Getting the orb also awards a steam achievement.

Zhandul's Orb
Find Zhandul's Orb

The good thing about this is it allows you to min/max; which means maximize everything you can to boost your strength or attack power and minimize things such as evasion or dex, since your range guy will be in the back nearly the whole game. This is especially true when you do a second run through a...

In the next level there is a place where you can also find a skull sadly. There are 6 total I read.

Yup, you missed one alright. I went and backtracked to find it, had to fight some fire guys and crab respawns but it gave me a ton of exp.

I just happen to lvl earth magic for my mage by chance, during late lvl 2 or early lvl 3 you discover a scroll for poison shield it boosts the entries party resistance by like 40-45 I believe, it reduces the poison damage ticks by a lot. The major problem is that you need like 13 earth magic to use ...

There is a script around these boards somewhere I think which allows you to hotkey them. There does need to be a interface change to allow for quickcasting of learned spells, divided by school of these spells.

I agree they are pretty tough. I say after clearing a few spiders save the game so you do not lose to much progress if you get ambushed or mess up. There should be about 5 fire flasks that you should have picked up over the course of the last 3 lvls., use them it does A TON of damage to them. I had ...

I started unloading some of that stuff even using it as counter weights and leaving them behind once I started finding upgrades.

If you sleep when there are enemies in the next room despite there being a locked door in between, there is a chance a small group will ambush you. Happened to me on lvl 3 with about 3 spiders surrounding and killing me pretty much.

The spiders do respawn if you sleep near them, meaning if you want to rest and the spiders are in the next room separated by only a gate. So if you want to heal up before a big fight do it several rooms away, ones you have already cleared.