> > If you were able to get in and get the Stone of Passage, your party is probably ready or close to being ready to brave the rest of level 7. The best way to do that is to base yourself out of Lyesis, the town on Level 7. Yes, it is more expensive than Kaliti or Perinn, but the payoff is worth being there in my opinion.
>
> In retrospect, based on my experience in MR, Lyesis could very well be skipped entirely. There's nothing wrong with the town itself, but its location is horrible. It's in a dead end. You can't progress from Lyesis into the same direction as you got from Kaliti to Lyesis - if you want to go on level 8, you have to go back to level 6. If your party gets killed on level 8, then it's off to Lyesis again, and you have to go back to level 6 again. The monsters on level 6 between the connections to Lyesis and level 8 are extremely tough and can easily wreck your party if you have to fight them over and over again.

I agree with you that Lyesis is a terrible base of operations for anywhere else in the game but level 7. However, it is a very good place to be when you're exploring level 7. Once I'm done doing that, I always go back to Kaliti and base my further explorations from there.

I find that level 7 is an excellent temprary location to increase your party's wealth and experience. True, there's only one pool, but that "Storage Area" is very easy to get to from Lyesis, and if you know how to do it, you can get in, get all the treasure, and get back out again and only have to fight one group of monsters.