When I first started playing a few months ago I was in normal mode and got insanely lucky. In the first
couple weeks I had an exotic land right in front of me in a space station and I had *just* enough to buy it with trade-in. The first freighter I was offered was an "S" class. And then not long after that I found a second exotic (a yellow and gold royal.) I even found a star system with three awesome planets (Bountiful, Tropical, Paradise.) For a while it was fun but got boring pretty quickly.

I kept that save but decided to start another one on permadeath with the difficulty ratcheted up a bit. MUCH harder and definitely frustrating, but a lot of fun! A lot more animals attack me on planet surfaces and pirates definitely seem more skilled in fights (a couple times I barely made it out alive after prolonged battle, when in my other save I'd dispatch them in less than a minute.)

I think I am just over 15 hours into it and still hanging in there. I have an "A" class fighter for a ship, and have not seen a single "S" class anything. I've only been offered one freighter so far and it was a "C." I was in two other battles where I could have been offered a freighter but accidentally shot them while fighting the pirates and then had to deal with pirates AND sentinels with no reward for it. The struggle is real. Me in my other save: "Oh look, another exotic. I'll add it to my collection." Me now: "OMG is that sodium?! WOO HOO!"