No tips really (I tried Dwarf warriors too, for a while, and found the same sort of problems), but an idea. A compromise between ironman and regular play would be semi-ironman mode, where
- there are no up stairs and
- recall always takes you to one level below the lowest you've been to (unless that's DL99 and Sauron is still alive).
This would be an ideal mode for competitions; in fact, this feels to me like the way the game "should be played".