lol yup, that's what I figured out, but thanks for the tip. The Dragon Chestplate definitely puts me over to lvl 11 though (I tried it). I was ok getting the Augment Damage point, and the Alchemy point (1500 xp). Not sure what I'll do next besides try to make a little cash. Didn't nab much from the city watch. I did notice I can grab most or all of the armor in the marketplace armor shop.

Another little tip I learned, if you run away from something (I did this to the vampire, maybe it won't work on other things) and get out of their sight range, then sneak back into range, you can bombard them with meteor strike (staying in sneak) and they just stand there. And this is surely an exploit, one I'll probably rarely if ever use, but if you load a game in which you had taken minor shadows, when it comes up, your mana is no longer draining. This probably balances out the bug where your shadows is off, but you continue to lose mana. I don't know if saving/loading would correct that or not.

I tried the trick of releasing scorpions then turning into a spider, at first I was watching the carnage thinking "hey, it's working, no xp!" ...but then I went to move and realized I'd been dead for some time. I'm pretty positive one of the scorpions killed me outright, I'll have to play with that again.