[2021] Too easy.

There's a lot of possible reasons for this, not limited to but including:

• It seems likely that your friend had xp gain set very high, to say 300+%; Massive exp gain is a double edged sword, as while it gives you lots of skill points and bonus health/stamina, it also makes the game more difficult much faster.
  
• Being in a party and in the same area with that party member causes gamestage(The measure of difficulty) to be added together; The first player in a party is worth 1.7x their gamestage, and every additional player is worth a further half of the previous value (0.85, 0.42, etc)- Once all players GS are calculated, the numbers are added together.
  
• In conjunction with the above, If your friend was already a very high level and invited you to his world, You would be playing in a level of difficulty faaaaar above what you should be as a low level character.
  
• Screamers spawn based on Activity generated in an area; Activity is noise, light, gunshots, sounds of mining, etc; Everything that screams 'human here'. If your friend was running around with gas powered tools like the auger and firing off guns like a madman, you'd be encountering many more screamers than you might otherwise; Similarly, if he already had a well built up base that produced a lot of activity, he'd have lots of screamers spawning- But a new player playing on their own isn't likely to have the dozen forges, dozen campfires, dozen chem stations etc all running at all times because they just dont need that much material processing at one time.