I'm trying to play through the game without dying, BG.

Anyway, I wound up getting the spear. It took a little trial and error to figure out how to go, and when I ran up against 3 Oversouls at the exit (followed by a rare monster), I thought I was toast, but I can survive Annul (they only used Kill once, and it missed), and that spear hits hard enough to regen MP fairly quickly.