General-purpose thread of secret shame!

[MTaur]

I usually shun potion races, but when they come up in a DERP, usually I feel like I'm doing really badly, but then I start on the boss and then it turns out I'm ok. Unless it's an easy Normal dungeon, and then I might go parched.

[eastless]

DO NOT DESECRATE Tikki Tooki playing Gorgon!
Tryed to make PQI Gorgon Miser Naga City and this niggling dude just wiped whole my poison strike, so I was forced to buy Yendor to finish Kinisssich and not to lose, but failed PQI.

[William]

Mmm, played real stupid in the Halls of Steel daily. Managed to get punished by Dracul for using Halpmeh, decided to swap out of him...to EM, forgetting that lifesteal angers her. Nearly lost due to all of this. At least I desecrated Binlor after I had killed all magic users.

[Zazzlegut]

I've been following this thread hoping to learn from better players and avoid making some mistakes. Even with all the great help presented I've still managed to pick up one really bad habit. I constantly screw up the use of GETINDERE.

Either I cast it when I don't need to (the monster I'm about to hit is lower level and I will hit it first anyway) or I cast it when it will do no good (the monster has first strike and the glyph doesn't help).

Worst of all, I keep trying to use it when I'm carrying around the Really Big Sword. Mana waste everywhere!

A lot of the time I just convert it on sight now so I get some benefit from it without the mana waste.

[eastless]

@Zazzlegut
But, actually, it isn't really wasting. When you cast GETINDARE, you're getting not only first strike, but 5% dodge as well. Sometimes when you don't have any combat glyphs available this is the only way to spend your mana usefully. For example, viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3018&start=690#p37373 I did some early high level kills exactly this way, by stacking dodge before attack.

Even with RBS or Platemale, may be you have no BURNDAYRAZ/HALPMEH/BYSSEPS/CYDSTEPP/PISORF, nothing else but GETINDARE, and you're engaging the big bad boss, you can just cast it every strike and eventually get a free attack.

[William]

@Zazzlegut It also makes for good cheap piety farming with JJ, and when you dodge, TT.

[eastless]

>JJ piety farm
Ha-ha, my another secret shame - almost never worship JJ, I just hate him, stupid god who punish just because he can. So what? If I'm L1, already weakened, corrupted and poisoned, how am I supposed to go further? And you can't just explore first and then worship him, he rewards encountering monsters, some spellcasting, kills, you have to worship him immediately as met, and then suffer from random punishments, until you give him a bribe. His boons aren't really impressive, yeah, I can get L1 Rogue with huge health bar for example, but I'd better go GG for that, at least I can control my piety and game in general with him. Mana? We have a separate special magic deity, almighty Mystera. Last Chance? Yeah, sure, spend all of your piety for nothing. Or, may be, if you're lucky enough... So the only real thing is the Chaos Avatar, and this is my choice when I have MA and/or EM, so I can convert to JJ, desecrate them and take CA to finish boss. This way only.

[Tinker]

JJ is not a very charismatic deity. He is, however, one of the best ones, in my opinion. I would hazard a guess that a lot of veterans play mostly JJ runs outside of VGT (but I've seen runs go through JJ even on VGT).

JJ is almost as good as Mystera for a caster build; almost as good as GG for a melee build; and none of his punishments should be that detrimental... Corrosion? your extra health more than offsets it. Weakness? having extra spells should more than make up for it. All others are ideally shrugged off via kills/level-ups (or, at worst, by quaffing a potion). WEYTWUT is a really good multi-purpose glyph (2nd most expensive glyph in the game, and for a reason!). After Petition there is nothing that would upset him, and if you cast the right spells, you'll be hemorrhaging Piety from him.

Some examples and more.

[Lujo]

The thing with JJ is that you can get a load of solid boosts and general map advantage without fighting anything, and he makes goblins complete monsters. Having a guaranteed Wheytwut to start with is akin to a cheatcode - it means that the map layout is largely irrelevant. Vets who casually overuse him simply forget that there are actual situations where you're supposed to make a sub-maximal move (for example killing something that's in the way, etc). Once you figure out that Byceps and Getindare give you piety for every cast, as does killing anything, you can get so much piety with him so fast it's not even funny. Also, using bear mace to repeatedly push stuff into fog and then "rediscovering" it, or ever sillier, push stuff into fog than immediately bringing it back with Wonnafyt (yo-yoing it's called I believe) is VERY silly. It's a bit puzzling why that even works...

And Gobbos just get a very quick petition, pop a glyph, and get rid of poison and manaburn and put themselves out of the weakness and corrosion crippling range (which is lvl 1) Then you're happily dinging around with +20/40 health, +3/6 mana, everything you want picked up, a guaranteed popcorn bowl and 2 silly refills for when you get really high level. GG is simmilar for them, but JJ is just maphack + silly stats + silly ding sinergy. Just use health to beat up popcorn/level up and mana to fireball bossess while you're at it. Fire Heart tends to work really nicely with the health pool boost (and adds more refill), and JJ bloodmages (especially goblin ones) can get well beyond stupid.

[eastless]

Well, it makes sense, thank both of you for your answers. I'm usually do the same things, but relying on odd ENDISWAL/WEYTWUT, and working mostly about damage, not bars. I do understand (I want to believe I'm already understanding ) after hundredrs hours played how perfectly balanced this game is, so this JJ shenanigans are just another edge from endless approaches represented in game, every single one of them is unique, due to glyphs/gods/items/monsters/class/race/preps combination... It's just I do not appreciate JJ-style yet. I remember I read some tips on wiki about mechanics of his punishments, sure it's easy to neglect them, may be I should just play more games with him to get used. But I'm alright with my style mostly.


Updated:

Okay, I got it. (73 piety Last Chance - after Matron's death - DISREGARDED YOUR PRAYER MWAHAHAHAHA)