Ishtar dilemma?

After being stopped at Ishtar's gate, i noticed that my Hashishin reputation is a paltry 15% even though i had achieved the minimum 75% from Braga to Mora Sul.

so far, i had refrained from quests that causes harm to the Water Mages and basically i want to side with the Water Mages for the time being. Can i leave Varant without entering Ishtar? will it cause any problems later - anything game-defining? i know i can't learn the master of dual-sword wielding but it's no big loss..

No, you dont need to enter Ishtar peacefully. You do however need to loot Zubens corpse for one of the endings (but that can be achieved by running in and chopping him to small pieces, and grabbing the loot before moving on as the enemies wont hit you while looting).

I dont think its possible to enter Ishtar peacefully without killing some water mages (I think they count for about 3 rep each) and doing some slave hunting quests in Myrtana. I had 80 in rep when I entered the city, and that was with most of our blue robed friends dead and Varant more or less cleared (hadnt opened two of the temples). The largest contributions to my hashishin reputation came when I did everything for Nafalem, Sancho, and Tizgar though…

thanks for the tip, Zaleukos.. i was worried that it might cause some problems later in the game.