Usually when I find myself in a bad situation, I just try to hack my way out of it and end up dying. You'd think after beating the game several times I'd know to keep cool when bad things happen, but nope. I have tactics for dealing with expected bad situations, but the unexpected ones always get me, especially early in the game when I feel like "oh well I can just start over"
I was in GC2, had a decent character who had been really lucky so far. Helm of Understanding, decent equipment, permanent telecontrol from blink dogs, horn of bravery. The only thing he was missing was boots
Ran into a nasty orc who must have had an enchanted weapon. With no boots, my legs were quickly dismembered, but I kept hacking away as usual and found myself with only 1 arm, panicked, orc, mutant bunny, and blink dog all surrounding me.
This time I realized I should actually try to figure a way out of this. I broke my wand of teleport, and since I had telecontrol, stayed where I was knowing that the other guys would disappear. Then blew the horn of bravery. I had no healing liquids... tried rubbing my lamp which i had been saving just in case, but unfortunately no genie. Prayed to Legifer and Atavus and got 2 limbs but was still missing a leg (and the other was made of glass). I tried running for the staircase but by then the bad guys had caught up again. I polymorphed the bunny... into a mistress. Oops. Then the wand was out of charges, so I broke it. I transformed into a werewolf, orc I think was unaffected. But as a werewolf I was able to escape. Unfortunately just as I was reaching the other staircase I met a real werewolf, who finshed me off.
It was a good learning experience though
I've never gone to such desperate lengths to save a character this early in the game before.