ToME WikiA Death Mold Archer?!?
Well, ElvishPillager, having last played a Necromancer/Thaumaturgist with an awesome wall destruction spell, couldn't bring himself to start obeying the normal rules of walls again... so he picked a Death Mold! For some reason, Death Molds also have +2.500 to Archery skill to begin with.
As to picking Archery, ElvishPillager is sick of the classic Angband spell system, and ToME's school spells are even worse. One reason he used Necromancy and Thaumaturgy is that both are weird and don't require books. Warriors are boring and totally impracticable for Deathmolds, wizards are basically covered, and Loremasters are just weird. Plus, I had enough pets last game. 
And finally, ElvishPillager wanted to mess with Antimagic; a magic-proof archer is an awesome thing, because it can use ranged attacks but blocks almost all ranged monster powers... and it has free direction-controlled phase door every turn. Maybe using Deathmold phase-door powers with Antimagic is too exploitive? Well hey, you are supposed to pick a race and a class that go well together... :P
The character is actually an classical Deathmold Unbeliever, named Blinky the Swordholder.
So, he's in the town, and he heads over to the general store... heads up. It's not the same heading over to the general store with a Death Mold. O-kay, time to really head over to the general store... *pop* there we are.
After shopping around, Blinky the Swordholder heads for the dungeon. I remembered not to buy Phase Door scrolls, but didn't remember not to buy Boots. Heh.
It's an easy dungeon and he spends a little while killing monsters up to level 6. It's very easy, but then again, the first levels are always easy. At 100', he does a princess quest (I picked 34 quests) to kill Scruffy Looking Hobbits in a lava room. They can't shoot, and they can't cross lava. Blinky got level 7 and a Wooden Boomerang of Slaying (2d9) (+3, +4) there, and upped his Antimagic, Archery, and Combat to the level limit.
At 200', he meets Smeagol, whom he can see from across the room. With his new boomerang, he pounds on Smeagol from afar, and when his enemy is half dead, it comes close so that Blinky can eviscerate him with his Dark Sword. He gets a Ring of Invisibility, which is annoying to wear; he likes it when monsters come to his line of sight for easier shooting. (He also must have gotten another item but in hindsight (writing this afterwards) I have no idea what it was.)
At 250', Blinky hears a Princess shouting about the stupidity of Druids. Recalling the advice of his predecessor, he stays well clear of the level. Maybe he will come back when he has Free Action and Resist Electricity.
Doing more random exploring 50'-200', Blinky comes upon some Cave Spiders. Let's see - don't shoot them, there's twelve of them and he doesn't want to break his Boomerang sooner than he has to. He takes off my invisibilty ring and waits... and waits... and finally a cave spider wakes up. And then another. And they don't come towards him. Eventually a couple come to him and he kills them; then he gets frustated and blinks into the middle of them and kills them all. Welcome to level 8.
At this point he has 12 Combat, 12 Archery, 12 Antimagic, and 3 free skill points. Free skill points are awesome; ElvishPillager's last character won with 41 of them.
Fighting a few more monsters, Blinky's prized Boomerang of Slaying is destroyed. Oh well; it had far outlived its average 100-throw lifespan already. He switches to a Small wooden boomerang (1d4) {good} that he picked up in the dungeon. He is also still carrying around a bow and arrows.
He decides to head back to town and then try his hand at the orc dungeon.
On the way up he finds a Robe [2] {good} at 100'. He decides to id it and sell it; it's probably worth more than the ID scroll, even though he has 3 charisma. But, oh dear, there is no identify scroll. He keeps it in his inventory, along with his cursed ring of teleportation (he'd put them in his home, but he doesn't have a home and won't get one until level 15 when he'll be able to pick up the chainmail he'll be forced to drop.)
Now, time to adventure into the Orc Cave. Blinky uses his magical powers to go UP... haha. Hmm, blinking up here will take time. He is undaunted but ends up moving in the wrong direction several times. Whoopee.
He deals reasonably well with hunger and lights growing faint and makes it to the orc cave. He descends... into a room filled with Killer Bees and Rotting Corpses.
Blinky throws his boomerang {good} and it breaks in one throw. Ouchies. Time to break out the good old (+0,+0) arrows...
The Killer Bees are easy (he's invisible, they don't even try to attack him.) He reaches level 9. At this rate, though, he will run out of arrows before killing half the Corpses, so he takes off his Invisibility ring to use his trusty Dark Sword... Speeding up the Very Fast to bring his stealth down to Very Good, he picks up arrows as he waits for them to wake up.
All the Rotting Corpses die in one round. For all that he is based on Archery, Blinky's four blows with a 3d7 sword are nothing to sneeze at.
The he resumes the tiresome task of collecting arrows, using only Deathmold powers. He truly prefers boomerangs...
While resting for collecting arrows, ack, an Undead Mass appears in the doorway! Blinky blinks to right across from it and starts firing arrows into it, hoping it doesn't expand into the room. It takes 13 arrows to kill.
Unfortunately, there are more behind it that Blinky isn't prepared to fight against, but he kills two more and reaches level 10. Running out of arrows is a big problem, so Blinky starts fighting them with melee - whenever one comes next to him, he kills it. As he does this, he rests to build up arrow-grabbing power. Eventually he plans to collect all the arrows and leave.
Oddly enough, after a while, the mass stops spreading and he picks up his arrows in peace. He also collects a Quarterstaff that was in the room. Then he exits the dungeon. He senses that the quarterstaff is average, so he will sell it. He also sets his movement back to Normal.
Back home, he sells the staff and two unID'd potions, and does find a scroll to identify his robe [2,+5]. Indeed, he earns 179 gold on the exchange.
Chatter
- Heh. Very nice. I think you may have a promising character coming out of that... I did want to pop in to say I'm trying out the thaumaturgy necromancy combo with a deathmold warper. One question... how do you plan on getting past no-tele levels? My plan
is spoiler:corruptionsend spoiler. Goodluck, and I'll check back later!
ElvishPillager: Thaum/Necro with a Deathmold? Very interesting! I can see some quite powerful tactics coming out of that. Unlike my character, it will be immune to traps and able to get treasure out of vaults without slogging through monsters and again, setting off dozens of traps. Plus, of course, the Deathmold's innate Necro bonus.
For no-tele levels, I was planning to use the typical solution of using morphic oils. Or better yet, Mimicry, if I can get it from an FF quest. What corruptions help?
MrConceit: I love deathmold anything. My true winner, or whatever it is when you kill Melkor was a deathmold sorcerer. In fact I love them so much I stopped playing them. They're too good -- ONCE you get past the very tough start. 
25 stealth is nothing to sneeze at, along with 15 hit dice. I'm trying an archer myself at the moment, he's around level 28 I think. A zombie high-elf archer. I was doing a lost soul thaum, but I had Eru as a god, was using corpses to get piety faster in the walls, forgot to destroy them and promptly died when I went back out into monsters with -150 speed or so. Serves me right.