A good vampire build?

I'm trying to figure out a good vampire build and I needed to get a few tips and pointers. I have put together two builds and I don't know which one of these that are the "best". Anyhoo...

Battlemage

Astrology
Psionics
Artful dodger
Staves
Dual-wield
Vampire
Archeology



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Melee-vamp

Staves
Dual wield
Fungal
Artful dodger
Astrology
Assassination
Archaeology

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What do you of these set-ups? Which one would you choose?

 

Or would you exchange any skills?

 

There is no bad build with vamp.

If you're playing Dwarven or Elvish, it doesn't matter.

If you're playing GR, go any damage dealing skill tree like Prometh, paired with a hand-weapon + astro and you're good to go.

 

First one needs blood mage.
You be surprise how often you need to spam that nervous staple to not die.

Second one does not have any means to survive dungeon 10.

 

Okay, should I exchange artful dodge or archeology?

 

Personally I don't like Archaeology, but that's more of a preference thing.

If you can survive floor 1 without Radiant Aura, you may ditch Astrology instead. That's really the only good skill on that tree.

As for the other stuff, Solar Inscription gets outclassed by Nervous Staple, Blinding Flash is terrible, Syzygy you can get with potion, Celestial Aegis are surprising bad with it's 4 hit duration/cost/upkeep, and The Stars Aligned miss all the time.

That said, Radiant Aura really is that good. Often Astrology are chosen just for that.

 

But will psionic outclass that skill after floor 1?

 

Nervous Staple is the level 4 psionic skill that stuns 100% for 2 turns. That's the best stun you can get. Basically when enemy are in front of you you can't take those 33% chances from astrology. 3 hits from arch diggles you are already dead.

 

Okay, thanks alot for the information!
Something else I've been wondering about, wouldn't it be smarter to exchange vampirism for fungal arts? I don't know but it seems that this will give me buffs, "mana pots" and also vampirism? More or less what I'm asking, does greedy blungecap give the same effect as the vampirism skill?

 

Blungecap leech slightly more, but it takes a turn to eat it. Most the buffs are not that useful, because again you need 1 turn to eat it.

It's also unrealistic to assume you can have a constant supply of them every 19 turns. So while fungal give you other things, don't expect fungal to replace Vampirism in any meaningful way.

 

Unrealistic? My last Fungal Arts character had over 200 each of blungecaps, grunge ears, and fairywodgers left over at the end of the game. After that I've never seen the need to ever take Vampirism. You get all of the benefits (on top of more benefits), and none of the drawbacks. The single turn it takes to eat them is negligible assuming you know when to time them.

You don't even have to sit around and farm for them. Just transform anything that isn't one of those and keep combining the stacks. Then once you've absorbed stacks from each other several times, you end up creating a stack of like 60+ of whichever you want.

Fungal Arts also gives you 2 summons, a passive attack proc, and lots of poison resist. It's practically superior in every way to Vampirism assuming you aren't just being lazy. Then you have to think about the fact that Vampirism is going to get nerfed even more when they fix the haywire and "drain life stacks of bodies" bugs, and it's going to become even more ridiculously unappealing.

 

We obviously has a very different standard of what farming is, Because laying spores and transforming every mushroom stack for 1/12 chance of becoming Blungecaps is a lot of farming in my book. I guess if you can handle that kind of maintenance then sure. You can get a little bit more out of it if you are willing to put in significantly more effort.

And just so you know, every leech works with bodies as is, and they have not fixed that as of yet according to their bug list. Blungecaps will be nerfed just the same way if they actually fixed that. It is also silly to plan for 1.04 with the sheer amount of changes that's taking place.

 

I have to agree with 123stw. Fungal Arts is an amazing skill if you are willing to spend an extended amount of time grinding and farming your mushrooms. To suggest that anyone who does not is merely lazy is a probably missing the point. These games are not a second job even if some people are perfectly willing to make it a second job to succeed. Nobody should be looked down upon if they just want to have fun.

 

@Incendax
For me, time investment matters, and the best builds are those that take the least amount of time to consistently beat the game. So for me Fungal Arts sucks.

It's like playing an RPG where a character need twice the exp to level as another, just to be a little better.

 

I only mentioned the being lazy part because I never had to farm for mushrooms, I didn't intend to call the people who don't like or want to use it lazy. At the end of big fights, I would spore seed some bodies, collect the mushrooms, and move on. I would transform them if I happened to look down and notice that the skill was ready for use. All in all, each step takes maybe 5 seconds. I don't just wait around and keep transforming them over and over before moving on, or making sure I seed every single corpse, it isn't necessary.

I will concede that maybe Fungal Arts isn't something everyone wants to do, but it isn't grindy unless you make it so. I never spent any amount of time working with them, I just used the appropriate skills when I happen to think about them, usually after clearing a room or two. That was my whole point. I beat Dredmor with hundreds of extra mushrooms and never had to "grind" for anything, ever. Let's say I have 10 of each type of mushroom just from collecting randoms. I transform the 10 mud wens, and get 10 night caps. Now I have 20 night caps. Next time I transform 10 fell truffles and get 10 princes, for a total of 20. The next time I use the skill, I transform the 20 princes and get 20 grunge ears, which is now at 30. So I transform the 30 grunge ears and get night caps, for a total of 50 with the 20 I already had from the earlier transformation. I transform those and get 50 greedy blungecaps. I can either keep them, or feed them back into the process. You may look at what I just typed and say that's "grindy", but a single use of one skill every few minutes of gameplay is hardly a grind, those examples aren't taking place back to back as they are written. I'm just confused by the implication you guys are making that using Fungal Arts is some kind of a horrific timesink. It isn't unless you're OCD and just sit in one room combining mushrooms while you wail away on your spacebar to get past cooldowns and making sure you seed every single corpse in every room. Again, none of that is necessary. Just use it every once in a while and that's it.

I STOPPED taking it because it makes the game too easy. As for the blungecaps being nerfed eventually as well, good. I primarily used fairywodgers for health because using blungecaps, again, makes every fight pretty much impossible to lose. But when that gets fixed, every other part of the tree will still be viable. Vampirism, if left unchanged, will be useless.

 

Another question, I hear alot about the bugs and that there's going to be a change towards vamp skills but I couldn't really comprehend what that change will be.
Will vampirism be powered by haywire now instead of magic power or is the other way around?

Also, because this has been soooooo helpful, what stats should I focus my gear against? Magic power, crit, sagacity and so on.

 

Upsidedownface

Went with the fungi tree with my monk character and I loved it, down on floor 7 I accidently walked into a monster zoo that I had no problem completing thanks to my shroom power!
But how powerful is the Battle Mycology skill to a melee character? Never got fungi high enough to use it.

 

Battle Mycology is the same thing as the toxic cloud that comes when you summon a fungus, but it's only 1 tile.

Edit- Also, supposedly, your fungal guy will cast it as well, but I've really never seen him do it.

 

@Upsidedownface
Well a vampirism character can go on auto pilot and play at ++ speed. Fungal requires a lot more maintenance and precision both in and out of battle.

It takes roughly 3 to 4 hours for me to beat GR with a Melee/Vamp/Psionic. I can't see myself doing that with Fungal without at least 6, possibly 8 or 9.

Again, let's not talk about the new changes until after 1.04 comes out. Until we see exactly what happened to vampirism and fungal, debating about it is rather pointless.

@Popolo
Don't worry about the patch. From what I know it won't be out til at least the end of this month. You will probably have beaten the game by then.

So far, the spell/effect on cropse bug have not been fixed. Hard to say it will even be fixed when 1.04 come out.

That said, if you really like fungal, you can use both vampirism and fungal to doubling your leech. They appear to stack just fine.

 

I definitely can't argue whether Vampirism is less hassle. Obviously, if you like it and it works, my opinion on it is just that, my opinion.

If you want a faster paced game, then yes, Fungal will probably not mesh well with the character. Honestly, there' a fair amount to like about the tree without even using the mushroom skills. The passive hit proc that drops spore clouds can stun enemies, it has two summons (although the first is rather weak compared to other summons the last one is fairly good right up until the near end) to keep enemies off you, like corrupting monsters, and each skill level also gives poison resist, making any poison-heavy damage or traps a non-issue.

I agree that we don't know what the patch will do yet, and as such will refrain from bringing it into the conversation.