addicted to torchlight on hardcore

So my good buddy Dave hooked me up with torchlight as a revenge tactic for getting him torchlight and getting him addicted.  I enjoyed it right off the back a great deal and was taken back to the grand ol' diablo/diablo2 days.  I've been playing off and on bashing baddies heads in with my destroyer.
  I became obsessed recently after reading on the runic forums about rolling VeryHard-HardCore (VHHC) toons.  Now on diablo2 rolling hard core toons didn't work out so well for me and I kinda just wanted to get through the story.  But I decided to give a VHHC toon on torchlight a try, and once was all i needed. One VHHC build clicked with me, the heavy ranger build based on the destroyer.
  Read the guide, built my toon and went on a rampage DESTROYING EVERYTHING IN MY PATH!  Until I died at lvl9.  LEVEL 9!  I had sweet gear/spells and everything was going great until I was zerged down  by a group of skellies.  Enraged,  I built another VHHC toon and died over and over again.
Finally, I was like, if i die one more time, FUCK IT! 'course that went on a few more "fuck its"
What was my down fall? Ignorance.  I did not truly understand the mechanics of the game (more than likely just ignored it) and it has been trial and error for me.  Mainly cause I fail to RTFM!  Not just in Torchlight, in everything.  Yes including life.
So I learn the hardway.  So if you are as fucking hard headed as I am then maybe you should read the following posts about my opinions of the game and how I am surviving VHHC thus far with my latest toon.
stay tooned...