Two Questions: Kitty Karma and Game Difficulty At Beginning Versus End

[sytar6]

First things first. I was playing a trollish barbarian. He has really hilarious stats. This is how he got rolled:

St: 38 Le:1 Wi:8 Dx: 13 To: 31 Ch: 8 Ap: 2 Ma: 4 Pe: 11

Somehow after drinking Thrudarr's potion of literacy he got 63 literacy off the bat. Wat?
Anyway, since this guy had no musical abilities whatsoever and seemed like he was on the brink of starvation, the first few cats the game threw at me I simply killed with impunity. I'm level 8, and my kill log says I've killed 3 cave lions and 5 cave tigers. The weird thing is, up until around the 7th cat kill, I never got any message about the cat's spirit doing that thing where it rises up and plunges pathetically or whatever. When I reached my 8th cat kill, I finally got that message. I hadn't been crafty about killing the other cats. I just berserk'd them in the face. Do you not need to get that message about the cat's spirit rising up and plunging pathetically to have ruined your kitty karma? I always thought that was how you were supposed to know that you weren't getting the ring of the master cat.

Second question:
Does nobody have an issue with the pacing of the game? The most hardy character I've rolled was a drakish fighter. I usually like to play with archers, wizards, thieves, and assassins. The beginning for those classes (although less so with archer) is really tough. You can die at any moment. This barbarian seems to just roflstomp through everything in the beginning of the game. Regardless of class, though, it seems like the game peaks in difficulty around the time you get Thrundarr's quest to see the other side of the Dwarven Halls or Animated Forest. Both are deadly without the proper items. Without invisibility or controlled teleportation, you might make it to the other side of the animated forest, but good luck getting back. All the hostile trees are waiting for you at the stairs. Going through the Dwarven Halls is the biggest crapshoot possible. If you don't have controlled teleportation, invisibility, magic mapping, or something, you're not going to make it. Sometimes even with invisibility and magic mapping you won't make it. My last Barbarian had shit in the way of scrolls/wands and wasn't going to make it through the animated forest. He got swarmed by a horde of teleporting hostile Unicorns last game. It seems like when you get to that quest, there's a very, very strong incentive to raid darkforge - a pretty cheap tactic in my opinion. I feel like I'm cheating when I raid DF. Without those items, though, going through the Dwarven Halls feels like I'm completely at the mercy of the RNG god. The difficulty ramps down for a bit once you've gotten through (or really, lucked your way through if you don't employ any scummy item generation methods) the Dwarven Halls. The Tower of Eternal Flames is tough, but really not that bad if you disable the ACW. Between the Dwarven Halls and the ToEF, leveling comes to a virtual halt.

After the tower, though, the rest of the game becomes a complete cakewalk compared to the beginning of the game. For some reason you start gaining levels at an absurd rate. It's not unusual for some enemies to give you multiple levels. In most video games, the later levels come slower than the earlier levels. In ADOM, for some reason, levels 1-10 come incredibly quickly while levels 10-20 come at an unbelievably slow rate. Levels 20-50 you can pile on in the span of an hour or two. To me, that's a serious pacing issue. Sometimes, after beating the ToEF, I kind of lose the will to keep playing. It feels like I've won. The casino shouldn't exist. It gears you up in an absurd way that takes all the challenge out of the rest of the game. Even without using the casino the rest of the game is still a cakewalk. It's incredibly rare to lose a character once you've beaten the ToEF, unless you do something stupid and essentially suicide yourself. I feel like the game post-ToEF needs to be just as challenging as the beginning of the game.

I know I'm new to the community. I also know that I don't know shit. These are just my thoughts, and I expect some pretty intense criticism of them - which I don't mind. I'd love to hear your perspectives. Especially people like Soirana, Gut, Grey, Silfir, Jellyslayer, anon123, etc.