I suppose it makes sense for it to be tough considering that it's intended as an endgame expansion and it's also replicating the new character low level experience with the scadu blessing system

I have actually found that the Land of Shadow has heaps of alternate routes to places, they're just much less obvious than before. The map is so wildly vertical and overlapping that finding a spiritspring or a tunnel or one of those cliffside staircases of protruding gravestones can take you to a whole new area

This exchange just popped back into my head for some reason. Your description of the approach to the flower was spot-on! Turns out it just happens to be a similar approach to Siofra. Took me a few attempts, and fire damage is a bit of a miserable situation for my dex build with a bit of int (level 150, scadutree... 9, I think? Maybe 10?), but I got there. I found that the best thing I could do was actually just to absolutely max out my own durability and accept that I was only getting one attack off per opportunity. I was having a really rough time avoiding the thorn eruption attacks, so the crimson seed talisman basically giving me two extra flasks worth of health was great. So long as I used fire damage and hit it in the "face" I didn't really need to do anything else to get plenty of damage

I have since gone through the specimen storehouse and found my way into Rauh, which I was absolutely delighted by because it looks exactly like Shadow of the Colossus and I'd been itching to get there ever since I found that waygate that gives you a preview of it