Sorry, I do not agree. In fact, I think solo playing should have options to be tougher/more difficult. Been hunting down mods to do that but most help out with building, though one was adding more monsters, have to check it out to see how tough they are.

Anyway....

Are you exploring biomes before you finish gearing up? It is meadows=>Black Forest=>Swamp=>Mountains=>Plains. If you skip over a biome the next level of mobs will hit you very hard but, say, if you have the wolf armor upgraded and (if needed) activate bonemass power, then when you go to plains the deathsquitos are not so bad, especially with the silver shield. But if you skip over or stumble across/yolo into a higher level biome, you will probably get killed. Also, some maps place high level biomes somewhat close to where you start, just have to avoid them early on.