Minotaur with an axe is pretty powerful, wanted to try what Xom feels like. Dungeon to level 10, Lair, Orc, Spider all went smoothly without much trouble. At that point I hadn’t found any source of flying so I didn’t want to go to shoals.
First tried elven vaults which worked fine until Xom had the funny idea to teleport me into the Hall of Blades. That place is pretty big so it took 3 teleports (and some luck) to get out. Next I went to the vaults, after the first 4 layers where no trouble I just went to V5 with haste+teleport before heading down the stairs.
One could think that after you found and cleared the first corner for a quiet rest you are basically save but one would be wrong. Still had several close call encounters and used a whole bunch of haste, heal, curing, ambrosia and cancel pots and teleports but eventually cleared it all. Probably would have been a bit smoother if I had realized how nasty a mark on V5 actually is and cancelled these as well.
Still didn’t have a source of flight even after Vault and Dungeon until the depths but char was approaching axes/ fighting level 27 so I decided to go to shoals anyway and avoid fully exploring every level (which otherwise I generally do all the time). Had to clear level 5 almost completely anyway until I found the rune but char was sufficiently powerful at that point that the lack of flight didn’t cause any big trouble.
I actually found my first gem there and had to check the wiki to learn what these are about. Char felt maxed out for the skills he had so I decided to do a quick rune for Zot. Only half explored the depths levels and then read a scroll of relevation and went directly for the stairs on every Zot floor. That gave me two more gems and my highest scoring winner so far.
Xom felt very random as expected but overall much weaker then Okawaru or Trog. You often get help but not necessarily when you need it most. The random teleporting only led to a really dangerous situation once, in the hall of blades but that could have been much worse. Additionally I got all kinds of mutations with an even mix of good and bad ones but the bad ones tend to be much worse than the good ones are helpful.