Been playing Torment, and having a blast. However, I've recently gotten into Baator, and the game seems to have taken a massive jump in difficulty. I observed this in Curst as well, and my tactic is most indicative of how I feel the game is spiked. My team is TNO: Mage, Mort, Dak'kon, Annah, Grace. TNO recently hit level 12 as a mage. However, in Curst's dungeon, I quickly ran out of heals and revives against the guards that dealt high damage and had good accuracy. Once that had happened, the most effective strategy became to throw the nameless one solo at the masses of enemies, getting in 20-30 damage in between the dozens of deaths it took to clear the level. Outlands was a nice break, and I assumed the spike was temporary, but now that I'm in Baator, I can't even use the Curst strategy because the enemies move while I respawn. So my question, is the game supposed to get very frustrating at this point, or is 12 a really low level at this part of the game? I haven't been grinding much, but I didn't leave much xp on the table either.

Curst, and the areas past Ravel's Maze in general, is somewhat infamous for being closer to a typical RPG location (apparently due to a different designer team working on it), so yes, that part can be frustrating if you weren't prepared for it.

The Curst prison can be easier if you backtrack to the hermit to heal and rest; however, this causes problems in the unpatched game. As for Baator... er, just run. There's little point in fighting those abishai when your main objective is to just get the info from the Pillar of Skulls and return, so if you're lucky to have TNO make it to the portal, that's it.

(I usually grind to level 12 before Ravel's Maze, but that's just me being obsessive; mages are slow at gaining levels. Also, did Morte and Dak'kon get stat upgrades? Those are really helpful when it comes to the combat-heavy parts of the game.)