[Bungleau]

Welcome to the boards, LiOnHe@rT! May your journey through the Gael Serran bring you riches, fame, and lots of entertainment.

Now, for your questions:

1. You can level up anywhere. The cost is the same. So, the answer to your question is that the best place to level up is usually the closest place.

2. Assuming that by second-level characters you're referring to the roles like ranger, paladin, monk, warlock, etc., the answer is no, you don't have to. As you travel around, you will find that each character can become almost every class in the normal course of a game. With the exception of the elite classes, of course; but most of them don't become possible until you're amost done.

3. The infinite gold trick only works in the unpatched game (at least, if you're thinking of the same trick I'm thinking of). However, once you get past Ishad N'ha, you can legitimately acquire large sums of gold without having to do much extra work, so the infinite gold trick is far less useful. At the end of my last game, I had something like 50 million gold stashed away in the bank (in addition to the 20 or 30 million I carried with me

Hopefully, I haven't spoiled things too much for you. Do let us know how things are going.