The game punish you very hard if u dont use the right passive skills tree. Watch some youtube builds and select the one you like. This game is hard if u just play randomly. I spend hours to find some good build works for me. Good luck!

i may try a different build soon i guess, confused on if leveling more in story mode would help

Run mandates for a little while to find some good up-to-level rare (yellow) gear. Complete the first few, cheapest projects, and consider adjusting your passive tree you will be able to reach some good nodes with 45 points.
Mandates are the stepping stone to expeditions after you have finished the story, there's no need to rush to them. They are also still useful at a higher level for when we just need a few hundred productivity to finish the quickest projects.

most common problem is that ppl ignore resistance in story mode and when they come to expedition with 15-20% ress they got slaughtered ....

You need solid def ,,, resistance is priority for lower expeditions , more important then HP or FS ...

Later you need to make proper build ... I suggest to use someones guide ... picking randomly with no plan or idea don't end well ...

If you have problem as LVL 45 to finish lvl 40 expedition your build is fundamentally wrong ...

First char I made i get to expeditions as LVL 41 and I was struggled ... I had low resistance and no plan . I choose passives myself and it was very hard to progress .... eventually I use some guide , changed everything , made a good build ...

At one point I didn't want to ruin character I made so I made another ... with this one , much smarter now I used proper build form the start ... With lvl 35 I was finishing expedition lvls 50 with no problem .. at 40 i was at 70 .... at 60 at 130 ....

this game is designed the way that in endgame you must be able to go to exp levels much higher then your character lvl ..... if you straggle with same lvl or even lower then your build is no good ... find a guide , change everything from 0 and you will be amazed how much it will change ...

cant even do mandate at 50, its probably my resist then. ill maybe try to redo stats to more toughness. my passive build looks right so i dont think that was problem. thx all for help

all into toughness worked- thx all!

yes .. most of the builds have "all to one attribute" system ...

depend what is you primary defense ... Lot of builds have "all to toughness"

balancing attributes and putting equal to everything usually is not very effective in the end ...

My build now have "all in wisdom" I have relatively low HP 40k , 0 force shield ... but all resistance over 60% and block chance/block efficiency 100%/75% ....
I tried several things and find out that combination of full block + high res works best by far .. I think atm block builds have most effective def in the game ... ( my build : dagger+shield - all 7 ailments / crit dam/ block/ high res )

my previous build have 120k HP and 70% all res and it was not effective as this one....It was a tank but still I was stuck at lvl160+ ...

Now with only 40k Hp I can survive and clear 187 expeditions as char lvl 79