Azzanine, Have you played Departed? Your reply indicates you haven't played it and that is why my answer didn't make sense to you.
1. Wut?!? Levels are indicated by the green bar and number above your health and food, as for dropping diamonds?... No idea what you are talking about there.
There are new skill levels from AoA that dont show up when a fresh copy of the departed is loaded. You have to hit C to get them and ensure C isn't conflicting with the Crafting Grid. In the 3rd video I linked in the original post...this is the first thing he does.
2. A pick axe. Very few things past that are "must have" everything past that is purely at your own comfort.
No need to troll. It was a reasonable question for what items to target in the progression. I'd like to hear what others have found as well. AoA is a BIG mod by itself and there is so much it is hard to know what to focus on obtaining and what is junk.
3. I assume you have NEI installed (after all this is the FTB forum), press F7 to show a colored crosshatching of the terrain, Yellow indicate spots where mosters will spawn at night, red indicates areas where monsters will ALWAYS spawn. However this might not take in to account mechanics added by mod that might spawn things that don't take lighting in to account. Like if a mod added a hostile mob that spawns only in the day.
Also assuming you have Extra Utilities installed you can make Chandeliers and Magnum torches. They make natural spawning impossible in a certain radius despite light levels, I forget the radius of Chandeliers but magnum torches have a 64 block safety zone.
Your answer here has good information but wasn't targeted to the Departed pack. "might not take in to account mechanics added by mod" applies here. Most of the mobs in the AoA mod have completely different light level requirements than normal which make the F7 NEI function moot. Also...No Extra Utilities in Departed. The vanilla mechanic you can rely on is non spawnable blocks...transparent blocks, upside down halfslabs, etc. This is a lesson learned early when playing Departed. My first time I dug down to level 5 and hollowed out a little base to branch mine from. To my surprise when coming back to that well lit "safe" room....it was loaded with monsters that I had no chance to beat with 1 stone sword and no armor. Now I half slab that room and a portion of each branch mine tunnel leading away from it. There is also a height factor in this...but the half slab solution works at any height.
