I started playing Project Gorgon after a search for some MMO/RPGs that weren't pay-to-win or pay-to-play, which I could play on my free time, lead me to a thread recommending Project Gorgon with a warning that it was a bit grindy, which I didn't mind. I downloaded it and read up on some other threads which also alluded to the fact that it took a lot of grinding. Once on the tutorial island, I went through it pretty fast and was already given the option to leave by the man in the light-house. I thought I was leaving a bit under-leveled, and went to grind out to a comfortable level around 15 or so sword and 11-13 unarmed and could solo the big-headed skeleton boss there. After giving him the coordinates I landed in Serbule and went to test the mob difficulty to die to a tiger that was right where new players coming to serbule spawned. I thought that was a bit weird but I respawned in the town and started on the beginner quests I was given. One told me to chip off a piece of a crystal, which spawned a deer that wasn't too hard to kill but still kicked my ass for something that was in the starter quest. I killed enough to finish the quest, but thought I was a bit underleveled so I farmed the deer to kill them until I could be comfortable fighting them, around 20. This was because anything besides the deer killed me if more than one of them grouped up, then I went to do the other quest given to me. This quest, the starter one, sent me into a dungeon with brain bugs every ten steps, which I could only kill, at level 25 sword and endurance 16, one at a time with a full break in between, with the best food I could get without training cooking too much. The other quest underneath the crystal lead me to a dungeon with slimes I couldn't even kill without dying. I decided that I couldn't do either of the starter questions with my main skill maxed to half, at least without bumping up the level cap. So I tried some other skills like bard and fire magic, which brought something else to my attention. At the starter levels of a new skill, the only reasonably kill-able mobs, apart from those at the tutorial island, gave only 20xp and they were few and far between and took ages to respawn. At this point, I thought I had screwed up somewhere down the line and went to what I had been told was a very helpful, closely-knit community which had drawn me to the game in the first place. The only responses I got to the mere idea of beginner unfriendliness was one dude telling me how much xp he had to get and that I was a bitch, and an overwhelming amount of the same response of the game "not holding your hand." I feel like I want to make this game work and that it would be a great time-spender if I ever got behind it but I feel like its not geared towards beginners at all and is oddly difficult for certain stages of the game. Am I doing it wrong and needed to do something different to make the experience better? Is this random jump in mob difficulty from the tutorial island to wanting to do anything in serbule noticed by any other beginner players? Did I just run into a bad egg or is this community just a closely-knit Dark-Souls-esque elitist club? Let me know, it'd be great to get some information.
TL;DR: grinded tutorial island but got my ass handed anywhere else in serbule, couldn't do any quests, leveling is boring slow, wondering if i did something wrong or has anyone else noticed the bullshit jump in mob difficulty.