Becoming a vampire was too satisfying

[Bone Tomahawk]

So I'm not a very knowledgeable nor experienced player, and I like the Necromancer class. I played it many times, and failed many times. Insanity usually halts a lot of my runs and eventually my commanders all get killed. Makes sense, I thought, they were just petty mages.

However, this time I got lucky. There was a Old Ruined Castle close to my territory and I was lucky enough to get the Blood Rite for my first Mastery Ritual. I performed for my main necromancer and he became a vampire. I didn't think much of it at the time. It was cool, I guess, and it provides me a way to rid of insanity, not bad.

I was exploring with my 80 strong army of minor summons and skeletons when suddenly my neighbour druid appeared with an army of almost 300 units suddenly hopped out of the forest and attacked my Vampire's army. At that point I was devastated. I finally managed to transform into a vampire and he has to die right away? Why is this game SO CRUEL! I thought.

When the battle began, things were even worse than I had anticipated. The druid army had massive animals of every kind leading their attack. Bears, giant moose and tigers led the charge and trampled my pathetic undead skeletons and archers to death while only losing a few of their siege animals.

At this point I was about to close the game, it was an absolute slaughter. But I thought to myself that I should at least finish watching to honor the death of my first vampire. He was surrounded, but I was stunned when he killed the full health bear with one single attack. He did the same with the moose and the tigers and Barechested Warriors who tried to attack him. He even drained their health so much that he had twice his maximum HP! I couldn't even believe my eyes, as I was used to playing the Baron, and quantity usually meant victory in my experience. But he was singlehandedly killing their entire army! One by one, he killed every single enemy who stood in his way, eventually the entire two hundred. It was without a doubt one of the most satisfying thing I've ever experienced in a video game. He alone stood victorious, and I used the Raise Dead skill to turn all his victims into minions.

Here he is now, the insane ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥:
http://imgur.com/U32yo8y
He got a Robe of Shadows from one of the Mound Kings that he summoned which now makes him practically invincible to non magic attacks, and nice strength boots and protection ring from the dead druids.

Thank you so much for this game, I don't think I've ever felt this powerful in a video game before. Going from a Petty necromancer who was careful to avoid groups of Deer to slaughtering entire armies alone. I felt like Sauron or something, destroying enemies like they are just ants.

[Jakalor]

I must say, that is indeed one badass vampire.
One thing to note, your vampire is Immortal and not only will heal any wounds dealt to him over time, but will also reform in the Old Castle Ruin that you created him in. This makes him excellent at throwing himself at the nearest stacks and killing as much as possible before dying and reforming. I will not that he is actually weaker with the Staff of Lightning equipped, since he will use it instead of casting Necromancy.

Personally I prefer to use Liches, since they cast Necromancy twice a round and can do it in Melee, but Vampires are better suited for raiding and harassing since they have built in Life Drain, a Great Sword and Necromancy. The Boots of the Mountain that you have equipped him aren't that useful to him as he doesn't benefit from Mountain move, but the Robe of Shadows is very good and so is the Ring of Protection that gives him a total of 4 Armour (which is very powerful, all non-armour negating attacks have to bypass 3-4 points of armour, making Archers virtually useless) and some MR (to not die due to Curse of the Frog Prince which turns him into a frog, making him loose Immortal). The Robe of Shadows Floating isn't that useful since as a vampire he already has Flight. Try to find him an item that gives him Fast and he'll be very good.

The main reason why he didn't die in the fight is the Regeneration he gets, which is quite good.

[Fleshhunter]

If you like Vampires play the Markgraf(Their end goal is a bit bitty)

[Dr. Uncredible]

A fun thing to do is to collect Necromancers, vampirise them, and have them form a separate unit, when unhindered by silly walkers they can fully utilise flight and you suddenly have a superfast elite unit unbothered by terrain where any casualities reform after a short while. Really nifty for taking on the frozen north!

[Dr. Uncredible]

Oh gods! Thanks to Fleshy above I decided to give the MarkGrafs another swing, and while I havent found a single Ruined Castle, I DO at this point have two Deathknights with infernal torches setting fire to everything even a little bit green, a Dragon Lich with regeneration, overcoming its only weakness and TWO ethreal abominations who are just growing and growing since no one can hit them properly. Most entertaining game in a long time! I almost feel sorry for the hoburgers themselves, apart from the necromancers the wee folk are a non-entity in this war!

[Jakalor]

Originally posted by Screaminglyjolly:

Oh gods! Thanks to Fleshy above I decided to give the MarkGrafs another swing, and while I havent found a single Ruined Castle, I DO at this point have two Deathknights with infernal torches setting fire to everything even a little bit green, a Dragon Lich with regeneration, overcoming its only weakness and TWO ethreal abominations who are just growing and growing since no one can hit them properly. Most entertaining game in a long time! I almost feel sorry for the hoburgers themselves, apart from the necromancers the wee folk are a non-entity in this war!

Yeah, the Markgraf is essentially just Necro on a budget. Most of their units are kind of bad and all the Necro summons can be gained by the actual Necro. The only unique and good thing are the Vampires you can create out of the different commanders.

[Fleshhunter]

Their End Game is basically Vampire Swarm(The Markgraf(After he is Vampified) turns Markmeisters into Vampires for 100 hands(Which is actaully a lot cheaper due to mass vampire swarms)

[Dr. Uncredible]

I knoooow, there didn= t seem to be a single castle ruin on that map, such sadness, even more so when a REAL necro came with an army powerful enough to wipe my supermonsters out, leaving me with a handful of deathknights, hobbits and regrets.

[Lord Vyse]

You may want to get a mod that turns the Markgraf capital into a Ruined Castle. Should be like that anyway as they are almost broken without one.

[awc]

My most satisfying will always be the Gold Golem + Bloodstone Amulet. Second trinket can vary depending on preference, but giving the Gold Golem regeneration makes it a game over for everyone else but you.

[niddhoger]

There are a few more ways to deal with insanity. The first is to use an escort for the necro. You can't move an insane commander, but you cna drag them behind a sane commander. Whenever they are luid, add them as an underling to another commander's army. So raise dead, join someone else, get dragged kicking and streaming to the next pile of corpses, detach, repeat. Keep doing this until the guy is more insane than not, then just leave him as a permanent attache to someone else, he'll always cast spells in combat.

The next is twiceborn. This is basicaly your budget lich tree. Twiceborn ritual is only 30 hands, and when the necro dies he'll be ressurected as a lesser undead. However, even an apprentice will ressurect with -1 insanity loss/month, and they can be upgraded like normal. You can't turn one into a vamp/lich, but they increase their isnanity reduction as they jump up to tier 3. They also lack immortality... but again, you gain sanity reduction for as little as 30 hands of glory. Get one out early and you can raise more dead with less headaches.

Finally, liches. Liches have more sanity reduction (5 iirc) and cast twice a turn. They may not have drain life (nor choose to cast it), so vamps can be more durable as frontline troops/guerilla operatives, but liches can skele spam as their fodder. Then cast entire-battlefield affecting spells that kill the living, or spam decay on everythign in sight. The demi-lich can't move on its own, but it can teleport to anywhere with dead bodies insantly. So you can send one to the other side of the map to take out entire citadels by itself. You'll then recruit/summon a commander, raise up an entire armies worth of unead, and use that to continue conquering as your demi-lich continues to hop around causing chaos.

Necro is a pretty damned OP faction, all told.

Oi, I'd also stop using minor summons. If you feel you have to pop some off while being threatened by a powerful AI, go for it, but otherwise save them for better rituals. A -much- beetter use of hands is to turn your longdeads into banefire archers. They'll gain extra magic damage (great for killing ethereal units!), but also gain decay on-hit. Anything they shoot, is dead. If it has regeneration, you'll need to diesase it first, but otherwise a single scratch with low-medium MR and that unit will die whether you win or lose the fight.

[Shotagonist]

I did this with Markgraf once and got ~insane~ boosts to his necromancy skill so he could cast a dozen spells or so per turn and he managed to either summon hordes of undead each turn or was just giving everyone the finger.

[]Pure Blind[]

Yep! I just played my first necro tonight. My vamp had the perfect skills including a 25 square AOE that insta killed everything basically.... he had like 700 kills when I quit

[ArchaicReaper]

If you think the Vampire is great wait until you get the Vampire Count and give him the magic skull that boosts his Necromancy to level 4, with the spell that makes him immune to non-magic damage. Ah, so perfect.

[Jakalor]

Originally posted by ArchaicReaper:

If you think the Vampire is great wait until you get the Vampire Count and give him the magic skull that boosts his Necromancy to level 4, with the spell that makes him immune to non-magic damage. Ah, so perfect.

Or just have a Lich/Demilich do that. The best part is that the Demilich doesn't even need to cast that spell, and both of them get two castings of level 4 Necromancy if they have a path booster.

[ArchaicReaper]

Originally posted by Jakalor:

Originally posted by ArchaicReaper:

If you think the Vampire is great wait until you get the Vampire Count and give him the magic skull that boosts his Necromancy to level 4, with the spell that makes him immune to non-magic damage. Ah, so perfect.

Or just have a Lich/Demilich do that. The best part is that the Demilich doesn't even need to cast that spell, and both of them get two castings of level 4 Necromancy if they have a path booster.

I tried to experiment with that by giving the Lich the Skull but I barely found any battles of course. In theory a Lich with the Skull should be able to cast 4 level 3 spells a round, which is beyond devastating. But giving the Vampire Count a Skull makes him a magical match for a Lich with better melee abilities. I don't think the Demilich can hold it, a skull holding a skull just sounds weird, but I haven't tried it yet.