Mini-G
04-08-2008, 12:36 AM
this build has been posted on the D.A.R.K forums for a few days now, thought i would port it to my new home... Have fun.
The General
A vamp build by Mini
Link to a vid of the build in action (http://www.vimeo.com/815234)
Ok, so I'd like to start off by telling you all that this is one of the greatest builds in the game. But i would be lying, and mummy said I'm not allowed to lie. I will however say that this build is a really, really, really powerful one, that will have your character killing mobs twice your level, with minimal risk, really early on (if you know what your doing), and no need to swallow swarms of runes.
Right, with that out of the way. Onto the build.
The Theory
We all know that having more than one source of damage on a target is good, right? and we all know that there are limited ways of applying those extra sources of damage, more party members, larger spells, summons, and zombies. and i thought to myself, these methods don't quite have the... oumph. you can only have one wolf, so that's out of the question. bats are limited to 9, and are severely limited in the later levels. and its often hard to maintain a conventional zombie army, as your constantly switching between vamp and knight, and loosing all of your work in the process. this event can also happen at the wrong times, such as in the middle of a large fight. should this happen, you can practically write off the toon unless your handy with your spacebar.
http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/8109/normalawakendeaddc2.gif
so, sticking with the zombies for the moment, i thought to myself (i do a lot of this) "i'm sure i remember a way to keep a zombie forever". and after a little experimentation i discovered that i was right (that happens a lot as well). there is a technique, well i say technique, slight exploitation (to the tiniest degree) would be a better descriptor of the method. anyway, where was i? oh yes, theres a technique where if you cast Awaken dead on a corpse at the right moment, the corpse will be animated at the same time you turn back into a knight. this means that as long as you stay in knight form (A.K.A don't use turn to vamp again) the zombie will not ever disappear (unless its killed).
"what use is a single zombie?, i cant raise more in knight form!" i hear the less informed amongst you shout. well, what most people know, is that when a zombie minion kills an enemy, there is a chance that the fresh kill will be automatically "converted" into a zombie. meaning as long as you stand back and let your zombie get the kill, your zombie horde will have the opportunity to grow in size. and if you know anything about maths, then you should expect this growth to be exponential (the more zombies you have, the faster/more you kill/convert). and once a suitable sized army has been created, you are quite a formidable force, wherever you decide to take it.
right then, lets put this theory to practice.
The Skills
Note: I've never been one to tell people how to play the game, and there are many different possible variations to this build, a lot of the build is up to the player using it (including the skills).
There are four essential skills to this build, all focused on making you very, very hard to hit. the skills can be selected whenever you wish, as none of them directly affect the effectiveness of the build, but you probably do best selecting the essentials first. i will however outline recommended skill point distribution between them, and outline some of the possible additional skills. (if you really wanted to push it, attempt the build without selecting skills at all)
The essentials
Constitution: about 1/2 of your level, but high enough to ensure you can take a fair beating just incase the enemies manage to get in close.
Agility: keep this skill at 1/2 of your level, in order to keep that defense rating up, making you more resilient
Parry: this skill needs to be 1/2 your level so that you really cant get hit by most enemies
Armour (that is NOT a typo): spare points go here, unless you are still getting hit a lot with high amounts of parry and agility. if htat is the case, you need to be putting a few more points in here, just to keep the damages down
The Choices
as said earlier, a lot of this build depends on which direction you want to take it in, do you want a horse? do you want to use the army as backup, or augmentation to damage you yourself do?, rather than a killing machine in its own right. this is where you decide.
Riding: If you want to use horses to give yourself a HP and defense boost. or maybe you just fancy imagining yourself as the general in some sort of medieval battlefield. either way, you will want to select this skill, as it allows you to get some of the best horses in the game. (more on this later)
Weapon Lore: if you want to use the army as backup to you, then you will want this skill. im sure you know why
specific weapon's lore (sword lore etc...): to improve your attack rate against enemies using your chosen weapon.
Vampirism: don't want to burn up, while trying to get that first zombie? then this will probably end up in your list of choices.
Ranged Combat: Fancy yourself sitting at the back watching them do all the work? than this is probably best for you (it fills a skill slot at least).
the possibilities are.... well not quite endless, but theres a lot of them.
The Attributes
Because this build relies so heavily on not getting shot/hit/killed it makes sense that the attributes help with this. theres four main attributes that you can put hte points to in order to help the build stay alive. strength (health), endurance (resistances), Dexterity (defense rating), physical regeneration (health regen).
in the build i created, i pumped all points into dexterity, increasing my defense rating, and making my character insanely hard to hit in the field. about 1 in 15 hits was getting through to my toon by level 30, which is good.
if you find that your defense is fine for the moment, but your lacking on health, or you are taking too much damage when they do manage to damage you, then strength or endurance will make it better for your character.
The Combat Arts
there is only one CA that is necessary here, there are several extra CA's that could come in handy every now and then though.
Awaken dead: necessary for the build, i usually kept mind about 4-8 levels above my character level, but thats only because i was pushing the build to take me into dangerous places really early on. so as long as its roughly at your level, you should be fine. no need to worry about the regen time either, because it only needs to be used once. one thing i will warn you about though, is that if you put too many levels into this CA, there is a point where it will only get you 1 exp for what your zombies kill. this is a restriction imposed by the difficulty level of the server (at least, thats what it looks like). if this happens, just go up to the next difficulty level.
Turn into Vampire: you start with this CA, don't put any more into it, because as you use the build, you should know how long it lasts by heart, and putting more runes into it messes that up. note: at night time, TiV lasts twice as long as it says it does.
Time control: not necessary, but really useful if not on horseback as it allows you to instantly get out of the way of any danger (such as if your fighting a dragon and find yourself in the way of its fire)
The Gear
there is no specific gear set that is particularly more useful than another with this build. however, i recommend getting armour that has a lot of sockets, and socketing things that give +XX% Defense, such as the blacksmiths arts. this really helps keep enemies off you, and increases your survivability.
Tactics
Starting the Army
Starting your army is probably the hardest part of the build, getting the first kill when you have no combat specific skills or CA's can be challenging, depending on where you try it. to start off an army, picking an area with low level enemies is best, such as belvue or silver creek.
once you know your location, and have found an enemy you want to be the first zombie in your army, cast Turn into Vampire. now it is vitally important you know how long TiV lasts, as the timing of when you cast AD is critical. you need to be casting animate dead one second before TiV wears off, which sounds hard, but its fairly easy when you get the hang of it. the best way of ensuring this happens, is if you have a watch or an analogue clock nearby to look at. when you cast AD, look at what time you cast it (were interested in the second hand here), and then what you need to do is time the kill to be close enough to the end of TiV so that hte body doesnt disintergrate (i've found that a body will stay there for 20 seconds, but i wouldnt risk more than 10). once you made the kill, watch the clock intently until the time is almost up. then cast AD on the corpse. If all went well, you will turn back into a knight, before the casting was complete, and the corpse will be a permanant zombie.
I've found that the ideal place to start army is with the wolves in belvue, they are easy to kill and they do a significant amount of damage to many things.
Recruiting for the army
Once you have your first zombie, increasing your army size will be your first priority. and once again, its best to move slowly. start attacking single enemies, and avoid groups until you have several zombies under your control. when you have 5-10 zombies under your control, start attacking the larger groups, and converting large numbers of enemies. its also worth having a try at some higher level enemies. once you get the ball rolling, you will practically be an unstoppable force.
http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/5682/someenemiesad8.gif
Army maintenance
As your army continues to kill things for you, it will continually expand. and this growth can get really out of hand. i've had army sizes of about 80 zombies, which can really affect your framerate, as well as possibly cause some lag. because of this fact, it is necessary to keep a close eye on your army, and to purposely shrink the army every now and then.
one method of maintenance is by attacking something that is obviously out of your league, such as a dragon, or a really high level enemy. and while your army will probably be able to kill it eventually, it will suffer a fair amount of casualties in the process, lowering its overall numbers and ensuring that it doesnt get out of control.
another, more drastic method of controlling the size of your army, is to delete the whole thing on purpose by turning into a vamp, and then back into knight form. while this is definitely an extreme, its undeniably one of the better ways of controlling an army size, as you can restart your army from scratch, which is a definite way of lowering its numbers.
http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/7753/armyerasingow9.gif
Horses and Riding
in this build, it is certainly possible to make effective use of horses. Besides the Defense and health bonuses they give, they can be used to stun enemies that get too close while your army finishes them off. Or they can be used as quick getaway's or transport to distant lands. if your going to use a horse as a main aspect of your build, getting Riding and going for the horses with huge health bonuses would probably be best for the build. i wouldnt raise riding over 25 though, as by then you can already get the mystdale warhorse, which is pretty much the best in the game.
one downside to using horses with this build, is that because when you are on a horse, you cant run through your zombies like you do when dismounted. because of this, standing around idle for a few seconds is going to get you sort of stuck, and you wil need to find a route out of the swarm (its possible to get out of it without dismounting, just takes a bit of random movement)
Zombies
Useful Zombies
as you could probably expect, certain enemies make for better zombies than others, heres a short list of what i have found useful.
Crabs from the pirate isles are probably the most useful creatures your army could possibly have. they are fast, and have immensley high damage outputs with a fast attack speed, get half a dozen of these in your army and your ready to take on anything.
Hell Golems make for invincible powerhouses of damage, their high resistances mean that nothing ever does more than 300 damage in one hit to them, and they do huge damage themselves.
Sakkara demons are good to have, the do average damage, but that's made up for be the shear shock value. when people see half a dozen sakkara's walking behind you, they are usually slightly surprised.
Archers. an army of archers is such a cool thing its worth point it out. and they don't do too bad damage either. although it is worth noting that if you use archers as your main army, you will be slightly more susceptible to getting hit as archers don't form a wall in front of you to protect you.
skeletons. they do average damage, but they have a high attack rate, and they are relatively quick.
Spiders (the medium sized ones) do average damage, but its poison damage and not much has poison resistance. they are also fast, and have a high attack rate
Giant spiders. once again, just for shock value
Dark elves make for good front liners as well, they have high damage poison weapons, and they are fast.
dragons. not particularly fast or strong, and you will probably lose yourself behind them, but they are cool to have nonetheless
http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/513/skyisthelimitwk5.gif
Zombies to Avoid
basically anything slow is not worth converting into a zombie on purpose. they will never manage to get a hit on half of the enemies, as the faster zombies will always get there first. if however your army is already in full swing, it doesnt really matter how many slow zombies you have, as long as you have ample faster zombies.
Drawbacks of the Build
Sadly, all this awesomness comes with a price. if you do decide to use this build, expect to spend a lot of your time unpartied, because as you can guess, its not the most party-friendly build. pretty much everybody else cant pass through your zombies, so they are always getting in the way, and they block the enemies from your friends attacks. this means that most people will not be able to get any kills when fighting alongside you.
another drawback is that the build makes it fairly hard to complete quests involving you eliminating groups of enemies. this is because sometimes when an enemy is converted, the game doesnt count this as being a kill, and you wont be able to complete the quest that needed him to die until the zombie dies.
one other drawback is that when loot drops, its fairly hard to pick it up the first time round. this is because when you hold down alt to check the name of the item, you get the names of all your zombies, which when you have a large army causes a lot of movement with the labels, making hte name of the item dart all over the place.
Do not go to the island with your army, its a very bad idea and i cant stress this point enough. if you have to go to the island, MAKE SURE IT'S EMPTY!, or destroy your army first
Final thoughts, and Further Reading
This build has been one of the most fun i have created in a while, and its definitely worth trying, even just for the shock value of being able to have half a dozen dragons walking around with you. its capable of doing insane damage, while keeping you relatively safe, with minimal rune usage compared to what some of the builds need. for example, my toon at the moment is level 30ish, and with a level 33 Animate dead, im able to successfully complete an VoT run, and im sure it would be possible to do it with an even lower level of AD as well.
All of the information held in this build has been my own original research. however honourable mention goes to GrimJack, who also noticed this method of making zombies permanant, and if you want to read a bit more about what he discussed, you can find it in these threads.
Post 58 and onwards in this thread (thanks masteff)
http://forum.sacredeng.ascaron-net.com/sho...9002&page=2 (http://forum.sacredeng.ascaron-net.com/showthread.php?t=39002&page=2)
and some discussion in this thread on the dark matters forums
http://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?sh...p;#entry6798704 (http://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=6497&pid=6798704&st=0&#entry6798704)
[/quote]
The General
A vamp build by Mini
Link to a vid of the build in action (http://www.vimeo.com/815234)
Ok, so I'd like to start off by telling you all that this is one of the greatest builds in the game. But i would be lying, and mummy said I'm not allowed to lie. I will however say that this build is a really, really, really powerful one, that will have your character killing mobs twice your level, with minimal risk, really early on (if you know what your doing), and no need to swallow swarms of runes.
Right, with that out of the way. Onto the build.
The Theory
We all know that having more than one source of damage on a target is good, right? and we all know that there are limited ways of applying those extra sources of damage, more party members, larger spells, summons, and zombies. and i thought to myself, these methods don't quite have the... oumph. you can only have one wolf, so that's out of the question. bats are limited to 9, and are severely limited in the later levels. and its often hard to maintain a conventional zombie army, as your constantly switching between vamp and knight, and loosing all of your work in the process. this event can also happen at the wrong times, such as in the middle of a large fight. should this happen, you can practically write off the toon unless your handy with your spacebar.
http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/8109/normalawakendeaddc2.gif
so, sticking with the zombies for the moment, i thought to myself (i do a lot of this) "i'm sure i remember a way to keep a zombie forever". and after a little experimentation i discovered that i was right (that happens a lot as well). there is a technique, well i say technique, slight exploitation (to the tiniest degree) would be a better descriptor of the method. anyway, where was i? oh yes, theres a technique where if you cast Awaken dead on a corpse at the right moment, the corpse will be animated at the same time you turn back into a knight. this means that as long as you stay in knight form (A.K.A don't use turn to vamp again) the zombie will not ever disappear (unless its killed).
"what use is a single zombie?, i cant raise more in knight form!" i hear the less informed amongst you shout. well, what most people know, is that when a zombie minion kills an enemy, there is a chance that the fresh kill will be automatically "converted" into a zombie. meaning as long as you stand back and let your zombie get the kill, your zombie horde will have the opportunity to grow in size. and if you know anything about maths, then you should expect this growth to be exponential (the more zombies you have, the faster/more you kill/convert). and once a suitable sized army has been created, you are quite a formidable force, wherever you decide to take it.
right then, lets put this theory to practice.
The Skills
Note: I've never been one to tell people how to play the game, and there are many different possible variations to this build, a lot of the build is up to the player using it (including the skills).
There are four essential skills to this build, all focused on making you very, very hard to hit. the skills can be selected whenever you wish, as none of them directly affect the effectiveness of the build, but you probably do best selecting the essentials first. i will however outline recommended skill point distribution between them, and outline some of the possible additional skills. (if you really wanted to push it, attempt the build without selecting skills at all)
The essentials
Constitution: about 1/2 of your level, but high enough to ensure you can take a fair beating just incase the enemies manage to get in close.
Agility: keep this skill at 1/2 of your level, in order to keep that defense rating up, making you more resilient
Parry: this skill needs to be 1/2 your level so that you really cant get hit by most enemies
Armour (that is NOT a typo): spare points go here, unless you are still getting hit a lot with high amounts of parry and agility. if htat is the case, you need to be putting a few more points in here, just to keep the damages down
The Choices
as said earlier, a lot of this build depends on which direction you want to take it in, do you want a horse? do you want to use the army as backup, or augmentation to damage you yourself do?, rather than a killing machine in its own right. this is where you decide.
Riding: If you want to use horses to give yourself a HP and defense boost. or maybe you just fancy imagining yourself as the general in some sort of medieval battlefield. either way, you will want to select this skill, as it allows you to get some of the best horses in the game. (more on this later)
Weapon Lore: if you want to use the army as backup to you, then you will want this skill. im sure you know why
specific weapon's lore (sword lore etc...): to improve your attack rate against enemies using your chosen weapon.
Vampirism: don't want to burn up, while trying to get that first zombie? then this will probably end up in your list of choices.
Ranged Combat: Fancy yourself sitting at the back watching them do all the work? than this is probably best for you (it fills a skill slot at least).
the possibilities are.... well not quite endless, but theres a lot of them.
The Attributes
Because this build relies so heavily on not getting shot/hit/killed it makes sense that the attributes help with this. theres four main attributes that you can put hte points to in order to help the build stay alive. strength (health), endurance (resistances), Dexterity (defense rating), physical regeneration (health regen).
in the build i created, i pumped all points into dexterity, increasing my defense rating, and making my character insanely hard to hit in the field. about 1 in 15 hits was getting through to my toon by level 30, which is good.
if you find that your defense is fine for the moment, but your lacking on health, or you are taking too much damage when they do manage to damage you, then strength or endurance will make it better for your character.
The Combat Arts
there is only one CA that is necessary here, there are several extra CA's that could come in handy every now and then though.
Awaken dead: necessary for the build, i usually kept mind about 4-8 levels above my character level, but thats only because i was pushing the build to take me into dangerous places really early on. so as long as its roughly at your level, you should be fine. no need to worry about the regen time either, because it only needs to be used once. one thing i will warn you about though, is that if you put too many levels into this CA, there is a point where it will only get you 1 exp for what your zombies kill. this is a restriction imposed by the difficulty level of the server (at least, thats what it looks like). if this happens, just go up to the next difficulty level.
Turn into Vampire: you start with this CA, don't put any more into it, because as you use the build, you should know how long it lasts by heart, and putting more runes into it messes that up. note: at night time, TiV lasts twice as long as it says it does.
Time control: not necessary, but really useful if not on horseback as it allows you to instantly get out of the way of any danger (such as if your fighting a dragon and find yourself in the way of its fire)
The Gear
there is no specific gear set that is particularly more useful than another with this build. however, i recommend getting armour that has a lot of sockets, and socketing things that give +XX% Defense, such as the blacksmiths arts. this really helps keep enemies off you, and increases your survivability.
Tactics
Starting the Army
Starting your army is probably the hardest part of the build, getting the first kill when you have no combat specific skills or CA's can be challenging, depending on where you try it. to start off an army, picking an area with low level enemies is best, such as belvue or silver creek.
once you know your location, and have found an enemy you want to be the first zombie in your army, cast Turn into Vampire. now it is vitally important you know how long TiV lasts, as the timing of when you cast AD is critical. you need to be casting animate dead one second before TiV wears off, which sounds hard, but its fairly easy when you get the hang of it. the best way of ensuring this happens, is if you have a watch or an analogue clock nearby to look at. when you cast AD, look at what time you cast it (were interested in the second hand here), and then what you need to do is time the kill to be close enough to the end of TiV so that hte body doesnt disintergrate (i've found that a body will stay there for 20 seconds, but i wouldnt risk more than 10). once you made the kill, watch the clock intently until the time is almost up. then cast AD on the corpse. If all went well, you will turn back into a knight, before the casting was complete, and the corpse will be a permanant zombie.
I've found that the ideal place to start army is with the wolves in belvue, they are easy to kill and they do a significant amount of damage to many things.
Recruiting for the army
Once you have your first zombie, increasing your army size will be your first priority. and once again, its best to move slowly. start attacking single enemies, and avoid groups until you have several zombies under your control. when you have 5-10 zombies under your control, start attacking the larger groups, and converting large numbers of enemies. its also worth having a try at some higher level enemies. once you get the ball rolling, you will practically be an unstoppable force.
http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/5682/someenemiesad8.gif
Army maintenance
As your army continues to kill things for you, it will continually expand. and this growth can get really out of hand. i've had army sizes of about 80 zombies, which can really affect your framerate, as well as possibly cause some lag. because of this fact, it is necessary to keep a close eye on your army, and to purposely shrink the army every now and then.
one method of maintenance is by attacking something that is obviously out of your league, such as a dragon, or a really high level enemy. and while your army will probably be able to kill it eventually, it will suffer a fair amount of casualties in the process, lowering its overall numbers and ensuring that it doesnt get out of control.
another, more drastic method of controlling the size of your army, is to delete the whole thing on purpose by turning into a vamp, and then back into knight form. while this is definitely an extreme, its undeniably one of the better ways of controlling an army size, as you can restart your army from scratch, which is a definite way of lowering its numbers.
http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/7753/armyerasingow9.gif
Horses and Riding
in this build, it is certainly possible to make effective use of horses. Besides the Defense and health bonuses they give, they can be used to stun enemies that get too close while your army finishes them off. Or they can be used as quick getaway's or transport to distant lands. if your going to use a horse as a main aspect of your build, getting Riding and going for the horses with huge health bonuses would probably be best for the build. i wouldnt raise riding over 25 though, as by then you can already get the mystdale warhorse, which is pretty much the best in the game.
one downside to using horses with this build, is that because when you are on a horse, you cant run through your zombies like you do when dismounted. because of this, standing around idle for a few seconds is going to get you sort of stuck, and you wil need to find a route out of the swarm (its possible to get out of it without dismounting, just takes a bit of random movement)
Zombies
Useful Zombies
as you could probably expect, certain enemies make for better zombies than others, heres a short list of what i have found useful.
Crabs from the pirate isles are probably the most useful creatures your army could possibly have. they are fast, and have immensley high damage outputs with a fast attack speed, get half a dozen of these in your army and your ready to take on anything.
Hell Golems make for invincible powerhouses of damage, their high resistances mean that nothing ever does more than 300 damage in one hit to them, and they do huge damage themselves.
Sakkara demons are good to have, the do average damage, but that's made up for be the shear shock value. when people see half a dozen sakkara's walking behind you, they are usually slightly surprised.
Archers. an army of archers is such a cool thing its worth point it out. and they don't do too bad damage either. although it is worth noting that if you use archers as your main army, you will be slightly more susceptible to getting hit as archers don't form a wall in front of you to protect you.
skeletons. they do average damage, but they have a high attack rate, and they are relatively quick.
Spiders (the medium sized ones) do average damage, but its poison damage and not much has poison resistance. they are also fast, and have a high attack rate
Giant spiders. once again, just for shock value
Dark elves make for good front liners as well, they have high damage poison weapons, and they are fast.
dragons. not particularly fast or strong, and you will probably lose yourself behind them, but they are cool to have nonetheless
http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/513/skyisthelimitwk5.gif
Zombies to Avoid
basically anything slow is not worth converting into a zombie on purpose. they will never manage to get a hit on half of the enemies, as the faster zombies will always get there first. if however your army is already in full swing, it doesnt really matter how many slow zombies you have, as long as you have ample faster zombies.
Drawbacks of the Build
Sadly, all this awesomness comes with a price. if you do decide to use this build, expect to spend a lot of your time unpartied, because as you can guess, its not the most party-friendly build. pretty much everybody else cant pass through your zombies, so they are always getting in the way, and they block the enemies from your friends attacks. this means that most people will not be able to get any kills when fighting alongside you.
another drawback is that the build makes it fairly hard to complete quests involving you eliminating groups of enemies. this is because sometimes when an enemy is converted, the game doesnt count this as being a kill, and you wont be able to complete the quest that needed him to die until the zombie dies.
one other drawback is that when loot drops, its fairly hard to pick it up the first time round. this is because when you hold down alt to check the name of the item, you get the names of all your zombies, which when you have a large army causes a lot of movement with the labels, making hte name of the item dart all over the place.
Do not go to the island with your army, its a very bad idea and i cant stress this point enough. if you have to go to the island, MAKE SURE IT'S EMPTY!, or destroy your army first
Final thoughts, and Further Reading
This build has been one of the most fun i have created in a while, and its definitely worth trying, even just for the shock value of being able to have half a dozen dragons walking around with you. its capable of doing insane damage, while keeping you relatively safe, with minimal rune usage compared to what some of the builds need. for example, my toon at the moment is level 30ish, and with a level 33 Animate dead, im able to successfully complete an VoT run, and im sure it would be possible to do it with an even lower level of AD as well.
All of the information held in this build has been my own original research. however honourable mention goes to GrimJack, who also noticed this method of making zombies permanant, and if you want to read a bit more about what he discussed, you can find it in these threads.
Post 58 and onwards in this thread (thanks masteff)
http://forum.sacredeng.ascaron-net.com/sho...9002&page=2 (http://forum.sacredeng.ascaron-net.com/showthread.php?t=39002&page=2)
and some discussion in this thread on the dark matters forums
http://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?sh...p;#entry6798704 (http://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=6497&pid=6798704&st=0&#entry6798704)
[/quote]