Wrapping my head around this whole Sampire thing...

[Podolak]

OK...OK I give up I am going to ask for help. I've read dozens if not more posts on sampires. Posts about templates, posts about equipment. Every time I put it in my spreadsheet it doesn't seem to work out quite right. Can someone give me just a little more specific direction? I guess I am looking for bare minimums on equipment. Here is my thoughts on a template:

120 Swords (real)
120 Tactics (real)
120 Parry (real)
120 Bushido (real)
100 Reisst or Anatomy or Lumberjacking (real)
99 Necro (85 real 14 bracelet)
65 Chiv (55 real 10 bracelet)

Am I really hurting myself putting skills on the jewelry instead of other useful mods like stats?

Also, is going ELF a must?

Now equipment....alright alright I've seen a bazillion different configs. Thunderz has a rocking suit on Hollywood but his woodland pieces all have the 5HCI random property. The only way I can think to do this is to imbue a woodland piece made with plan wood and enhance with heartwood hoping for the 5 HCI property to show. Is this accurate?

What are the real minimums I need to be an effective sampire. So far I gather:

all 70's (95 fire so I can still be 70 after vampiric embrace)

45 HCI
45 DCI
181 Stamina
30 SSI (or more??)
Some level of HPI increase?
Some level of Mana increse?

Should the 181 Stamina be after using an agility pot, same thing for strength after using a greater strength pot?)

Clearly things like Mana Regen, HP Regen, Stamina Regen are not important because the weapon/Vampiric Embrace should leach it.

Should I make the armor out of leather, out of wood? What should I enhance with? If leather I presume Horned, if wood I am not sure, I'd hate the random property to be luck or something and if enhancing with Bloodwood the fire resist bonus seems nice.

Are there not too expensive arties I should consider? I can afford Crimson's but the Insane Leggings are out of my reach.

Thank you to anyone who can ease my mind a bit. And to those who ignore the post I understand, there are a ton of these types of posts from people.

 

[Pinco]

elf is a good race due to the extra mana bonus.

the swing speed and stamina really depends on the weapon you'll gonna use. Read the table on my guide (I think was stiked in the faq post...)

the armor material depends on what mod you need. If you gonna use the wood the armor piece will have a short life, because every time you go to repair it you can fail and for every fail is 1 less from durability.
Leather should be the best choice if you dont have particular request (like the hci from heartwood)
Every material have also an imbuing resistance cap limit so if you need much resistance of 1 kind take a look for it

 

[Taylor]

Skill Jewels--You're not necessarily hurting yourself, but you will be using two mod slots.

Elf?--Elf isn't a must. I've seen successful sampires from all races. I use an elf for the extra mana...but some folks prefer humans or gargoyles.

Minimums--45 dci is the most basic requirement. 180 stamina before pots would be preferable. 30 ssi can help if you are using slow weapons, but it's not a requirement. (I'm using leafblades with no ssi on my suit or weapons). You'll probably want a bit of lmc and mr, to keep up with your specials.

Thunderz's leet suit is made of imbued wood. My cheaper, easier, albeit less leet suit was made from leather. Altogether, I think I burned about 5 to 8 barbed kits for my neck, chest, arms, and gloves. After imbuing, I ended up with the following suit:

45 dci, 43 hci, 180 stam, 60 di (+40 on all weapons), 30 hld, 20s lmc, 4 mr, high 60s resists, and around 20 hpi. Not a bad suit, especially considering that I made it in 2 or 3 hours for under 30 mil.

Arties--I'm using mace and shields, conjurer's trinket, leggings of fey, crimmy, quiver of infinity, and cloak of death. These are all fairly cheap, with the exception of the conjurer's trinket (depending on your shard).

 

[Stormbringer127]

I like elf for the mana but character was already one might have rolled human for the weight and jack of all trades

What your looking for in general suit:
45 dci
45 hci
Ssi & stam depending on your weapon
Try to get up to 150hp
All max 70s on resists
100 di
Hld is great on mace and shield

I used woodland armor took maybe 5000 heartwood to get a full suit of exceptional hci and di so I could pick and choose which piece where helped pick up some more hci and di I needed so I only have to put 30di on weapon though you can make a suit that has 100di on it.

 

[Stormbringer127]

Here is a thread I started with alot of good info people gave me

http://vboards.stratics.com/uo-warrior/220704-questions-building-suit-sampire.html

As for skill jewelry I crafted a turquoise ring with ssi5 that had ninjisu almost got rid of it till I realized ninjisu is in the same skill group as chiv so changed it to chiv to help not fail EoO so much

 

[[JD]]

I've read dozens if not more posts on sampires.

thank you for reading/researching first!

Am I really hurting myself putting skills on the jewelry instead of other useful mods like stats?

depends what you have and what you need on your suit. keep in mind you dont need tactics at 120. 100 will suffice until you either get a 720 skill pt account or you get uber equipment.

Also, is going ELF a must?

not at all, some here value the 20 mana and wood armor over JOAT

The only way I can think to do this is to imbue a woodland piece made with plan wood and enhance with heartwood hoping for the 5 HCI property to show. Is this accurate?

yes. and if you are a crafter you are halfway to building an awesome sampire. being a good sampire is half knowing how the melee and encounters work, and half knowing how to tweak your suit. crafter sampires have the advantage in this dept.

What are the real minimums I need to be an effective sampire. So far I gather:

181 Stamina
30 SSI (or more??)
Some level of HPI increase?
Some level of Mana increse?

regarding stamina and ssi, it depends on the weapons you use. you want to swing at cap (1.25 sec per swing), AND have a buffer so that if you are cursed or are hit and lose stamina, you still swing at 1.25 cap.

hp increase, i havent done them but it seems there are certain encounters where you want very high hp so you can live through crazy attacks. paraoxy and stygian dragon come to mind.. are there more fellas?

LMC, INT, and mana increase determine your mana pool and how many specials you can use. i've heard the rule is have enough mana to do 2 specials in a row. but honestly, if you can get more without sacrafice, get more. mine is kind of right on the cusp as a human, so i follow the attack pattern: special, LS, LS, special, LS, LS...

Should the 181 Stamina be after using an agility pot, same thing for strength after using a greater strength pot?)

you want a buffer in there so its variable. 181 stamina would have you dropping to 1.5 swing speed in some instances if you dropped to 179.

Clearly things like Mana Regen, HP Regen, Stamina Regen are not important because the weapon/Vampiric Embrace should leach it.

you might want to make a "recovery" suit for after death with 100 LRC (17 on each piece), MR1...other then that, not overly helpful. use leeches

Are there not too expensive arties I should consider? I can afford Crimson's but the Insane Leggings are out of my reach.

the two most prevalent sampire arti's are on the head... spirit of totem, or mace and shield glasses. the rest can be imbued/crafted

 

[Farsight]

There is a minimum armor configuration for a Sampire, and it's far FAR under what most people say it is.

For example, my Sampire on Drachenfels has soloed everything up to Dread Horn with this armor:
40% DCI, all 70's armor and... assorted odds and ends (haven't resuited after imbuing, I never use the character).

It's only artifact is an Aegis of Grace.

If I took the time, I could get better armor (note: I still only use top end weapons) and make it easier, but it's all still possible with only the DCI and resists.

My Catskills Sampire uses mostly imbued gear, with Fey leggings (human version) as the only armor-artifact (still use conjurer's trinket, crimson cincture, Ranger's Cloak, etc... but those slots have no craftable/lootable items)

 

[Freelsy]

WHy dont you drop your tactics to 90? Just enough to use the specials from the weapons and save yourself 30 skill points and the mod slots on your ring/brace.

Its what I do and the damage difference in the long run isn't going to be that big.

Like some have said, Sampire armor is soooo easy to get now. As are the weapons. Its not even a challenge anymore. Imbuing is your friend... lol

I don't see where you are running into problems at though. Its pretty much cut and dry. If you're new to the scene just start with your basic cookie cutter sampire (the one you listed) and then go from there. Get used to it, then start tweaking it to how/what you fight mostly.

 

[Thunderz]

thank you for reading/researching first!



not at all, some here value the 20 mana and wood armor over JOAT

OH yes

yes. and if you are a crafter you are halfway to building an awesome sampire. being a good sampire is half knowing how the melee and encounters work, and half knowing how to tweak your suit. crafter sampires have the advantage in this dept.

I started out as a crafter and used connors advice and had no problem killing any bosses


hp increase, i havent done them but it seems there are certain encounters where you want very high hp so you can live through crazy attacks. paraoxy and stygian dragon come to mind.. are there more fellas?

Proxy is one, his hit for 80 HP followed by two 30s will spell the end

LMC, INT, and mana increase determine your mana pool and how many specials you can use. i've heard the rule is have enough mana to do 2 specials in a row. but honestly, if you can get more without sacrafice, get more. mine is kind of right on the cusp as a human, so i follow the attack pattern: special, LS, LS, special, LS, LS...

I can hit Feint constantly with the right wepon, popping a few LS along the way



you want a buffer in there so its variable. 181 stamina would have you dropping to 1.5 swing speed in some instances if you dropped to 179.

Shouldnt that be 182?


you might want to make a "recovery" suit for after death with 100 LRC (17 on each piece), MR1...other then that, not overly helpful. use leeches

I have a jewelry set that i equip on resurection will lots of MR LMC FC FCR so i can get back into vamp for and back into the fight asap. Carry lots of those items from stealing that let you resourect and heal, along with the medusa one to res your pet



the two most prevalent sampire arti's are on the head... spirit of totem, or mace and shield glasses. the rest can be imbued/crafted

Tinker legs or feys are a must
[/QUOTE]

Thunderz

 

[Connor_Graham]

Tinker legs or feys are a must
Thunderz

Unless you happen to use the Assassin Armor set.....

 

[Podolak]

I don't see where you are running into problems at though. Its pretty much cut and dry. If you're new to the scene just start with your basic cookie cutter sampire (the one you listed) and then go from there. Get used to it, then start tweaking it to how/what you fight mostly.

Now here is a question I can answer!

Because I am crazy...

For some reason long ago I stopped just "messing" around and have since always tried to maximize a skill/armor config before even using the character. I have no idea why, I don't even know if I'd like the template. I should really just do more trial and error to find what works best for me, which I am sort of doing here. I did some trial and error on Test center but it didn't work out quite the way I want it to. Though much of that could be tactics too, which spells to cast and when.

 

[Taylor]

Dunno if this'll help, but I'll offer it anyway. I've tried half a dozen sampire templates over the past couple of years, but I could never really find one that suited me...until recently. A couple weeks ago, I finally found something that I enjoy. The skills look like this:

120 Fencing
120 Bush
115 Tactics
100 Anat
100 Heal/Resist
99 Necro
66 Chivalry

I don't miss parry a bit. After adding both healing an anatomy, I am healing way more damage than I defended against with parry.

Also, I switched from swordsmanship to fencing in order to use leafblades. The feint and AI specials are awesome. Plus, with 180 stamina, I don't need any swing speed increase (ssi) on the weapons, leaving a free mod for imbuing. My primary leafblade looks like this:

Leafblade
60 hit mana leech
44 hit stamina leech
47 hit fireball
30 hit lower attack

I also have a set of slayer leafblades that look similar, but with the slayer property instead of hit fireball.

So far, I'm loving this template. In fact, I've used it almost exclusively for the past two weeks. The damage dealt is unreal with EOO, consecrate, perfection, and LS. Again, I am still not missing parry at all. GM healing/anat + 150 dex is enough to keep me alive against most mobs. Add in vamp form and confidence and he's one tough cookie, as far as PvM is concerned.

Actually, he is so viable that I've forgotten a couple of times to re-cast vamp form. I ended up soloing the skeletal dragon renowned champ a couple of times with only bandages for healing, simply because I forgot to cast vamp form. Same thing happened a few nights ago: I was back at the Painted Caves fighting grobu, lurg, and a few trogs. I was doing just fine--it wasn't until after the hunt that I realized I'd forgotten vamp form.

As long as you're committed to "playing around," you might give the healing sampire template a try.

 

[Pinco]

Unless you happen to use the Assassin Armor set.....

or by using other kind of items

After reading this post I take the challenge to make an armor suit without bane or fey leggings and without the conjurer triket

I did it, just requires some heartwood pieces (piece that can be done WITHOUT enhance with heartwood )

The "problems" in this suit are that:
Need the gladiator collar (just for cap HCI, you can still use a 5% heartwood piece and reach 40%)
use the tangle: less hp than using the crimson ( gladiator can balance this)
a turquoise ring really hard to find: (4 mods are locked) SSI, HCI, DCI, DI. With a bit of luck you can get a +skill as 5th mod

 

[Arroth Thaiel]

Hey Podolak,

Just to jump in here, I came back to the game a couple of months ago and started running my sampire again. I'm using almost the exact skill set you posted.

120 Swords (real)
120 Tactics (real)
120 Parry (real)
120 Bushido (real)
120 Anatomy (real) (Hey, I like it. *Sticks out tongue*)
99 Necro (69 real) (+15 on ring and +15 on bracelet)
66 Chiv (51 real) (+15 on ring)

I'm using a human, and my suit is basic arties from 2 years ago. I changed some stuff around so I'm not even at all 70's anymore. I think everything is 68 or higher. All I have is 45 DCI and 45 HCI. I use 30 SSI on my weapons. That's about all the mods on my suit.

No, I also have Nightsight.

I don't have 180 stamina, I'm not even close. I hope to get there eventually, but right now I think I'm at 155?

The first thing I did on coming back, before I started using my sampire, was make an artificer. Imbuing may actually be more important to a sampire than all the skills listed above.

With just two or three nice imbued weapons (bladed staff and double axe), and that crap suit, in the past couple of weeks I have......

>Gone through the painted caves without vamp form (Yes I forgot to cast it as well. This may turn into a trend...call it "Sampire Light"?)

>Farmed Miasma to DEATH

>Solo'd Barracoon

>Worked meph to last leg solo, then a tamer showed. (not sure I could kill meph solo, but figured I'd try.)

>Solo'd the goblin mini champ, all three rat mini champs, and the fire ele mini champ

>Solo'd a couple greater dragons in destard (I use a chese ball run and heal method, but I still did it.)

I don't have the gear, or the skill yet, to try anything harder. However, if I can do all that with what I've got, you definitly don't need the uber gear to get out there and actually be playing. You may not take peerless right away, but you gotta have goals right?

Basically you can walk unscaythed through any of the non peerless dungeons and solo most anything that isn't a champion/peerless. At least in my experience so far.

I can't wait to build up some cash, start getting some of the higher end stuff that is in use now, and see what else I can take.

I see that Lynk is always talking about soloing Rikktor, so that is on my list for the next Big Boss. There will have to be some higher end gear in play before that happens though.

Let your mind be at ease and have some fun!

 

[Pinco]

arroth, the history of stamina to 180 is not a must

as I said in my guide, the important is reach a good balance between stamina and ssi.
High ssi requires less stamina and vice versa

 

[Podolak]

Just for verification, when I go to this link:

UO Stratics - Weapons

I want to enter my Stamina level in the Dex Field, SSI in the SSI field and hit go, the goal being that my weapon(s) of choice have a swing delay of 1.25 after entering those numbers?

Arroth, my goal is to solo Rikky too. Though I'll start with a swamp dragon first *chuckles*

 

[Lynk]

The trick with Rikki is to hit hard enough to get decent leeches. His resists are all pretty decent, so I didn't really find success until I started spamming the AI.

 

[Podolak]

The trick with Rikki is to hit hard enough to get decent leeches. His resists are all pretty decent, so I didn't really find success until I started spamming the AI.

It seems the highest DPS AI weapon is a longsword, is that what you used?

 

[Taylor]

He's using hatchets.

 

[Arroth Thaiel]

Pinco...

I'm with you on the stamina. I was actually trying to say the same thing. You just did it better.

Podolak...

I'm going to take a wild guess here and say that Lynk used a hatchet.

 

[Lynk]

It seems the highest DPS AI weapon is a longsword, is that what you used?

I do use a hatchet, but am actually in the process of making longswords to use when doing fighting something that I would want to use resist for (like undead spawn).

Max damage with a hatchet is the same as longsword when I have LJ on. But without LJ, longsword has better damage.

 

[[JD]]

Just for verification, when I go to this link:

UO Stratics - Weapons

I want to enter my Stamina level in the Dex Field, SSI in the SSI field and hit go, the goal being that my weapon(s) of choice have a swing delay of 1.25 after entering those numbers?

Arroth, my goal is to solo Rikky too. Though I'll start with a swamp dragon first *chuckles*

yes and remember you want a buffer.

ie, if it takes 150 sta and 30 ssi to swing your weapon at cap you will want to have maybe 165, 175, or even higher sta. that way if you lose sta you dont drop below 1.25 swing speed. you can also have a buffer by adding ssi, like turq ring, ranger aug cloak, tink legs...

the faster weaps (fencing, daisho, radiant scim, etc) will require less to swing at cap and have a buffer

 

[Podolak]

OK so I made the suit and here it is. Let me know how I did, this being my first attempt of course:

Specs:

Physical Resist: 79
Fire Resist: 95
Cold Resist: 70
Poison Resist: 70
Energy Resist: 70
Mana Regen: 2
Lower Mana Cost: 40
Hit Point Regen: 10
Hit Chance Increase: 45
Intelligence Bonus: 10
Damage Increase: 70 (+30 on the weapons)
Mana Increase: 32
Stamina Increase: 32
Defense Chance Increase: 45
Hit Point Increase: 25
Dexterity: 12
Swing Speed Increase: 10 (+whatever on the weapons)

Thank you for looking and critiquing.

The stats are shown with Greater Strength and Greater Agility Potions used. Also, character type = Elf.

 

[Taylor]

Better than my suit...and my sampy runs great. At this point, it's all about finding a template that you're comfortable with. You should be set.

 

[Podolak]

Well I did despise yesterday but forgot to soulstone parry back on (It was being used on my DCI parry mage) but he did pretty well until the coon and then kept dying. I was using the Ornate with:

Repond
max hml
max hss
30 di
25 ssi

I switched to the radiant with:

repond
max hml
max ssi
di
max hit cold area (I was using this for the spawn)

and did a little better at keeping myself alive. I presume if I had parry (instead of ninja actually) I would have lasted longer but I might have wanted to used a weapon that had HLL.

After I put parry back on I did the SA demon spawn and that went rather well actually. Same weapon config for the ornate except demon instead of repond slayer. To do the spawn I used a radiant with hml/hsl/hll/demon/30 di and that worked well also. Now that I think about it when I did the champ I switched back to the radiant because he kept spawning little mobs to kill me.

Apparently I really like radiants.

 

[Lynk]

That is very similar to my suit, except on the woodland pieces I went DI or HCI on all woodland pieces instead of HPR. I wanted my DI capped before equipping a weapon.

Should do just fine.

 

[Garm The Green]

Dude its all bollocks. Just get a set of mace and shield glasses some decent resists 60+ in all and 30-40% DCI. Dont worry too much about having high parry or anatomy.

Get the best DPS you can, use the stratics calculator.
I find LMC at 20% or 40% is critical to maintain spamming, anywhere inbetween doesnt help any more than 20%.

try getting some imbued jewels with DCI/HCI/STR/DI + whatever jewels if you can and you're set.

My sammy is setup with the above, and red dragon scale imbued, cheap cheerful, looks pretty good and allows me to easily solo dread without pots.

The reason why mace and shield are so important is that it allows weaps for single high end mobs to be HSL/HML/DI/HLA/SSI - get a bladed staff like this and hit AI whenever ur health is low for a boost. For others use a daisho or rune blade. Easy!

So my essentials would be:

M&S glasses
Fey Legs
Decent Jewels
60+ armour (try for 65+)
HSL/HML/DI/HLA/SSI weaps with AI/feint
HSL/HML/HLL/SI/DI or HSL/HML/HLL/DI/hit energy area whirwind weaps.

GL dude.

 

[Nastia Cross]

Dude its all bollocks. Just get a set of mace and shield glasses some decent resists 60+ in all and 30-40% DCI. Dont worry too much about having high parry or anatomy.

Get the best DPS you can, use the stratics calculator.
I find LMC at 20% or 40% is critical to maintain spamming, anywhere inbetween doesnt help any more than 20%.

try getting some imbued jewels with DCI/HCI/STR/DI + whatever jewels if you can and you're set.

My sammy is setup with the above, and red dragon scale imbued, cheap cheerful, looks pretty good and allows me to easily solo dread without pots.

The reason why mace and shield are so important is that it allows weaps for single high end mobs to be HSL/HML/DI/HLA/SSI - get a bladed staff like this and hit AI whenever ur health is low for a boost. For others use a daisho or rune blade. Easy!

So my essentials would be:

M&S glasses
Fey Legs
Decent Jewels
60+ armour (try for 65+)
HSL/HML/DI/HLA/SSI weaps with AI/feint
HSL/HML/HLL/SI/DI or HSL/HML/HLL/DI/hit energy area whirwind weaps.

GL dude.

PODO, your suit looks good, don't listen to this guy lol.

 

[Podolak]

Apparently I am an idiot...

The Undead Slayer Talisman was causing the coon to do double damage to ME....

Thanks for smacking me upside the head with that fact Giggs...

 

[Taylor]

lol, everyone forgets to remove it at least once.

 

[Podolak]

lol, everyone forgets to remove it at least once.

Well that makes two mistakes on my first trip out with him.

Undead Trinket vs a Repond
Forgetting to Soulstone parry on.

Woopsie...

 

[Lynk]

Well that makes two mistakes on my first trip out with him.

Undead Trinket vs a Repond
Forgetting to Soulstone parry on.

Woopsie...

I was gonna say.. with that build, suit, and weapon, you should be destroying baracoon. The hardest part about killing him is getting him to stand still.

 

[Podolak]

I was gonna say.. with that build, suit, and weapon, you should be destroying baracoon. The hardest part about killing him is getting him to stand still.

I did get him trapped too. North East corner of Despise there was a one tile wide slit that dead ended, right by the water. Now when he popped his rats on me and they were up on the ledge, would whirlwind still kill them?