Things that only happen when playing tabletop RPG

So. Was playing a bit of Solo D&D. (My set up includes one full PC + 2 NPC sidekicks. Think of NPC sidekicks as the pen-and-paper equivalent of AI party members. Except instead of being limited by having dumb AI, NPC sidekicks are limited by having about half of the normal resource of a PC.)

Anyhoo, long story short, my PC failed three Survival checks in a row (rolled 2, 4, 3 in that order, no joke), so the party walked straight into the green dragon wyrmling's lair. The two sidekicks managed to both go down into death saving throws and I had to get them back up with healing potions using my PC. Then, while trying to fend off the dragon wyrmling, I managed to walk the party into a den of blights despite reading ahead and knowing this was going to happen. Because narrative logic says my character doesn't know shit thanks to failing the survival check three times and definitely would just...run into the nearest looking cave. So that was a thing. And then a freaking snake monster joins the fray, trying to charm my sidekicks then grapple my PC.

I was definitely convinced this was going to all end up in a TPK (again, my PC was down to 8HP, my sidekicks were down to death saving throws, it was not looking good). And in my infinite wisdom/desperation, I leveraged fucking Minor Illusion, a ha-ha spell that makes illusory objects which fit inside a 5-foot cube and, being a faerie and only 2 feet tall, I created an illusory cloud of darkness to block line of sight, thus blocking magic spells being able to target my PC and hoodwinked the wyrmling with blindsight (because blindsight cannot see through illusion magic according to rules as written), so this gave me the ability to...shock... survive long enough to use Mage Hand to force feed health potions into my dying sidekicks, bring them back up to an unreliable 6HP, then finally turn the battle around.

The entire battle lasted 8 rounds. I would like to mention that combat normally average three to six rounds. Point is, holy fuck, I was 8 hit points away from a TPK. Anyone who says D&D 5/5.5e can't reasonably threaten a well prepared team past level 2 is bullshitting. Also, fuck save or suck spells. Why is it that enemies are able to save against my spells every time?! My poor sidekick ate two critical multi-attack hits in the face. No amount of HP buffer was going to save it.

Also complaints about low level flying races being overpowered is absolute bullshit. Fuck that noise. My entire party could fly and it did nothing for us other than make us even more of an easy target because there's nowhere to hide in the air. Even with Minor Illusion filling the spaces with chunks of illusory cloud, it did nothing against the wyrmling's breath weapon.

So yeah. Solo D&D. Somehow still better than AI dungeon masters.