Originally posted by Cobretti:

The armor grind isn't necessary and can save you quite a bit of farming time. If you think about it, armor is just insurance against making mistakes. A lot of players prefer to run light armor for the mobility and focus on not getting hit. I'd rather do that as mining makes me fall asleep.

I've tried that.
Light armor and mobility-oriented weaponry(knives) works well in early biomes, but at swamps and later on they become rather pointless. It's missing 2 or 3 tiers of light armor. Irongate made a fun functionality split in food, but the stamina-oriented food has no (yet?) actual use, unless you're a 100% archer, or if you're doing a long run from point A to point B. Trying to be 100% archer when you have bosses like Bonemass is rather pointless. Also being a stamina-oriented eater is a death sentence in a poison-riddled biome like swamps.
I'm yet to see a proper utilization of stamina-oriented gameplay, because for now, I see it utterly lacking past the third biome.