From a speedrun perspective, some of those skills don't make as much sense. In particular:

Learning: You are spending skill points now for more power later. In a speedrun, there is no later: you are not going to reach that high of a level. This skill might be useful if it allows you to obtain a particular skill sooner (or get an important piece of equipment in the shop), but otherwise might not be worth the skill points.

Knowledge of Herbs: It's commonly recommended to wait until this skill is leveled up before harvesting herbs. For a speedrun, that advice doesn't make sense: it takes too long to go back and harvest herbs. Also, it is uncertain if the extra herbs from this skill provides a benefit worth the skill points and time to level up the skill.

Knowledge of Terrains: This skill, while useful, has one drawback from a speedrun perspective: it makes the passage of time slower, which means it takes more real time for the shops to restock, and I have a feeling that may be important.

On the other hand, Camouflage saves time by letting you reliably skip time-consuming battles.

By the way, how fast do hounds scale on Hardcore difficulty?

Learning = getting level ups faster = higher Speed, higher percent chance to hit something, more HP, PP, more efficiency. Especially important when you don't plan to clear out areas.
You can max this skill at midgame. At late game monsters are so incredibly fat, that you will regret not maxing combat benefits at that point.
As you will see later on, passage of time in some regions is insane. One region is nigh impossible without that skill (you take starving damage there no matter the difficulty).
For speed run it is MUCH faster to kill all along way than having to deal with 10 misses in a row. More exp = higher level and you didn't see later bosses. Skipping encounters and herbs will make them unkillable without coming back and killing stuff.
You meet them 50% as often than on Old-School Mode (1 enc. per 600 revealed cells). And they are nigh impossible to kill when you first meet them, but eventually you'll be able to and more easily than standard monsters. On Old-School veteran, first encounter is winnable with enough perseverance (I was lucky and didn't even get cursed on my fail playthrough).

One of the reasons I suspect using mages might be a good idea for a speedrun is that they don't have to worry about missing.

Also, mages can reliably stun and freeze, so if the next character is a physical attacker, she might be able to get a reliable hit in.

I don't think speedrun is good idea for this game at all, especially on intended ("Real" difficulty).

Fighting at low levels without blessings - nigh impossible to kill anything. Atm, one blessing at Lv.8 costs 80 gold, and where i am now, you better have all blessings to greatly reduce real time of reloading when thieves steal form you and run. That's 640 Gold, and you also need to upgrade gear and get skill points.

I am finally done with mushrooms (killed them all, because I hate stealthing in any game), but blessings are still needed. Those 640 gold is a PITA, and without blessings combat is way too frustrating - bees can kill your tank before your first turn (speak of Speed here), burglars steal massive amounts of gold and run away extremely fast (btw, Speed again) and Venom Wasps are like normal bees, but hit harder, even MORE fast and have surprisingly deadly poison.

Out of these only Burglars drop stuff... 48 Gold (in contrast to 70 on easy mode), IF you kill them before they run away with YOUR stuff. This isn't enough even for 1 blessing.

Definitely interesting and challenging game, but I am not seeing myself replaying it after this. Way too much focus on cereals in the beginning. Cereals for blessings, cereals for gear, cereals for skill points, and monsters are there just to drain you of all gold by requiring to have blessings, putting mega-expensive debuffs and outright stealing your stuff. Too big temptation just to open savefile and add 6-7 zeroes to your gold. I keep persevering, knowing that it will become much more sustainable later on...

I've read online that thieves tend to flee only when they are low on health, so the strategy is simple: don't let them get a turn when low on health. Wait until the thief isn't going to act for a while, then bombard the thief with stuns, freezes, and fast damage.

Also, according to a discussion on the Steam forums (http://steamcommunity.com/app/296570/discussions/0/611696927919707287/), if you have a high level mage, you can apparently use Energy Absorption to drain all of the thief's PP and prevent the escape spell from being used.

In a speedrun, of course, it probably makes sense to not bother with them.

Anyway, I think the early game, at least, might be more fun on the easiest difficulty. It is also apparent that, if a speedrun is viable, it is only viable on the lowest difficulty.

Don't forget that Energy Absorption is Lv.33 spell, and that burglars like to come in large groups. Surely it is doable, just with blessings and some save loads.

I am also such a person who goes through the game as a tank. If there is side route or possibility to skip some annoying encounters, I'll disregard it and will keep pushing through. So no way I am going to Golden Woods while there are still random encounters before entering Woods.
It is definitely much easier on easiest difficulty. You can kill enemies without blessings, which already means a lot, everything is cheaper and treasures, enemies have much more gold, etc., but intended/normal difficulty is Old-School Veteran. Personally, I don't like hard mode, nor easy, just game files revealed that actual intended normal mode is the middle one. I started to look into game files after wondering why Bestiary from Deluxe Edition is completely wrong. As it turned out, Bestiary lists stats for medium difficulty. I don't like hard mode, but I don't like easy mode either, so I restarted on intended difficulty.

Another thing to keep in mind, that game eventually becomes much more easier. On easiest mode the game doesn't even get a chance to be challenging (except for mushrooms - but you need just few blessings to kill them, don't let me get started to describe my preparations to kill them on old-school veteran). The whole point of many things is just missing on easiest mode - cursed hounds die by looking at them, bees die by the sword, you can actually witness enemies running out of PP, and so on.

How far did you make it now btw?

Playing this game on easy difficulty is surely boring. I have played on old-school veteran up to a point where it became so easy that most of combats were click-click-click on an enemy until it's dead, then the next one (clickfest without any strategy) that I have restarted on hardcore-ironman. Now this is really fun (maybe I am a bit masochistic), because you really have to use strategies, use stealth, retreat from fights with 4-5 characters killed (no-reload) and I try not to use gamey tactics (I collect herbs when I find them, not wait to reach max skill in herb collecting). So far it's a lot of fun, but you have to restart a few times on hardcore until you learn the strings and ropes. I even defeated all cursed hounds encounters (which start directly with 2 cursed hounds), but it means when you get the warning you must use a teleport crystal to return to village to prepare for the fight.

I decided to go the other way and head to the castle, getting a nice amount of money by killing guards (including a wandering guard ecnounter). Also, the cost of training started to increase faster, 100 at a time instead of 50.

Also, the game randomly decided to unequip the axe that I didn't meet the requirements for.

I would consider the higher difficulties if the game didn't start out as hard, or if I could increase the difficulty after I get past the earlier stages.

With respect to the gamey tactics gunman_ mentioned, I see it as a flaw in the game; the game would be better IMO without the Knowledge of Herbs and Learning skills and without experience boosting equipment and blessings.

On Old-School Veteran it is exactly twice as expensive, so it starts with 100 and increases by 100 untill 1000 g, etc. Even more expensive on Hardcore.
Games with finite resources always have some unusual approaches in order to maximize gold/exp/etc. income/returns. That's probably another reason why you don't like no-respawns (I don't like it for sure, but for some games I make exceptions).

Off-topic: I almost confused you and Gunman, I wonder what avatars would you pick :)

Still off-topic: What are the format and dimensions of the avatars?

Format jpg (png should work too), 49 x 49. If dimensions are larger than that, I think forum engine downscales them (to 49 x 49).