I don't like playing just to get frustrated, either. Since I couldn't make only the animals neutral without also making the monsters neutral, I installed a mod that lets me respawn near where I died. It does make temporal gears lose their purpose as a respawn mechanic, but I think that's a fair trade-off because, as long as I've marked my base on the map, I can always walk back. It's a nice quality-of-life mod. If you want a completely vanilla experience without mods, though, there's really nothing that can be done for you.