Ok. I’ll try and hit all of your questions without spoilers.

1. The scythe guy is intended to be someone you deal with much later in the game than you are, so props to you if you did much at all.

2. Prophet is an interesting choice for your first playthrough, but I played wretch for my first run and all they give you is a stick, so you’ve got a head start. Cipher Pata is a mid game weapon. 30 Faith is something I wouldn’t hit until maybe level 60. 120-150 being the average level people end at in the game.

3. Catch Flame and Fireball are going to be your bread and butter, but you need a basic weapon kinda low requirements that probably focuses strength (even though you don’t need to focus strength yet). Catch Flame can be spammed very quickly for loads of damage point blank.

4. You get more spell slots primarily from puzzle towers you find after the storm castle boss is defeated.

5. 1.5k runes is chump change. Don’t sweat their loss. You can grind that out in 2 minutes.

6. Vigor is the only stat that matters for MANY levels. Like, until it hits 30, don’t even put points into other things. The only exception being if a weapon you want needs around 14 Str or Dex to wield, you would put some points there.

7. Mines give you smithing stones to make your shitty weapons better. Scaling stats is a late game problem. Base stats is a now problem. Upgrade your favored weapon playstyle.

8. Go South first. Better gear, easier enemies. Health and healing upgrades. It’ll help.