>I agree with that strategy except most everytime I have been
>killed, it's been by someone hiding in shadows or invisible,
>so I can't spot them until it's too late..

You might consider playing something with more detects or more stealth.

An assassin has detect hidden and detect invis as class abilities, so it's easy to keep them running at all times. It also can hide, which really limits who can attack them while they're hidden.

Or you might consider a ranger, which only has acute vision as a class ability (meaning you'd probably want to find a regular source of detect invis), but can camouflage and while camouflaged can be seen by almost no one.

Warriors (I think you said you were a warrior elsewhere in the thread) are a great class for what they are, but, they have less utility in the sense of abilities to let them see enemies coming, conceal themselves from enemies, or quickly escape from enemies than pretty much anything else. They can handle fights, especially at lower levels, better than a lot of characters but I'm not sure that's always a great trade for a new player. There's a lot to be said for being hidden as a thief or assassin and knowing that only a pretty short list of characters (other thieves or assassins, duergar, magistrates in their cities) can see you and that everyone else (there's one or two rare exceptions but they won't be relevant to you) is guaranteed to NOT be able to see you as you're trying to learn your way around and figure stuff out.