Hooray, won again! 2 from 39 games. I fancied a go at Vine Stalkers with
their clever gimmicks. On the way to this win I had an embarrassing death
in Pandemonium with 5 runes (two Lair branches, Abyssal, Vaults, and Lom
Lobon) - embarrassing both because I had no business trying clever
extra-rune stunts on my second potential win and because I had switched to
Zin (after Vaults:5, Okawaru's wrath is like a gentle shower of warm rain)
and forgot to use Sanctuary.

I lucked out this game by getting the quick blade from a scroll of
acquirement (mind you, I had a few scrolls of acquirement during the game
and also cleared out Elf, so I think the odds of me getting a QB at some
point were good - indeed, I found a second one at some point) and, on
deciding to roll the dice when I had two scrolls of brand weapon, getting
electrocution first try. For much of the game I had a randart dagger I'd
swap to for rElec.

Okawaru's gifts ranged, as usual, from occasionally useful to laughably
bad (as I recall, two -6 bucklers with a stat penalty to boot), but they
did cough up javelins early (I almost never had to throw a tomahawk),
boots of flying, and a crystal plate armour with a juicy set of
resistances... and -Tele. I did use that for a while but decided to go
to Depths to try and make myself a gold dragon armour, which I did using
one of the guardians of the Zot portal (having almost despaired of
getting a golden dragon to leave a corpse).

I got some mileage out of the lightning rod, which I burned my scrolls of
recharging into. I made almost no use of the lamp of fire, etc, but that's
at least partly because I decided to leave Vaults:5 well alone and grab
the abyssal rune instead. 

Branch-wise, Snake was pretty straightforward (not as many guardian
serpents as I feared). I was wary of Shoals having been once before and
died, but with boots of flying it proved to be a doddle. Elf:3 took a bit
of thought but of course vine stalkers with 0.3 weapon delay absolutely
excel at mugging enemy spellcasters. I cleared out Crypt (might as well)
without trouble. I needed a couple of cure mutations after the Abyss, but
I had them to spare (besides those on the dump, there's a couple in shops,
I think). Zot:5 was really suspiciously easy: I came around one corner to
find two orbs of fire, two ancient lichen, and various other nuisances,
but other than that I just strolled up to the Orb (squishing Orb Guardians
but, to be honest, they're not that bad) and hit a permanent teleporter.
By good fortune I landed in the explored lobe of the orb vault. The orbrun
was totally uneventful; never even saw a Panlord.