Plains difficulty curve PITA

I've been deeply in love with this game as I've made my way to the plains in prep for Yagluth. But I'm not loving the plains.

Prior zones mostly followed an enjoyable pattern. Whether Black Forest, Swamp or Mountain, my initial forays were scary as hell and involved plenty of deaths. But as I began to upgrade my gear and build some familiarity, the risk diminished to where I'd be generally safe as long as I paid attention.

Fast forward to the plains, and that's not happening. I have max padded armor (save the helmet at rank 3), and I can manage a group of four gobbos at once with a little care and some Frostner slowdowns.

But the swarming nature of plains encounters means that I still take dirtnap after dirtnap, even when being super careful. Case in point: Yesterday I decided to sail around the coast of a large Plains zone, rather than run through, and brought mats to build a portal. Nice and careful-like.

Got all the way to what looked like a safe spot to disembark and build my portal, only to be surprised by a level 3 gobbo. Not a problem, I thought, and started to fight.

You know what happens next. Three Two more gobbos and two deathsquitos joined the fray. More than sufficient to take me down before I could drop a portal, especially since the first little b*stard engaged before I was even fully ashore.

Now I'm facing yet another PITA corpse run where I can either go naked, and probably get killed again, or gear up in old gear and risk it all getting worse. Where even just getting there is a major challenge, and it's a safe bet there's a gobbo rave centered on my corpse.

Anyone else have this experience, or am I really just getting sloppy? Either way I'm getting pretty tired of corpse runs, especially with the injury-to-insult of constant skill loss.

Edit: Sorry, that total != add mistake probably led many to think I'd done this at night.