Favourite non- Tier 1 combinations?

[Darvin]

[Astral]

You're completely right about less glyphs, I hated it for ages. Since I was about to transmute NW anyways I figured why not take less glyphs too. It's one of the few times when it makes sense and I'd never use it otherwise.

The slim chance of pulling a glyphs sub is what even makes me try it over mana boosters. There really should be more glyph subs, or a class with +2 glyphs or anything that makes it useful.

It's not even that good with Vampires either. You can reach the maximum meaningful lifesteal without it too, and extra attack boosters can raise the limit it's worth stacking for.

Btw added a 2nd edit for my previous comment.

[Darvin]

[Astral]

Yeah, that's the worst part about it. It's made obsolete by the other preps from the same building. No matter what you play there's always 1 thing that's more synergistic.

But hey, maybe the new class will change it

[Lujo]

Maybe they change Less Glyphs to Fewer Glyphs (if they didn't allready). It's even in Word Crimes by Weir Al Yankovic (which is a Serbian surname, pronounced Yankovich, and the Accordion is all of ex-Yugoslavias national instrument. Went to school with two Jankoviches, it's pretty common in these parts, and it means "from the family who's founder's name was Janko", pronunced Yanko, also a common Serbian name. Random fact of the day.)

The peekaboo thing is pure briliance.

Also, I remember finding a use for fewer glyphs, I think it was when the PQI sets you up with a glyph class warmonger. Otherwise More Glyphs is way more flexible (up to and including helping time your goblin and transmuter shennanigans, Mystera shennanigans, and general shennanigans. Also ups your chance of scoring Wonnafyt which means a lot in certain cases).

[sitnaltax]

It's already Fewer Glyphs, yeah.

One one hand, yeah, it would be more broadly useful if it worked in a different way. On the other hand, another place it comes in handy is Triple Quest 3 (as the only prep of that flavor that can carry over from the easy first section to the murderous second one), and man, you need every little edge you could squeeze in there.

The other thing that makes Fewer Glyphs less attractive for vamps is that More Attack is somewhat less attractive (more likely to kill your bloodcows, most of your fighting is regen-style anyway) as is More Mana (since keeping glyphs and casting spells is a pain)

[Darvin]

[Astral]

Thanks Lujo

Though I'm not the 1st one to discover it. I'm sure I've read the peakaboo term from someone else and borrowed it, but I discovered the method independently.

It's good you mentioned that sitnaltax. Haven't gotten there in the TQ yet, but when I do I'll try it.

[Sidestepper]

The triple-peakaboo is a fantastic idea. If you can get it set up, and if you can sustain both your own health and the monsters', that makes JJ the best piety-for-blackspace deity. By a lot. How hard is it to get that rolling? It sounds like it would require a near perfect storm of circumstances, but I've never tried it.

[Astral]

It's much easier to set up than it sounds. You can peakaboo in almost every map. It's best done at lvl 1 or 2. You need knockback and unboosted damage. Having a prepped Fortitude Tonic and Burn Salve will be helpful too.

You may not immediately find perfect targets, but Weytwut will help in placing when you do. You are looking for monsters who have low damage and cannot be oneshot. Meatmen and Goo Blobs are the best in this regard. Trying it in Vicious also eliminates this problem.
Start pushing your monsters into blackspace and keep spending your mana on the cheapest JJ friendly glyph (except Wonafyt, because it can mess up your peakabooing). JJ will reward you with a lot of piety and will start throwing his curses at you. The weakening is godsend, the corrosion is annoying. A lot of the times you will be able to rack up 45 piety before getting manaburned/poisoned or manage to score only one of them.

My general strategy is if I get burned I continue peakabooing like that, take petition at 45 piety and only drink burn salve after that. This way I can avoid the need to cure a 2nd manaburn.
Poison is countered by spamming glyphs and doing the same petition shenanigan. By this time you usually find monsters with enough staying power, so you can wipe your weakenings.

Petition should always be the 1st boon you take. After that I recommend 1 Health Boost, so you can store more health when you explore. Btw you should always explore in 2 ways. You should be collecting info from the dungeon and saving up the obviously empty black tiles looking for bosses/altars/etc. and at the same time pushing your ~ 3 monsters in a long horizontal/vertical line whenever your health is filling up.
How many monsters you can push depends on their damage and what items you find. Bloody Sigil is very common and doubles your regen, and the plate mail can reduce the damage if you're not cursed yet. If Pisorf is your cheapest glyph, you can push monsters with that too, ignoring damage entirely.
I usually push 3-2 monsters, when I'm getting exhausted I just explore more.

When peakabooing, the walls in your way don't matter, but the monsters can stop one of your 'punchbags' occasionally. Not a big deal, push the monster diagonally instead and realign it later. A big cluster of monsters is annoying, but if you uncover them Weytwut will be able to put them aside. Also when you reach the other side of the dungeon just pick up your targets with Weytwut and start the process again somewhere else.

JJ's piety generation is so generous peakaboing works in lake heavy Northern Desert and and in Double Doom's layout too. But don't try it in plant levels!

The reason peakabooing is done at low levels, is because as you level up same level monsters hit for more and more % of your health so it becomes impractical, while the weaker guys are much more likely to be oneshot by you. Also if you take all the boons you want at lvl1 and convert into the next god you want to worship, you can benefit from all this power for the rest of the run.