ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I am about to head East (for the first time !) and I could not get the Alchemist Quest done for the +2 class points. I needed Frost Wyrm claws, and the mountain area was the fire version this run. However, I can jump into the far portal, and see what happens.

So my question is: Would it be dumb of me to try and find Frost Worms in the far portal, or is it just to dangerous (I'm a level 34 Alchemist). Some people talk about the Far Portal as if it were an easy place to grind stuff, other say stay far away, not sure if I should bother or not.

If I could try the far portal and see what happens, any tips once inside? In all honesty, I am not sure what to expect in the portal, other then it being very random. Will the monsters scale to my level? Will the area be themed like regular areas, or just totally random?

Farportal levels scale, but they are just boring randomly generated levels, so just continue with the plot. You can finish the alchemist quest later.

There will be Wyrms in one of the prides. You will do those when you go to the East for the second time.

The only problem with farportal, is that if you try to recall, before you kill a specific enemy, there is apparently a chance of breaking the rod.
So there is no quitting once you are in.
And there may or may not be a stupidly powerful randboss.

Grinding farportals or adventure parties to complete alchemist quest is rather boring and asking for RNG to kill your character.

I did a few farportals and ran into a Radiant Horror boss with my Ghoul Doombringer. It was the most epic fight I've ever had. XP is great and you're likely to get an artifact or two.

But you should be very confident in your character before doing it.

Would you rather open Dreadfell (and later) vaults or use farportal for artifacts and XP?

Dreadfell Vaults give better rewards at the moment.
It used to be the other way around, but DarkGod found out I was using the Farportal to get to level 32 before saving Melinda.

I'm pretty sure farportals are way lower risk than dreadfell vaults are when you first do dreadfell. There's one randboss, but there's no particular concentration of danger compared to non-vault regions of normal dungeon levels apart from that unless you get a bad theme and even that's not going to be worse than a level adjusted Daikara or Dreadfell and unless it's open with a nasty long ranged theme it won't be as bad as the Vor Armoury or most pride bastions. The fixed areas on those are specifically designed to be nasty.

And, yes, they are themed. I've seen slime, vampire, dragon, bear, and orc farportal dungeons that I can remember. The randboss doesn't match the theme, though.

On normal they're pretty routine once you have your build fully up and running. You can expect several randarts and enough transmogrification gold for a merchant randart or two total from the farportal. More if you have gem alchemy.

At level 34 you should be more than ready to barrel through the portal. I'd suggest only doing the spider and farportal quests on the other side before coming home again though.