and I’m a hoarder who can’t abide throwing anything away.

I’m guessing that I’m half to 2/3 of the way through Lands of Lore, and the only thing I’ve used a guide for was the make sure it was safe to throw away items (although they don’t disappear from the ground in this game, and you can do significant backtracking if you need to, but not always through the entire game).
It took me three attempts to beat the original Wasteland because the first two times I got deep into the game and realized that I’d somehow dropped something I needed and couldn’t complete the game without it.