Head Start completed. It was a completely mad run, I was a knight and had barely better than base level stats, my pig died quickly, the only immunity I had was poison, and I hit a gold diet potion early so I couldn't even buy any good upgrades... I managed to do it with a combo of retaliator sword + stack of gold diet potions (and high bloodlust). On the last level I had one room where I blew a door open and kept one regular swordsman alive so I could go back in and get stabbed by him a few times to boost the retaliator back up. I had a horse pet, so sweep-and-stomp tactics worked on most regular rooms, then I left plenty of gold on the ground saved up for boss fight prep. Still only just worked, I got set on fire by the dragon master with very little health left (and that after nearly dying in the catacomb boss fight, too), but a win is a win...
And yeah, that's a good point, I need to get better at using dolls in several of these. It took me several runs to work out that you basically need to use the bomb in compendium to bypass the shaman room then come back when you've no longer got all the dolls pinned on you.