Vampire

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VampireHero.pngVampire Monster Icon.png This article is about the playable race, for the monster see Vampire (Monster)


Vampire
Monster Class
Vampire Hero Large.png
Class traits
Class trait: UNDEAD UNDEAD
Trait: Poison Immune Poison Immune, Trait: Mana Burn Immune Mana Burn Immune
Class trait: DAMNED DAMNED
Cannot worship, exhausted while wounded, flat health regen of 1
Class trait: ETERNAL THIRST ETERNAL THIRST
Starts with Trait: Sanguine Sanguine and 1 level of Trait: Life steal Life steal
Conversion
1 Trait: Life steal Life steal per 120 Conversion Points
Unlocking
Complete Dungeon: Vicious Steel Vicious Steel with 3 classes

The Vampire is a special monster class, built around Trait: Life steal Life steal ability. He has completely different playing style from other classes. Though it seems to be a extreme version of worshippers of God: Dracul Dracul, his life steal ability is so powerful that he went to another step of power curve.

Class Features

The Vampire's long list of disadvantages and his utter reliance on his lifesteal class feature, which means you absolutely must convert items early to raise it, despite the high CP cost, makes him one of the most difficult classes to play, only under Class: Rat Monarch Rat Monarch and maybe the Class: Goatperson Goatperson in learning curve.

Conversion Bonus

The Vampire gets +1 Trait: Life steal Life steal for 120 conversion points. This is the defining ability of the Vampire. He's incredibly vulnerable to Trait: Bloodless Bloodless monsters, so it's important to keep track of which monsters have this trait, and which do not.

A useful and recommended approach to playing Vampire is to cultivate "blood cows". To do this, identify high-health/low-damage enemies (Monster: Meat Man Meat Man works best) and avoid killing them. Once you are a higher level than they are, your lifesteal will vastly exceed their damage output. Because these monsters have high hit points, your attacks won't actually kill them. When you next explore, your blood cows will heal and you can repeat the process later. With enough blood cows, a Vampire can effectively eliminate his regeneration issues. In fact, you might even "regenerate" faster than a normal character would, making you a superb regen fighter. When your blood cows are all at full health, your actual health can be effectively up to few times(!) higher than your health bar and you can health-spike any higher level monster.

It is important to note that your Trait: Life steal Life steal is capped by your damage output. With a sufficient number of CP (and especially with a Item: Vampiric Blade Vampiric Blade prepared) this can become a serious bottleneck. Because your life steal is doubled versus lower level monsters, it is capped by your damage output anyway. Preparing extra attack boosters or the Item: Perseverance Badge Perseverance Badge can be very useful to avert this limitation, but be aware that anything which increases your attack reduces the number of enemies you can use for repeated healing. One interesting thing is, if you prepare the Vicious Token.png Vicious token, more monsters can survive your attack so you have more blood cows to use. This is by far the only case which a character gets an advantage from VT.

You also cannot steal more life than the enemy has; this is especially notable with enemies that have Trait: Death Protection Death Protection, since they will be reduced to 1 hit point between attacks. In cases like these, you should explore to allow your enemy to heal (but not too much!) so you can steal more life when you next hit them.

Class trait: UNDEAD UNDEAD

The Vampire is immune to poison and mana burn, so that he can use more non-Trait: Bloodless Bloodless monsters as precious bloodcows, such as Monster: Serpent Serpent or Monster: Burn Viper Burn Viper. This ability (similar to the Class: Crusader Crusader) gives him a special affinity with Item: Patches the Teddy Patches the Teddy. Because he's immune to two of the "bad things" Patches can invoke, this cursed teddy bear is all carrot and no stick for a Vampire.

Class trait: DAMNED DAMNED

The Vampire cannot worship a god, he would be too powerful otherwise. Thus it is obvious that he will always win Badge: Faithless Faithless badge whenever he wins a dungeon, and you don't need to take effort to this badge for the other classes if you are going to rainbow a dungeon. (In Rewind, Vampires can not earn the Faithless badge!)

The Vampire's healing rate does not improve as he levels up, and he cannot regenerate mana unless he's at full health. While he can explore to recover at the 1st and 2nd level, it quickly becomes impractical to do so beyond this point. You will eventually need to rely primarily on your lifesteal, allowing you to conserve exploration tiles for recovering mana.

It is important to remember that lifesteal can heal you above your maximum hit points, though there is still a cap above which further healing is wasted. Your max health is only a suggestion, and you should try to stay above it when exploring (so you regenerate mana) and when beginning tough fights.

Class trait: ETERNAL THIRST ETERNAL THIRST

The Vampire starts with 1 Trait: Life steal Life steal and 10% Trait: Sanguine Sanguine. A stack of life steal is very powerful addition to his power. 10% sanguine is flat and you have no method to improve it. Bloodpools are basically non-newable resources for spike so tapping into bloodpools too soon can be highly detrimental. In case when your health is too low and you have Trait: Slow Strike Slow Strike so that you cannot steal life from any monster, you can drink your health potion or some bloodpools to quickly escape from this embarassing situation.

Strategy

Glyphs

The Vampire benefits from first strike and dodge more than than other classes due to his focus on lifesteal, making the Glyph: GETINDARE GETINDARE glyph incredibly valuable to him. Remember that if you strike second, the enemy's damage is applied before your lifesteal and can potentially kill you. Where most classes can get one extra hit from first strike, a Vampire can get several extra hits. The Vampire can receive several more attacks from a single dodge while other classes receive just one free hit, making dodge far more powerful than any other class. However, due to their natual playstyle of attacking bloodcows several times more than the target monster, the dodge will likely to happen versus bloodcows, which become less meaningful.

If you do not find Glyph: GETINDARE GETINDARE, Glyph: BURNDAYRAZ BURNDAYRAZ will be your main finishing movement. If you finish your non-Trait: Bloodless Bloodless enemy with slower attack, if the enemy's too low, you cannot steal enough health. You should explore a bit of blackspaces to fully use your life steal ability, but it can be a waste of blackspaces. Finishing the monster with BURNDAYRAZ will not make this problem. Of course, BURNDAYRAZ is the basic solution for all Trait: Physical resist Physical resist monsters also.

When you have enough Trait: Life steal Life steal, Glyph: HALPMEH HALPMEH can be actually better than BURNDAYRAZ by the damage output per mana. The reason is same with that characters with high resistances prefer HALPMEH over BURNDAYRAZ.

Other non-utility glyphs are not more useful than their conversion bonus, and can be converted on sight.

Shop Items

The Item: Platemail Platemail item is particularly useful to the Vampire though the item cannot go along with Glyph: GETINDARE GETINDARE. However, Platemail is actually better than GETINDARE, and converting the glyph gives 100 CP anyway. Although he will always strike second, the damage reduction has a wonderful synergy with his lifesteal. A 10th level Vampire with platemail and many layers of lifesteal can effectively cancel out the first 70-90 points of damage, enough to make winning any non-vicious scenario trivial. Be careful that it is very vurnerable to curse, and keep in mind that it gives you Trait: Slow Strike Slow Strike debuff so you get two Trait: Cursed Cursed stack from killing a Trait: Curse Bearer Curse Bearer popcorn.

Item: Tower Shield Tower Shield or Item: Elven Boots Elven Boots provides extra resistances. Trait: Damage Reduction Damage Reduction and resistances are better than Trait: Life steal Life steal because it does not care about your damage output, but these are also disabled by curse.

Item: Vampiric Blade Vampiric Blade is another good item to find in the shop. The effect on reducing incoming damage is only a half compared to Item: Platemail Platemail, it's easy to hit the attack power cap, and it's largely meaningless versus lower level monsters. However, it is not disabled by curse.

If you are using Glyph: BURNDAYRAZ BURNDAYRAZ, Item: Witchalok Pendant Witchalok Pendant can give you a very good chance versus physical attack monsters. You can hit an enemy with fireballs, and attack to heal while damaging it.

Items increasing your hit points reinforces your Trait: Sanguine Sanguine and ability to tank a huge hit, but their conversion value is sometimes more important. Other than these, items with high CP/cost value are good items to purchase.

Preperations

Item: Platemail Platemail is one great option to be a guild preperation. Item: Dragon Shield Dragon Shield can be a better item to prepare, leaving chance to find Item: Platemail Platemail from shops. A Vampire having both items is an incarnation of Dracul. Item: Vampiric Blade Vampiric Blade is a viable choice, but a Item: Sensation Stone Sensation Stone is much better if you can afford the gold cost from your kingdom.

Preparing Item: Really Big Sword Really Big Sword is a good option if you are going to face Trait: Physical resist Physical resist monsters, especially if you also prepare Item: Platemail Platemail or going to find one from the shop. Because the Vampire cannot worship a god, ways to erode resistances are very limited.

Item: Quicksilver Potion Quicksilver Potion and Item: Reflex Potion Reflex Potion are superior items for the Vampire due to the exact same reasons why dodge is highly valuable for him.

Also remember Item: Patches the Teddy Patches the Teddy is very good addition to the Vampire as said earlier.

It is sometimes even worthwile to prepare Quest Items just to find the Item: Platemail Platemail. Shop scroll is another option, just because you can convert it to gain conversion points.

Class history

Vampires could originally worship deities, but the problem was that they were absurdly overpowered with Dracul. Rather than nerfing them into the ground, the devs just changed them so they couldn't worship deities. It was the most graceful solution available to a glaring balance problem. There was a brief period where they could grab Pactmaker Pacts, though :-P