ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

It seems nearly impossible to get one of these off the ground. I can get through the scintillating caves easily enough, but everywhere else is a death trap. Bill ignores my stuns, stuns me back, and rushes if I try to blink/run away. Korpul is skeleton warrior roulette, one stun and you take 250+ damage in before you can move. Even the old forest has me getting murdered by a sand drake breathing for over 100 damage through allies and blinding me for a long duration. Am I just supposed to restart over and over until I get lucky enough to hit level 12 without ever seeing one of these enemies? Am I missing some sort of awesome shadowblade ability that lets them not die in 1-2 hits from anything bigger than an ant, or kill stuff in less than a dozen turns?

I want to try out the set of abilities shadowblades have, but I can't seem to get anywhere at all with them in the early game before something kills me almost instantly.

You need dual strike at 4/5 to semi-reliably stun Bill.

This thread belong to spoiler section, so admins pls move it.
Some shadowbalde advices, from former lvl 50 shadowblade, fallen in final battle:
1. Plan all your talents beforehand for as far as you hope to live, choose the path (stealth based or fighting based, not both) and stick with it.
2. Raise generic attack skill from start(weapon combat)
3. Dirty fighting is more effective then dual strike usually
4. Don't use phase door for escape. Use teleport instead

I too have a L50 Shadowblade. I only haven't tried to finish with it because the new betas keep flooding in with all their sexy new content! The Shadowblade might well be my favourite of the non-locked classes. To be fair, the Shadow Magic talents and some of the other abilities are complete bunk, but the combination of Rogue and utility Archmage abilities is a delight. I can see how they'd be terrible for a player who doesn't favour a creeping, super-cautious playstyle, but for someone like myself who enjoys this they're a roguelike dream come true.

With this in mind my best advice to you might be to try playing a crueler roguelike for a while-something like Crawl-and to see if the constant paranoia this game puts into you won't turn you into a master Shadowblade.

A few more tips:

1) Try investing 3 points into Illuminate early on. It's no Sand Breath, but an areal blind combined with spell phase door and two excellent stun talents is a hell of a defensive suite.
2) Don't fight an honest fight with Bill. You need to kite him about so that you aren't trying any attacks on him that don't involve stunning him (use Dirty Fighting before Dual Strike), but leave him no more than a space apart from you so he can't Rush. If the new, gratuitously lethal, dazing Rush comes close to killing you, then phase door quickly away so you have just enough time to heal up before his next Rush is off cooldown. Remember also, the Trollmire's layout leaves a wonderful amount areas to pillar-dance.
3) Don't fight Bill, at least not too early on in the game. Do some of the other early content instead. Grind a bit, duck in and out of higher-level dungeons. Don't expect every playthrough to be conventional- this is a still a *band, after all, and a careful choice of which path you take is likely to be more important to your survival than any other advantage you exact for yourself.
4) Before going toe-to-toe with something with a dangerous stun, like a skeleton warrior, pop a regen infusion. If your health is good, it'll still be good if you take a turn and then find yourself snapping out of a stun three turns afterward. If your health is bad, this technique can and will save lives.
5) Use Phase Doors early, before getting into serious trouble, rather than at an occasion where a bad result will get you killed. This also means that PD'll be off cooldown for you in case you do really need it a few turns later.
6) Try using Precise Strikes. Having high attack and being able to hit with your precious stunning strikes is more useful than anything. The penalty isn't bad, for a character who is economical with the turns she takes like a Shadowblade, and with 5 points the bonuses become amazing later on (+ >25% crit chance). Also, starting with a point in Precise Strikes and a point in Weapon Combat is darn gratifying.

Hope this isn't too much, or too late.

Anyone else have any Shadowblade tips, builds, or stories to share with us?