The extra stamina usage is to punish those that yolo around and die all the time and therefore have lower skill levels, and who don't want to get better food and better armor moving from biome to biome. You should be gaining at least 10 skill levels per biome to keep up with new weapons and their attendant stamina usage. Their game, their rulez.

I can't even get into the aforementioned artificiality regarding game design. Unless you want a game you play while sitting on real grass, maybe pushing frogs around, what you get is a magical world designed by artists and rendered in zeroes and ones, on a computer.