A Poison potion and tier 1 Frostner with Tier 1 Wolf Gear destroys Bonemass. Skipping the long grind for Iron Tier and full Bronze Tier, spending 1/10th the time looking for a Silver Mine or 2. Then destroy Bonemass, then quickly after Moder, saving the Iron grind for the Padded Armor and tools.

Mine Bronze to get Forge,Workbench and Cauldron upgrades, make Tier 1 Bronze armor or skip for fully Tiered Troll Armor. Make your Bronze Tools, go to the swamp for some Iron and Ancient Wood, then head for the mountains for that silver and Wolf taming. Then back to swamp. The only Armor, Weapons and Tools I fully upgrade atm is Plains stuff. Everything else seems like a long, long waste of time.

But that is me, you may need to spend 10s of hours upgrading.
Death runs can suck, sometimes a fun challenge, other times annoying, but that is with most all survival games. If you have food, spare armor and weapons, then recovering your stuff isn't difficult.

Maybe the Dark Souls part is the couple hits you dead? IDK never played or watched anyone else play. But a lot of games have the "Dark Souls Like" as they claim.