Had an early RoW, dumped 6 upgrades into it ASAP. Ended up with tons of +3 gear drops throughout the rest of the game. The grim greataxe with +8 ring of Arcana and +7 Ring of Furor meant that all enemies were executed within 1-3 hits. I had a ton of scrolls of transmutation as well with which I gave myself almost all of the desirable abilities from other classes. The only thing that I couldn't get to make it even more overkill was a camouflage enchantment on my armor.
Seed: FQT-ZHV-WLL although since most of this gear was a random RoW drop or the result of a lucky transmutation, your results may vary. There is also a very useful unstable spellbook early on. The imp also gives you a +4 ring which at that point you can transmute to whatever you want.
more luck than skill, actually. got an unupgraded ring of wealth in the sewers, waited until the completion of the troll blacksmith quest to upgrade the ring to +2, and dumped all scrolls of upgrade to it. with a high level of RoW, highly upgraded weapon drops are guaranteed, although the farming was slow.
what allowed me to survive until the mines without upgrading anything was the +3 mail armor i got in the prisons.
here's the seed if anyone wants it!
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