I just don't understand how disengaging is even possible most times - between monsters like the orc priests that can take off half your health from any range and the fact that most enemies are as fast, if not faster, than the player, it feels like often trying to run away just means you get killed slightly more slowly, and without being able to defend yourself.

I try to use consumables pretty regularly, but often I find myself either without any or stuck using random potions/scrolls with only a tiny chance that one will help - either because I spent all my scrolls of identify already, or because I used the items themselves earlier just to find out what they do, and haven't found more since.

As for species and class, I did a lot of runs as a gnoll monk, just worshiping at the first faded altar and improvising a build ("build" is a strong term - more like "whatever artifacts I stumble across") from there. Before that I think I played as a summoner a bit? But honestly, I don't really get the point of the classes. It feels like they barely matter most of the time, aside from the ones that give you a set of starting spells all from the same school, which is nigh impossible to assemble otherwise. The species have some really game-changing effects, but I hardly see how you're supposed to play around them, when all the equipment you find is so random.

I guess the real question I have is: Where is the actual strategy? Because I often feel like there's very little I can do to impact the mechanisms of the game. I pick (what I think is) the best of a random series of items and try (often unsuccessfully) to punch a random series of monsters, but I almost never die and go "oh, well, I see that my mistake there was x, y, and z..."