Leveling up skills can be difficult. Ignoring the 5% loss on death if you're careless, the mere act of training any skills past a certain point becomes exceptionally tedious. I know there are guides you can find to "power level" some of the skills, but that makes the effort feel even more grindy. You'll have beaten the game before you reach 100 in any skill, even if you don't die once.

I think it would be cool to have meads of various levels that are expensive, but provide various modifiers to exp gains for a moderate amount of time. Perhaps a small experience mead gives +100% increased experience, a medium mead gives +150%, and a large gives +250%.