Diablo 1 is very very difficult and from an era of videogames where you would need to farm experience and drops in order to progress to lower floors. By design you will likely clear to the butcher 2-3 before you are able to defeat him. Spells are quite important, so break barrels looking for tomes, as well as an ungodly amount of health potions. If I am remembering correctly you want buffs, fireball and chain lighting. Keep an eye out for ranged monsters, they can be hard to see, at higher levels be aware of curses over your player. Unlike most modern RPGs, the best items in d1 were mostly blue and mostly armor/hp stats because of how spells scale.

I know you didn’t want to hack, but if you get an elixer of stats, I would recommend duping it 5-10x before drinking it as a “house rule”, just to reduce farming. Squirt is a rip off, but has the best items in the game so check his wares. Duping to afford Squirt/potions is another potential house rule.