Did you mindread Sassan and each of your platform servants? That will give you a few extra skill points to play with until you can afford to reskill.

Skill Books/Stat Books/Dragon Skill Books Complete


To fully upgrade the runners it will cost 42,000 gold (1k + 2k + 4k for the 3 levels of upgrades, for both weapons and armour, for each of the 3 runners. If you don't have enough to do it all at once, start with Tom, and send him out for malachite ore to sell.

Do you not have any loot to sell, etc? I hung on to lots of ok equipment that had charm or enchantment slots, thinking they might become better later, but invariably by the time I had better charms or enchantments, there was also better equipment around, as well. After getting the battle tower I stashed some stuff in the chest there, and sold the random stuff I clearly wasn't going to ever use (I still kept sets, dragon armour, and other stuff I didn't really need).