My very last dungeon was Naga City with a Goatperson. This is a rough dungeon with some interesting quirks for the Goat. On the other Goat Vicious dungeons, you can level carefully and then use your potions and conversions to spike the boss. On NC, that doesn't work, because the TEN bosses just have way too many HP between them. On the other hand, the NC altar layout means you can prep any god and get it normally (except that you are forced to begin worship and don't get a glyph). Then, once you go to the lower level, there's another quirk: the altars aren't real until you pay for them. So you can get a free conversion that keeps all your piety if you only unlock one altar and then ding.
After determining that a basic goat spike wasn't going to work, I tried resistance stacking. My idea here is prep Dragon Shield and Binlor, get Stone Heart and a few Stone Skins, then go downstairs with 100 piety and switch to Drac for Blood Shield. This strategy was good enough to get down 4-5 bosses. It hurts that you don't hit very hard and have no good way of turning mana into damage. I think HALPMEH could make it work, if Drac didn't hate it, but he does.
I then went poking through my locker for a different highly-potent item that could enable a different strategy and hit upon the Avatar Codex. This is the key! The outline of the strategy looks like this:
Prep Avatar Codex, Mystera, Compression (lets you take an extra glyph down), Quest Items (Crystal Ball, Dragon Soul, Witchalok Pendant, Soul Orb), Extra Attack Boosters (not mana--because of the Goat's crippled leveling, mana boosters don't provide much resources. Attack helps you hit harder in those critical times you have to hit.), Black Market (because the extra blackspace in Smuggler's Den is a hindrance with the Goat), Perseverance Badge, dodge/reflex/schaden/WHUPAZ.
Topside: I needed a few things to go my way, so I ended up hitting the restart button early on several times.. I need the monsters you can fight of appropriate level nearby--Gorgons, Dragons, Vampires. HALPMEH has to spawn, although it doesn't have to be convenient. (Maybe I could have done it with PISORF? At any rate, you need one of those two to take on Iron Man and the final boss.) BURNDAYRAZ has to spawn in a relatively helpful place. And I need some combination of helpful items, a good subdungeon, and possibly a good secret subdungeon. The gold secret dungeon is worthless because it costs you food for a resource that's not a problem anyway. On the other hand, the "eight monsters" secret dungeon is fantastic. On my winning run, I didn't find a secret subdungeon, but I did get the Smacklefunky's subdungeon, which is a FANTASTIC boon, providing much-needed food and XP.
At any rate, the idea is to get all the XP possible, while getting Mystic Balance, two shots of Magic (= 15 MP), and as much leftover piety as possible. There's not enough food on the bottom, so I think you have to take down at least 40 food; on my winning run, Smacklefunky helped me carry down about 70, which was more than enough. By converting glyphs you can't take down with you, level 8 should be reachable. Take down three glyphs--BURNDAYRAZ, HALPMEH/PISORF, and something in the third slot. GETINDARE is probably best but on my winning run I just had CYDSTEPP which I never cast.
Lower level: Although you're a Goat, you need to watch your XP carefully, because that affects when you can switch religion. Drac and GG are both typical choices here, but Drac hates HALPMEH. You want GG for Protection, but he doesn't like potions, so try to use those earlyish.
Pactmaker offers two interesting things to do with your extra piety. Scholar's Pact is a cheap health refill when you ding, and Spirit Pact lets you turn any extra food you might have into refills. Taking these early prevents you from getting the 50 free piety from Consensus, though.
As for the bosses: This is one strategy where the Goo Blob is mercifully easy. Jorg is easy as always, as is Iron Man with HALPMEH. The two Mana Burn bosses are trouble without the Soul Orb--which I didn't, on my winning run. Basically you fight them right after another boss so you have just enough mana for one fireball, cast it, drink a mana potion, cast another fireball, etc. Four fireballs drops either one so you have just enough mana potions. The goblin, warlock, meat, and zombie bosses take their familiar giant pile of regen fighting and potions--at least getting enough HP to survive a warlock hit isn't an issue with this strategy.
On my first mostly-successful attempt with this strategy, I made it all the way to the final boss and had him down to 4 Death Protections when I finally ran out of gas. I had 4 mana potions left, but I was worshiping GG (no HALPMEH, but I had converted GG->Drac->back to GG), had no piety to drink them, and had Spirit Pact so I couldn't even convert three of them. I had used dodge/reflex against Iron Man. On my next good attempt I had HALPMEH and that evens out the resources much better, and managed to take him down with a comfortable margin of potions and piety left over.
Anyway, thank you devs for an amazing game, and to all the forumites who provided encouragement, advice, and discussion. I'll probably still play casually, and my money is ready to go for the sequel.
