Thank you very much for the welcome!
Yeah, I noticed that the forum was taken down quite soon after I had created this topic. At first I thought I might have been banned (for whatever reason), but then again, it wouldn't have made any sense for me not to be able to even display the website any more. XD
Thank you for your elaborate reply. Well, I've refrained from eating runes, either completely or at least in the sense of not eating more than one, except for some buffs whose regeneration times are easy to keep down with a couple of points in Concentration or Meditation respectively. The first thing I read about this game's mechanis was that in order to find more runes, you had to eat as few runes as possible. Needless to say, this also prevented me from experimenting with all the combat arts, as it would've required me to unlock everything. If I remember correctly, I've started a game with all of the different classes except for the Seraphim. Reading that she's kind of a jill of all trades put me off, as I generally don't like this kind of character in a game. I still may give her a try, though.
I now think that it's a mistake to complete the game on Bronze difficulty, as the levelling process becomes a mere grind fest beyond level 30. I wasn't sure when to switch to Silver, though, but I have little motivation to take my gladiator ('Hector') to Silver now (I know I needn't finish Bronze in order to import the game into Silver). He can deal with any kind of situation on Bronze difficulty, and I haven't even collected all the elements of Ancaria with him yet, but it's not fun. Until level 33, I've only used Attack against everything, and it's worked fine. Then I decided to finally eat some runes (Heroic Courage), and I also unlocked Fist of the Gods and Hard Hit. Yeah, he can easily kill stuff with these combat arts, but it's boring to me.
I found the dwarf ('Bolgrim', no good name from ancient Greek mythology here) far more exciting, probably also because he got some great loot by shopping in both Port Vallum and Braverock Castle. I didn't even need Dwarven Armor, Vehemence and War Cry were sufficient for any kind of situation. I enjoyed playing as a dwarf mostly because you cannot play dwarves in most games. I mean, basically in any fantasy setting, dwarves are either extinct or on the brink of becoming so.
I started a wood elf ('Artemis') because I usually like archers, but hack 'n' slash rpgs tend to make them problematic in that everything wants to be straight in your face. I watched some videos about high-level archers, but for my taste, it took too long to take bosses and especially dragons down, at least compared to what other characters can do. In fact, I've never played any archer as fun to play as a bowazone in Diablo II. I loved the ability to cover the whole screen in arrows.
Playing as a dark ('Deimos', for obvious reasons) elf, then, I made him a dual wielder, and I have to say I like it much more than dual wielding with a gladiator. The weapons and the way the dark elf moves around are more to my taste. I haven't taken him beyond level 30, either, though.
I recently started a daemon (and called her 'Styx', obviously). Her wings look ridiculous, but I like her movement speed and dive attack.
I started a battle mage ('Azrael', ancient Jewish instead of Greek, but also: smurfs) at some point, but the fire ball spell with which he starts off moves so slowly that it killed my motivation soon. I finished off everything in and around Bellevue but had no idea how to deal with the swarms of goblins beyond the bridge. I need to stand still in order to cast, but with so many enemies to deal with and no effective Area of Effect attack, I didn't want to continue that journey.
If I understand you correctly, I need to bite the bullet in any event, since I need to get my characters beyond level 30 or even 50 for them to take off. I find this tedious, but if it's necessary, I'm willing to give it a chance.
One more thing, do I have to import a game into a new game each time I want to kill a dragon or specific boss again? Enemies respawn basically as soon as an area is off-screen, but I noticed that this doesn't entail dragons and bosses, at least not in the cases where I actually bothered to look.