Has anyone taken the new vampirism for a spin?

True. I don't think balancing should ever be done on a kneejerk, and it should be done slowly if it's to be done at all. One idea I have is to add +1 for each vampirism level you take. This would make a rush to cap it out in the early game quite tempting, since such a dramatically powerful healthdrain would easily open up middle game. Possibly an impressive passive too, since presumably your character are themselves undead. (unless you're an anime-style vampire, I suppose)

But yeah, I hear you. Novelty builds aren't a bad thing. I don't think Tourist should actually be any good for min/maxing purposes, for instance. I still use vampirism for my own theme character whenever I can. Again, I'm not unbiased.

 

I should point out that, while a vampire with two or three health regen will certainly be weak, a vampire that does a good job at stacking is incredibly powerful. I'm up to a pretty consistent 12 on DL5 (granted, three of it is from some sort of invisible buff, I think? I can't for the life of me figure out why it's there), and I'm steamrolling most enemies. +12 drain on all animals, +7 drain on demons, and +4 drain on others means that it's very hard for enemies to deal net damage to me. And even when, at the end of combat with a bunch of powerful enemies I can't drain, I might be down 15 HP at worst? Corpse Drain is a cooldown 4 heal 17. And I'm actually scared to find out how much the Diggle God of Fertility buff will break Vampirism open. The new vampirism is actually quite good, if you're willing to build up the necessary health regen to make it work.

 

I hate to plug myself, but I'd like to direct people to the conversation http://community.gaslampgames.com/threads/dredmor-patch-1-1-1-feedback-thread.4111/page-5#post-49897 and http://community.gaslampgames.com/threads/vampirism-needs-to-be-reworked.2075/.

In the former post I've tried to outline why Vampirism was bad, and why the changes haven't helped enough.

To add to it, I'd like to point out that people are taking MoA and Shield Bearer, while Vampirism is still considered a wizard tree, so skilling it up gives you sagacity and savvy which you really don't need, if you go a warrior vampire.

Of course, you don't actually need to use magic power-reducing armor and shields to benefit from the trees (which ought to be addressed), but a gish build is the best idea to benefit from Psychic Vampire, as well as the escape from Transylvation.

Psionics synergy? Most assuredly. But even moreso, Communism works excellent with its + and heal (which works with Vampirism!)

I believe the most egregious flaw with Vampirism is its dependence on other skill trees, for the regen and the healing, and yet healing is what Vampirism is supposed to be for (as well as an interesting change in gameplay style.)

As a note: Corpse Drain's heal does in fact scale off of 1.2 x . Sparkly and Psychic Vamp scale off of

 

I will say vampires are well on their way to being something really decent and I really do appreciate the effort Gaslamp Games crew went into making it a fun and compelling tree. Just keeping some perspective here.

One thought I had is that maybe vampires can randomly proc a buff that makes corpse drains and their attacks much more effective in healing. Like a blood frenzy sort of thing, a bit of Berserker-tree flavor. It'd hopefully be unreliable enough that vampirism wouldn't be a no-brainer for melee builds, but significant enough to turn the tide during a steeped melee or make healing off weak enemies more expedient. Would also help vampirism's healing stand out against Greedy Blungecap et. all's alternative.

And yeah, someone else had said it, but it'd be neat if undead were neutral to vampires. That would make the early game a little more manageable because as early as DL2 the drain attack stops becoming as effective thanks to the high volume of undead enemies. Of course, if they did that, we'd need an achievement for playing both it and Vegan in one run ("Friend to All (Un)Living Things" or something. Maybe a reference to Count Duckula!).

 

Honestly, beating the game with Vegan and Vampirism needs to be an achievement anyway, due to the immense anti-synergy going on.

After all, BGH and Vegan work fine together given you can kill animals just fine, simply not with melee attacks.

 

Well some games you come by tons of and others you don't.
I am curious about vacantvisionary's extra 4 as that is almost a game changer. What is your build? I want to try it out.

 

Hm. Four is a pair of Emerald Encrusted Rings (I'm running Smithing), four is Buckle Up, another one is Tourist, and the last three are... honestly an unidentified bug? :/ I'm pretty sure it's a problem with Necronomiconomics, specifically Necropain's -1 not starting properly, but I'm not sure. It's happened a few times on two different builds (namely, that I randomly have one or two more health regen than I should), and I have not the faintest idea why. Frankly, though, the extra 3 regen has been, in my experience, completely overkill. I've gone below half health maybe once or twice over the past few floors, and both times I just ate a corpse or two and was back at full. I'm pretty much at full health at the end of every fight.
The full build was Polearms, Master of Arms, Smithing, Alchemy, Tourist, and Necronomiconomics, though I'm currently experimenting with an alternative build running Shieldbearer and Demonologist (celestial circle, besides being insanely good, gives +5 regen and seems like it would be really good with psychic vampire covering the upkeep) over Alchemy and MoA. I could definitely see arguments for Communist for its heal but, again, I've rarely found that I need much healing beyond Corpse Drain. It's possible that this gets less manageable deeper in the dungeon, though, so I'll keep you guys updated (though I suspect Pact of Fleeting Life will help a great deal).
As an aside, I'm really not sure whether MoA or Shieldbearer is better with this build. MoA gives an insane +10 , stackable three times, off of Walk It Off, but it's a 6-turn buff that procs 20% of hits. By contrast, Shieldbearer's Duck and Cover only gives +4 regen and can only stack once, but a single proc will last you 24 turns and give you a bunch of other nice stats. Plus, the (now actually really good) +4 regen brittle buff is much deeper in the tree. Thoughts?

 

If you have a way to attack multiple times per turn reliably, the one that procs when you attack is better. Otherwise, the other one is (due to reliability).

 

They're both 20% when you're hit in melee, unless Dredmorpedia's wrong.

 

Yes, they both do. Either way, if you can attack a lot, you want the short-lasting one (because you'll be triggering it all the time), and if you don't have anything that would allow you to attack more than one target, just one per turn, you want the long-lasting one as it is more stable.

 

Not to turn this into a vampire lore discussion, but it really depends on the lore behind the vampire how it can shrug off near-fatal wounds.
In the Blade movie mythos, an arm can be regenerated over time by the vampire. And most other lore agrees with this.
Bloodrayne's lore was around the same, except Rayne was a bit more resistant to bullets than most humans.
Bram Stoker's Dracula was to my knowledge, a bit fragile compared to other myths.

Buffy universe had vampires heal over time, and even become paralyzed like we mortals can from having a building fall on them.
DC comic uses vampire's strengths and weaknesses more like Bram's. In fact, Dracula once hypnotized Superman and bit him. It didn't end well for Dracula. Like biting the sun.

 

The Dresden Files uses:
Bram's Vampires for the Black Court (The White Court even published Dracula to weaken them in this verse)
Batlike vampires that can generate a human skin to fit in with humans, but cannot do this in sunlight (because it burns them, though not as heavily as weak Black Courts). Also weak to symbols of faith (Any faith. A pentagramm for the main character's belief in the power of magic). Not garlic, though, and I do not know about holy water, but I would guess it affects them.
White Court are succubi/incubi. No typical vampire weaknesses, but cannot touch/affect people in love.

 

If they can't touch people in love, they are like the worst Succubi/incubi ever.
Also, I can't really trust a group of people being good (The white court) if they are all demons from hell.
That's what Succubi/incubi are after all.
However, off topic now, let's get back on, no one wants to see David post walls of text on various things.

 

I would say Master of Arms is better for Vampire than shield bearer. Suit up last 12 hits compare to tortoise maneuver's 9 hits. Both give 4. Walk it off gives a massive 10 even if it only last 6 turns that will pretty much fully heal you when you faces some animals. Last the capstone skill of Master of Arms gives you 10% of Suit up on hit. This means your more likely to have the a buff up.

 

Fixed for clarity's sake. I'm sure most would know what you're talking about, though.

 

Aw thank you. I fixed my post as well.

 

I was a Vampire back when it sucked. I never noticed, because I kept dying.... Really though, Vampirism is a TON better already. I'm on a vampire build right now: Vampirism, Unarmed, Berserker Rage, Astrology, Burglary, Assassination, and Warlockery. I'm on DL 11 and going strong, especially after I learned that Vampire Damage, Drain, and Corpse Drain all scale off of . I was doing alright, but not great before that. Now I'm rocking 10, 22 AA w/ Diggle God Blessing, and Universal Principles/Malleus Malificarium. Plus I have every single damage-dealing trap I've come across, which I plan on laying down for Dredmor. Lets see what happens when he runs over a square with hundreds of traps on it....

 

unfortunately, each trap will be rolled individually, which means dred will resist almost all of it, then block the rest.