Etrian Odyssey is really hard

[Great Rumbler]

As for money, there's enough to buy a couple of items, but not much... all you get is the stuff from drops, but if you need warp wires and healing items and stuff, that adds up fast... money isn't a huge problem, but getting a warp wire every time... that'd make buying other stuff harder anyway, for sure. And you can only do the woodcutting thing once a day. A party of five survivalists with Chop looks more attractive all the time..

You can do chop twice at level 1, actually.

The Alchemist is level 8, the other four level 7. I'm partway through floor 2 - I have a bunch explored, but I think some of that is from deaths... I have defeated two ropealopes though, I think. Is that too low for where I am or for the Ragelopes or something? Aren't they supposed to be hard?

You probably need to be at least level 10 when you go to B3F, anything lower than that and you're going to have a tough time. For the moment, concentrate on taking out the FOEs one at a time, that should give you enough experience points to get where you need to be.