Digging for victory

Dig for victory is a strategy in which the player aims to quickly reach the castle by digging down as soon as possible.

The player must have a tonal musical instrument (basically, not a leather drum) in order to open the drawbridge. Since elves are guaranteed to start with an instrument, an elven wizard is a popular choice of character for this strategy. The player's first task is to reach the Gnomish Mines and search for a pick-axe. The player then returns to the main dungeon, and digs down until the castle.

Digging with the pick-axe requires multiple turns, so occasionally monsters will appear and halt the digging process. These must be scared off with Elbereth or otherwise dealt with. The player will likely encounter a minotaur either on the castle level, or in a maze just beforehand, and these ignore Elbereth.

Once at the castle, the drawbridge can be opened and closed at will by playing the passtune, crushing anything that stands on it, which will hopefully be everything. Once the castle is clear, the wand of wishing is available for the taking.

Criticism

Much like the protection racket, dig for victory is nice when it works. Unfortunately, low experience level, interference from monsters, lack of equipment, minotaurs, collapsing drawbridges and purple liches all conspire to make the fatality rate very high. As such, it is really a metastrategy (a true strategy aims to maximise the survival chances of a particular character, not maximise the chance of at least one of many characters surviving), and even considered by some to be a form of scumming behaviour.