Your gear is fine, but upgrading is never a bad idea if you're finding it tough to win with what you have. I did a lot of T2 runs with similar gear (different armor and helmet, but nothing I would consider better than what you have). You may consider getting an extra weapon slot for a blast bomb, though. That bomb is useful when there are a lot of enemies that you want to temporarily disperse, which can be important when soloing so you don't get hopelessly surrounded.

I'm guessing you're playing too quickly. When you're solo, it pays to go slowly through the levels, try to draw out enemies only 1 or 2 at a time so you don't face too much firepower at once. Also, use the terrain. You have a decent gun, so get used to hiding behind railings and shooting across corner gaps to keep space between you and your enemies. In arenas, where you can't use terrain or isolate monsters easily, don't do the second or third arena room unless the first one seemed really, really easy. Finally, practice using your shield, which goes hand in hand with slowing down you play. Know how many hits you can put in before you need to dodge or block and know how many hits your shield can sustain before it breaks.

You can also stop your run at the terminal. The difficulty increases significantly with depth. Until you're nearly ready for tier 3, in all 4* gear, soloing the last couple levels of tier 2 will be (and should be) quite difficult, so if you find yourself dying too often, don't be afraid to return to Haven before reaching Emberlight.

Icee and Kaybol are both on the right track, as, for the most part, playing Solo is considerably different when compared to party play.

You may need to find an equipment set that both supports your needs in the Clockwork, but also your favored play style. I, for example, specialize with bombs, so that's all I ever carry, and to help survive while alone, I carry a Super Blast Bomb (to replace close quarters and disperse enemies) and the Rock Salt Bomb (which is used to replace my ranged attacks and has Piercing damage type), making for a slow, but overall safe trip into the unknown.

If you're alone, and particularly if you are focusing on the challenge areas or arenas, you will always need to stay moving, thus a gun or bomb will likely be the best option. Weapons that you must stop to use, or even worse move the user forward, will likely cause more problems than they will mend with what I would assume is a higher damage output. It is also to be noted that, as above, the shield is wonderful as an emergency survival tool. Not only that, but with proper timing, it can be used to bounce some of the lighter enemies away before they can even execute an attack.

I am no expert on melee, as I ditched it the moment I was able, but if you prefer getting up close and dirty, perhaps trying out some of the weapons that provide quick attacks, ranged charges, or bestow upon your enemies negative effects, particularly stun, poison or curse.

Kiting is key. Kiting, in case the definition eludes thee, is leading your foes around as if they were attached to a string, a bit like a kite. Generally, the more room you have to do this, the better, but since enemies cannot occupy the same space, occasionally dragging several enemies into a corridor and then pinning the first one in place means you only have one to deal with at a time. Once again, alone, this process can be painfully slow, but it works. And it's safe.

Last and most importantly, have fun. No, seriously, this is really important. If you're having a hard time routing your enemies, perhaps you should take a break, clear you head. It'll help when next you enter the fray.

Hope all of this helps. Good luck down there!

The recommendations with bombs and guns are appropriate if you're just starting out since they're pretty safe and you don't really need to know too much about your enemies to kite besides their damage resistances.

On the other hand if you're interested in using swords the main aspect you need to concentrate on is timing: you need to know your weapon and your enemies; you need to know how much recovery time you have, especially if you intend to use the full combo (for the extra damage), you need to know how often the monsters attack and all of that comes with experience. From what i managed to learn here's a few tips that might help:

->Have a sword with knock-back: be it the classic calibur charge or the troika series normal attack combo you need something to give you some breathing room and help you prioritize targets; reaching that healer in the back is going to be very annoying if you don't have a way to reach him without taking damage.

->Cutter series is a very niche sword when soloing: it has a very low range and when fighting groups it puts you in a very bad position. Sure you might be able to fight jellies and maybe some fiends with it but anything else that's encountered frequently won't let you get off your full 5-combo safely (and that's the power of fast attacking swords high dps..if they let you). Sure the sword is awesome for alphastriking unaware puppies with your charge and eliminating lumbers. Your best bet if you want to keep using the striker is jumping from mob to mob to knockback them fast enough so they stop attacks and help you get out of range from others' retaliation. For me this is pretty hit and miss, sometimes i manage to do it, sometimes i take half of my hp in damage.

->Get appropriate armor. Yes you're going to get hit, be it lag or simple personal mistake, make sure 1 hit won't be the end of you because if you die there are no friends to rez you..it's your energy that's going to take a hit. Look on the totem outside and match your gear to what you expect to encounter (check the wiki for details on what monsters do what damage); don't forget status conditions and their resistances, you can get away maybe without poison, curse or fire resist (though this last one is pushing it if you encounter the lovable missile puppies) but going in a shock area or worse, freeze area, without resist is extremely risky, it's very easy to get overwhelmed when you can't move :).

->If you don't already shield bash, learn to do it and do it often, especially if you're using the cutter series. If you see an attack coming stop your hitting and try a shield bash, you might be able to throw him far enough so that you/your shield won't take any damage.

->If you're still in 2* gear never be under 5-6 bars of HP if you can help it, especially in the lower depths of t2.

Why would you want to use swords? Because done right they're the highest damage weapons you can use, guns are low damage, high safety and bombs do good damage but are a bit slow to fire. High risk high reward, LIKE A REAL MAN! :P

Back to your particular situation (provided you still want to use swords):

-> I personally don't really like wolver unless maybe doing jelly king because i haven't seen any pierce damage outside big lichen spikes and floor spikes, so you're basically sacrificing entire pips of defense for a stat you won't use. My recommendation would be to start saving for "thematic armors": X-breaker set if you're doing elem themed stratums, skelly if lots of undead etc. . You elemental is a good set for the element stratums if you started getting the game a bit since you'll take damage more from hardly avoidable stuff like seeker missiles, fire on the whole tiny path, lazor beams from outside the screen and those are all elemental damage. But until you're getting used to dodging, blocking and knockbacking my suggestion is to use armors with a bit more normal resists because a lot of enemies still do quite a hefty chunk of normal damage (including those in shock/frost/fire stratums)

-> Get another sword: calibur is the safest "general purpose" one being decently fast (it doesn't have the high recovery times of the troika series for example) with a very good get out of jail free card charge (with very good damage if you manage to get the doublestrike on the whirlwind). Troika is pretty nice for hit'n'runs since it has a nasty whack and a 2hit combo that gives you breathing room even from wolver "bosses".

->Always err on the side of caution. f you're wondering if you should risk that last hit in your combo or start blocking...always block. You can compensate for that last hit with a couple few extra seconds, but pips of HP care harder to come by.

Is terms of enemies try fighting slime levels (they're fairly straight forward: all the jellies and lichens just attack and melee and occasionally do a pretty predictable "charge") or undead levels (zombies are easy to time hit->block->hit, cats are easy to avoid, only challenge being phantoms block their 3 hits->get 1-2 hits in yourself depending on sword, prepare to block, avoid the curse sword). Beast levels are a bit harder since the wolver bosses are quite annoying and strict on timings and elemental levels like to drop the lazer firing robots that seem to have huge reach with their melee attacks (that isn't even close to their animation) and the god damn puppies. Goblins are quite intense with the various types you get, tight timings on their meleers and bomb droppers that cover their healers.

Um... I can solo Tier 2 with...

Vile Striker (I used to do it with Striker...)
Fiery Vaporizer OR Firotech MK2
Jelly Shield (UGH)
Skelly Suit
Magic Hood

I just hit then shield at the right times.... LOL I went into tier 3 with my friends with this gear and rarely died... my only problem was spikes because I had no piercing defense and I'm a klutz..

I just want to add that I found soloing T2 very hard when I first got there. I haven't significantly improved my gear since then, but I ran with some parties and in general got some practice in, and things fell into place. While this may seem like a simple game at times, it always leaves room for us to play better than we did before. :)

or... u can search for a 'Rescue' guild member and hire one of us to either rescue you when u need it (u can summon us) or escort you until u reach ur goal :)