How to Vampire?

[FDru]

I finally got around to unlocking this class, and now I can't wrap my head around it. The 1 hp per reveal really sucks, I can't even beat Venture Cave, and it keeps making me just want to play a Bloodmage.

But I was under the impression that the Vampire was really strong, so I'm sure I'm missing something. How is he played effectively?

[Wargasm]

Meh. Be happy. I keep getting the wrong draws to even beat VHoS. If I roll Berserker, I got extra cursed mobs, if I roll Sorc, I see almost no AAs (but plenty of Illusions!) et cetera. Actually I'm 99% sure if Weakening Blow healed on level up or Illusions didn't Retaliate Fireball, I could swing VHoS a little more consistently.

[The Avatar]

That's why it's Vicious. Even most super vets can acheive no more than 90% success with the easiest classes.

Prep less glyphs. Fight low damage mobs. Use saved lower level monsters to heal, but DO NOT KILL THEM if possible. That way you can reuse them.

[Darvin]

If you're relying on exploration to regain health, you're playing the vampire wrong. Once you're past level 3-4 you're basically permanently poisoned, so you must use sanguine or lifesteal to recover. The vampire is highly dependent on "dings" to heal, so focus on power-leveling to conserve resources as best as possible. If you can make it to high levels with your resources (popcorn and blood pools) mostly intact, the vampire will have no difficulty with most bosses (even vicious-level bosses) in the game. The difficulty with the vamp is getting to that point.

With that in mind, be a little more willing to tap popcorn and blood pools to keep your momentum going. You don't need nearly as many resources for your end-game as other classes would, since the Vampire has a ridiculously good end-game.

[onion_knight]

If you have enough lifesteal you can actually gain health when you hit a enemy with low attack. The key is to find some weak enemies that you can hit without killing them and let them regenerate when you explore (meatmen and the physical resist blobs are great for this). Dont forget that you can overheal up to 150%. I haven't played the vampire since the platemail nerf, but that item used to be the best prep because damage reduction is a great help, and it probably is still worth it. I also tend to covert items and glphys sooner as a vamp because having high lifesteal is very important.

[Darvin]

Dragonshield is the better prep now. Platemail is still a great in-dungeon purchase if you don't have GETINDARE, and the Vampiric Sword is a must-have if you find it.

[The Avatar]

Yeah. Yendor is also a wonderful prep.

[Nurator]

here is how I play a vampire:

When you get to the endgame with enough lowlevel monsters left, the boss is a piece of cake. So you need to kill as few as possible mobs to gain a high level without wasting your levelup full heals. The item I use for that is the Balanced Dagger (one of my favourite preps, although noone seems to like it ). Another important prep is "More glyphs", because of the 120 threshold... it nearly never matters and you have a higher chance on a GETINDARE.

Some important things about Lifeleech: You get one life per level per stack of lifeleech you have. But this is caped at your damage dealt (AFTER enemy resists) and the enemy HP. It also is given back to you AFTER the enemy attack, so if you die first, it does not help you. This leads to a wrong calculation on the HP bars! It may seem like you can hit 4 hits, but you can do only one... A perfect glyph for lifeleech is GETINDARE, because if you first strike, the enemy doesnt strike back when hes dead, giving you all enemy HP left as your own HP. Dodge is even stronger, giving you a FULL attack worth of life (capped by your lifeleech) with no retaliation.

Playstyle: Scout for the monsters on your level with the most damage to kill, because it is not useful for lifeleech. If you find a glyph you don´t like (lemisee for example is worthless) convert it instantly. Buy items that give lifeleech, give resists or increase base attack/attack bonus. Don´t rely on mana items, the vamp is a crappy spellcaster. When you have a few DINGs, you can start to use your low level popcorn with low attack values to milk for life. Start with one to get overheal, attack a high level enemy, attack other popcorn to fully heal, attack the enemy again, getindare dead. If that reliabally works, you can convert the balanced dagger for that extra lifeleech, because you wont use it anymore.
Dont use bloodpools, only for that emergency last bit of health to kill the enemy. When you get to the boss with some lvl 6 meatmen or something like that, you can just switch between attacking the boss and the meatmen, dont caring about any ability the boss might have.

This way I managed to kill Vicious Horatio, so it should be appliable to low level dungeons aswell

[booooooze]

To add/rephrase on what others are saying: as a vampire, while you don't regen health (basically at all), everything else still does. Meatmen are absolutely your best friend... be very aware of when you can attack something without killing it and gain health from it.

With the vampire, you don't heal yourself between fights, you heal your prey.

[dislekcia]