jeffery, don't go & fight the orcs before going to the catacombs. you'll get butchered out there. whoever said that is giving a bad advice. also, i know the game takes too long to save & load. just bear with it. i did. now i have a level 45 warrior who just finished the game this weekend.
now for my suggestions, go to the catacombs, kill as many as you can & get items which you can sell to build up your gold. fight your way up to the last level of the catacombs. i usually end up around lvl 8-9 after clearing out the catacombs. however, as i found out after starting some characters, the catacombs can be tough for a starting char. i had a harder time at the start than at the latter part of the game. explore aleroth first and see what you can to build up your gear before heading down.
so to make your starting career in dd a bit easier, you can do the ff.:
(1) talk to the two patients, verlat in otho's house & simon in goemoe's house (hope i didn't mix them up). then get the magic mirror in the house north of aleroth (top of packages;hard to miss that). after, visit the healing shrine to get the healing gem. go to pond east of george's house, drop the magic mirror first then the healing gem. you now have two healing gems. go back & talk to the two patients, simon & verlat. give them one each of the healing gem. then talk to goemoe (only after you've healed the two)& tell them you've healed the patients. voila! he will teach you restoration spell. now you can heal yourself at low mana cost w/o resorting to potions.
(2) then talk to george. he will ask you to get a drudanae plant in lanilor's garden. since you have no idea what that plant looks like, george will show it to you inside his room. you will get a cutscene wherein he will enter his room; don't follow him yet in the room. instead, grab all his equipment. you can even grab the key on top of the cupboard (hit the alt key so you can see it) so you can open the locked chest in the main room. now you have lots of equipment to sell. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />
(3) get the drudanae plant and head back to george. worth lots of experience at this stage of the game.
(4) now, to help lanilor, go to the well west of mardaneus's house. once down there, look for a key (sitting on top of a barrel). use it to open the locked door. follow the path south leading to the stairs that will lead you inside mardaneus's house. get him to unfreeze lanilor. again worth some experience pts. now you can also grab the key near mardaneus's bed which you can use to open a locked chest at the back of his room. you can get a good piece of armor or weapon there.
now hopefully, you can trade with george to build up your starting gear. by now, you can replace your worn sandals, worn leather helmet, worn gloves & broken sword. & still have some extra gold to buy extra potions.
(5) once you're ready, i suggest (though you can opt to do it later), to use your teleporter stone. i assume that you have the one given by lanilor already. place it near your bed and use it. you'll be teleported (obviously) to the 2nd teleporter stone. pick it up & drag to inventory, but you'll find yourself in the middle of a pack of skellies. depending on your gear, you can choose to fight it out or run south to get out of the room. once outside head west. you'll still have to face some skellies but before reaching a locked door, you will find a portal stone which will port you to the well. just go up the stairs. you're back in aleroth w/ the 2nd teleporter stone & again, some xp pts. now, just leave one stone near your bed and carry the other so you can opt to sleep whenever you're low on health & don't want to waste potions.
read the various walkthroughs & browse through the helps/tips/tricks forum. they really help a lot. i don't know how i could have finished this game without reading them. good luck!
