Good starting skills for Dungeons of Dredmor

The "easier" skills are those that are least situational, those that are constantly useful and don't require leveling up a lot before becoming so.

My "easiest" builds so far have been very combat-centric selections, and will normally consist of (in no particular order):

• Swords, Axes or Maces. I personally favour Swords, but Maces have a very useful knock-back bonus at level 2. Overall they all have pretty much the same effects at each level.

• Artful Dodger or Master of Arms depending on if you intend to go with roguish dodging or heavy armour - either can work (so can both), but be wary that high armour absorption won't help against elemental attacks later on, but a high block score (which you get from armour and shields) can.
  Artful Dodger also provides the very handy Knightly Leap skill (level 3) that lets you perform short-range teleportation, so if in doubt pick that and concentrate on your dodge skill.

• Burglary, because infinite lock picks are a must (level 2), and the easier avoidance of traps is handy.
  The invisibility trick at level 4 is also really helpful if you get in trouble.

• Berserker Rage provides randomish buffs than appear when you fight to make you stronger for a short period of time (and can stack for some really hefty bonuses). The 3rd level provides a number of permanent defensive buffs.

• Assassination provides more bonuses in combat, these mostly do a little bit extra damage, but most usefully either put enemies to sleep or stun them.

• Smithing; there's nothing quite like having really good equipment from an early stage.
  This skill does require leveling up to be really useful, but is seriously worth the effort.

• Fungal Arts will provide a near-infinite stream of buffs and heals from mushrooms, but does require a lot of micro-management (so can be a little dull, to be honest).
  This is really strong if you keep generating mushrooms, which you can do at level 1 so the skill can be ignored when leveling up, allowing you to concentrate on your combat skills.

If you don't fancy the effort of Fungal Arts, swap it out for Perception. It's another passive skill (or less to think about), which lets you see further and adds bonuses to your Dodge and Enemy Dodge Reduction scores so helps in combat.

You could also consider Viking Wizardry if you don't want to consider your mana wasted, the level 1 buff spell is very useful in combat at the start of the game, but the skill tree does become less useful as you level up and get better equipment so it might be something you want to neglect.