Etrian Odyssey is really hard

[Great Rumbler]

Running away is pretty effective, but warp pipes... unless I go the "make a whole party of survivalists with all their points in Chop to take advantage of the resource point near the enterance of the first floor" method, which seems to me would be kind of cheating (RPGs are about making one party, not several...), there's no way I'd come up with the money to afford a 100 gold (or whatever the money is called) item for every time I go in...

Man, what is it with you and not being able to get money in videogames? I haven't really had many money problems, a bit early on, but I fixed that by just fighting a lot and taking advantage of the item points from time to time. Make sure to fight a lot of enemies at a fairly low level, that should give you more than enough items to build up some cash reserves.

(Ragelopes = HARD!; random monster versions of that enemy (forget their name) = "can almost kill you in one hit".). And this is just on floor 2.

You sir need to do some level griding.

Don't worry too much about Warp Pipes on the first few levels, but by the time you get down to B4F and B5F, you really need to keep at least two with at all times.