you said it's not hard to level up on free area but you suddenly switch from free area to challenge which require step by step walkthrough to unlock it.
you really should look at this from fair perspective.
i think we could easily understand each other if i said i didn't join the discord and getting extra knowledge there.
i literally learn the game by playing hence why i restarted my progress because i don't want to invest on training skill due to stats cap show up very earlier.
All I was doing was explaining a very easy method to rank up that doesn't involve 10 hours of grinding. There's more to the game than just grinding in the free area. You can also rank up in the free area without it taking 10 hours. Like maybe if you only stay in village of beginnings it would take that long but you're supposed to explore and get to stronger areas with more xp.
I also didn't get any of that info from the discord btw, it's just from playing the game and messing with the mechanics.
It's totally fine to learn to play a game by just playing it without guides. I'm not saying otherwise and I did the same thing.
I think the best way to look at the game is a snowball effect. Things are a lil slow at first but the more you progress and unlock the easier and faster things get.
I'm not telling you this to brag or demean how you're playing to be clear. I think that would be kind of silly lol I'm just trying to encourage to keep playing and not overly stress over what skill you unlock first. It's not going to majorly impact the game not unlocking that skill immediately, but what WILL make it take forever to get to is starting over due to worrying you've made a huge mistake when in the end it wasn't a big deal.
If you just genuinely prefer playing this way though, I will not tell you what to do. :)
