Looking for some tips

I think there are some general tips around, that I'm sure someone else will point you to, but here are a couple tips..

1) Keep promoting .. always promote as soon as you can. As you get your promotes up, you will become significantly stronger and have better defense.

2) I worked on constitution first, with the lego, but it got a bit boring doing 250 missions with him right off the bat. I would try to vary who you play with to avoid burn out.

3) AW is great for promoting will power early. The Lego is good for constitution, as is the templar. The Katari might be a good beginner 2-hander. The Avvar and Reaver both require a bit more before you can really unleash them I think. Silent sister is crazy strong early, so unlock her and use her for early cunning promotes. AW, Silent sister, and lego/templar should let you start to push the difficulty level a bit.. at least be able to get into threatening at higher levels.

4) The real name of this game is heal-on-kill. Once you start to get some heal-on-kill rings and add heal-on-kill onto weapons, that makes it so much easier. As such, don't use any of the materials with 'Cotton' in the name to make dragon calls or anything else. When you build hafts, hilts, etc for weapons, the cotton adds heal-on-kill for you. Once you get some decent heal-on-kill, the reaver is crazy strong.

5) Open every chest and get every bit of gold. Eventually, to get the top-tier loot, you need to have grabbed and salvaged 2000 items.

6) The top-tier armor is really helpful, so I would focus on those several characters and try to get better armor.  With the top-tier armor, threatening should be a breeze.

7) Have lots of fun!

Keep the Blizzard Staff.

It's fairly weak to begin with but it's helluva fun when you gain promotions.

I use it on all mages now, except Saarebas.