Current state of sampire template?

[Roland of Atlantic]

Hi all!

I have been contemplating changing my bushido/chiv warrior (who dies too much) into a sampire (which hopefully will die less).

I read the Stratics sampire page, and I'm wondering how far behind the times the article is. I'm sure that OSI has managed to nerf the heck out of them, and I'd like to know if the sampire is still a decent template. I know for instance that one aspect of the article is outdated, which is the concept of using lightning strike and seeing mana and stamina leach on the weapon work for the special attack. I use the soul seeker currently, and the life leech and mana leech don't work while using lightning strike, only during normal striking.

What is the most current form of the sampire? What do I need to have as far as skills, weapons, armor, jewelry, etc? Is the sampire still able to stand toe to toe with all that doom and peerless has to offer?

 

[Farsight]

The Sampire guide (currently located here) Was written about a year ago but is still accurate in relation to the stats and skills. The items, however, are a completely different ballgame after the Stygian Abyss package (i.e. artifacts with swing speed increase and imbued items making things a lot easier)

Life leech and mana leech should work during lightning strikes as well. The only weapon property that doesn't mesh well with another is a hit-spell effect doesn't work with a slayer-effect.

The most current form is ... variable. There are a lot of different methods out there, and they're all effective.

 

[Zalan]

Sampire guide is still good. & there some more recent info to in the All Skills FAQ stickied at the top of the forum. Both Linky, & Pinco give some very usefull info.

 

[Roland of Atlantic]

Ok then... I need to know what the best way to get there from here, so to speak. Right now, my skillset is:

Swords: 101
Bushido: 100
Chivalry: 71
Healing: 88
Anatomy: 101
Tactics: 100
Focus: 100

From what I understand about the sampire, I'll need to get to something like:

Swords: 120 (scroll is expensive, but at least it's not magery!)
Bushido: 115
Chivalry: same-ish
Necromancy: 120 (any links to the best spells to cast to learn fastest?)
Parry: 115 (I have 67 points on a soulstone, so I have a little head start)
Other skills I'm not sure about: the rest

At this point, I need someone that has played a sampire a long time, and has killed (and been killed by) loads of bosses to tell me:
A) what to use the rest of the skill points for
B) how to get them in a logical way from my current setup without making the character useless in the transition
C) list their armor suit.
I've read over all the sampire pages, and there is too much confusion and contradicting viewpoints for me to know what to do. I can adjust later after I get some kills under my belt and learn how to fight using this style. I want the best ALL AROUND template, so I don't need to switch armor or skills to fight different things.

I need to start out cheap, but I need to know what the perfect suit is, so that if a guildie offers to imbue for me, I know what I want. I don't know anything about imbuing and what fits where... So tell me what the perfect skillset is and what armor/jewels/weapon I'm shooting for, and I'll be happy.

in the interest of starting cheap, I have fey leggings, aegis of grace, and soul seeker. I have about 600k gold to put together the rest of my noob sampire suit.

 

[Stupid Miner]

All the info you're looking for and more has already been answered. Try the search bar in the forum.

 

[Roland of Atlantic]

All the info you're looking for and more has already been answered. Try the search bar in the forum.

Thats the problem I have. It's been answered, then re-answered, then argued, then rehashed, then argued some more, then revised, then revised again due to patches, then debated some more, ad nauseum. I could spend months reading all that and go nuts, but I was hoping ONE kind soul would give me ONE opinion that's current, that will show me the way to get from point A to point B as painlessly as possible. I know you're an expert now, but try to think back to when you were new, and you really needed advice, and nobody could spare the time to give it to you. Thanks for your patience, and any advice you may have.

 

[Zalan]

Right now after reading a few other sampire threads I got inspired. So, I branched out to another shard namely Chessy. Were I`m building the Poor Poor Man Sampire. Took a New Character out to the Lost Lands collected the money & Crystalline Blackrock left by others. Turned around & sold the Crystalline Blackrock dirt cheap 20 piece for 1 mil. Bought a 120 Mace for 300k, 110 Bushido for 35k, Virtue armor piece for 5k each. Then spent about 215k on the donation crap for the humilty cloak quest. Roughly 500k invested.

Looking at this for a template:

120 Mace
110 Bushido
90 Chivalry
100 Tac
100 Ana
100 Healing leaning toward 100 SS
100 Necro

Stats
100 Str 120 Dex 10 Ints + 20 Mana from being an Elf

Like I said the Poor Poor Mans Sampire lol

 

[Stupid Miner]

I could spend months reading all that and go nuts,

Precisely! It requires a *lot* of reading to become a good sampire.

And, just so you know, pretty much all the templates are right, and wrong too! The reasons are much more important than the actual given templates.

 

[Roland of Atlantic]

Zalan, thanks for the info, and for having the courtesy to help me out.

SM, thanks for smugly blowing a brother off. You probably have all the info, and probably play a good sampire, but telling me like that is kinda like drinking a nice cold Coke in front of someone who is thirsty, and extolling the virtues of making the right decision when it comes to liquid refreshment, and telling them to go do the research to find out which beverage is right for them. Like Mr. Miyagi telling Daniel-san "go read book, learn block, learn kick, no right way, no wrong way, just do." and then go clip his bonzais or something. Thanks. I will be a good sampire one day, but it will just be a longer and more frustrating task. The next time a noob comes up to me at the bank and asks for help learning how to do anything that I know how to do, I'm going to tell them "http://uo.stratics.com" and walk away.

 

[Stupid Miner]

Zalan, thanks for the info, and for having the courtesy to help me out.

SM, thanks for smugly blowing a brother off. You probably have all the info, and probably play a good sampire, but telling me like that is kinda like drinking a nice cold Coke in front of someone who is thirsty, and extolling the virtues of making the right decision when it comes to liquid refreshment, and telling them to go do the research to find out which beverage is right for them. Like Mr. Miyagi telling Daniel-san "go read book, learn block, learn kick, no right way, no wrong way, just do." and then go clip his bonzais or something. Thanks. I will be a good sampire one day, but it will just be a longer and more frustrating task. The next time a noob comes up to me at the bank and asks for help learning how to do anything that I know how to do, I'm going to tell them "http://uo.stratics.com" and walk away.

Hehe, the metaphor's too amusing that I wont bother to debate it.

I should probably remember that new players want concrete information, not abstractions. Most people don't like dealing with abstractions.
The truth is in the abstractions. Examples can get close-ish.

I suppose for the same reason people don't like math, they don't like abstract answers.

 

[[JD]]

The only weapon property that doesn't mesh well with another is a hit-spell effect doesn't work with a slayer-effect.

What types of hit spell effects don't mesh with slayers?

I made a Radiant Scimmy for the invasion:

Ophidian slayer
HML 55
HSL 44
DI 45
Hit Area Fire 44

Is Hit (Area) included in that?
What about Hit Lower Attack?


Or are you talking only about the single target nuke hit spells? (harm, lightning, fireball, etc)

 

[[JD]]

To OP:

These are sampire staples/minimums in every (most) template:

120 Weapon
120 Bush
100 Tactics
60-75 Chivalry
99 Necro

These are options:

100 Anatomy
90 or 100 Healing
90 or 100 SS
100 or 120 resist
100 or 120 Parry

Start out with cheaper 110 or 115 scrolls if you can't afford 120's.

You want 45 HCI and DCI or as close as possible

Enough Sta/Dex to swing your weapon at cap even after you've taken a few hits

Weapon should have Hit Mana Leech and Hit Stamina Leech.

If you want a less expensive setup I suggest going with faster weapons so less SSI/STA is required to accelerate them to cap. This will allow you to use inexpensive DCI artifacts instead of needing to run out and imbue a ton of stuff just to get started

You will want a whirlwind weapon, and a single target boss weapon with Feint at the minimum

Rushing out the door so I'm sure I missed plenty, but it can be edited/added later by others. At least this gives you some answers.

And Read The FAQ

 

[Obsidian]

This is what I would start with:

120 Mace Fighting
120 Bushido
120 Parrying
100 Tactics
100 Anatomy
99 Necromancy
61 Chivalry

Macing because it is a cheap scroll and getting 120 weapon skill is the most important thing for you to start with. Plus, mace weapons are good and even better now that you can craft exceptional black staffs. You can use a lesser bushido and parrying scroll initially. I use a skill jewel (ring or brace) to push Chiv to at least 70. It isn't required, but you will fizzle less on Enemy of One (EOO).

For your suit, grab Excel and map it out. You want 70/95/70/70/70 resists to start and DCI at 45. Remember, vamp form gives you a -25 fire resist penalty. Find a way to push total stamina (dex plus stamina increase items) past 150 and preferably past 180.

You can certainly make it better with HCI, LMC, and SSI on items, but the above is what I would start with. You can use a cheap Heart of the Lion and Fey legs to get you 35 DCI and then have the other pieces imbued. You will eventually want to go for something like Thunderz suit (lots of modifications possible, but he's got the best pictorial on these forums). However, that should be considered a long-term goal and not the initial suit requirements for a beginning sampire.

Hope that also gives you more to think about. You can start a sampire at a reasonable level and then go from there. I've upgraded my suit four times now and i keep finding new ways to make my guy more effective. He's my favorite char for solo play.

-OBSIDIAN-

 

[Roland of Atlantic]

Wow, now I'm learning something!

DC, Since I am a swordsman, I have a soul seeker, and it works well for the mana leech, life leech and stamina leech, repond slayer is great, since a lot of enemies are reponds (learned not to use it on undead or in the ice dungeon! ) Whirlwind is a great thing to have in high spawn areas, but there are two things that I'm wondering about. The first thing is that I have read in Pinko's sampire page that it is no good to have the SSI on your weapon (for a reason that I don't quite understand), that it's better to have it in your armor. secondly, on a perhaps related note, I notice that when I use my soul seeker with lightning strike, it doesn't life leech at all. When I use it normally, or use it with whirlwind, it will life leech.

Obsidian, Do you have a link For Thunderz suit so I can see his example? Also, when you die in vampiric form, do you rez that way, or do you need to recast? Assuming you need to recast, is it a pain when you can't get to your corpse (and reagents), or do you include LRC into the armor?

Thank you guys for helping!

 

[[JD]]

SSI is SSI..

That said, if you free imbues off your weapon like SSI or DI you can put other important things, like HLA or slayers

 

[Stupid Miner]

Wow, now I'm learning something!

DC, Since I am a swordsman, I have a soul seeker, and it works well for the mana leech, life leech and stamina leech, repond slayer is great, since a lot of enemies are reponds (learned not to use it on undead or in the ice dungeon! ) Whirlwind is a great thing to have in high spawn areas, but there are two things that I'm wondering about. The first thing is that I have read in Pinko's sampire page that it is no good to have the SSI on your weapon (for a reason that I don't quite understand), that it's better to have it in your armor.

If you can get all the SSI you need on your armor instead of your weapon, it's a good idea to do that.
Same goes for DI, if you can get 100% DI on your armor, it helps a lot.
In my opinion, if you can get all the SSI you need on your armor, then you're using weapon that's too weak, and should switch to a slower, heavier weapon.

Secondly, on a perhaps related note, I notice that when I use my soul seeker with lightning strike, it doesn't life leech at all. When I use it normally, or use it with whirlwind, it will life leech.

Whirlwind hits several enemies so the effect is more noticeable.
The life leech formula is annoying and complex, sometimes you'll leech 0 hp, and with a low damage weapon, you will only leech 0 or 1 or 2 damage or so, per hit.

Also, when you die in vampiric form, do you rez that way, or do you need to recast? Assuming you need to recast, is it a pain when you can't get to your corpse (and reagents), or do you include LRC into the armor?

You rez as a human (or elf) and will need to recast. If your corpse is surrounded, embrace Honor (causes enemies to ignore you).
When you're training you might die too often (within 5 mins of the last Honor). In those cases just carry an insured pair of arcane boots.
LRC is a waste.

If you haven't already, here's some mandatory reading:
The Samurai
The Sampire

 

[Roland of Atlantic]

SSI is SSI..

That said, if you free imbues off your weapon like SSI or DI you can put other important things, like HLA or slayers

Pinco's page says

"Swing Speed Increase: increase your swing speed BUT if you put it in the weapon every leech properties will be scaled. Use this in the weapon ONLY if you can survive with a scaled leech. For example the leafblade at 30% SSI has the cap to 50% on leech rate instead of 68."

Which leads me to believe that my soul seeker at 60% SSI might be leeching a lot less than it should...

Once I made the mistake of using the pixie swatter in oaks (area effect weapon), which backfired on me as I took out a shadow wisp, and managed to get 3 pixies and a normal wisp to kill me as I tried to outrun the negative karma associated with killing pixies... I think I'll avoid area weapons in places that have non-combatants from now on.

 

[Obsidian]

Miner answered your question on rezing. No, I don't put LRC on the suit. It would take 5 mod slots across my armor to get it to 100 and that is too much for an occasional caster.

Here is the latest suit Thunderz posted: http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j155/aaaaaaaaaaqqqqqqqqqq/hollywood2.png. It's posted in the thread "Is anyone actually USING Tink Legs in a template" also on the Warrior forum. You probably need to save the picture and then enlarge it to read it. I need to put together a view of my suit. It's not as uber as Thunderz, but it would give you an idea of a middle ground. Connor Graham uses an Assassins suit as his sampire's base armor (unless he changed it recently). I am not sure what Miner, Lynk, or Lord GOD use. And there are many other super experienced sampires that frequent these boards that often mention the pieces they use. Keep reading and looking for hidden tips like those.

I've been playing solid for two years since returning to UO (1999-2002 then back in 2008). Everyday I learn (or re-learn) something new about the game. Keep reading the threads in this forum. The topic may seem unrelated, but you never know when something recommended ends up being the answer to a critical issue you face in the future.

-OBSIDIAN-

 

[Lynk]

I'm currently rehashing my scrolled out sampire to the following:

120 Sword
120 Tact
120 Anat
120 Bush
100 LJ (can be changed w/ parry/heal/resist/SS as I see fit, usually LJ tho)
84 Necro (15 necro on brace)
56 Chiv

40 ssi (30 ssi on ornate, 5 ssi cloak, 5 ssi on ring). End up with 182 stamina, 45 hci/dci and 100 DI without a weapon equipped. Suit is 40 LMC and with 300 wep skill points I have enough mana to do 2 crushing blows at double mana cost. So with 50 hit mana leech, in theory, I should be able to chain crushing blow endlessly assuming mana leech goes off 50% of the time. I'm sure in practice I'll have to occasionally switch crushing for lightning strike.

Once it is fully functional I'll post armor/mods and some damage output figures from Dreadhorn and other peerless.

Oh - and before anyone else gets a chance, I'm dubbing this the Sampirjack.

 

[[JD]]

Roland, yes if you have SSI on your weapons the leeches will scale - at time of imbue. My advice if you are using a fast weap you can leave SSI off and put extra mods on weap. Or as Stupid (who is actually quite brilliant) suggested, use slower weaps, put 30% in addition to what SSI is on your suit. I'm in the process of building a template which will let me do either.

Lynk, is LJ part of base damage? (tactics, anatomy, str...)

In my messing around with it, the difference between GM LJ and JOAT was like 4-5 DPS. If it's part of base dmg however that could be significant when you count up the 300% dmg

 

[Lynk]

Roland, yes if you have SSI on your weapons the leeches will scale - at time of imbue. My advice if you are using a fast weap you can leave SSI off and put extra mods on weap. Or as Stupid (who is actually quite brilliant) suggested, use slower weaps, put 30% in addition to what SSI is on your suit. I'm in the process of building a template which will let me do either.

Lynk, is LJ part of base damage? (tactics, anatomy, str...)

In my messing around with it, the difference between GM LJ and JOAT was like 4-5 DPS. If it's part of base dmg however that could be significant when you count up the 300% dmg

My understanding is that it is part of base damage, so it should be pretty significant with the 300% and then additional 50% from crushing.

 

[Stupid Miner]

My understanding is that it is part of base damage, so it should be pretty significant with the 300% and then additional 50% from crushing.

It is base damage, but, in my opinion, tends to be insignificant.

GM LJ is 30% damage increase, but this applies to the Weapon Damage: so, take the Weapon Damage from whichever axe you use (it's in the item property display) multiply it by 0.3 and add it to your base damage which is in the Stat bar.

Adds about 5 damage to double axes, and 5-6 for ornate axes.
This is before damage increase is applied from spells and such.

With max damage increase from spells and perfection and such, it'd be an extra 15 damage before resists are applied.

In PvP it'd be 5-6 * 0.3 = 1-2 extra damage if they have 70s resist
Crushing blow would be 5-6*1.50*0.3 = 2-3 extra damage

If your enemy isnt corpse skin proof...
Normal hit: 5-6 * 0.45 = 2-3 extra damage
Crushing Blow: 5-6 * 1.50 * 0.45 = 3-4 extra damage

It's... pretty mediocre for 100 skill points. Might have a bit better luck in PvM (Double strike = 30*Resist damage), but even then 100 points can probably be better spent.

 

[Lynk]

How sure are you on how the DMG inc from items/spells is applied?

I'm inclined to think that I'll see more hefty of an increase than 15 points per swing.

Once I've completed the suit I'll test damage with LJ and then without and record results.

 

[Stupid Miner]

How sure are you on how the DMG inc from items/spells is applied?

I'm inclined to think that I'll see more hefty of an increase than 15 points per swing.

Once I've completed the suit I'll test damage with LJ and then without and record results.

100% actually. checked on Test Center.

ok, 90% ... since i never really trust data, even my own.

 

[Lord GOD(GOD)]

My last one on my main shard was pretty much heading towards the maxed out LJ/Ornate/sampire. Except I couldn't be bothered to train up LJ again and turned it into a Throwing/wammy instead.

I've kinda gone off playing sampires, but still have one on a secondary shard that is a 'training' sampire I built for a friend, I liked the simplicity and copied it over there. That one is a 150 Str/150 HP Fencing one, built entirely for Leafblades, with the Bush/Parry/Resist rounded setup.

 

[Nyses]

SSI is SSI..

That said, if you free imbues off your weapon like SSI or DI you can put other important things, like HLA or slayers

Pinco's page says

"Swing Speed Increase: increase your swing speed BUT if you put it in the weapon every leech properties will be scaled. Use this in the weapon ONLY if you can survive with a scaled leech. For example the leafblade at 30% SSI has the cap to 50% on leech rate instead of 68."

Which leads me to believe that my soul seeker at 60% SSI might be leeching a lot less than it should...

Once I made the mistake of using the pixie swatter in oaks (area effect weapon), which backfired on me as I took out a shadow wisp, and managed to get 3 pixies and a normal wisp to kill me as I tried to outrun the negative karma associated with killing pixies... I think I'll avoid area weapons in places that have non-combatants from now on.

The statement in Bold above in not accurate. Let me explain. It would be an accurate statement if it only included Mana Leech. Mana leech is the only leech property that is scaled down with SSI on the weapon. So in the case of Mana leech, Yes it is better to have the SSI on the Armor.

Life and Stamina Leech both have a 50% cap on every weapon I have ever imbued, regardless of the SSI or lack therof on the weapon.

I only point that out, because for me, I usually will put SSI on my weapons (that need it) as I have more flexabilty in my armor, including replacing it whenever I feel the need.

Edit: after double checking, it is Mana and Life leech affected by SSI, but Stam leech is not.

 

[Stupid Miner]

The statement in Bold above in not accurate. Let me explain. It would be an accurate statement if it only included Mana Leech. Mana leech is the only leech property that is scaled down with SSI on the weapon. So in the case of Mana leech, Yes it is better to have the SSI on the Armor.

Life and Stamina Leech both have a 50% cap on every weapon I have ever imbued, regardless of the SSI or lack therof on the weapon.

I only point that out, because for me, I usually will put SSI on my weapons (that need it) as I have more flexabilty in my armor, including replacing it whenever I feel the need.

Both Mana and Life Leech *should* be adjusted up or down with imbuing.
Whether life leech does? Dunno, haven't tried.

Yep, Life Leech adjusts at the same rate as Mana Leech.

 

[Nyses]

Both Mana and Life Leech *should* be adjusted up or down with imbuing.
Whether life leech does? Dunno, haven't tried.

Ok I just checked it and My Bad. Life leech also scales, I guess I don't imbue that property much.

So, if you put both life and Mana leech, SSI is better in the armor.

I only ever put Stam and Mana leech on the Sammy weaps. But lets be honest, on a Whirlwind weapon, will you notice 81 man/life leech versus 62, (was on a double axe with 0 SSI and one with 30 SSI)? A good WW will auto max you in everything.