After a week of playing, I think I'm on a Dungeon Hack run that will clear the game: a human cleric with a ridiculous -5 AC (artifact chain mail, an Ioun Stone of Protection, and Bracers of Protection +2), permanent Improved Invisibility from a magic ring, and two Staves of Striking +3 that she's dual-wielding because clerics can do that here for some reason. She's just effortlessly cleared a labyrinth of Slithermorphs - the point in the game where my previous character, a mage, slowed down badly (she ran out of food a few levels later.)
Clerics overall are pretty broken, with the best protective spells (including the only reliable defense against level drain), free ranged offense with double Spiritual Hammers, and the ability to both create food and heal - which means that, unlike other classes, you don't have to balance resources. Not a surprise though: clerics are often "tank mages" in these older AD&D games.
Anyway, this is just a long way for me to say that Dungeon Hack is cool.
@dabbling_duck Dungeon Hack, that is a name I've not seen in a long time. Played the heck out of it 20+ years ago. :D
@dabbling_duck Next up: Lands of Lore? :)
@trinsec That would be very satisfying, although I've been reflecting on how the only major Dungeon Master clone I've never finished is Stonekeep... maybe it's time!
@trinsec Funnily enough, I had installed it mostly because the disk was nearby, and I wanted to test my new real-hardware setup with something familiar... but it very quickly got its hooks into me again, and here I am, still playing!