The Tavern

I've had mixed success in **consistently** living to the middle-game phase, defined loosely as the point where I find the Temple and adopt a religion. Tips for staying alive while in the early phase of the game?

The advice here is mostly good and still applicable (some things, like stasis, don't exist anymore).

Try reading the nice guides here:

http://www.ultraviolent4.com/Guide.html
http://www.ultraviolent4.com/patashutactics.html

The guides on ultraviolent4's websites are a very nice start in order to learning how to play the game as well as how to avoid dangerous fights as well as keeping yourself alive to clarify however temple is NOT where mid game starts a more appropriate definition of mid game in crawl is once you get to lair by then your characters spells, skills, and god piety (there are exceptions to this) are fleshed out and you have a baseline of equipment to keep yourself alive (there are exceptions to this as well such as horrible RNG and playing races that have a tough time surviving always such as a naga or felid)

Play something easier than octopodes until you have a win or four under your belt.

In Ultraviolent4's guide, why does Centaur have the head of a horse? Centaur's lower body is of a horse, not the upper body.

Although there's no longer a dedicated "stasis" item, it's still possible to find artifacts that include the property "-Tele," which will prevent you from being teleported or blinking.

(It''s quite rare to run into them before Temple, actually... But they can turn up fyi.)