I've completed 6 lawful ultra endings, 2 neutral, 1 chaotic, and 6 regular endings.
I almost never play straight fighters, I've won with bards, priests, wizards, archers, a paladin, healer, assassin, and a weaponsmith. Almost always magic and missile focused. I think my first win was the classic dwarven priest. And numerous failed ultra endings after hitting level fifty with everything from wizards to farmers to monks. All my characters do melee a lot as well as cast and use missiles. And yes, I usually use polearms, I'll farm orcs for a good one if I need to.
Wizards can be a bit tough early due to lack of HP, but rock later on. Gnomish wizards/priests/healers are probably my favorite due to starting with extra talents. Grey elves are nices to start because of the elven chainmail as well. Starting with treasure hunter makes the game a lot easier by the end. Herbs are key. I usually go through 6-10 characters up to level 8 or so before I get one that I continue onward with (or don't die).
andy williams guidebook is crazy helpful. I confess I only got one character up to level 25 before I started reading it. Lot of fun figuring things out on my own before then, though.
My usual game start is: go to village, buy as much food as possible, go to outlaw village, kill something, learn pick-pocketting if neutral/evil and don't have it, walk over everything in the shop for some early ID's, go to small mountain cave (nw) until level 4, try to find stairs down, read the scrolls there to practice literacy while levelling, leave, wander countryside until raider is encountered (often die/starve at this point), kill raider (sometimes die here), collect reward, buy food, keep strained and satiated to improve strength. Explore druid cave (come back and kill druid later at level 10-12), explore puppy cave (sometimes die here), hopefully head back down through small mountain cave and out other side, otherwise head overland. Once a character actually reaches this stage I'm dedicated to trying for a win. If I haven't encountered any herb levels, altars, or gotten some good loot though, I'll sometimes just abandon and start over.
damn it makes me want to play.
peace,
-m