Another Newbie needs help

[Mondkalb]

The encumbrance leads to less spell points. If you need spellcasting, it wouldn't be a good choice.
If you are slowed down, even only one point, it is a questionable choice. I wouldn't wear it.
Until you are strong enough, you probably will have found better stuff. You could sell it and buy useful things instead.

[Timo Pietilä]

I didn't forget about dwarves, I just don't consider blindness resistance to be as helpful as you do. I've gotten used to not being able to both it and confusion resistance at the same time, which means I can never rely on scrolls for escapes, which means that blindness resistance doesn't affect my tactics much. Especially since you can still "see" enemies just find with telepathy when blinded. And anyway you don't get blinded very often.

Maybe this is class question. As you know I play mostly priests, and priests lack detect monster (until godly insights), so light/dark hounds are a problem to them and both cause blindness. Also being able to cast spells is pretty critical to priests, so blindness resist is very important to them.

Anyway, I almost never use staves of teleportation as escape for any char, and rely on scrolls for more than devices because they are fail-proof as long as you are neither blinded or confused. I like having blindness resist. Confusion as attack is pretty rare now, blindness is far more common (it exists as spell too).

For innate abilities outside of...well, abilities... I rank high CON highest. IMO CON effect on HP is too high, even hobbit with low hit-die outperforms elves with CON penalty because they can have much higher variety of items to use without losing HP. +3 difference in CON is huge. This is also what makes Thorin so non-brainer.

[Timo Pietilä]

In the early game, what;s more useful acid or lighting resist? I'm on DL12 just found both amulets, don't have any resists at the mo.

Also do you find that confusion is the biggest killer of early characters? Hasn't killed me yet but i've had a couple of close calls, you can't cast or read so 2 escape routes are closed off and I haven't found a teleport staff yet.

That early, neither. Wear acid if you don't have anything better.

Confusion rarely kills once you learn what monsters to avoid. Umber Hulks are hard to avoid early, but usually you can melee them even when confused effectively enough that they start running away very soon. Use your potions of CCW as heal, not as cure to confusion when against Umber Hulk: otherwise you would be drinking them all of time, and run out of them without harming it - RIP.

Hummerhorns mentioned in other post are nasty. If you can't kill it ASAP and they breed out of control (which is about two rounds after one wakes up) leave that area immediately. Warrior with high HP and AC can usually melee it's way out of hummerhorn infested areas even when confused, but casters would be in deep trouble in same situation.