The run I've been playing most recently (not my most recently-begun run, but it is my only extant game at the moment) is one of the best I've had in quite a while: Half-Orc Fighter of Gozag, I've got enough AC, SH and resistances at my disposal where only the mightiest of individual hits can do much to me, and enough money that I could (if I needed to) bribe some of the tougher branches which remain. Even in the Vaults (so far) and the Depths (which I've now cleared while putting off tackling the bottom floor of the Vaults), almost nothing has made me have to slow down and think, "Okay, I need to take this a little more carefully." But Vaults 5 has killed enough of my strong characters who've made it that far for me to not be able to be cavalier about its danger, so I'm definitely going to bribe the branch again (my previous bribery fund for it having been exhausted), and buff up with a couple potions before going down there.
Still not sure if I'm going to attempt to go for any of the more optional branches and/or runes before going for the Orb, or just call it and go for my third win ever; I suppose it will mostly depend on how well/badly Vaults 5 goes.

Wish me luck, fellow delvers!

I've died over a thousand times (2000?) and never won. It really irritates me, and while I love fantasy, I dislike how mages/magic work in the game, and that I've been killed over and over and over. Many if not most of those deaths I blame on poor documentation or the game outright cheating. Games cheating ruins the fun for me so I'd like to never play again but, like an addiction, I'll eventually fire it up again, and die again, and ragequit again.

Well, I got through Vaults 5, with a lovely vacation in the Abyss partway through that made V:5 itself seem like a pleasant diversion by comparison. Wound up chugging all my heal wounds potions (and using Gozag's Potion Petition ability several times as well) just to survive, but I spent a large majority of my time there at <50% health. Somehow, I found myself on the deepest level of the Abyss (I didn't pay attention to which layer I started on after my banishment, but at least once, I took a portal to a deeper level just to get out of a dangerous situation), and I wound up getting the Abyssal Rune by happenstance before I could find and successfully use a portal back to the Vaults.
And it wasn't till after I had been banished that I realized I had completely forgotten to re-bribe the Vaults before I descended to V:5! -_- (Sadly, the denizens of the Abyss are apparently above accepting graft.) And by the time I got back, I figured I'd already cleared enough of the enemies that it would've been a waste of money to do so then. No matter, my stack of scrolls of immolation and my overall rF++ meant I had little problem dealing with the mobs I got swarmed by before and for a short time after my vacation. I mean, I also have a halfway decent artifact main weapon (double sword or double blade, whatever the base weapon type's called) and, as mentioned, gobs of armor and shielding -- and reflection, which I forgot to mention before. That's been kind of important, too. :D
Now, before I go...wherever I'm gonna go next (still haven't decided, though after the time I had in the Abyss, I don't think I feel like checking out the Hells or Pandemonium), I have to remember to check my mutations and see if there's anything worth dealing with. I got malmutated at least a handful of times in the Abyss, and after the first couple, I kinda stopped checking, and I hadn't gone into V:5 with any potions of mutation (and DCSS v0.20 is the first version where the effects of the older potions of mutation, beneficial mutation and cure mutation were combined into one, which I believe is still the case in recent builds), so there was nothing to be done at the time; and by the time I got out, got up to Vaults 4, and got rested, I had more or less forgotten about that entirely.

What about the spellcasting do you not like?
What kind of documentation do you think the game is missing, or what parts of the existing info do you find insufficient or misleading? (I assume you're speaking of the in-game help info. I have my own thoughts on some things that could be expanded on, but it's mostly to do with a total lack of explanation of some of the technical terms used with regard to the in-game search function and in the options guide; I find that most of the info on actual gameplay systems is not only decent, but often better -- and almost always better-written -- than info in a lot of paid games. And from what I've seen of more recent versions, there seems to have been a noticeable increase in the amount of numeric, mechanical info provided to the player over the last several years.)
In what way do you think the game's cheating? (I'm aware of at least one or two ways in which the enemies and neutral/allied creatures work differently from how the PC works, but the only slightly "cheaty" part is that they're somewhat implied to work differently than they do, not that they're adapting based on info they shouldn't have, or suddenly using equipment they neither spawned with nor picked up, etc.)

Being killed over and over is part of it being a Rogue-like. :) But if you want to practice without fear of death, there is a Wizard mode you can enable -- I believe the keyboard shortcut is "+" (as in, "Shift"+"="). I've never messed with it, but I remember it exists because of how many times I've accidentally almost enabled it when trying to do something else (thank Trog for that "Are you sure...?" prompt ;P ). I think it invalidates that run from being counted in your high scores, or something.

EDIT: Also, if you want any tips, let me know what you're having trouble with. Obviously, I'm not some masterful player myself, but assuming I can get a character to survive past the crap shoot of the first handful of Dungeon levels, then -- as long as that character isn't ridiculously sub-optimal -- I can typically at least make it into the Lair, which I consider the start of the mid-game. Perhaps just as importantly, I'm pretty experienced at this point with the ins and outs of most of the different commands and info modes (at least in the older versions I've played -- though I doubt many of the actual commands have changed), which makes getting important info much easier, which, in turn, makes survival easier.

Heh, after failing with another brand-new run (taking a little break from my late-game main run), I loaded my HOFi of Gozag to check the mutation situation, and found that I had...nothing. He is "rather mundane". Turns out that the creatures that malmutated him in the Abyss only do so temporarily -- though I'm not sure if it's the kind of temporary that goes away with experience gain, like skill drain does, or if these were on an actual timer, as with effects like corrosion. Either way, the mutations were all gone by the time I had finished gathering the most interesting bits of loot from V:5 in a waypointed mini-stash on the floor above, then taking a good chunk of that back to my main stash back in Lair 1, where I left off playing.

EDIT: Deleted an extraneous word

Yeah those are wretched stars, those small purple stars that appear in the abyss. Their mutations are temporary and go away with xp. Those mutations should also be marked in purple in the mutations overview screen so that they are easy to distinguish from persistent mutations.

Fun to read btw. I had my big time with DCSS from roughly 2016-2020. I still play from time to time but not as much anymore as I used to. I always stick to the newest version though.

Years ago, I might well have known that. But, other than my recent banishment, the only time I've spent in the Abyss in a long time has been as various beginner Abyssal Knights, trying to see what goodies I can scrounge there before something really bad notices me and I have to GTFOASAP (and at level 1, almost everything in the Abyss is really bad :P ).

What are the things that appear in Zot (and can appear in the Depths, I think, and maybe the Slime Pits?) that can permanently malmutate you? It's been a long time. I could've sworn it was the sun demons, but their description mentions nothing about mutation at all (at least in 0.20).

Thanks! It's been fun to get back to the game. My main period of play before now was similar to yours: from the end of 2015 (playing on then-current 0.17.x) off and on until fall 2021 -- though that seems to have been a fairly brief, casual return, judging by my morgue files (it seems I only played 2 runs, both of which had been started in the prior couple of years, and only one of which I finished that year -- my second ascension); otherwise, I was pretty much done by the end of 2020.
I have no proof, but I get the feeling that the game's heyday of popularity was in the 2010s.

Any changes over the years that you've particularly liked, or disliked?

Zot of course has orbs of fire. Slime has shining eyes (purple eyes). Those are really nasty because their mutating attack is the only attack option they have so they will use it if they have lof. Not recommend going there if you are worried of mutations and don't have a way to quickly dispatch them. (they're very fragile though)

You can sometimes find neqoxec or cacodemons in depths but they are very rare there (usually only found around abyss portals)

I just like the direction of development overall and how the devs streamline the game without sacrificing complexity and gameplay. I really don't want to go back to the times of item destruction or stat death or hunger because they were annoying for me.

And while there are always also changes that I dislike (recently Abyssal Knight got removed as background and Lugonu lost her blink ability, both changes I really don't get) the pros outweigh the cons for me.

Orbs of fire! Those are the ones. That's why I always keep confusing them with sun demons -- because sun demons are also represented in tiles as literal orbs of fire (as far as I can tell). Different art, but same visual concept.
And I vaguely remember the shining eyes, but I've so seldom visited the Slime Pits over the years (and not at all since I got back to the game this year) that I couldn't remember whether it was the same thing that spawns in Zot.

One change from before my time playing Crawl, and that I would have liked to have gotten in on at the time, is wandering monsters -- intelligent ones, at least -- being able pick up any items they found lying around, not just ones the player hadn't seen yet. (Yes, I could download and play a version where that was still a thing, but I don't really want to start from scratch without any possible player ghosts or anything, since I'm guessing there were some version breakpoints in between a relevant version and the one I'm on now, and that even older version might not like my bones files from years later.) Honestly, a little more variety in enemy behavior in general (more than just "some monsters, like bats and unseen horrors, move erratically") would be appreciated.