Great advice everyone, thanks.
I looked at the build guides and my character specs are honestly already pretty close. Ifan is Ranged/Summons, Lohse is Hydro/Aero with a splash of Pyro, Red Prince is Warfare/Geo/Single handed, and Sebille is Scoundrel/Polymorph. I don’t think my build for her is a common one but I invested a lot in those skill books, and honestly Polymorph is fun and effective.
I’m playing on Xbox so I can’t cheat myself some gold. I’ll consider thievery. Every time I pick pocket as soon as I unstealth the guy confronts me and demands a search and I fail persuasion, which leads to the whole town aggroing and a reload. In DOS1 I stole paintings early on to gear out my party and that got me over the difficulty spike. Paintings in this game are kinda worthless.
I’ve cleared out the graveyard except for Ryker, he’s too hard and he gave me a quest I want to finish first. I’ve encountered Alice Aliceseon and she did indeed 1 shot me, I have no idea how that fight is supposed to go except pass persuasion I guess? The trolls are level 18, I tried fighting each of them too, with elemental effects, but I can’t DPS them down fast enough and they 1 shot everyone except Red Prince, who takes 2 shots. There’s Bloodmoon isle, which I haven’t explored yet.
I wondered into what looks like a slave camp full of level 13 magisters. I helped them kill some voidwoken, then saw them about to execute some villagers. I picked a fight with them and got half of them down before all my CC was on cooldown and they managed to kill Lohse and Ifan in the same round. Then I went to bed and questioned my approach to this game.