honestly...i really don't get it. With the first levels filled with mostly animals you cannot really function with the veganism tree. Can someone please help me out here. The tree is cool but you either find yourself running away from every animal...or you lose all the experience. I really need to know how to use it properly. Thanks
interesting my problem is the buffs aren't great for a magic user build and waiting for a pet to kill things is a bit slow. Oh well I guess i will figure it out as time goes on
The buffs are quite good for magic users. The third skill gives a massive 17 max hp. It is the best way to keep your hp high.
Animals don't really attack you, so you don't need to worry about them killing you and thus can take your time to stab them to death. Though burning them to death with spells, or using pets to trample them, or using projectiles to snipe them, is preferable. Having some sort of decursing ability (or whatever) also helps, so it goes pretty well with Emomancy of all things. But to be honest, we could go on for hours on how it is possible to play with Killer Vegan, but without knowing what is your build supposed to be, we can't give you any real advice.
Killer Vegan gives you a few things, and takes a few things away. Playing it well is all about turning the benefits to your advantage, and minimizing the weaknesses. Advantages: 1 - Animals never attack you (40% of all enemies just became non-aggressive!) 2 - Huge bonuses to , , , . Huge. 3 - Amazing 5 to all attacks! (Melee, crossbow, thrown) 4 - Turn an animal into a partial pet (does not aggro, so not useful for pulling enemies off you, and has a hard time hitting) 5 - Bonus experience / food for killing vegetable enemies. Weaknesses: 1 - Attacking any animal with a melee attack triggers awful debuffs for 200 turns. 2 - Eating any meat or cheese triggers awful debuffs for 200 turns. 3 - Since animals never aggro, it can be difficult to move around them - even killing them takes a bit longer, since they will wander randomly while you attack, instead of staying close. The new rules for animals can slow things down a bit, but they don't really make things much harder. The challenge when playing a vegan is not being able to eat most of the food - at least not without penalty. Sometimes as a vegan I'll go on an omelette binge, eating 2 or so before I'm about to take a long walk (like returning to a previous floor shop to sell) so the debuffs have time to expire. Learning to shred all your cheese and put it in the cube is fun. Also, turning an animal into a pet doesn't break the 1-pet limit, so with a Wyrmling or Fungus or Moustache you can actually have two pet at the same time - fun! Being a vegan warrior makes the most sense - it gives you lots of extra damage, dodge, and health. 5 Righteous damage is also pretty stunning. Wizards will like the second pet, and the extra health - but the stat bonuses and attack damage bonus is mostly wasted.
Well honestly I didn't know what type of build would be very effective with it. I was trying it with a mostly Melee build but the stacking debuffs each level got to be incredibly difficult to deal with. I figured the stat bonuses were a bit of a waste on Wizard I mean the hp is a major buff but I prefer to keep my distance. I guess I can use it on a Warrior with some ranged mixed in. Im not used to that sort of build so stupid me for expecting the Vegan tree to be able to fit in my normal builds. Thanx everyone for helping me your advice is well received =D
Update I played around a bit and have found some success with builds like Vegan Axes Dual wielding Archery Tinker Smithing Rogue Scientist with minor variations from there. I might try and mix in golemancy for the pet but i guess the key thing i need to learn is patience.
Most important, when making a Vegan build, is no know what NOT to take. I don't think Vegan + Vampirism is any good - reducing your healing options even more sounds like a big mistake. Similarly, Vegan + Big Game Hunter is poor - because BGH has procs which only affect animals. Vegan + Melee is totally fine - softballs provide enough ranged firepower on a heavy warrior build to kill things for you reliably. I think Fungal Arts would be better than Golemancy - because the pet is similar, but the other effects are better suited to your melee playstyle. Vegan, Axes, Master of Arms, Dual Wielding, Smithing, Fungal Arts + whatever is a very solid build. Viking Wizardry could be fun, or Tinkering or Burglary for the trap levels. Even Alchemy, for the resists + healing potions which max out at level 2.
I haven't tried it myself, but veganpire might work better than it seems at first glance. The extra health buffer would be a huge help and radiant damage trivializes undead enemies, which takes care of one of your "problem" taxa. The key is to remember that you can run off to snack on all the tasty animals wandering around any time you want at zero risk, so long as you have debuff removal available--which you do, as soon as you reach Level 5 Vegan. Both trees carry similar drawbacks--you shouldn't/can't eat most/all food. Which has the same solution for both--you need out of combat healing options. Which this particular combination of skills gives you--you can get tons of health from draining animals without taking any damage in return. The main issue for vegan builds is that you start out with most of the penalties from the tree but very minor bonuses, so you really have to be able to beeline up vegan ASAP. If you're planning your builds around abilities that show up deep in a couple of other skill trees, you're going to have problems since you can't work on other key skills without neglecting veganism, getting all its hassles and none of the rewards.
Oh yeah I forgot to mention. The Ranged or AOE melee moves don't incur the 200 turn debuff as long as you are not select an animal at the target sqaure. My unarmed vegan could handle animals pretty well.
Also, try using alchemy with it. Alchemy/Tinkering/Rogue Scientist is a terrific combination: RogSci's salvage ooze powers alchemy somewhat, letting you make brimstone flasks to take care of big groups of animals. Tinkering's passive invisible "make two ingots instead of one" ability is also wonderful: Tinkering 1 and Alchemy 2 means 1 hematite makes 2 iron ingots. 2 iron ingots grind into 4 rusts. 4 rusts mix into 8 healing potions.
I definitely agree here. It is good to just shoot straight for maxing out Vegan as soon as you can. Once you do, however, you should be pretty overpowered with the aura and 90-100 hp for the next 3-5 floors. So it makes up for it a lot. I like to do throwing with Vegan, since softballs are pretty cheap and with the Vegan (and ) bonuses you get a lot of early game power.
I have tried so many times to use this build and I always go nutz before I get off the first floor. Wanted to try it cause of the bonuses to (testing a skill of mine that scales with ) and yeah...halfway thru floor 1, I just couldn't take it anymore. LOL
