Dracul
Dracul | |
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Initial worship |
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Punishment |
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Prep penalty |
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Boons | |
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Dracul is the unholy deity of death, undeath, evil... your archetypical Lord of Darkness. Dracul's boons are well suited to brawler-type characters, and with only a few very narrow exceptions is largely useless for spellcasters or striker-type attackers such as the Rogue.
Dracul is unlocked in a subdungeon to the east. When you enter this subdungeon, you will be pitted in combat against a doppelganger of yourself. However, there is a known bug where the subdungeon exit doesn't seal itself off until you move one tile. If you adjust the visible tabs, you can leave the subdungeon and avoid unlocking Dracul in this fashion.
Contents
Boons
Blood Curse
Never purchase it at low level! The purpose of existence of this boon is getting quick piety gain at endgame. Dracul is very petty with your piety, and 20 is incredibly valueable to you. The perfect timing of this boon is when you purchase
Blood Tithe for two or more stack. It will be described below.
This boon synergies with regen-fighting, Blood Hunger,
BURNDAYRAZ and
HALPMEH (only for
Paladin) since this features use your level, not the power of your character. Also note that
Life steal ability gets doubled versus lower level monsters than you.
As you cannot levelup above 10, purchasing blood curse will limit you at level 9 effectively, in the sense of maximum HP and base attack. While this is not a problem for most dungeons, for some longer dungeons which most important fights happen at level 10, you should never purchase this boon.
Blood Hunger
If you are worshipping Dracul on early-mid stages, it is very hard to rack up piety without desecration. Purchasing this boon will greatly increase your piety gain, from 2 per monster slain to 3
. Having a
Vampiric Blade is equally good, though having both does not increase your piety gain. In order to increase your piety influx,
Stone Sigil works on top of the
Life steal. After you get life steal, you can attack some monsters but avoid killing them to gain some quick piety. Converting
Health Potions or desecrating some harmless altars are often a good way to start with Dracul.
For characters who can raise their resistances substantially above 45% you should virtually never purchase the Blood Hunger boon, although some expert players can carefully manage the drawback. Only one stack of this boon is preferred at most cases. If you purchase this boon twice your maximum resistance would be decrased into 25%, which is nonsense for resistant-stacking characters. Also 45
is too expensive under Dracul. With this much piety either
Blood Shield or
Blood Tithe is preferred.
If you happen to get 2x life steal, especially with Platemail, some lower level monsters' attack will be actually weaker than healing from life steal. Attacking these monsters will heal you instead. If you avoid killing those monsters they can heal and you can steal life from them again. They are called bloodcows, and is one of the healing source that Dracul can provide.
Vampire has his playstyle completely build around this feature.
You can overheal from life steal. Because Blood Tithe nor
Blood Swell can heal you above your maximum HP and blood tithe decreases your maximum HP, sometimes you cannot even tank a hit from the boss. Of course not making those situations is the best. But if it already happened, life steal is often the only way to deal with it.
Blood Shield
Another powerful boon of him. Because of this boon, Taurog into
Dracul is a very powerful conversion chain. Taurog's easy piety generation lets you convert into Dracul with nearly full piety, and his armor pieces combine with
Blood Shield for a very easy way to get 30%/30% resists, making the chain one of the best ways to stack resistances. Combine with
Patches the Teddy and the
Dragon Shield and baby, you've got a stew goin'.
Even without resistance stacking it synergies with Blood Hunger very well. If you can still raise your piety after purchasing this boon, this boon is very good choice for your mid-late game approach. Resistances will increase the value of your health bar, which would be refilled several times afterwards under Dracul in endgame phase.
Blood Tithe
The most powerful boon of Dracul, and also the real reason why Dracul is the king of the endgame spike. You don't actually need this boon halfway through the dungeon, and you don't want to accidently waste your bloodpools. Unlike Blood Hunger, only one stack of blood tithe is not very efficient for the usage of limited bloodpools. Drinking bloodpools with one stack of blood tithe will not heal you much and give you mere 1
. When you reach 25
to get another stack of blood tithe, your bloodpools would mostly be depleted. In order to avoid this inefficient movement you want at least two stacks as fast as possible, favorably even before consuming any bloodpool. This is the perfect timing which
Blood Curse kicks in. Because you would be facing the boss around then, exp is not a problem and blood curse doesn't actually have any drawback. Collecting piety sparkles you've saved, killing popcorns, desecrating some altars, or taking
consensus from
The Pactmaker are also some great moves here.
Each stack of blood tithe also reduces your maximum HP, and since blood tithe and Blood Swell heals a certain percentage of your maximum HP, it's better to find a way to raise your maximum HP to compensate and it will cost a significant amount of piety. This usually means you'll need to convert into Dracul's religion with a large amount of piety already accrued, and found some way to increase your hit points. The need for improved hit points means
Jehora Jeheyu,
The Earthmother or
Glowing Guardian all make excellent deities to worship prior to converting to
Dracul. Followers of
The Earthmother should take note that
Plantation will remove bloodstains. Followers of the
Glowing Guardian must tread carefully with
Absolution; removing a monster will also prevent you from harvesting its blood after you convert.
Jehora Jeheyu is difficult to manage, as most players will want to use
Chaos Avatar before converting out, which may leave you with insufficient piety, but this combo is very powerful when you do have enough piety to pull it off. Preparing additional health boosters, being
Dwarf or purchasing some items are also a great options.
Note that if you leave Dracul and convert back, you only get 1 piety from drinking a bloodpool no matter how many blood tithe you have purchased.
Blood Swell
After you consume all your bloodpools, you'll probably at 3-4 stacks of Blood Tithe and plenty of piety left. You can choose to consume health potions or convert into other religeons like
Tikki Tooki, now. This boon is one another way to leverage with remaining piety. If you have any resistance or damage reduction you want to kill popcorns to remove curses. You should think carefully and conserve right amount of popcorns when racking piety to take stacks of
Blood Tithe in this cases.
Strategy
Dracul is difficult to gain piety with under most circumstances. There are only four ways to do so: killing non-undead monsters, converting a "holy" glyph ( CYDSTEPP or
HALPMEH), converting a
Health Potion, and using a
Life steal ability. For most characters, the only way to get a
Life steal is with one of Dracul's boons, which means it's imperative for Dracul worshipers to purchase either
Blood Hunger or
Blood Tithe as soon as possible to begin racking up real piety.
Dracul's boons all grant ways to restore your hit points or (in the case of Blood Shield) prevent incoming damage. This gives a Dracul follower greatly increased staying power in combat, and Dracul often makes an excellent last-ditch choice in the end-game since none of these are dependent on exploration space.
When combined with the BLUDTUPOWA glyph, Dracul becomes an awesome force for spellcasters.
Blood Tithe and
Blood Swell boons can be used to farm hit points, and then
BLUDTUPOWA can be used to convert them into mana. This allows Dracul to fuel some of the most powerful spellcasting spikes in the game, turning any character into a
Bloodmage. However, without this glyph he offers no synergy with spellcasters.
Overall, Dracul is a very difficult diety to consistently worship, but is by far the best diety for a late-game health spike. With even a moderate store of piety, Dracul can fully heal most characters several times over with Blood Tithe and
Blood Swell. While he is rarely a good choice as a first diety, his incredible late-game power is nearly essential in
Vicious Gaan-Telet and can be incredibly impactful in other difficult dungeons as well. Just be sure to drink your health potions and kill off any
Wraith and
Zombie popcorn before converting.