Race/Class combo

[Overheat]

Not so JellySlayer. The class most likely to win does not necessarily live the longest on average.

GE Wizards, if they die, tend to die early on, therefore bringing their average "lifespan" down.

Orc barbs, are less likely to win than GE wizards. However, their common deaths are mimics, aging, dopplegangers, DH, molochs, chaos guardians, etc. Their deaths tend to be further into the game. So their "lifespan" is longer tha GE wizards.

A GE wizard may hit a couple block traps and firetraps, dying eachtime, before getting to DT, from there being hard to stop once morgia training has started.

Orc barbs will reach DT with more consistency, but are not home free like the GE wizard.

Basically, orcbarb will life longer before the he croaks.

[Toan]

You could always try Troll Elementalist. You don't need to read books, can bash stuff to oblivion while still having some magic for mimics, dopples, etc.

[vogonpoet]

Trollish mindcrafters are pretty cool too - your two most useful abilities come right at level 1, so now worries there. You are just a normal troll able to disable many monsters - very handy.

[Toan]

Sounds like any other troll. =/

[MrNiceguy]

To maximize sheer earliest game survival, play a druid. -snip

Which race? I guess dwarves (live long, high To and St, decent enough Le) should be best if it's survival you want, but I'm not sure. There are few things that don't go well with a druid.

Personally, I've never had a dwarven druid do well. I always have bad luck with finding herbs and end up starving to death in the early stage of the game. Until you find a Stoma patch, Druids tend to have food problems since so many of the edible critters are generated non-hostile. Dwarves are worse than most because they don't have Food Preservation and won't eat orcs unless starving.

I've had good luck with Hurthling Druids, myself. You won't be casting much in the beginning, but just head for PC2 and let the friendly ants dig you up some ammo. No food problems for Hurthlings, plus I don't think there's any race with an easier time of getting in good with your deity. (Combine the cooking skill, a guaranteed cooking set, and a god that likes home-cooked meals and you're set as soon as you find an altar.)

[Silfir]

I honestly consider food trouble of any sort completely avoidable, even without herbs. Munxip sells large rations in droves, and reaching the Arena is not hard. Cooked lizards, bam, end of story. Fried bats too if you want. Stomafillia is never the answer for me - I never even start eating whatever stomafillia I found until late in the game, if I ever do run out of my lizards. If you really do experience frequent food trouble, one of your first trips should be a hike across towards the CoC for a lizard shopping run. And it's important to remember to not run around Strained or even Burdened if you realize you could be getting into trouble!

But yes, hurthlings are less likely to get into trouble with food, so if that is an important consideration, it's perfectly valid to choose them for it. Everyone has different preferences.

[vogonpoet]

I prefer bulimic drakelings

[fazisi]

Drakeling druid is the best. Play drakeling druid.

[Moloch666]

I always have good luck with Elves.Like High Elf Barbarians.

[novapsyche]

I disagree, you completely forget magic in this. A good magician will be able to survive solely on his spells. Acid balls fucks the world HARD.

Yes, indeed. Except when it comes to diamond golems, which my gnomish wizard recently encountered in the Library. Any missile of construct slaying would have been my best friend, had I any. :\ (My wizard did manage to survive. But not by magical means.)

As for the broader discussion, I too have been interested in race/class combos, but I've been focusing on the ones that would give me the most copious skill sets. I believe that would lead to dwarven thieves (although I don't know how that would work out, given the alignment problem), HE/GE farmers, dwarven healers, etc. I think I had a drakeling elementalist at one time, which had Swimming as the only skill overlap; however, he kept dying at one point, just fatally flawed.