That's part of the intro mission -- it warns you repeatedly to stay back from that thing.
You have to go away and get a different spell from the building you start in, and then you can kill it easily while taking no damage. In terms of people dying early on into the game, I think that's pretty well always been the case. From a fundamental sense, the complexity hasn't really changed; at the "macro" level the complexity has actually decreased.
And really, it should be a bit easier on average now than it used to be. Monster stats have not changed, but base player health is higher, and characters now get extra bonuses that they didn't have before. There are a number of new enemies that are specifically quite difficult, but mainly those are relegated to specific zones of the world (fear the forests) or to later in the game. There are also now more missions that start out easier and then ramp up more as you play them more -- before most of the missions started at what is now considered their max difficulty.
There has also been the introduction of things like the infestations, which do add more difficulty; but then again those are offset by all the benefits the players now have. And similarly, players now have an extra enchant slot for even more bonuses than I already mentioned, and the whole upgrade stone system has been turned into an enchant-based system at the opal guardian's store that means the penalty for death is vastly less.
And you start with more enchants once you reach the settlement, plus you have the ability to buy more with the consciousness shards that you now find around in the world. Among... other various benefits and simplifications.
But yeah, some of the new monsters that you see right from the start in some of the zones are definitely much harder than the older ones, in counterbalance to this, I will say. Not during the intro mission, though.
EDIT: Ninja'd.