I did most of the quests in Rivertown and Verdistis, and cleared the Rivertown sewers (that made things a bit easier later) before entering the castle. After getting out of the castle and clearing up a few related quests, I entered the Dark Forest for the first time. If you want to do some or most of the Dark Forest before the castle, go ahead. I didn't have any problems just doing Rivertown and Verdistis, but some people like to level up a bit more first.
If you have done most of Rivertown and Verdistis, you shouldn't have a problem with the Cursed Abbey (a character level in the late teens to low twenties should be good enough for that area IIRC).
When composing a new topic (or if you quote or reply to a post, rather than quick quote / reply) there are a bunch of icons just above the text edit box. The forth from the left (3 bullet markers in front of 3 lines) is used to create a list. You can also just type in the UBBCode directly, as below (but without the extra spaces by the square brackets).
[ list ]
[ * ]first entry
[ * ]second entry
[ * ]third entry
[ /list ]
This produces a single spaced bullet list (use list=A or list=1 at the start for an order or numbered list), but I don't think you can control the spacing before and after the list (a blank line is added each place, so you can not start a list immediately under a heading, AFAIK). If you are getting triple spacing, maybe you are staring multiple lists, rather than adding entries to the first?
