You play the way you want to. After all, video games are for your entertainment, not for community approval.

I have a setup and started to use it around day 200 of my first playthrough which allowed me to lose nothing on death and not lose any progress (not lose 5% of stats). I could still die and would return to the last spawn point, but it allowed me to learn the game without too much frustration on that first playthrough. Now that I know the game and a few experiments with that mod parachute, I can deactivate the mods.