Just putting this on here, haven't looked to see if this is discussed.

The difficulty/amount of hostile bugs seems out of whack to be honest. I thought maybe it's just me... My friends and I beat grounded 1 and a few days later 2 came out for ps5 and we hopped on immediately, so we're still fresh. Been playing since launch and holy crap... We went mild because we like building and we're just wanted a chill time. It seems like EVERYTHING is designed to make the experience more difficult. Thirst and hunger drop way faster, aggressive bugs are everywhere, get hit twice and death.

I thought something was weird so I looked around. A LOT of people are complaining about this on Reddit, so I know I'm not alone. I got followed for a good 7 minutes around the entire park trying to escape a bug. Why? Why am I being chased throughout the whole park?

Playing the first one, we could build and do our thing in relative peace. Sure, a spider once every blue moon might show up. But we never had to mess with the options. Now we specifically turn off the options so we can build cuz it's so annoying walking out of your place and getting bombarded with mites. Then walking a few cm and a sudden grasshopper out of nowhere. Then a wolf spider in the other direction. And mind you, this is the very beginning of the game, we've done maybe 2 story missions.

We love the game, mainly playing it together. But playing on mild should NOT feel like a fight to the death every few minutes. The first game handled difficulty well.. difficult at first cuz you're new and you have to figure stuff out and weak weapons and all. Then you get used to it and the difficulty goes at a good pace. This one smacks the hell out of you right from the getgo and it's honestly making it less fun.

Anyways, just wanted to rant because clearly I'm not the only one that feels this way. I hope obsidian or eidos or whoever is paying attention to customer reviews, because a lot of people out there love your game, but are slowly getting turned off by this.

IDK man ... didn't feel that way. Yes, mites are seen often, but they die easy. Orb Weaver Jr are hard, but you avoid them and it shouldn't be a problem. You eventually learn where the big bugs are and avoid them until you are stronger.
In general there are like 5 strong bugs in the whole area out of the garden and into the abys area. You can avoid them.

The mosquitos look scarry, but if you get an ant buggy, the ant can solo a mosquito with no buggy upgrades.
The scorpion is the worst enemy since it can follow you into the base and spawn camp you. What I did when that happened to me was to enter the facility and shoot it with a bow until it died. I was super happy once I got my first stinger.
IDK, didn't feel the game was needlessly hard. In fact, you feel the progression much better, because you see these enormous bosses that 2-shot you and slowly get stronger and stronger to get them on. The first minibosses are the Orb Weaver Jr and Northern Scorpion Jr, then you kill the big guys, and the Wolf Spider is almost end-game enemy.

Just the thing that you mention grasshoppers, they are not aggressive and they live in areas where you need to go once you have at least tier 2 full gear.

Or, idk, just get a ladybug shield and a ****roach mace and ace the game. Both are easy to farm and the mace is the most used weapon by me by far. I changed it only when I killed King Dozer for his mace.