Maybe I haven't truly went to the high level areas so far (Only got through the Gorn part of main quest, and never went to dead end areas like mountain cave and sea so my highest level area is the marsh), or maybe I just don't spend enough adventure on one day. My longest journey so far is going foot from Wimborn to Frostford and then back, fighting every last hostile encounter and still come back home safely everytime. In my personal experience neither high stress nor low energy is a significant issue.
Stress gets capped at 120 and doesn't seem to have significant debuff to my party, and acid spit special move doesn't cost energy and erode armor so that pretty much negate 0 energy problem.
Then again, I tend to always lean more towards caution when playing video game, so that may be why I don't find adventure to be particularly challenging since I usually go low level adventure with full party of chain mail/long sword, and high level adventure with lv10+ all have hammer. I'll probably have to play more of the game to tell for sure, but so far Strive is definitely more of a relaxing experience which is not a bad thing, since I always prefer a relaxing game over a high challenging game anyways. I just don't feel the game mechanic does what the game maker wants to accomplish.
I will definitely have to give Invigorate/Magic build a try. Haven't really feel I needed it, but if that move has unlimited use per day unlike Sedation, it sounds like a really helpful spell.