This is very interesting and an excellent job, especially as a first sculpt! I just created an account because I am doing something exactly like this as my first sculpt. I am doing the male Charr Warrior… lol. As of right now, you are so far ahead of me. I only have like 1 free hour a day after work and grad school/homework…
In any case, what is taking me the longest is learning everything in ZBrush. It seems like every day I do something, I end up redoing it 2-5 times in a different way with better results. I am attempting to learn the most powerful/least time consuming techniques so that I can maximize my efficiency (I learned how important this is once I got into environmental/level design in Unreal.)
BTW, I made the same mistake as you and attempted to detail before I should have. Plus, I was originally doing just the head. However, now that I understand subtools and how to create new ones straight from the base tool I am planning on doing the whole body and armor… I will likely post my base mesh before detail to get some tips on proportions before I sculpt in details.
Two things still have me stumped though. First, I really want the effect of real hair, but it is too painful rendering Maya or Max fur over a whole body… Second, Even with a good PC, I can not subdivide past 18 million polys. That doesn’t seem like enough for a fully body, especially if you hit like 8 then can’t subdivide again. How many polys are you working with on your base tool?