No prob my friend, just keep going and have fun. As for HoMM3babies mod, it is made by 1 man, and there is couple bugs, but i finished it 3 times with every class once and help found some of problems, in first play there were allot of them, but that was 4 months ago and many of those bugs were found and fixed. Last game i played was 2 weeks ago with paladin and everything were great no problems, but ofc it`s you`re choice i just recommended it for new experience and some ideas i liked in it (rebalanced spell system, challenging enemy heroes, nicer skill changes . . .).
Other note :
1) Did you take wife ? She gives nice bonuses and ofc item slots. My advice for marauders i forgot to mention that i had Rina then, and my marauders had 3 speed, and were easy to move them around without losses.
2) Whenever you find some item that is quest connected try to use it, right click and use option. For example stinky elixir that witch give you to destroy alchemist cauldron may give you 100-150 exp points depending on hero class. If you kill Noric zombie hero in swamps use his bag and find gold inside, i`m not sure how much but it`s 100+ i think. Before you return lost town chronicles to mage school use it and get some spell scroll from it and so on . . . Many quest items have something inside them, try using every one.
3) if you have fire arrow, use it instead magic axe, it`s similar dmg for same mana cost, but have burn% which decrease enemy units stats. Other than that use whatever you have at disposal, since Darion is first location and hardest to start for lack of everything (units, gold, items, spells).
4) uprgade your rage box asap
