Note: very weird, i can edit comments but not actual blog posts. Apologies, i'll dump this over here:

Killed Bill the Troll and gained 3 levels in a row. He gave me another orange belt. I think i prefer my girdle of power to this girdle of calm waters.

Went back to town to sell some stuff then entered the nearby ruins. Stumbled upon a phial of darkness ont he first level.

Level 8 died to skeleton mages guarding a locked room.

Stuck a class point to arcane dexterity. The effect on Flame and Lightning spell damage was minimal.

Turns out there's still wizards around, they live in a town called Angolwen. Better check it out. Bought a nice Healing infusion to replace the Regeneration one.

Run into another injured seer. I wonder what will happen if i take the same reward twice? Will it stack or will the reward be completely wasted? Woops, looks like it's wasted. Meh, that could have been +4 to magic.

Something blinded me and i died next turn. When i resurrected i was still blinded. Oh, it's a sand drake. Well hello there, what are you doing at level 2 of Kor'pul? He breathes sand which blinds me again. 4 turns after i can see again. Well, sort of, i can't see my @ icon. Time to dump some points into constitution; i pump it to 23 to enable the generic talent "Health".

Note to self: when resurecting, remember to switch arcane combat on.

Leveled up; put some points into strength to unlock arcane feed. I wonder if i can have 2 sustained talents working at the same time. Turns out i can. Great, less manasurge rune micromanagement.

Bah, two levels doswn i'm still using manasurge like crazy. Also i found a second Wintertide Phial. Guss i'll be selling this one. Or both - i find this dwarven lamp i found much more convenient.

Saw an spider, moved in to whack it. It had some nasty spells. Turns out it was the dungeon boss, called Shade. That healing rune i bought from Angolwen really came handy. It dropped a feathersteel amulet. Looks like i won't be having any encumburance problems with this character.

Level 12: realized i have a category point. Gain access to conveyance. Pumped magic enough to learn teleport. Maxed Fire & Lightning with the remaining class points. Feeling quite mighty atm!

Made an alchemist. Saw he has a mandatory golem pet and scrapped him.

Made a fighter but he died at level 1. On the plus side i now know i can't go upstairs to the map while poisoned.

Made an archer. I don't know where to put talent points to make him any different from my dead slinger.

Made an arcane blade. Still having trouble seeing where i should spent talent points but at least they are different than those of the archer/slinger. I'll stick with that atm. Hope i won't get killed in level 1 this time.

As a sidenote a "random" option wouldn't hurt.

Put the extra category level into magical combat and pumped arcane combat to 5/5. Died at level 4 to rattlesnake.

Apparently at level 5 i get 2 class skills. I put 1 into flame and 1 into lightning.

Run into a seer lost in the woods. He's offered some training for helping him out. Picked the divination category reward. The category is still grayed out and i can't put any points in the skills. I don't get it.

Completing "an apprentice task" will cause you to fail "the curse of magic." Go figure. It ought to fail you for giving your first item to the apprentice, just to keep me from wasting time and effort...

So I'd been sending Darkgod some difs that where from b18 and it was a headache. Finally learned to compile on windows though so now I can actually use my SVN for something other then just checking out incoming changes.

I ran into a few pitfalls while learning to compile though, namely once the exe is produced you need to copy the dll files over from a release copy. Another issue I had was that I downloaded the wrong SDL library (it was for windows but not for mingw). Aside from that it was easier then I imagined and took less time then I thought it would. None of the libraries require installation, just unpacking. The only thing that needed to be installed was mingw.

Anyway, I think keeping things up to date will help keep me motivated to finish up the chronomancer and make things a lot easier for Darkgod and myself.

I am finding the order you do things in is incredibly important.

My last character Smashface, a level 13 fighter skelly (made for the fighter report week on the forums) had to be put down (as a rabid dog) after discovering that he would not be able to obtain the rod of recall which basically hosed him for the rest of the game. He was on his way to completing the antimagic quest, had already done the fortress (barely surviving vs a nigh unkillable boss!!) and had done the maze, the old forest and the cursed/merchants quests. He obtained 2x Hymn of preservation from escorts while losing one escort quest to a suicidal warrior.

After this fiasco, I have decided the order in which this character needs to be built is as follows:

+ Get out of the start-up dungeon. (level 5 after killing the boss waiting near the exit.)

+ Prepare before you leave the start-up dungeon: Make sure to collect enough staves/jewelry to do the apprentice mage quest and complete it on exiting the start-up dungeon. Also try and do a vault if you can find one that has infusions to replace your runes with so you can at least have some defenses while on the antimagic quest. I have found infusions to be incredibly rare outside of vaults, though very infrequently you can find them lying about on the floor.

+ Go get the antimagic quest AFTER completing the mage quest. You might end up having to do the trapped quest early because walking around looking for the apprentice mage can take quite awhile since he spawns within a huge radius of Anglowen.

+ Be sure to get the orb of scrying asap (you automatically qualify since you should have picked up the Cloak of Deception from your dead master's corpse.

+ Do the Trollmire! (be wary of using gifts from escorts yet. You can have them but you can't use them or you will negate the antimagic quest.)

+ Do the maze. It is harder than some of the other starting dungeons but it is slightly more rewarding and you can find some interesting items there on occasion. The Labyrinth boss is not a pushover but if you get a little lucky you should be able to stun him which will give you time to back away from him/heal/regen/etc. Shield Wall x4-5 is essential to keep yourself from being smushed here.

+ Then do the old forest. The hardest part about this are the nests and escort quests. The combination can get you killed if you are trying to keep your escort alive (almost impossible in some scenarios as they are prone towards extreme depression and suicidal tendencies because of some drama in their recent past.)

+ You should be able to do the fortress now, and since you don't need to breath it should not be too much trouble to get to the next level from the water filled parts.

Be ware of He Who Walks (orange (h)orror/wurm) as he can kick your butt even if you are maxed out in shield wall etc. Other than him the level shouldn't be too hard.

The boss below on the other hand is either easy or hard depending on whether you can get him stun-locked. Not an easy feat I found, though I was able to do so readily with a berserker at the start of beta 18.

After capturing the Fortress you should be level 15-16 which is minimally right on time for the antimagic quest (since you can't take it before level 5 as a skelly) though perhaps a bit early. I haven't tried it since I failed with my rogue but I suspect a skelly fighter will have an easier time of it. You might want to do the other two Into the Darkness quests first to level up for better results. The two last monsters I hear are the hardest.

Anyway I plan to follow this on my NEXT skelly fighter in an attempt to make a character report for the forums use.

Run into the worm queen right next to the stairs. I managed to nail her while blinded but got killed in the process. When i respawned i got instakilled. Respawn, instakill again. And again. In a wtf moment i stopped hitting the respawn button - the worms continued to move around while i was dead?!

I waited it out, once they dispersed i managed to somehow get up the stairs. Noticed i had zero (0) health. Rested, got downstairs, killed the rest of the worms, the quitems were gone.

I lost my final two lives buried in crumbling tunnels while searching for the teleport exit.

Adding insult to injury, the wilder summoner istarted died before reaching level 2.

I think i'm in a maze. Doesn't look like the "secret town to the southwest" to me...

Wasn't that pointless?

He looks to be getting along fine with these fine gentlemen, don't know what i'm supposed to do. The stage music is nice, i guess i'll hang out here a bit.

Flameborn swallows its target!
Eternal bone giant rises from the dead!

Well... this is awkward...