Out of curiosity, did you end up putting any points into your attributes? I went up about 7 levels without realizing that I needed to assign them, and was wondering why things were as tough as they were, but once I finally started getting those stats up, it got a lot better. Still challenging, but doable.
I did allocate points to my skills and character traits, though I was extremely unlucky when it came to getting equipment to drop early on and eventually switched to melee and then to magic, both of which felt much more impactful to my gameplay and dropped much more frequently. It got much easier as I got better equipment and a higher level, but the journey to get there was rather unforgiving.
Still I feel that something should be done to improve bows as they are weaker and less interesting compared to melee and magic respectively.