I have had the same problem. Before you get precrowning, you can go from pleased, very pleased, inner peace, spiritually invincible, and then very close, and then after that you get favors, favors greatly and absolutely close (enough for crowning, precrowning). At level 8 you can get to N+ or N- and get precrowning without an issue. Seeing is that you must complete the Pyramid before level 17, it makes since to get precrowning gifts for level 11 and 14 as well, *BUT* after the first precrowning you cannot get any messages higher than very close, and if at later you try to pray to heal or what not you'll get crowned instead, locking you out of the ultra ending if you haven't done Baba Yaga and the Demented Ratling objectives.
If nothing else it helps generate fodder for the demented ratling.