ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Ok... I have a level 10 dwarven berserker going, just killed the Shade of Angmar (after a lot of unsuccessful tries involving spells freezing or drowning the poor char in one round...) with a lucky combination of successful Warshout/Stunning blow to confuse/stun the bastard, and I have some questions regarding the game:
1) At level 10, the character has 500+ hps and still gets whooped for 100-200 dam by any large brown/white snake on level 1 of the Amon Sul cave... not mentioning the ego skeletons that can stun him and cause critical blows for almost 500 hps... so how are you supposed to survive and kill the stronger stuff???
2) At level 10, I got a "talent category point"... but there are no categories to spend it (I could spend it on weapon/shield or double wielding... but since the character is using two handed weapons, what would be the point?)... so what to do with that?
3) Stuff in shops sell for 10% of their actual value, and I didn't see any charisma factor to counter that... so how are you supposed to get cash to buy stuff (considering that a simple phase door scroll costs 3 and you need to sell at least 10 items to get that amount)?
4) Are you supposed to sell anything to any shop (like weapons in the scribe shop)?
5) I saw a vid of a mage winning the beta 2 release at level 10... and my warrior can still be killed on the first level of the game at that level... is that supposed to be the rule?
6) How do I run? I didn't see any command for that...

1. Better dakka, better stats, better equipment. If you're building the character well, you're going to be putting out more damage than before and taking less, above and beyond the leveling curve. Ferex, you might be hitting a 10 hp critter for 20 damage @ level 1, but you should be hitting a 100 hp critter for 300 @ level X, where X is whatever point you start hitting for that much, heh. Mind you, those numbers are (way, way, way) off, but it gets the idea across. Also, those ego skelies are among the top-tier critters currently in the game; they're supposed to be knocking you around a bit, heh.

2. There are ways to get new talent categories beyond the ones you start with. Since this is general discussion, that's all I'm saying, I guess.

3. Better quality items sell for more. I had a fighter sitting on ~70 gold before a loading error nixed its save. I'd probably suggest doing your leveling in the Old Forest; there's nothing more dangerous in there than in amon sul, in general, and the loot's much, much better. I regularly just go straight up the stairs when starting a game and head to the Trollshaws (-> old forest -> Maze -> sandworms -> ???, is my general progression these days. Sometimes I skip the trollshaws, heh.), then ignore amon completely until much, much later.

4. Well, you're certainly able to, so apparently yes. Sell to the shops you're not going to buy from, so you don't clutter up the good stuff's inventory, heh.

5. There's level scaling involved, and mages are freakishly easier to play than pretty much every other class in the game. Like, playing a mage reduces the general difficulty by probably a factor of two or three or so. So your warrior's going to have a harder time of it. That being said, you shouldn't be getting dropped on the first level of amon sul at level 10; you're either doing something silly, woefully unequipped, or not using/spending your points terribly well, to be blunt. You'll get a feel for what works and what doesn't as you play more.

6. Standard keybindings in windows: Hold shift (that is, shift+direction = run) when you're making a normal move command. You'll run if you're able.

As frumple said

Just to add that:
- mages had a bug, flame did really too much damage
- mages are *squishy*, you do not notice it because the dungeons up to tol falas are not that hard, but it'll become obvious later