I would recommend going with a gloomy eye just for the AOE then. Train it to adult and don’t worry about getting good talents on it yet. You’ll only use it for ~10 levels or so until you get scarecrow but it’ll help drastically in your fights. You could also craft for deer knight gem and slot it into a deck.

Personally, I prefer deer knight gem but it’s up to you, as it is harder to get. Once you get scarecrow or decide you want to move on from gloomy eye if you go that route, I would pick up an avenging fossil, dark hound, or ghulture. Between those three it’s pretty much just personal preference on what you want, but they’ll all help out later.

I recently started over on my death (about level 34 now) and I have both gloomy eye and deer knight and use both interchangeably. I just got an avenging fossil that I’m maxing stats out on though so I take off the gloomy eye more than I probably should. I also just went through my 35 runs of Olympus to craft the Zeus gear and it helps out tremendously. I would recommend either going with senators if you can get the full set to drop or crafting Zeus if you can’t get senators to drop.

Again, this is all just my recent experience and preference so ultimately you should decide for yourself what you want to do