Meaningless sounds good, as I thought it´s very bad this was really frustrating. Dev could add some more detailed info on what happens on death ingame to prevent raising frustration about probably not as bad as it sounds - loss of stats.

And about BlackForest? Is this the right direction to go? My two starting islands both are huge with several directions I can go to - a never ending "island", so I don´t really know if I entered an area too high for my level (with all items level 2, a pick axe made from bone - no way to build a smelter with my work bench level 3 - so maybe mining in Black Forest is not necessary now, but I don´t know what else to do after killing the first "boss")