A good vampire build?

But what is the bug? Also, does vampirism get stronger with magic power or what stat?

 

@UpsideDownFace "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."
They already said they're going to adjust Vamprism so it's not based on magic power.
so if anything, with the fixes they're going to put on it, it will be even more useful.
While I agree Vampires are magical, not all Vampires are mages. Look at Alucard and Dracula. From Symphony of the Night, not Hellsing. Dracula knows some spells, but I really wouldn't put him up on the list as Gandalf of the Vampires.
Same with Alucard.

Also, I'm fairly certain I saw that the drain life stacks of bodies fixed for this upcoming patch.

As for Fungal, I can't use it to save my life. Seriously. I have no idea how I can farm for shrooms at all, when the skill gives me one spore every how many turns it is. And I start with 2.

I would have to spend several hundred turns getting one dozen spores in the first room before I could be comfortable.
Unless I'm missing something.

 

Vampirism will probably end up being changed to gain health at a similar rate to Blood Magic.

Vampires themselves are really diverse as far as profession, especially since many vampire myths make it contagious by one vector or another.

@DavidB1111 The low maintenance way to use Fungal Arts is to just use Mushroom Farmer after every battle and plant it in one dead corpse. Wait a couple rounds, grab the mushroom, then move on. You use Moldsmith to turn anything you don't like into something you do like. It's still a little tedious since it requires constant hotkey swapping.

 

I just finished a going rogue run with a character that was melee oriented, skills as followed;

Assassination
Unarmed combat (using two high block shields,)
Psionics (Healing out of combat, Nerve Staple stun)
Archaeology
Master of Arms
Berserker Rage
Vampirism

-I didn't invest a single point into vampirism though, I just wanted the effect, so carrying a number of grungecaps from fungal arts would work just as well.

-Skip floor 7, it's just not worth it.

I did spend most of my time on the 10th floor running away from archdiggles and spending my huge stack of Acid Ampoule Bolts to do most of my killing. I've also heard the horror stories about Dredmor, so I rooted him with Bolas and killed him at range, everything else died fine with melee combat, but you don't want to take any risks with those diggles, dedicate four or five inventory slots to bolts as you're heading down there.

@DavidB:
You get one extra spore per skill point you invest into fungal arts, the slime summon makes for a good enemy distraction for the first few floors (if the enemy has the choice of striking you or the slime, they'll go for the slime), and the extra spore makes farming shrooms it a lot more efficient, though still annoying.

 

@DavidB1111

Fungal Arts IS a rather strange skillset, isnt it?

That being said, if you get the hang of it, it's so very worth it.

As Dverger said, the slime summon is incredibly helpful early on (and there's another summoned something or other later on... a mushroom beast, I think. Take the slime summon as early as you can; aside from the whole "pets are useful" bit, you'll be getting two spores every time you use that skill instead of one; the whole thing is MUCH more manageable just with that one extra spore. It's important to use the skill that generates the spores as often as possible.

Dont be afraid to just keep using the spores on corpses as they're available, even if you're running out of them.

So far, in my current playthrough using that skillset, I havent had to actually farm for mushrooms at all; in the normal process of using the skill as often as possible, and dropping spores on enemy corpses as often as possible, I've got quite a great deal of mushrooms to choose from. Which includes those excellent Puffballs I use so many of. Even just 2 spores at a time from that skill will cause you to end up with a squillion mushrooms, so long as you arent eating silly amounts of them.

Fortunately, all of the skills in this one are worth taking, so you dont have to take crappy skills to get the number of spores-per-summon up.

Overall, it's a very powerful skillset indeed, albeit a wierd one.

 

Fungal Arts is really a support skill. Also, as others have stated, the number of spores you create per use is tied to the skill level of the tree. When Fungal is maxed you get 5 spores per use, I believe.

The slime summon is really weak after the first few floors, but the mushroom beast summon is much improved. Honestly, they're mostly good for keeping kleptos and corruption monsters at bay, or buying you time if you need to escape. They don't have the raw damage and health you might find with summons in a tree like Golemancy, or even the Promethean tree's Wyrmling summon, but are far from useless. They also create a large poison cloud when they are summoned, but I'm not quite sure exactly what effect the cloud has on enemies. It doesn't seem to hurt them, but I think it might have a chance to stun them.

 

The problems with clouds is that they only cause damage on hit and on movement thru them. As you might predict, that means it doesn't do much when they are staying put on the summon, anyhow.

 

Thank you everyone, I now know if I want to use Fungal arts again, what to do.
Admittedly, it will still be low on my lists of skills to play with.
Along with all magic skills.

 

Here is the build for the next character I plan to make(Keep in mind this is currently hypothetical): Swords/Dual/Vamp/Shroom/Astro/Assassin/Archaeology.

The general idea is to spore/seed any corpse I don't need to eat and turn stacks of shrooms into Greedies and Inkies. During larger battles, I will quickly swallow a Greedy for extra health drain or an inky if its clear I need some space. During normal play, I will allow the summons to do their thing while I flank/spore/seed/feed as needed. The shrooms should more than make up for the lower base hp gains per hit.

My planned guide would be spending my first few skill points in Shroom, Vamp, Sword, Assassin, Assassin, Shroom, in that order. By level 7, I will have summon, the ability to eat corpses, 3 offense melee procs, and defensive melee proc, and the ability to create an almost infinite supply of bungle and inky shrooms. From there, I can put more in Swords, Shrooms, cap Vamp, or start on Archaeology at my leisure. When I get a chance to play it, I will test it out in Dwarven Moderation and see how it goes.

 

Vamp
Psi
Blood

Then either:
UA/Shield or DualWeild and Staff

Then two of the following:
Assassination, Viking, Astro, Berserk


Psi is terrefic for vampire.
- It lets you push/sleep to make it a series of 1v1s.
- HEALING

I go straight for Psi first with Vamps. The extra wizardry helps the vamping out too nicely.

UA+Shield is prefered, since you usually have to favor offense, this is a rare chance to sneak in some defense. Double staffing seems good too though.

I did Assassin+Berserk.... but Assassin and Astro seems better. Passive stuns increase your survivalability sereval fold.

So, I'd sumbit

Vamp
Psi
Blood
UA
Shield
Assassination
Astronomy

 

A double-staff Necro vamp can do an extra 30+ piercing damage while healing them for that much. A vamp build with out staffs, or any weapons for that matter, is more or less pointless at the moment.

 

I think Psi Vamps are fine. Nervous Staple spam can make up for the low leech.

And unarm/vamp also works because of the ridiculous counter/block/dodge. Though given shield is kinna broken atm, I will replace shield with smith to capitalize on that.

 

If it helps, I beat the game (Moderation, Perma-death) with a Vampire Fencer:

Dual-wield
Vampirism
Astrology
Swords
Archaeology
Burglary
Berserker Rage

Just make sure you get your Magic Power and Mana Regen up so you can fuel the Astrology Buffs and leech more than 1-2 health per attack. Dodge and Counter-attack are pretty big musts, too.

 

@123stw He didnt take unarmed though. He just didn't take any weapon skill at all. I count unarmed as a weapon skill, since it more or less functions as one.

 

@Kaoy
I thought that's what UA means, or are you referring to another post?

 

I was commenting on Lazorfost's build.
Edit: Though he seems to have updated it since. Originally, he had MoA in place of UA, I believe.

 

Fungal arts is superior to vampirism in terms of power, however it does take a bit of micromanagment. 123stw is being overly harsh on the downsides of fungal arts however.

The turn it takes to eat a mushroom is trivial and you will never be wanting for whatever mushroom you want. Additionally, you start the game with a stack of random mushrooms that make level 1 very easy. Mushrooms also give you a great escape skill and a way to refill mana in addition to a pet. I'd only recommend 3 points in the skillset vs. the 2 in vampirism.

The additional time it takes to beat the game is also a non-issue. Most of us aren't doing multiple runs. I want to run through using every resource at my disposal to maximize success. I don't really care about speed runs. I'll sit and spend 45 minutes getting the stats I want with archeology too.

If I was planning on beating the game 10 times, I'd care about 3 vs 9 hours. But after beating the game a couple times what's the point?

 

Also I'd say for build

Melee-vamp

Staves
Dual wield
Fungal
Psionics
Blood Magic
Assassination
Archaeology

Is probably the best possible power build. Taking burglary would make the first few levels much easier though.

 

@jhffmn

Well, if we can agree on the 3 vs 9 hours difference, what to make of it will be subjective. For me, the 6 additional hours of managing fungal is repetitive, and isn't fun, and that's my biggest issue with it.

Given you are willing to spend 9 hours anyway, you can also use the 6 hours to do all quest, lutefisk , max out your levels, and Arch reroll near perfect items. Unless of course you do all of the above regardless.

Also, having fungal does not reduce vampirism's effectiveness. On a staves build this can add 10 additional drain/damage, which sits in the background with no point investment needed. So in your build for example I will remove Assassination for Vamp as Nervous Staple will provide all the stunning necessary.

 

That's a fair point, though I don't think you need to stack vampirism ever. You just need some additional form of healing to counter the random counter attacks you'll take.

I just think if you were choosing one ability fungal arts in terms of pure power far exceeds vampirism.