Killing Neira with Sampire

[Fizzleton]

Hi Folks -

I did some champ hunting for the first time and found of course Piper, but also Semidar and Rikktor to be doable. (Didn't try Oaks and Mephitis yet). Unholy was tough for me, and killing Neira takes some time. Seems not to be worth the time, even death happens during bossfight, but maybe I just don't get it right.

Setup is "classic" sampire with mace: 120 mace & bushido, 110 tacs, 110 parry, 110 resist, 100 necro, 60 chiv. Mace because of costs (cheap scrolls and lvl III mastery). Not max in tac/parry/resist, but since I need some chiv and have no uber-jewels, this setup should do. Have full 70 resist and with blackstaff max ssi, 45 hci, 25 dci, 90 DI. No uber-template, I suppose, but should be ok.

What I learned from other threads and uoguide etc. is: Neira has no slayer vul, what means that it is difficult to reach the 300% damage modifier cap if you don't have max tac & ana on your char; EOO is therefore a must, but will pay off badly if you are hit by the spawn; resists of Neira are low, so you will not profit of AI or elemental weapon; and the spawn will grow as long you don't whirlwind it away.

My probs:
- Neira itself: If no spawn is present, I rarely leech enough life to compensate for "bad luck situations" where several hits from Neira land and I also am strangled etc. Most unattractive situation is if I only have to rely on Neira for life leech and am still lvl 5 poisoned by a rotting corpse from the spawn.
- Since I take a 2-hd blackstaff to whirlwind the spawn, I can't use pots without retreating. Sometimes damage comes so fast that it is better to hope for the next hitting whirlwind than trying to get away to use a pot. Additionally, I don't have enhance pots on my jewels, so I think it wouldn't be very effective. (But maybe I am wrong).
- I would really like to swap between whirlwind weapon when spawn is up, or AI-weapon if Neira is solo. Is it really true that AI doesn't pay off for her? Would test it myself but my resources are too small to just imbue a champ weapon for testing.
- De-curse or de-poison via chiv spells: If you don't cast protection, you get interrupted, and my gear can't compensate the resist loss and also the resist spell loss of protection. Furthermore, while casting, the char stops hitting, so the life leech is even more interrupted (don't have fc on the jewels). And lvl 5 poison - even at highest Karma, you fail a lot with just 75 chiv, it's not an option.

So any hint of the more experienced ones for this champ?

Kind regards, Fizzle

 

[Max Blackoak]

Here you can see her stats and resists: Neira the Necromancer - UOGuide, the Ultima Online Encyclopedia

Neira has pretty low resists, so you heard correctly, armor ignore will not do too much for you.
You should use double strike on her with an undead slayer quarter staff. Either keep up consecrate weapon or use a 100% energy damage quarter staff to hit her lowest resist. Switch to your whirlwind weapon when needed.

strangle, poison or any other damage over time spells should really not matter at all because you should leech back more than you lose.

forget about pots unless you're using a one handed weapon. Maybe you could see if you can get your stamina and ssi high enough to use a warhammer for whirlwind. This will drastically increase your damage output with whirlwind and thus allow you to leech back more hp. Ideally this warhammer would be undead slayer with 100% fire damage (lowest resists of undead creatures).

without protection you really should only use chiv spells to remove curses and cure when you're out of battle.

Finally the one thing I see that I would say needs improvement is your skills:

try to get tactics and resist to 120 and chiv to 80 at least. I found 60 parry to be enough on sampires in general, so you could lower that to make room for the other skills.

Another thing is to keep up counter attack as much as possible, even when running lower parry. You will notice the extra hits when it procures.
Since I didn't see you mention it I would also like to points out that you should always honor Neira. It helps with the damage.

 

[Akiho]

Something I did to help on Neira early on when building up Sampire suits/weapons with little gold available (and have done on a few shards now) is to honor yourself as she starts to throw bones around, then you can just ignore the spawn. With max honor you have more than enough time to kill her, providing you don't use any AoE abilities of course.

In those early times I primarily used a hatchet (I'm sure there's a mace equivalent) for all bosses just purely for maintaining swing speed as my Stam/Dex was so low. Running off occasionally was inevitable. I found AI, although not ideal, was best when gear was not so good as I didn't have access to elemental weapons. But those are just my own experiences, take from it what you will.

The honor thing definitely works as you can keep EoO up on Neira and not worry about the spawn. If your Honor does run out (at max it's about 5 mins of immunity) you can use it again immediately at a reduced amount (about 3 mins Immunity at Level 2 Honor).

 

[BeaIank]

You should only worry about blood oath of Neira's spells and even that can be dealt handily with an enchanted apple.
You will need EoO for her, though, so 60 chiv ain't cutting it. Since you are using mace, you should also be using macing mastery and use stagger on her to debuff her swing speed by -60% for roughly 10 or so seconds. That will significantly slow down her damage output.
When she got spawn up, you can go with momentum strike to deal with them if you are not using a weapon with double strike and whirlwind to bash her to death.

 

[Lord GOD(GOD)]

While it's not a priority, if you want the chance to Remove Curse or Cure with Chivalry, then in your situation cast Evasion before trying.

You have a few things counting against you. No Anatomy means your damage is lower. Plus Black Staffs have low base damage. Plus your Chivalry is low so you're not getting much damage benefit from Enemy of One.

Neira runs out of Mana really easily and becomes pretty useless as her only real threat is Blood Oath. Try the fight in Wraith Form (assuming you can get some Spirit Speak on the template) or with Hit Mana Drain on a weapon.

I personally think Armour Ignore is the best option on her. A few heavy hits that drain mana render her useless.

As for the spawn, you can use an Equip Last Weapon macro to swap between your Whirlwind and Armour Ignore weapons, and Enemy of One will de-activitie as soon as you cast it if you're in trouble. Personally I'd just Armour Ignore the spawn though.

 

[dingomate]

Honor neira, pull out the fire axe and go to town. Don't need to switch weps this does more dmg than armor ignore imo

 

[Max Blackoak]

Honor neira, pull out the fire axe and go to town. Don't need to switch weps this does more dmg than armor ignore imo

he uses macefighting

 

[swroberts]

1. You may not like this .. but dump mace for swords... Then level 3 mastery and with 120 swords/120 tactics, spam onslaught- which will drop her resist(matching elemental damage of weapon) 20 points for 6 seconds.... Equates to 4 double strikes with an double axe. Unless it has been nerfed... Havent done spawns in a while..
2. Make a high energy double axe... You can use shadow runic, and I forget what to select, but you want to get to select the name... "Of quality"... Then grind out 30 at a time till u get the energy 60 physical 40 ... Fire is ok too and you can enhance a 60/40 fire with bronze to 100% fire...
4. Wear the conjurer's talisman, that way you can an max out your weapon and the talisman will cover undead Slayer..
3. Get your cook to make apples and carry 25.. should get u through ...

 

[swroberts]

Oh the double axe has double strikes and whilrwind... So with talisman, never have to switch weapons

 

[dingomate]

he uses macefighting

TLDR lol

 

[The Doctor]

For this boss if I didn't have swordsmanship. I would just imbue UBWS on a 100% fire dmg Double Axe because it has no slayer and a lot of spawn. I used to down her here and there with my sampire before masteries even came out. Loved doing the spawn there because you could pop evade, run in room then around corner and wait while they all group up and jump out spamming Whirlwind. Then watch them all fall hahahhaha good times back then. Boss was easy honor with undead trinket and have hit fire area on wep and throw out WW when it got thick. I always kept evade up on cooldown and confidence rest of time for heals from hpr and parry.

 

[Fizzleton]

wow, thx for all the input folks

Will do some data mining. Wasn't for example aware that effectiveness of EOO is depending on chiv level. Also did not know the exact effect of stagger (- 60% swing speed for 10s is really good; I used it on Neira and found that I had less problems in receiving damage, although I can't confirm that promised "massive extra damage dealt" - so it takes the same time, but you have less probs). Why don't they give such numbers on uo.com?? Seriously; sometimes it seems you have to join a secret order to get uo wisdom.

Concerning parry = 60: I thought to be smart in getting parry to 120 (if I get the scroll). 40% blocking chance is a lot of damage that you can avoide! But you seem to state: Don't care about incoming damage, if you do enough damage (and sampire is designed not for avoiding damage, but dealing damage), you will always leech enough to be safe. Well, rng is a pancake; I have 120 weapon skill, 45 hci AND 66% hld (mace & shield plus imbued weapon), and even then I can miss 2 or 3 hits in a row. 60 parry with 120 bushido leaves you with 22% block chance with 2-handed weapon, that's not that much.

But anyway, enjoyed your input very much, kind regards to all! Fizzle

 

[Lord GOD(GOD)]

It's personal preference. You can play less defence and more offence or vice versa. Most people go for damage over defence as it means finishing the fight quicker. But that doesn't always matter (If for example you're in an instanced encounter). There's no out and out rule for sampires other than vamp form and bushido. There used to be many variations that were about avoiding and reducing damage using evasion, hla, feint etc. Those ways still all work but people forget that because of people always comparing speed runs.

 

[klapios]

I would definitely drop some parry for higher chiv, and use a good Hammer Pick for Neira( If you are not hitting for 90+ on double strike I would use AI instead) If you can find one that has mana drain on it, I would use that aswell. Mana drain and hit area would be ideal. If you have a conjurer's trinket that will be the icing on the cake for the encounter. Stagger will help but she doesn't really hit hard enough that I would worry about it.

When she spawns make sure you get a chance to honor her, since she has no slayer this is a huge damage boost. If she casts bless before you get a chance too, just walk away and wait for her to regen and come back.
Then just chain AI's, with mana drain her mana will be gone pretty fast. If she cast blood oath just run and come back after she expired. To handle her spawn, just use momentum strike. If you get more than one lich lord or rotting corpse switch to your undead slayer and focus those down. With conjurer's trinket, momentum strike will be enough to take care of spawn.

I find the spawn to be harder than Neira herself when you do the encounter w/o magic resist.