Advanced Newbie questions

[puschit]

Hello fellow undead slayers,
I have a few questions regarding this fantastic game:

1) What happens when I get 10 different skills, di I just not get new skills offered anymore or do I get the opportunity to replace one of them?

2) Is the selection of skills on levelup truly random or do specific things show up more frequently? Do the skills I already have influnce what I get offered?

3) How do the enemies / the threat level progress? Is it just a thing that progresses over time or do they level when I do or something similar?

4) I unlocked the library but it is significantly harder than the first stage. Does a run-through change stages in between? Or do I finish the game the stage I start with?

5) When I reset my upgrades, do I get a refund? And if so, is it a full refund? Since the costs go up when I buy something it is hard to plan ahead.

6) With what frequence are those fire thingies that grant perks and gold spawned? Is there a set number of them and when I pick one up, a new one spawns? Or has each of them a respawn timer? Or does a new one spawn every X seconds irregardless of what I do?

[ZedPower]

1) Once you have six weapons, you stop being offered weapons at level up, and it's the same for passives. But you can still pick up upgrades off the floor; they don't replace anything, they just accumulate. So the basic idea is that you generally want to avoid picking up the "free" upgrades until you've maxed out the limit on what you can get from leveling up, unless you've got a good reason to rush the floor stuff. Leveling up once everything is maxed out either gives you a choice of health restoration or money, or if you've unlocked "limit breaking" you get a choice of stacking weapon upgrades instead.

2) All weapons/passives have a hidden rarity stat that determines how often they show up. I don't think what you already have has any effect on what you're offered.

3) Every stage has its own preset waves of enemies that appear at specific times. Some special enemies gain more health as you level up so they remain a threat for the duration of the run, and certain characters increase their Curse stat as they level up, which makes enemies tougher and faster, but in general it's just based on specific milestones on the clock.

4) There's no real set time for when you should be moving on from stage to stage. Stages remain the same unless you unlock modifiers for them later. If you think the library's too hard, you can make some money in the forest first and buy some upgrades. Or just keep trying the library and figuring out various weapon/passive combinations. You're in control of the pace, there are basically no wrong answers.

5) If you reset your upgrades, you get all your money back. Try whatever combination you like as many times as you like. You won't ever actually lose progress.

6) Those special items have a chance to spawn when you destroy light sources (brasiers, candelabra, etc.), and their spawn rate depends on your luck stat.

EDIT: I may have slightly misunderstood question 6. The spawn rates for light sources themselves are affected by Luck, but each stage has a soft cap on how many can exist at one time, at which point their spawn rate becomes very low regardless of your Luck stat. So you generally want to break them so you don't go over that cap... but you may have other matters to attend to (like avoiding damage or reaching fixed powerups). So it's a balancing act.

[puschit]

Thanks very much! Follow-up question regarding 3) though:

At some point I must have picked up one of those thingies that sucks in all of the XP globes because I levelled up 7 or 8 times in a row. After that I saw 2 enemies I haven't seen before and they curshed me soon after. This is where I got the impression that the waves are related to my Level. But maybe my level-boost just coincided with a new level.
Okay, that wasn't actually a qeustion. I guess my question is "are you sure time is the only factor?"

[Crescens]

This is something that you can find out yourself by continuing to play. If you make notes on what appears when you notice a change then you can come up with evidence. The waves normally change on the minute mark.
The one thing that you can try is play the same stage again trying to avoid picking up experience and see if you still encounter those enemies.

[godfather101]

Yes time is the only factor!
BUT: there are items in some levels, which spawn
strong enemies.
You can look them up in the wiki.
2 are rings (golden and silvcer ring), the other 2 are Metaglio left and Metaglio right.
If you pick them up, each of them spawns a hard enemy.
For instance Silver Ring Spawns Moon Atlantean ( https://vampire-survivors.fandom.com/wiki/Moon_Atlantean ).
The other spawn other similiar hard bosses.

And yeah, beside these ("pick up")enemies, everything else is wave based.
For instance the "bosses" (the enemies which can drop treasure chests) spawn at a preset
time stamp. They have special "powers", you can look them up here: https://vampire-survivors.fandom.com/wiki/Enemies?so=search#Boss .
You can look up the wave of enemies for instance for the mad forest here:
https://vampire-survivors.fandom.com/wiki/Mad_Forest#Waves
there you can see what spawns when. ;)

[ZedPower]

Some enemy waves contain either one bigger/stronger variant of a normal monster or some kind of unique mid-boss-type critter. They usually drop a chest and a red gem. Their appearance is entirely tied to a timer milestone, it's not tied to your level at all.

If you move away from these special monsters, they teleport ahead of you after a bit, and they'll stick around until you kill them (or your run ends). What I think happened to you is that one of these big monsters appeared in a previous wave, you sort of inadvertently kept your distance from it until another spawned in a subsequent wave, and they both just happened to converge at your location at the same time. The fact that you had just levelled a bunch was a coincidence.

There are also tough monsters that are always at fixed positions on the maps regardless of your progress on the timer, but they attack when you get close to them, so there's no correlation with your level there either.

Leveling up is almost always good unless you have some sort of effect that increases your Curse stat, and even then it can be good to increase that stat because it causes more enemies to appear, which means you gain levels faster if you can keep up with the increased challenge. (I say "almost always good" because some characters start with a huge bonus in a given stat that they lose quickly after a few levels, and some strategies involve exploiting that huge bonus by avoiding gaining levels at all.)

[puschit]

I am not talking of bosses, it was a new type of enemy that appeared in waves and it appreard in two different colours. Screen was just overloaded with them and I got crushed.
Anyway, it was my most successful run so far, I just couldn't reproduce it yet, so I thought better ask the crowd. I am currently focussed on unlocking stuff by advancing certain weapons to 7.

Thanks again for the replies.

[godfather101]

As said: you can look up the enemies in the wiki.
Just got to the level, go to the minute you were in and there you have
the enemies that crushed you.

[ZedPower]

Ah, I think I see what you mean now. The final 2-3 waves for nearly all stages basically just fill the screen non-stop with tons of tough monsters. The game expects you to have a complete build at that point, and it's the final test for whatever combination of gear you've managed to put together. If you get that far, it means you're doing alright. You just gotta hang on a few more minutes. You've got this!

[chris.ferrantegerard]

1) What happens when I get 10 different skills, di I just not get new skills offered anymore or do I get the opportunity to replace one of them?

You can get offered up to 6 weapons and 6 passive items. Until you have all slots filled, you can get offered a new weapon/item or an upgrade to an existing one. Once you have all slots filled, you will receive offers just for upgrades. Once all weapons/items are fully upgraded, you will receive a choice of floor chicken (heals) or gold bag on level up instead.

One other thing to note is that some levels have bonus items on them. If you pick them up prior to getting 6 items, this will take up one of your item slots. However, if you pick them up after getting 6 items, this will become a bonus item which you can level up like the others.

When you have unlocked Limit Break mode, you can activate that. Instead of getting choice of floor chicken / gold you get choice of getting a minor buff to a weapon (more area, more damage, more ammo, etc.)

2) Is the selection of skills on levelup truly random or do specific things show up more frequently? Do the skills I already have influnce what I get offered?

Some stuff has a lower chance to be offered I think. Each weapon/item has a rarity. Having an existing weapon/item will give you the chance to get offered an upgrade for that weapon/item.

Depending on your luck rating, you can get offered a fourth choice.

3) How do the enemies / the threat level progress? Is it just a thing that progresses over time or do they level when I do or something similar?

Waves are time based. Each level has its own set of fixed spawns. As you play through the stages you'll get used to them. Generally the waves get harder the further you go but some later waves are actually easier than some previous waves and good for grabbing more gems, finding lightsources for floor chicken to heal, etc.

4) I unlocked the library but it is significantly harder than the first stage. Does a run-through change stages in between? Or do I finish the game the stage I start with?

I think Library is often considered easier than Mad Forest. Enemies come from fewer directions. At this point, just run whatever you find can collect the most gold with and spend on upgrades.

5) When I reset my upgrades, do I get a refund? And if so, is it a full refund? Since the costs go up when I buy something it is hard to plan ahead.

You get a full refund. But the Amount upgrade as soon as you can. +1 ammo makes a huge difference.

6) With what frequence are those fire thingies that grant perks and gold spawned? Is there a set number of them and when I pick one up, a new one spawns? Or has each of them a respawn timer? Or does a new one spawn every X seconds irregardless of what I do?

Destroy the light sources on the stage, they drop gold, floor chicken for heals, rosary for screen clear, gem attactor, fire breath, etc..