u/Norrmma

Hooooooly shit. I actually cannot believe I did it. The full game, all of it completed on Permadeath. All Bishop quests done, all bosses killed. Genuinely did not expect to do this, much less all on one attempt. I'm sure plenty of people have done this but I'm just really happy right now tbh. Low % completion because I went pretty fast, and one of the best strats in Permadeath is to collect basically no Tarot cards so you get ones that give you HP very often.

Some not-so-expert thoughts about the various modes across all 3 "stages" of the game (Basegame, Unholy Alliance, Woolhaven) ahead:
Permadeath: Extremely fun in all 3 stages of the game. Most fun and difficult part of the game is definitely the basegame. Once you get about halfway through Unholy Alliance you can get so much HP that you're not really in much danger, though some bosses can still fuck you up. Especially if you cheese the mode by just Sermon spamming for blue hearts and waiting tons of days in between crusades for Disciple shrine buffs. I tried to keep that to a minimum however, only two Sermons and one Disciple buff per run. I did come close to death twice in Woolhaven, however so it's not free. Would 100% recommend a Permadeath playthrough, adds a whole new level of fun to the game.
Penitence: Fun during the basegame, the food management and unique way of playing the game is really fun during this part of the game since you have so little food and have to do a ton of unique strats (like farming birds in Darkwood for meat, and playing a full sacrifice build for follower meat.) Starts to get tedious towards the later stages of Unholy Alliance where you have farms setup and can start Missionary'ing for tons of meat. Starting Woolhaven it's pure tedium and I would've turned it off at that point if possible. It just becomes a chore since you have so much food. If you intend to play through the basegame only, it is a very fun stress inducing challenge that changes how you'll play the game. If you intend to play past that it eventually just becomes boring and tedious.
Quick Start: Not that important but I do have a thought on it, think it should work for Woolhaven too, lots of cutscenes in that DLC and it might be nice to skip them for repeat playthroughs.

I don't know if this counts as a spoiler but as it discusses stuff beyond the basegame I decided to play it safe.

(It's a backup save because I started Woolhaven early then decided it'd be cooler to do the entirety of Unholy Alliance before starting Woolhaven.)
Thanks for reading my wall of text :)