ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Certain early zones on insane are rare free (well, rare light), such as trollmire, korpul, and the undead start. I think the reasoning for the undead zone was that it was a forced level 1 start with no time to drown. Why does the dwarf starting zone not have the same treatment? Even Norgos can't tank/kill 1000+ hp bosses, which I've now run into twice out of two attempts. It feels like the dwarf starting zone strategy is pray for stairs in sight twice, and a little ridiculous. Am I missing something? Does anyone who plays insane have advice to not die horribly at level 1 to uniques (as a dwarf, I know about drowning)? Or did this just get missed or is bugged? All I wanted to do was play a stone warden.

Basically you have to pray for stairs in sight twice

From time to time you will get lucky and get unique mouse or something else that is rather easy to kill but most of the time you have absolutely no chance to win.