by Sidestepper on Tue Feb 05, 2013 8:23 am
If you really want to get a feel for JJ at peak power, do this:
Gnome Wizard
Elven Boots
JJ altar prep
Extra Mana
Scadenfreude, Mana, +3 junk potions
Shop Scroll
Random Blacksmith junk (pick a cheap one)
Compression Seal
The Wizard's glyph powers plus the compression seal go a long way to making JJ's prep penalty tolerable. Spam WEYTWUT whenever your mana is full and work your way towards the glyphs. If you find GETINDERE, BYCEPS, or APHEELSIK, you can use these as cheaper alternatives to WEYTWUT for piety generation. I like to find a mid level meat man and punch him whenever my mana fills up so that I can reset BYCEPS/GETINDERE.
WONAFYT doesn't actually give you piety. It summons a monster to you, and if that monster was new, you get the usual piety, but it doesn't give you any innate piety. You can confirm this by WONAFYTing an already discovered monster. For this reason I don't recommend using it too much, since it ultimately means less piety for you than if you had used your blackspace to fuel other spells.
Most of the stuff you brought in with you is there to be converted. Junk the shop scroll, blacksmith item, and off-flavor potions as soon as you have all of your glyphs. Take Petition as soon as possible and then you keep taking layers of Boost Mana. With the guaranteed early glyphs from the Wizard, along with the efficient casting cost, you can probably afford four layers (the theoretical maximum) and still bank enough piety for a late game Chaos Avatar.
Each layer of boost mana adds 1.2 mana to each future potion consumption, so if you are a gnome with a huge supply of potions, you always come out ahead. The minimum you should aim for is 25, which is when each potion is worth 2 fireballs, but overkill is always welcome.
The gnome Warlord works also, but is complicated by the fact that you cannot simply ignore physical damage. The Warlord also lacks the piety collection benefits of the Wizard. It still works though, and it even worked before the Extra Attack/Extra Mana preps existed.
Halfling health monsters of JJ don't work as well. The issue is that flat health boosts don't scale the way that flat mana boosts do. It's okay, it's just not great. Try it with a Halfling Priest.