As you figured out, there's a story mode where battles are not difficult, for adventures who are more interested in exploration than fighting. The quests are the same either way as far as I know.
Here are some tips:
1. Read everything you find. Most are just flavor, but some are involved in quests. You may see a popup that says check your quest journal J for more details. You don't have to literally read it, just the read mechanic from the right click menu.
2. Explore a lot. Some quest notes are inside locked red chests. You'll have to figure out a way to get at it. Most of these, fortunately, are not out in the open with a dozen people standing around, so hide and waiting a bit for people to wander away works.
3. Check the journal. It usually has a suggestion what to do next. Often it will put something on the map to go to next.
4. Keep pushing into new areas you haven't uncovered in the map yet. This helps for quests (especially higher-level quests) that seem at a dead end.
5. Some quests set things up for later in the game, and you have no access yet. There's quests you get in Act I you have to shelve until Act II or even Act III.
I don't think there's any quest you really need to get done to finish the game, though you may miss out on interesting questlines or "phat loot". IIRC, the fastest speedrun is less than 4 minutes!
Last edited by Shadowbart; 2 hours ago.
