The Challenge: Defeat Lord Dredmor as a vampire(and expansion if applicable) Find the perfect build that allows survivability and damage! Rules: Must have vampire skill. Must have bloodmage skill. Must have Necronomonics Permadeath on going rougue of course. Defeat Dredmor! Tips Beware of traps! They have killed me more than anything else so far...gah use any thrown/ranged items you get as soon as you can to weaken (harder)enemies before they reach you! Keep viking wizardry up as much as possible, it gives you the extra damage you need to survive early on. Build Ideas Vampire, Bloodmage,Necronomonics, Viking Wizardry, Beserker, Flesh Smelting?, Weapon Skill
Should probably add a rule that you have to use melee and not just play a mage. Otherwise it's a cake walk.
Yeah, I will definitely add that. But do you get any healing from killing things with spells? If not then it would still be a challenge considering your using necronomonics.
Might I recommend Demonology? Celestial Circle gives you massive spell resist (which resists Necropain) as well as a lot of Necromantic Resist. Fervor of the Flagellant is painful for a vampire, but... I think this might really really help.
Maybe the werediggle skill tree would help? Since it gives piercing damage. The extra regen would be wasted though.
ok, I seem to just have really bad luck...mis-stepping on a trap makes it really hard in the early levels. Heres my next build I think will be very successfull. Vampire Bloodmage Necro shrooms-for various buffs and heals dual-for increased melee damage Beserker-Increased damages/defensive bonuses OR Viking wizardry Assassin-makes killing things easier!
You basically play a mage for the first two floors until you can get Mark of the Black Eyeliner, which opens up Necro, which opens up the melee with Mark of Cthon and Pact of Fleeting Life, then you polish off with massive Staves skill and Demonic Circle.
Okay, so I've discovered that Psionics + Bloodmage + Assasinate is an incredibly awesome combo for Vampires. The healing crystals from Psionics more than make up for the lack of food. In fact, I've discovered that you can cast it multiple times on the same area to create giant stacks of crystals...effectively letting you heal 16+ HP in one turn. Eating corpses is nothing compared to this. Nerve Staple lets you stun monsters early game and then hack at them for two turns to heal, and you also get a spammable, 0 cooldown AOE knockback spell with the tree. I would go as far as to say that the skilltree itself is really overpowered. With Assassinate, the first active skill lets you stun an enemy for 5-10 turns and then teleport huge distances away. Bloodmage's Haematic Phylacteries are perfect for emergency healing. And since you dont even care about health regen as a vampire it's twice as useful. The mana regen combined with Pyrokinesis allows you to blast your way through the first few floors of enemies. Seriously, go try these skills together and you'll get a very hardy vampire who never worries about health.
Looks like it handles early and mid pretty well so far. I suspect that it is going to get very difficult late game though, when my melee damage becomes weaker due to armor absorption.
