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Still been playing Vampire Survivors off and on, mostly going through "one weapon" runs to test out every weapon individually. (Many are surprisingly better than I initially gave them credit for.) But tonight, I decided to do something different.
I thought about what might be the most absolutely busted build that doesn't just use Hail from the Future (X) and/or Moonlight Bolero (VI) right from the start.
So, here it is.
Before I started, I went into Collections and turned off pretty much every single weapon except for the following (roughly in the order they appear in the list on the VS Wiki): Whip/Bloody Tear, Pentagram/Gorgeous Moon, Clock Lancet/Infinite Corridor, Laurel/Crimson Shroud, Vento Sacro/Fuwalafuwaloo, Silver Wind/Festive Winds, Life Scan/Paranormal Scan, Sonic Whip/Crissaegrim Tip, Wine Glass/Meal Ticket, and Summon Spirit Tornado/Venus Crescent. (The first few times I was messing around with it, I'd also left on some other stuff on, but it was superfluous and clogged the item pool, so I went back and turned them off for the "real" run.) I left all the passive items on.
I picked Sonia Belmont, explicitly for her overheal ability.
Played on Moongolow with pretty much every stage mode activated except for Random LevelUp, mainly Inverse and Endless. (And for the music, I picked "Sarabande of Healing" [instead of Sonia's default "Bloody Tears"], for reasons that will probably become obvious soon enough.)
At the very start of the run, I took the Crystal Cries (XII) Darkana. I also went over to the Merchant and bought an extra Arcana, which I used on the Hidden Anathema (III) Darkana. Later, on the first purple chest drop, I took the Sarabande of Healing (VI) Arcana (which was mostly just gross, disgusting overkill by that point, but I'm getting ahead of myself).
Upon starting the run, I avoided every passive that was just laying around (which, since it was Moongolow, is pretty much all of them, except for Torrona's Box, Parm Aegis, Karoma's Mana, and any DLC specific stuff). The weapons I made sure to get before having a full six were Life Scan, Whip, and Vento Sacro. Everything else was just kind of whatever, but my initial six were Sonia's starting weapon (Sonic Whip), the three mentioned in the previous sentence, Wine Glass, and Silver Wind.
After getting Life Scan and getting it up to level 2, I kept hitting Skip (and the new Preserve thing that was recently added really helped with this) until I got the Mini Ghost to evolve the Life Scan to Paranormal Scan. Along the way, I ended up going ahead and taking Torrona's Box, Karoma's Mana, and Parm Aegis, too, even though I wasn't explicitly trying for those. After that, I scooped up all the other passive items on the map.
So, here's the thing about Sonia Belmont. Pretty much every time she heals, from any source, her cooldown time decreases significantly, meaning she attacks more frequently. This includes Life Scan... which heals her. Combined with max Empty Tome, she was eventually healing pretty much constantly. Or at least well within the time limits on her overheal, anyway.
Life Scan evolves to Paranormal Scan, which acts the same as Life Scan, except that it also adds a permanent (for that run, at least) stat boost to a random stat every time it activates (which as stated above, was eventually almost constantly).
The Hidden Anathema (III) Darkana makes it so that any food source (like Floor or Wall Chicken) doesn't just heal you, but also permanently (for that run) randomly boosts a stat every time you pick one up. This also includes the food that spawns from Meal Ticket.
Crystal Cries (XII) makes it so that whenever you defeat a frozen enemy, they drop a Crystallized Soul in addition to the usual Experience Gem. Every single one of these individually increase Growth, Max Health, and (most importantly for this build), Recovery.
Mini Ghost, which you need for evolving the Life Scan, comes with a free Clock Lancet effect, which freezes enemies.
To cut to the chase, with this build, I was basically unkillable by any normal enemies well before the 15 minute mark (and since I was playing on Endless, there was no Reaper showing up at 15 minutes on Moongolow), and well before I ever even evolved the first weapon (which, for some odd reason, took a weirdly long time, because chests just kept giving me boosts to irrelevant passives or whatever, rather than actually evolving weapons at first, for whatever reason, meaning that the Paranormal Scan stuff didn't even come into play until long after I was already essentially invincible [EDIT] and that's because I learned something else new about VS today, which is that those shitty bronze chests you get in the first ten minutes or so are actually incapable of triggering evolutions, even if the conditions are otherwise met, so I guess I've never had weapons ready for evolution prior to that point before, or at least never noticed until now, which kinda sucks [/EDIT]). Somewhere around this point, too, the music glitched out and went completely silent, leaving just the sound effects, which kind of sucked.
On my next Arcana drop after the first, I just said fuck it and took Hail from the Future (X) anyway. And then, I learned something new, which is that the Merchant respawns in Endless Mode, at which point, it was like, okay, whatever, and I took Moonlight Bolero (VI) as well. Only the first two or three Candybox drops made any marginal difference (I took Laurel, Clock Lancet, and Summon Spirit Tornado from those, as I'd already taken Pentagram after getting Fuwalafuwaloo, which freed up one of the initial six slots), as I'd turned all the other weapons off before starting. And the Arma Dio drops were completely useless, as I already had all of the passives before that point. So those two extra bits didn't really help much.
Oh, and after that, I went ahead and got the Left and Right Metaglio and Silver and Gold Ring passives, for the Crimson Shroud and Infinite Corridor, which was just massively excessive, by that point.
If I ever bothered to do this again, I'd probably also leave on some of the other weapons that I'd had on before, but turned off later with the rest, like Garlic/Soul Eater, Prismatic Missile/Luminaire, Refectio/Sanctuary, or Guardian's Targe/Sacred Beasts Tower Shield. (I didn't even consider leaving on stuff like Power of Sire or Sole Solution or whatever, because been there done that too many times to count.)
...actually, now that I think about it, the Fibonacci Spritz/Royal Flush weapons from the new(-ish) Balatro DLC[1] would have been a good weapon for this build, too. Or, at least, it would have made it even more hideously busted, anyway.
I played up to around 45 minutes on the game clock (which didn't take nearly 45 IRL minutes, what with both Hurry on and me additionally setting the Timer speed to max). Hell, it almost assuredly took longer to write this post about it than it did to actually do it.
Anyway, if there's a more busted build than this, I can't think of it off hand. I mean, one that isn't just Sammy set to one weapon and starting with the Disco of Gold (XV) Arcana, anyway. ¬_¬ (Pre-post EDIT) Or... Sammy set to whatever and given the Boogaloo of Illusions (XVIII) and the Wicked Season (XIII) Arcanas at the start. Holy shit. o_O I just tried this with Sammy's weapons set to 1 slot, and the effect is only slightly less preposterous. Like, you don't actually have to give him Troll Bomb or Soul Steal at all. ... ...Anyway. (/Pre-post EDIT)
But... honestly, being ludicrously overpowered is really only fun the first few times you do it. *shrug*
[1] - Which was pretty good, even if I didn't care much for the game for which it's a crossover. The DLC's free, regardless.
I thought about what might be the most absolutely busted build that doesn't just use Hail from the Future (X) and/or Moonlight Bolero (VI) right from the start.
So, here it is.
Before I started, I went into Collections and turned off pretty much every single weapon except for the following (roughly in the order they appear in the list on the VS Wiki): Whip/Bloody Tear, Pentagram/Gorgeous Moon, Clock Lancet/Infinite Corridor, Laurel/Crimson Shroud, Vento Sacro/Fuwalafuwaloo, Silver Wind/Festive Winds, Life Scan/Paranormal Scan, Sonic Whip/Crissaegrim Tip, Wine Glass/Meal Ticket, and Summon Spirit Tornado/Venus Crescent. (The first few times I was messing around with it, I'd also left on some other stuff on, but it was superfluous and clogged the item pool, so I went back and turned them off for the "real" run.) I left all the passive items on.
I picked Sonia Belmont, explicitly for her overheal ability.
Played on Moongolow with pretty much every stage mode activated except for Random LevelUp, mainly Inverse and Endless. (And for the music, I picked "Sarabande of Healing" [instead of Sonia's default "Bloody Tears"], for reasons that will probably become obvious soon enough.)
At the very start of the run, I took the Crystal Cries (XII) Darkana. I also went over to the Merchant and bought an extra Arcana, which I used on the Hidden Anathema (III) Darkana. Later, on the first purple chest drop, I took the Sarabande of Healing (VI) Arcana (which was mostly just gross, disgusting overkill by that point, but I'm getting ahead of myself).
Upon starting the run, I avoided every passive that was just laying around (which, since it was Moongolow, is pretty much all of them, except for Torrona's Box, Parm Aegis, Karoma's Mana, and any DLC specific stuff). The weapons I made sure to get before having a full six were Life Scan, Whip, and Vento Sacro. Everything else was just kind of whatever, but my initial six were Sonia's starting weapon (Sonic Whip), the three mentioned in the previous sentence, Wine Glass, and Silver Wind.
After getting Life Scan and getting it up to level 2, I kept hitting Skip (and the new Preserve thing that was recently added really helped with this) until I got the Mini Ghost to evolve the Life Scan to Paranormal Scan. Along the way, I ended up going ahead and taking Torrona's Box, Karoma's Mana, and Parm Aegis, too, even though I wasn't explicitly trying for those. After that, I scooped up all the other passive items on the map.
So, here's the thing about Sonia Belmont. Pretty much every time she heals, from any source, her cooldown time decreases significantly, meaning she attacks more frequently. This includes Life Scan... which heals her. Combined with max Empty Tome, she was eventually healing pretty much constantly. Or at least well within the time limits on her overheal, anyway.
Life Scan evolves to Paranormal Scan, which acts the same as Life Scan, except that it also adds a permanent (for that run, at least) stat boost to a random stat every time it activates (which as stated above, was eventually almost constantly).
The Hidden Anathema (III) Darkana makes it so that any food source (like Floor or Wall Chicken) doesn't just heal you, but also permanently (for that run) randomly boosts a stat every time you pick one up. This also includes the food that spawns from Meal Ticket.
Crystal Cries (XII) makes it so that whenever you defeat a frozen enemy, they drop a Crystallized Soul in addition to the usual Experience Gem. Every single one of these individually increase Growth, Max Health, and (most importantly for this build), Recovery.
Mini Ghost, which you need for evolving the Life Scan, comes with a free Clock Lancet effect, which freezes enemies.
To cut to the chase, with this build, I was basically unkillable by any normal enemies well before the 15 minute mark (and since I was playing on Endless, there was no Reaper showing up at 15 minutes on Moongolow), and well before I ever even evolved the first weapon (which, for some odd reason, took a weirdly long time, because chests just kept giving me boosts to irrelevant passives or whatever, rather than actually evolving weapons at first, for whatever reason, meaning that the Paranormal Scan stuff didn't even come into play until long after I was already essentially invincible [EDIT] and that's because I learned something else new about VS today, which is that those shitty bronze chests you get in the first ten minutes or so are actually incapable of triggering evolutions, even if the conditions are otherwise met, so I guess I've never had weapons ready for evolution prior to that point before, or at least never noticed until now, which kinda sucks [/EDIT]). Somewhere around this point, too, the music glitched out and went completely silent, leaving just the sound effects, which kind of sucked.
On my next Arcana drop after the first, I just said fuck it and took Hail from the Future (X) anyway. And then, I learned something new, which is that the Merchant respawns in Endless Mode, at which point, it was like, okay, whatever, and I took Moonlight Bolero (VI) as well. Only the first two or three Candybox drops made any marginal difference (I took Laurel, Clock Lancet, and Summon Spirit Tornado from those, as I'd already taken Pentagram after getting Fuwalafuwaloo, which freed up one of the initial six slots), as I'd turned all the other weapons off before starting. And the Arma Dio drops were completely useless, as I already had all of the passives before that point. So those two extra bits didn't really help much.
Oh, and after that, I went ahead and got the Left and Right Metaglio and Silver and Gold Ring passives, for the Crimson Shroud and Infinite Corridor, which was just massively excessive, by that point.
If I ever bothered to do this again, I'd probably also leave on some of the other weapons that I'd had on before, but turned off later with the rest, like Garlic/Soul Eater, Prismatic Missile/Luminaire, Refectio/Sanctuary, or Guardian's Targe/Sacred Beasts Tower Shield. (I didn't even consider leaving on stuff like Power of Sire or Sole Solution or whatever, because been there done that too many times to count.)
...actually, now that I think about it, the Fibonacci Spritz/Royal Flush weapons from the new(-ish) Balatro DLC[1] would have been a good weapon for this build, too. Or, at least, it would have made it even more hideously busted, anyway.
I played up to around 45 minutes on the game clock (which didn't take nearly 45 IRL minutes, what with both Hurry on and me additionally setting the Timer speed to max). Hell, it almost assuredly took longer to write this post about it than it did to actually do it.
Anyway, if there's a more busted build than this, I can't think of it off hand. I mean, one that isn't just Sammy set to one weapon and starting with the Disco of Gold (XV) Arcana, anyway. ¬_¬ (Pre-post EDIT) Or... Sammy set to whatever and given the Boogaloo of Illusions (XVIII) and the Wicked Season (XIII) Arcanas at the start. Holy shit. o_O I just tried this with Sammy's weapons set to 1 slot, and the effect is only slightly less preposterous. Like, you don't actually have to give him Troll Bomb or Soul Steal at all. ... ...Anyway. (/Pre-post EDIT)
But... honestly, being ludicrously overpowered is really only fun the first few times you do it. *shrug*
[1] - Which was pretty good, even if I didn't care much for the game for which it's a crossover. The DLC's free, regardless.
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Date: 2025-12-29 11:06 pm (UTC)From:For all the 107.6 hours on record I have playing the game, I could barely follow half of this. There's apparently been a lot a lot more new content added since release than I realized, between the game updates and the DLCs.
Never really got back into the game after actual release, mostly because starting over again with none of the powerups I had earned pre-release just felt slow and drudging in relation. Kinda the same reason I normally avoid early access games in general, but it was cheap and acclaimed enough at the time that I let myself succumb to the hype.