Experience ruined.

Is it possible to cheat in this game? Sorry I never knew. Me and my friends started playing like a week ago and we all have like 30-40hrs of gameplay by now. There's a skill drain when dying so I've been stuck on like level 30's of the main skills like running, jumping, woodcutting, sword etc. What I don't get is that there's this guy who keeps on dying, yelling in the vc complaining about how hard the game is and yet his skills are on like level 60 and his running skill was on level 87 which really made me act salty knowing that I navigate the map all the time, running for like hours and my running skill is still on 30's. I don't know, maybe I'm just a noob. And then there's this guy who admitted that he was taking items from his other world. But we all played at the same time so I doubt he had some black scrap something (i forgot the name) in his other world. And that just ruined my experience with the game. It was fun at first like experiencing new things in this game is phenomenal. It is still fun and one of the best games that exists right now but I prefer playing solo right now (or with new players so that everything is a fresh restart).