Strategy hint needed
 

Could someone give me a strategy hint on how to proceed?

I have just cleared the eleven quest to free the sole of the eleven princess and given the option to enter the locket gate the "eleven river land". But is here where I'm a little puzzled on how to proceed. I can see in many threads that some of you strongly recommend to clear the demonis land in dwarf lands.

Why should the demonis land be cleared before entering the locked gate?

Is there more areas that should be cleared before I enter the locked gate? For example the two land that can be reached by the book of death.

Further more, where can I recruit eleven hunters? I can not find them any where in the eleven lands (not a single enemy left to kill and all areas checked, including the castle behind the green portal)

The only reason to clean these areas is to gain more level and do some quests. It's possible to avoid Demonis, but you'll lose lots of fun.
During my last game, I found hunters in the Orinoco Castle.

Eh? I thought the gate key is obtained in Demonis.

Yeah, just forgot about that:)

Well, the Gate Key (for the locked gate) IS located in demonis but you can get it (easily enough compared to some of the other Demonis's fights) and leave. Whereas you can continue and have even more fun if you wish. Me, I finished demonis and then started on the locked gate area - Demonis was easier than most of my encounters there....

For my mage it was quite the opposite. One of the reasons was that 50% fire protection that all those demons have. It pretty much nulified Fire Rain, my main blaster spell.

And those Demon stacks with unlimited retaliation are something you really don't won't to take out without magic. Fortunately that's were I learned real power of Pain Mirror spell.

Anyway while my fights with undead (and orcs after labyrinth) were more 0-loss challenges, with demons it was pretty much who deals more damage contest.

Pain mirror has to be the best spell in the game, especially if you get "crit'd"

Pretty sure this has been mentioned somewhere, but a great technique is to spawn something, walk up to the biggest enemy and whack it, wait for the retaliation, and then use Pain Mirror. I think I get 189% from Pain Mirror at Distortion level 3.