And if you play on PC, also avoid Tales of Maj'Eyal (https://te4.org/), because of its depth and almost infinite replayability.
Most of the time I go with "rule of cool", blaze ahead, and die somewhere around the time I get to the sandworm tunnels.
The farthest I ever got was what felt like the first real boss who just teleports you to <FUN> which came out of left field and my character in that run was _not_ prepared to handle that.
If more games did this, the difficulty slider could go away. As an added bonus, there is a satisfaction of getting to the point where you are so overpowered the game essentially breaks (see: vampire survivors)