I've had a really bad habit for a while of starting LD+ over from the beginning every time a new story began. The Island updates have had done a good job on conditioning me to enjoy new content with an existing save rather than starting over.
Also, wanted to raise a discovery I made: I can JUST ABOUT win that fight with the supposed-to-be-unwinnable plant in the Forest Park by virtue of... let's call it "level grinding", and beckon meaningfully at the character creation process. Haven't quite figured out what levels I need to FULLY outpace its healing, but it does raise a question - do you have a failsafe in place for if that thing's stamina goes down to 0? Or should I stop experimenting so I don't crash the game?