I've decided to wait, but I'm taking all of your suggestions into consideration. I'm really tempted to try Jivya though
But yea, I won't be taking Chei. Zin sounds like a decent choice though, and I'm also thinking about Okawaru.
Anyways, I'm level 11 at the orc mines now. Had more close calls which I excaped thanks to this ring of controlled teleport I found. But just now I found both Sonja and Elrocha, on the same floor and at eyesight range of each other. I immediately climbed back up
I'll try an alternate route and try to flank them. Thankfully I'm proficient with mephitic cloud, but its the only spell I've mastered so far. I followed Demo's advice for today and stopped raising short blades once it got to 10, and now I am taking advantage of its crosstraining with long blades to raise it aswell. This +2 +5 greatsword I got from this unique (don't remember which, all I remember is that he cried that he had too many children before dying
) is helping me greatly, I'm now some sort of badass draconian swordsman, one-turn'ing alot of stuff due to the fact both the sword and unarmed attacks work at the same time
I should stop raising blades and get unarmed combat to 10 sometime though, its only 6 by now, rising slowly.
UPDATE: I survived due to the awesomeness of mephitic cloud, and now I got his dagger of distortion from Sonja's corpse which I'm so tempted to use.
Anyway it seems I've hit a dead end. I tried several stairs but at the end I only found a passage to the elven halls, which leads me to a small room with a shop, with no way to go elsewhere. Since I have no means of digging or magic mapping (to use with teleport). I came back to the dungeon, were I'll continue slicing me way through the lower floors. I'm at dungeon level 11 now.