The Tavern

I have had many of my runs ended after I explored the Elven hauls. It appears to the player soo early game. It is such an arbitrary difficulty curve in most of my runs. I really do wonder if it would be better off in a floor of the Depths to be honest.

PS
I have only beaten this game once as Vine Stalker after playing for 500 hours.

You don't have to explore everything when you find it
I like having Elves available after Orcs. Sometimes a character is stuck in all the rune branches and D, and the best path forward is to do Elves. Part of the game is learning when to switch branch.

After all, you have Jelly in Lair, and Hell in Depths. Elf is somehow deceiving in that it is doable, but very dangerous around lvl 15-16. Leaving it for later is an important thing to learn. A signal is the kind of timed portals that appear in it. IIRC, it's something like Salt and Wizlab, so stuff you would find in Vaults.

Yeah but slime shouldn't be at the bottom of lair either. Elf and Slime should be on D15.

If you want to put branches in the technically optimal order, sbranches need to be below orc, slime needs to be in depths somewhere, elf needs to be in vaults or later, and orc needs to always show up after lair. You could also put conditional warnings on the branches; "really enter elf with no runes," "really enter slime before 2 runes," etc, if you want a soft prohibition on incorrect branch order.

Not for venom mages imo.

The difference and confusing thing about the Elven haul is that, when you press } to see the rune list, it doesn't show up. This makes the player feel it is safe to enter. I love the conditional warnings on the branches idea.

O:1 can still spawn stone giant or ogre magi or even a warlord with a crossbow who are quite deadly for a squishy mage.
Or just the risk of sorceror paralysis or of a warg.
I wouldn't try it early on even with a VM.

I would. Methic Cloud is super strong in Orc. If there's something strong you can always run away and come back later. (so long as you have enough hp not to be 1-shot.)

It's pretty dangerous to run away and come back in orc that has sorcerers. I've had many a promising character die to paralysis from being overconfident in orc. That being said, lair can be dangerous as well, mostly due to hydras and giant packs of bees, blink frogs, etc.

I choose to do orc or lair first based on my character and gear, I don't think there is a hard and fast which one is easier. You want rPois and more AC for lair, you want more resists and MR for orc. Poison weapons and spells help greatly in orc, they don't as much in lair. Freezing and flame are good in lair... etc. etc.

It's still better than Lair which will definitely spawn spiny frogs and black mambas. Yes, you'll have to be careful but mephitic cloud will solve most problems for you. I always go to Orc first (after D:11) as a VM.