So I (finally) got my PS4 working after a year of assuming it was bricked, and one of the first things I did was download Let it Die.

After going through the tutorial, and a death on floor 3 because of getting cocky, I started back on floor 1. Once I got to floor 2, I ran into a level 29 enemy (my character being level 1 at the time). Deciding not to get cocky again, I went back to the floor 1 elevator, and leveled up some stuff. Decided to run floor 1 again to get more resources/exp, and this time ran into a level 30 enemy at character level 7. He noticed me this time, and I got taken out from full health in about 3 hits.

Is this a normal part of the gameplay loop? I understand it's called "Let it Die" for a reason, and that individual characters don't matter TOO much. I'm just wondering if there was something I could have done differently, or if I just got extremely unlucky, because enemy balance being so poor on floor 1 has me very worried about progression later in the game (especially since I'm hoping to remain a F2P player for my time with the game).

Edit: I went back to floor 1 to try and kill the Hater, and get my character back. Got 1 shot, because I dumped all my points into strength. Can I literally not progress in the game anymore?

Yeah its normal, haters are player characters usually sent to fuck up your game to earn extra stuff. Once you learn the patterns they arent tough, and losing a level 1 character is cheap to buy back anyway(do not waste death metals on them)

@oursin_360: You have two things confused. Haters are characters that have died and entered your game. This happens randomly. If you die, your own Hater will always be in your game until you delete, rescue or kill him. The Fighters people send after you are Hunters and they have red names.

As for OP, you can totally kill a level 30 guy if you are level 1. But it definitely isn't a good enemy to learn the timing of the combat against. Consider yourself unlucky for now, keep playing and learning timing and soon you'll kill anyone who is 30 levels outside of your range (so long as it's a 1 on 1).

Every time you make a new star level of character the AI Haters (YTYMK@whatever) go up to the next tier, though they also give better (sometimes otherwise inaccessible) rewards; in the early game you just have to learn to stealth/fight them well; in the late game there will be plenty of situations where it's total bullshit but there's plenty of other bullshit going on so it's far from the biggest issue you'll have there.