New Anvilite with ?'s, long read, sorry Options

[Hideous the W...]

Hi all, love the mod so far but I've only just begun. Here's what I've got

Protag - Necromancer lvl 12
Kensai lvl 11 with Joril's Dagger & Lilacor and 1 * in staves for crushing (+3 martial staff) and piercing (+2 staff spear)
Wizard Slayer>Thief lvl 9/11 +3 long sword & Sword of Balduran (+3 club)
Nalia lvl 12 I'm going to drop her for Imoen later on
Ranger>Cleric lvl 8/11 with FoA
Vagrant lvl 10 with Frostreaver and Mencar's hammer

I'm wondering where to head to next. I think my options are:

Trademeet - Troll mound, Ogre's Tower or Trademeet Tomb
Windspear Hills - I haven't touched anything yet except giving Dryads back
Watcher's Keep - but I have Kitthlix so I'm worried about the Spider Queen encounter I've read about
Unseeing Eye quest - I have no spell shield for Beholders and that's been my only defense in the past
Rakshasa - in the Temple sewers
Planar Sphere
Planar Prison
Temple Sewers party with Gaius
and probably some I've forgotten.

I just did the Slaver ship and found that to be very fun, however if one wanted to they could just wait for Assassins to keep spawning and restock their healing potions.
The only thing I'm bummed about is that I have an issue that was posted in this thread - http://forums.blackwyrmlair.net/index.php?showtopic=3190
I've tried all the lower settings and restarts and defrag but I still get the walk 3 steps and pause choppiness. I believe, but I will eventually go back and test it, that the choppiness only started once I entered the Copper Corronet. Up until that I was fine but now it persists.

I think I'm gonna go down to the bridge in the Unseeing Eye quest and see if I can handle those Beholders and then clear some of first level of Firkraggs' joint. But after that I dunno.

Thanks in advance.

[Sikret]

Maybe the game is spending a lot of time going thru those 9999 stacked gems if they are in a container

Yes, this is exactly why bottomless bags (or too many normal bags) can cause choppiness. Even 999 items of the same kind stacked in the normal inventory (out of bags) occupy only one inventory slot and the game goes through all of them at once and in one sinlge shot; whereas, if the same amount of items are in a bag, they are not actually stacked and each of them occupies one slot for itself and the game has to check each of them individually.