ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

So I'm close to finishing the game for the first time and I thought I'd share a few thoughts I have.
Great game, by the way - I really love the graphics and tactical choices
But!
After my character made it to the far east I understood the complaints on the game length at once. Darkgod, please, make the far east part shorter. IMHO it would be great to have short dungeons with small levels packed with dangerous enemies to really test your character. The prides are good except the one with cavernous levels. Those serve no purpose except to tempt you with a vault. Zone length of more than three levels should be avoided in all cases except really special zones like dreadfell and prides. Again, IMHO.
Also, the game NEEDS autoexplore. The maze, trollmire and such are KILLING me!..... what? The game does have autoexplore????? Huh?
Seriously, I played a lot of games before I read on something awful forums that the game does have autoexplore feature. Please, make it a big button on the UI. Because it is one of the best features of the game.
Hugs,
BFrost

I feel the same way about the East, some parts of it feel very long. Here are a few suggestions to help with that :
- Make the spider lair have 3 floors instead of 5. The floors themselves are large already, and it's probably the least challenging dungeon of the East.
- Make the breeding pits 1 guarded entrance > 1 "regular" level > 1 guarded barrack > 1 regular level. The entrance of that dungeon is its only challenging part, so that layout would make it shorter while requiring slightly more thinking.
- Make each pride have 3 levels instead of 4. They would still present a significant and fairly lengthy challenge that way (especially the non-melee ones, as it is not easy to skip any of it, you pretty much have to clear every level). If you think that makes the prides too easy, maybe make it so that each level entrance has a named elite, instead of just the first one?

The rest seems fine to me, Eruan does have 5 levels, but exits are easy to locate there, so you can skip much of it if you want. And the peak is long, but hey, it's the final dungeon!