As a warrior, I discovered that a lot of my problems resulted from attempting to melee, being unwilling to run, and an urge to revive NPCs that go down. All of these make Personal Stories harder for us. And of course, outleveling and gearing up are going to be major helps no matter what your strategy.
If it’s possible, you always want to give hitting the enemy from a distance/ kiting it a try. A lot of things in Personal Stories eat people who try to melee exclusively, or in a few cases, at all (ask how I know). Melee is generally works best as the last resort. If you can always open with ranged, taking off as much Health as possible before whatever you’re fighting gets close enough to do the same.
With all that heavy armor, you can feel a little silly making like a rabbit and running. Try to get over that feeling, since near as I can tell, it’s largely decorative. If it looks like your toast, try and run for it. Ideally, you’ll hit a tether on the enemies before you end up crossing the border of the instance and being kicked out. This is also a decent way to split groups of enemies in some cases. You run catch their attention, run a bit away from their spawn/home point, then hit one with an immobilizer and slower. Then you resume running until the rest lose interest, and run back to hopefully grab the targeted one before it makes it back to the group. If you fail to separate the group, be patient and keep trying, because some groups in Personal Stories are made of veterans who will flatten people soloing at the quest level.
You will get NPCs who will help you. At best, they will be utterly useless, at worst they will actively cause you problems. NPCs are only useful in cutscenes requiring them to be, do not rely on them otherwise. An inordinate amount of them seem to be set to charging in as some sort of default, which as a rule, gets you every single enemy in the immediate area and frequently leaves you facing them alone once the NPC faceplants because they’re more fragile than you’d expect, and also because NPCs do not run for their lives when you do. Stand back, open with a ranged weapon and see what the NPC does. If, like many do, they charge in, don’t follow, stand at a distance with your weapon to watch. A few can take the trouble they dive into and survive, allowing you to not take damage while you fight from a distance. A fair number will splat, which is when you run away until the enemy stops chasing you, then return and solo said enemies with the strategy you prefer.
If it’s part of the story for an NPC to die, they WILL die, no matter how you try to save them. If they are needed, the game will prompt you to revive them. There are “extras” who are helpful if revived, in a minor way, but they are never worth risking yourself over. Escorts, mentors, bosses, all these NPCs can be left until after combat to revive if they splat, and putting priority on getting them back up early just puts you at risk for armor damage. Remember, if you end up leaving the instance, everything will be hunky dory for them since everything resets, but armor damage remains. Groups of NPCs can be more effective than lone ones, but they are even more prone to bugging out and leaving you fighting alone, so go carefully.
No matter what you do, if you’re soloing, there will end up being one or two things you will end up reviving to fight again. Revive as quickly as possible and run back. If the NPCs have survived your death and are still fighting it, the enemy doesn’t heal while you’re dead. The goal is to get back before the NPC joins you in the great beyond, and start hammering away at it again. You may end up doing this a few times to take down something especially hard, but fortunately the retry checkpoint should be close.
And if you should see a human warrior running about without his pants, please don’t point and laugh. It’s not my fault the monsters are pervs and always make them fall off first
.