I am visiting the Joolian system for the first time. I read up on how hard Tylo is to land on, watched Matt Lowne do it, etc. I built a large, wide lander out of a single fuel tank, stuck 14 Spark engines on it, put a MK1 Lander Can on top and some legs around the sides, tweaked it to have 5100 DV, made sure the TWR was in a good place, and called it done. How hard can it be, I said, foolishly.

I got the lander (docked with the mothership) down to about a 25km orbit, then undocked and fired up the engines. A few crashes and quickloads later, I figured out that I needed to keep my engines aimed 10-15 degrees landward of the retrograde marker so I didn't drop too fast. My first landing I managed to keep 2500 DV, but the damn lander hit at 50m/s, bounced, and ended up on its side. This is Tylo, the gravity is too high for any RCS shenanigans to right the ship, and so I didn't bother including any. So I reloaded and got it down on its legs with 2100 DV left. I planted my flag, broke a banana, and said, 2100 DV is probably good!

It was not.

2100 DV got me a pretty respectable 20km apoapsis, but I was about 300m/s short of an actual orbit. So I said, "What would a Kerbal do?" and just bailed Valentina out a minute shy of apoapsis, pointed her prograde, and burned about half her monoprop. She achieved a stable orbit, and after that it was just a simple matter of having Bill pick her up with the mothership.

So, flag planted, Valentina safe in orbit, somewhat-expensive lander smashed to bits, and another 2 years or so before Jeb can bring a new lander from Kerbin. Good job team!