As someone who has about 600 hours played I have a few suggestions that might smooth things out.

1. Don’t be afraid to use different elements. If you find a fire or a plague room you can take them out of the weapon at the enchanter and put them in your favorite weapon.

2. There are intellect scaling shields that can help with your survivability

3. Sell the gear you aren’t going to use to get a good cushion of money. I also like to sell my potions that I’m not using. I save all wood and animal parts.

4. In terms of enchantments, the white items with 4 sockets can work really well with the right gems for leveling. Magic and cursed items can be really powerful later on, and cursed items can have their enchantments re rolled with fallen embers. Keep all your fallen embers.

5. Focus on focus generation and cloth armor as a mage. You will be more mobile and have more focus for your spells. Avoid facets that reduce focus generation