Bah
Arcane
Not really. I played on Ultra for over 200 hours. It takes a long time before you start fighting anything "serious". You can still fight Young rats, young critters, whatever, but dealing with tougher enemies (the raptor things, etc.) it's going to take awhile. Then again I play slow so it took me a bit longer. You can kill normal critters and what not earlier. A companion is important, though.
Surprisingly, I think I agree with Fluent. Avoiding fighting at the beginning of PB games is pretty common. Sure, I could use twitch reflexes and kite cheese strategies to beat enemies anyway and level up faster, but then I'd be playing an ACTION game and not an RPG.