Help a noob out with samurai vampire

[Bara]

Hi. I haven't played in years and was looking forward to trying out a samurai. I always liked the idea of necromancer/warrior, so this was a pretty logical combination for me. Here is what I'm thinking of.

110 Swords
110 Parry
110 Tactics
100 Bushido
100 Necromancy
90 Anatomy
80 Spirit speak

I plan on getting a bonded lesser Hiryu as soon as possible. I run with a friend capable of vetting and ressing a pet, so I figure, why not. I have enough spirit speak to also run with a viper or dark wisp as my necromancy pet, depending on need. Lastly, I am a human, so I have the jack of all trades feature for 20 focus and med to help give me a touch of passive mana and stamina regin, and also to cast Nature's fury if I really need to.

Stats are giving me a problem, as I don't have any pluses for account age. I was thinking of going high dexterity for swing speed because I depend on life leech and mana leech. Basically enough int to get about 40ish mana with my gear and then as much strength and hp I can muster.

My intended playstyle for this character is 100% pvm, melee style. I play with a farily casual group of real life friends who are all restarting the game, and we just want to be able to go hunting and eventually do something like peerless bosses once we get fully developed. My personal goal is to be able to stand toe-to-toe with a greater dragon someday.

I would like my character to be able to "tank" fairly well against most monsters and eventually work up to some of the peerless bosses. I'm not looking to dominate or anything, just to be able to have fun my way while getting the job done. Is it possible to do so with this template? Even if I don't have the benifit of an ideal end-game suit and expensive powerscrolls?

Lastly, speaking of suits, I want to try to maximixe my lower mana cost and defense chance increase while having as high resists as possible (poison being my "dump" resist if I have to have one).

Thanks much for any and all help!

Edit: i read that some people try to mix in chilvary with their samurai vampires, but I really don't feel like having to juggle my karma, and besides, I love the concept of an evil samurai and covet the title of Dread Lord.

 

[Farsight]

Welcome back, and nice to see you did your homework. Now all you need are creative workarounds to the problem of being new.

First of all, your template is good for now, assuming you're on a budget. If you can afford the 120 for swords, bushido and parry, do so. Otherwise put them near the top of your shopping list.

The absolute top of your shopping list should be a soul seeker or similarly fast weapon. Since you won't likely be able to max out your dex with items or power scrolls, the operative term is "fast". If you aren't swinging at max speed, then you're losing a lot of the power of leeches. Soul seeker has the advantage of being relatively cheap (a new player may think 200k-400k is expensive now like it was then, but their opinion usually changes very soon), having mana and stamina leeches, and can swing at maximum speed even at low dexterity. With that as a starting point and your template somewhat in order, you'll be able to tank a lot of mid to high range creatures in no time.

The downfall of that is you'll need to avoid the ice dungeon, since soul seeker is all cold damage. And you'll need to avoid fighting undead with the soul seeker since they'll do double damage to you.

If you plan on only PvM, then a hiryu may be good, but a swamp dragon is even better. With the swamp dragon, you can get dragon barding and reduce damage done to you by 20%. That is a huge difference in anyone's standard.

With fast weapons in mind (radiant scimitar, katana, or faster, all with SSI), you can get away with the following stats:
100 str
90-100 dex
25-35 int

I added in some flexibility to dex and int because some of the weapons specials can use up most of your mana in a flash.

After you get settled, then every single upgrade to your suit and stats should go toward your dexterity. That will enable you to use powerful but slower weapons like the ornate axe (don't forget the swing speed increase!).

In fact, dexterity is so important, that before I got my stats scrolls, I reduced my strength to 85 to get 15 more points of dexterity. But as a front line warrior, the added damage and hit points of more strength is more useful to most people.

One question for you, where are you and your friends playing?

 

[T_Amon_from_work]

I'm without the ability to login and check ... but are you sure the SS is 100% cold? I believe it's 100% Physical damage. It is a Repond slayer and good with quite a few foe in general.

<slight rant> I wish to Hades I could get my mobo back! It's on RMA to the vendor and I wanna play UO, dadgum it! I'm now closing on 8 weeks unplayable for lag (5 weeks) and bad motherboard (3 weeks).

 

[Arch Magus]

I'm without the ability to login and check ... but are you sure the SS is 100% cold? I believe it's 100% Physical damage. It is a Repond slayer and good with quite a few foe in general.

<slight rant> I wish to Hades I could get my mobo back! It's on RMA to the vendor and I wanna play UO, dadgum it! I'm now closing on 8 weeks unplayable for lag (5 weeks) and bad motherboard (3 weeks).

yep, 100% cold.
I colored mine Tokuno blue for that reason.

 

[slowman]

One question for you, where are you and your friends playing?

Hey, I'm one of the friends that restarted UO with him, we are on Legends. 2 of us were on Atlantic, but we transfered so we could build a guild city.

I'm also glad to be back! after an 8 year absence! I was amazed my account was still there.

peace

 

[Kellgory]

The only downside I see in your template is that you don't have a way to crossheal or rez anyone. Just hope your not the last person standing.

 

[Bara]

Welcome back, and nice to see you did your homework. Now all you need are creative workarounds to the problem of being new.

First of all, your template is good for now, assuming you're on a budget. If you can afford the 120 for swords, bushido and parry, do so. Otherwise put them near the top of your shopping list.

The absolute top of your shopping list should be a soul seeker or similarly fast weapon. Since you won't likely be able to max out your dex with items or power scrolls, the operative term is "fast". If you aren't swinging at max speed, then you're losing a lot of the power of leeches. Soul seeker has the advantage of being relatively cheap (a new player may think 200k-400k is expensive now like it was then, but their opinion usually changes very soon), having mana and stamina leeches, and can swing at maximum speed even at low dexterity. With that as a starting point and your template somewhat in order, you'll be able to tank a lot of mid to high range creatures in no time.

The downfall of that is you'll need to avoid the ice dungeon, since soul seeker is all cold damage. And you'll need to avoid fighting undead with the soul seeker since they'll do double damage to you.

If you plan on only PvM, then a hiryu may be good, but a swamp dragon is even better. With the swamp dragon, you can get dragon barding and reduce damage done to you by 20%. That is a huge difference in anyone's standard.

With fast weapons in mind (radiant scimitar, katana, or faster, all with SSI), you can get away with the following stats:
100 str
90-100 dex
25-35 int

I added in some flexibility to dex and int because some of the weapons specials can use up most of your mana in a flash.

After you get settled, then every single upgrade to your suit and stats should go toward your dexterity. That will enable you to use powerful but slower weapons like the ornate axe (don't forget the swing speed increase!).

In fact, dexterity is so important, that before I got my stats scrolls, I reduced my strength to 85 to get 15 more points of dexterity. But as a front line warrior, the added damage and hit points of more strength is more useful to most people.

One question for you, where are you and your friends playing?

Thanks so much for the awesome information. This will really help me set a solid base from which to upgrade from. I'm going to have to do some more homework, and find a fast, two-handed sword. off the top of my head, I'm thinking daisho and crescent blade.

And as my friend said, we are on Legends

 

[Bara]

I wanted to update those who helped me, and to thank you all again.

After a lot of struggling, and work, my samurai finally "clicked". I'm able to take out arctic ogre lords in seconds, wade knee deep through troglodites without breaking a sweat (spamming whirlwind and momentum strike). I managed to tank two dragons at once; it was huge for me (I know it's probably not a big deal to most of you, but it was a nice milestone for me). This template was really challenging to put together for me, but it's so satisfying now that everything is working well.

Here is what I have now (some of it is from items)

115 swords
115 bushido
110 parry (still hunting for a ps)
100 tactics
100 necromancy
100 anatomy
70 chilvary

All 70 resists in vampiric form except for fire which is around 60
max Defense chance increase (so amazing in pvm)

After a lot of frustration, I finally dropped spirit speak in favor of chilvary. I find the ability to concecrate, EoO and cure lethal poison far outweighs the benifits of spirit speak. Also, since I'm human, I have virtually 20 points in spirit speak which helps if i need to curse weapon in a bad situation. I'm carrying around some + to chiv stuff and a luna lance incase I'm the last man standing and need to res my friends, which is a great perk.

My main weapons are a pretty nice ornate axe with high ssi and mana leech, and soul seeker (which is brilliant, thanks for the advice). I'm still looking for that elusive ornate axe that has everything a young sampire could want, but regretablly no on on Legends seems to be crafting/vendoring these. All I can find is one handers.

Well, thanks again, everyones advice really helped me out.

 

[Saris]

alot less in number but a few still left huh? Also on Atl I have burned some val hammers its not easy to get the perfect ornate mine could use some mod changes for sure.