Shattered Kingdoms

Also if you start to get bored, take a beer break, or a walk, or a smoke break, or do some work, or whatever your vice of choice is and come back in 15 minutes. You'll preserve your concentration and efficiency that way =P

A tip for levelling a warlock if you have one. Although most people want to use elementals when they get them, I highly suggest not using elementals for levelling until later levels, or at all if possible. Use a static pet that can take a beating at lower levels instead of elementals because of 2 reasons. First, you can heal it and you'll save mana having to resummon your ele. And secondly, it won't leave you high and dry in midcombat OR be dispelled by a sorc NPC and get you killed.

I heard a rumor that makes me recommend that you don't bother trying to kill lighties for xp as a lightie.

Aim lower to avoid the helpless debuff.

If you need a pet tank, have it mode stun and mood defensive.

If you are particularly squishy, remember that your enemies cannot throw things at you if they cannot see you.

Like stratford said, use weapon types and the weaknesses of your enemies to your advantage. If you're going to be hunting elves, go get you a cold iron weapon that has properties suited to your fighting style.

If you're inexperienced enough to feel comfortable asking for tips, you should highly consider taking a hint from Theseus and keep a bread crumb trail. What do I mean by that? Map the steps you take through an area well enough that you can retrace them blind. This makes corpse runs much easier, by the way.

If you routinely execute even two commands in succession, make an alias for them.

Sell the random junk your victims drop. I routinely make aliases to speedwalk me straight from the fountain in my favorite levelling area to the nearest shop and back again, stopping by the bank. The only thing worse than being too low level for something is being too poor.

I generally do a two-hit combo to pull off what Turon suggests: I have my terminal send me the final fantasy victory theme when my enemies are dead and jump in to mash a F-key to drink and nom every 10th iteration or so and then sleep. Then, when my pulse slows to normal, another, different sound tells me that it is clobberin' time. Try to set up your aliases such that you do not need to input anything after initiating combat. With this triforce of grindan in place, you can practically sleep your way through an area. I will forever incorrectly believe the Ayamaoan Outpost is harkonen territory because I marathoned my way through multiple versions of Dune while I trained there, for example, and I can't walk through the sewers of exile without hearing the voices of Bill and Ted.

If you do these things, it is also worthwhile to suggest you wear a reaching weapon if you are a caster. It will save you from an entire host of "Oops" moments.

micro tl;dr: My biggest hint is complex aliasing. I'll let you figure out what that means on your own. Stay away from the black magic, though. People get burned with that stuff, and burned hard. Automate your character as much as you can without breaking the rule of every string of input requiring a keystroke on your end.

A tip for leveling a warlock is not to listen to Kin, and more importantly, to never level on anything that can dispel. Elementals are so incredibly beefy that with proper use of a mood defensive elemental, earthquake, stone skin, healing rays, invis and sleeping during combat, you can kill upwards of 8-10 NPCs at a time solo and send your experience through the roof. Don't get into a fight unless you were awake for the most recent tick though, because you get a message when your elemental is about to leave if you're not sleeping.

Clearly the experience bonus for Lightie vs Darkie is designed to encourage you to fight opposite alignment enemies, but is there actually an IC explanation for why you gain more experience this way? It's not like the enemy you are viciously beating is trying to defend itself less vigorously because you share a similar life philosophy. Chances are, the two of you have never even been introduced!

Maybe I missed the mention of this, but I am surprised no one said something as trivial as discovery experience. Often times, this can be an easy way to trudge through as much as two or three levels with very little grinding at all. A friendly pet can help a lot toward exploring various areas of SK.

With my elf warlock, the trip to the Temple of Murder was worth half a level in discovery as we went through all of the different areas.

I gained nearly a full level looking around for a few spells I couldn't find, though I was taking my character's life into her hand by looking via rift-roulette after asking around and not finding it.

Exploring areas at Veteran is awesome. Just explore everything you can, the more areas you find, the more exp you'll get.

Leveling has gotten much easier. I think with the implementation of the area command and familiarity (not to mention the new areas) have really cut down on the grind.