I was wondering why people said that Spriggan Enchanter was a good combo for beginner, and i noticed why when i acquired the hibernation spell.
It's harder than Berserker Troll for the beginning as your Spriggan is extremely frail, but once you can cast the Hibernation spell that is on the default book you start with, you get a huge survival asset there.
And combined with the running speed of a Spriggan to escape some foes, it is really a good beginner combo, at least if you can keep the Spriggan alive until you can cast reliably Hibernation.
Though i guess you'll need luck with finding fruit and bread, at least until Hive to keep your Spriggan feed.
For my Spriggan there was a situation in which only pure luck saved me, and for once luck was on my side (so probably Crawl will find an insane way to crush my character later).
I was in a corridor and badly wounded, behind me appeared a human, in the other side Pikel appeared.
I guess that's where i am happy to have a nice EV, as once i was in sandwhich between Pikel and the human slave, it was extremely hard, especially as i was out of teleporting scroll.
After a few resists that got my Spriggan sweating a lot as both human slave and Pikel were trying to kill the nearly dead hero, finally Pikel was affected the Hibernation spell and was immediately stabbed to death.
What a relief it was.
But what has satisfied me a very very lot is this :
Ah, sweet revenge for all the annoyance those unseen horrors have done for my non-see invisible characters.