Do you have some advice on how to evoke feeling of harshness in the setting without making it caricaturally grim or simply stingy with resources? Something like tolkienesque First Era Beleriand with inaccessible gods and great danger nearby but with less superpowered elves and less focus on nobility?
What worlds and work are you thinking of with the kind of general tone and scope you want to achieve?
my main thing at the moment is the untold stories behind Silmarillion - the humans of the East who neither had help from benevolent Valar nor had to endure the powers of Morgoth. The places forgotten by good powers but still messed with by distant evil powers.