Started an elf adventurer with points in swordsman, but ended up throwing projectiles at enemies instead. After a couple bandit camps I went to a night creature lair to kill the weaker version. I wasted most of my projectiles on it, damaging it about everywhere, including most of the internal organs save for the one hit kill ones (tore both of its cheeks, even), but in the end it finally spotted me and rushed at me. Since I haven't encountered any swordsmen, I still had only the default emergency dagger as the only real weapon, so I defended myself with it. The following battle was mostly me stabbing the creature wherever I could and him, being a large creature, knocking me backwards every time it could. Eventually it almost forced me out of its lair (the battle started at the other end), when I had a slashing opportunity on its head and sent it flying with a single slash.
I had a picture similar to Isildur cutting off Sauron's fingers in the first LotR, just, y'know, with the head instead of fingers.
Yeah, large copper daggers are awesome sometimes.
Update: went back to report the victory and ran straight into a lair. Its owner turned out to be the 'real' version of the same species of night creatures, so I had to dodge it until I could stealth and started peppering it with projectiles. I was about to run out when I hit its foot and so had to approach it to actually hit, and thus began the long kiting session. I spent... quite a bit of time hurling stuff at it and picking it back up because I was running out of it. By the end of the fight, every single body part of it was red except the trunk, it had an arrow through about every appendage, its exoskeleton was shattered, its belly was blown open and its guts were torn off, it had an arrow through its skull and finally through its heart, which was the killing blow. It still spent a few turns after that crawling towards me with incredible determination. At least it was crippled enough for me to replenish my thrown stuff. Still, was an impressive encounter.