You can craft better stuff. Check your inventory for prisms, they give you enhancements (weapons), combining two of the same type in the crafting screen to get better ones. For runes - gather ore and smelt in, then turn it into plates (like in the runecrafter quest). Talia (the runecrafter) sells the actual words, you buy a word and combine it with a rune plate you crafted.
Reaching level 10 with your gear is an achievement .
I'll make a crafting tutorial today, I'll link it here later.
You must be registered to see the links