dying in the desert in quests

hello, I need help badly.
This is my first role playing ever. Got to it late in life
Am W/R, L 20, 160 000 XP. but have just tanked up the warrior side of me.
have 12 strength, tactis, swordsmanship. armour 60 to 85 all with major warrior runes. am using comfort and charm animal Level 20 pet, resurrect und capture (flat chance) signet, protectors strike, Galrath slash, Bonettis defence and Sprint. My sword is fiery wingblade of defence fire damage 15 - 22, armour + 4, damage + 20.
Have been battling my way with a very good team down to the forge and felt great!! And that was with lesser armour and runes.
have tried 4 times missions with different teams from Amnoon oasis. Result, I just die very quickly.
Once no one could rez me. I just kept falling over again. Maybe my armour was too heavy? but seriously, I must be missing something here.
So please dont laugh at me and give me some advise.

Some suggestions that may be helpful:
-You say that you have "armour 60 to 85 all with major warrior runes". Do you mean to say that you have 3-4 major runes? The health penalty of that is enormous. It's best to stick to a single major or superior rune for your highest attribute.
- As most people will tell you, a pet becomes useless later in the game if you don't invest in Beastmastery and pet skills. So, if you want to keep the pet in the desert, you should have a significant rank in Beast Mastery, and bring 1-2 extra pet skills. Otherwise it's best to sell it.
- You only have 2 attack skills, so you'll not be doing a lot of damage. When meeting large groups of enemies in the desert, it's all about dispatching with the first few enemies very quickly.
- The first few steps out of Amnoon Oasis are a big shock for most players. It's mainly a matter of treading very carefully, and learning where the groups of scarabs spawn. After a while this becomes a lot easier.

well, thanks for that. I need to learn about runes a bit more, it seems.
So how do I undo those runes and where do i put them best?
I still have problems understanding all those attributes , health damage etc.

Back to the drawing board for me, it seems.

with 2 monks as henchies now. (last update) this really should not be that hard. But I can see if you are having a large health pentalty like Cedarde said. its prob hitting your health pretty bad. so I would consider changing that a little... maybe having 2 set of armor. I do that for tombs. I have 3 pieces I swap out for PvP, and use other set for PvE. good luck. you will get it.

I persoanlly find the desert very easy now as a ranger with my lev 20 dune lizard. I can even do some areas solo, and hydras are easy to kill now... But when I first got there and had lower lev armor it was really tough.

You can take the runes out of the armour, but it will destroy the armour.
Better to just put those pieces of armour in your storage and buy new ones to put maybe minor runes on.
Minor runes give +1 to an attribute and no health penalty.
Major give +2, but some amount of health penalty.
Superior give +3 and a big health penalty.
To find the exact numbers you can do a search.

It doesn't matter where you put your runes, they work the same everywhere, but they don't stack. So there's no point having two runes of minor tactics and expecting to get +2 to tactics, you'll only get +1.

The health penalty of major and superior runes can be offset with vigor runes.

Major: -50 to health, Superior: -75 to health.
There is some consensus that you should only use Minor (no penalty), or Superior (-75 but 2 additional attribute points). But superior runes cost fortunes. Also, few people (W) use more than 1 non-Minor rune.

Also, you may laugh, but another player on these boards had a similar problem until he realized... he wasn't wearing a helmet.

well, how stupid can I get, hey?
but thanks to that advice, i have bought lesser armour, and am now wearing
a rune of major absorption and of major swordsmanship. replaced amour level is 60, but it will have to do, till i get moe money.

Thanks again guys.

how much beastmastery do i need to catch a dune lizard?? Drool

am off to the desert now to test my new setup