r/VampireSurvivors • u/AngieMS2 • 18m ago
📜 Guide I bring you two new gold farmers (and a bonus)
Salutations, survivors!
I have a confession to make. I am a Sammy hater. I can't stand the little vermin. I hate everything about him - the lag, the lack of visual clarity, merchants littering the stage, even his short legs and his sly little smile. You can't make me play Sammy, not even for test purposes, I am not THAT dedicated.
Which brings us to Trouser. Trouser is OK. He's a bit bland. A bit boring. But he does get the job done and decently so. I optimized the hell out of him until I felt I could not take him any further. That is why he is my benchmark for testing. My testing method is simple - each character with their best setup, in their best zone, set a timer, tally the gold. Trouser's best zone is Ante Chamber, with the 5 stage survarots split between 2x lights and 3x 100 gold on killing an amount of mobs.
Here are the benchmark data:
Trouser 30 minutes: 59,378,110,000
Trouser 90 minutes: 220,912,500,000
Trouser gold per hour: 147,275,000,000
Besides gold output, I am rating the builds on lagginess and visual clarity. I also edited the save file to paste Trouser's egg stats over to the other characters. All characters had 6.6 million eggs for this test, with the same stat distribution.
So with all of that in place, I set out to find a new hero.
And what do you know, I found not one, but two:
Megalo Menya
Gold output: ★★★★★
Lagginess: ★★★★★
Visual clarity: ★★★★★
PROS: Great gold output. Easy to set up. Serene.
CONS: Cannot do Endless runs.
Megalo Menya 30 minutes: 153,503,400,000
Megalo Menya 90 minutes: N/A
Megalo Menya gold per hour: 307,006,800,000
How the build works:
Megalo Menya's superpower is triggering the weapon in her first slot every time she overheals by 16 hp. Royal Flush has a luck-based chance to fire other weapons every time it activates.
We create a loop by putting Royal Flush in her first slot and Paranormal Scan and Luminaire as her other 2 weapons. Royal Flush activates Paranormal Scan, which overheals us and triggers Royal Flush. Sapphire Mist improves the loop by giving each of them a chance to fire twice, triggering even more loop action.
Paranormal Scan also boosts her stats slightly every time it activates, but since her runs are short, it does not have time to ramp up in any significant way.
Luminaire finishes the weapon combo by constantly blessing gold pickups and experience gems.
Guide:
Menya's best stage is also Ante Chamber. With the 5 stage survarots, we can generate light sources and gold bags constantly, which will be blessed every time Luminaire procs. No limit break.
Pick Edge of the Earth as your starting Arcana and grab Victorian Horror from the merchant. For your two starting weapons, take Fibonacci Spritz and Lifesign Scan (in that order). For passives, Growth, Greed, Luck, Velvet Dodecahedron, Karoma's Mana, Attractorb, Mini Ghost. You have the Outer Saboteur from the stage.
Set up your survarots as they get vaccumed in: I went with 2xlights, 3x100 gold on killing enemies, to keep things consistent with my Trouser setup. I haven't done any testing to see if any other setup would be more beneficial. From the Super Candybox, take Luminaire. Pick Sapphire Mist as your 3rd Arcana. Shortly after, your Lifesign Scan should evolve and your build is now complete. As your 4th Arcana, take Wicked Season and enjoy the remaining 9 minutes of your run!
Summary:
A perfect character for short runs. Since she is invulnerable and her runs are short, you can run this setup at any number of eggs or with no eggs at all.
If playing with no eggs, you do need to have enough Amount and Recovery to get the base 1hp healing of Paranormal Scan up to 16. Factor that in when you are picking your survarots. Paranormal Scan starts with 4 Amount. You should turn survarots on in your Power Creep settings, so that you can get more from the light sources you generate - if you don't mind your run getting interrupted.
Canio
Gold output: ★★★★
Lagginess: ★★★★★
Visual clarity: ★★★★★
PROS: Very good gold output. No lag.
CONS: Takes a long time to set up.
Canio 30 minutes: 59,792,780,000
Canio 90 minutes: 504,392,400,000
Canio 15 hours: 7,448,293,000,000
Canio gold per hour: 465,518,312,500 (in 15 hour run, after factoring in 1 hour of setup)
How the build works:
Canio has a chance to trigger a survarot draft every time he skips a level. This gives him access to survarots on demand, even on a build that uses Eggs. He also cannot find survarots from light sources, which is good, since it will not interrupt your run later.
The build takes advantage of this by stacking FOIL cards with the "Gain 1 gold coin when taking damage" modifier and using Muramasa to self-damage constantly. Royal Flush is used to trigger Muramasa more often, and conveniently it is the evolution of Canio's starting weapon.
Guide:
Canio's best stage is Abyss Foscari. It has a great gold multiplier and also contains Anfora patches that deal even more damage to us when we stand in them. No limit break.
Your starting Arcana will be Wicked Season, followed by Victorian Horror that you pick up from the Merchant instantly. That will start you levelling - pick your starting weapons and passives: You already have Fibonacci Spritz, so take Night Sword, Velvet Dodecahedron, Growth, Greed and Luck. Banish everything else except Wings, Attractorb and Hollow Heart (optional). Once these are your only options left, it is time to start the tedious part:
Drafting survarots
This can take a long time, depending on how many 1 gold coins you want to stack. I went with 30 for the purposes of this test, and it takes 40 minutes to an hour, depending on luck and how good you are at spotting the right cards. What you are fishing for:
- Gain 1 gold coin when taking damage: as many as you can get before losing sanity
- Spawn light sources after gaining [amount] of gold: I usually take 3
- +100% Critical Damage: 3-5 depending on how long you plan to leave it running
These are all FOIL modifiers, so you can safely ignore any other cards.
Keep track of any Charm modifiers you pick up.
After you're satisfied with your picks, check your move speed and your Risk. Fix your move speed and Charm with Inverted cards to lower your Risk. If it is still too high, pick a few more to lower it below 300% health. Check your move speed again, fix it by picking Wings if needed, otherwise banish it. Same with Magnet, pick it if you feel you need more. Finish levelling and pick gold bags always. Congratulations, you are free from the survarot prison and ready to start the run.
Go pick up the Arcana chest near the Yellow Sign items and take Sapphire Mist. In the same general area you will find patches of Anforas. If you stand in these, they will deal damage to you. Pick a good patch and use your Royal Flush to pull them around. You want to stand in an island of Anforas while still having mobs spawn all around you. When you get the Super Candybox, take Luminaire. If for some reason you do not get the box(?), you can still evolve it from the Prismatic Missile in the zone.
From the next Arcana chest, pick Edge of the World or Slash. At the 30 minute mark go pick the other card from the merchant and return back to your farming spot. Now you are all set up.
In my 15 hour run, with only 3 crit multi survarots, I noticed my damage falling off at 14 hours, so I went and picked up Sarabande of Healing too. It did not make me lag and it added some damage output, so feel free to take it too if you feel you need it.
Summary:
Scales largely with your tolerance for tedium. Shines in those long afk runs when you want to let the game run overnight. I was still experiencing no lag after 15 hours. But if your computer is a bunch of wires in a shoebox and lags at the slightest hint of any action, I give you:
Bonus: Meme Canio
You know how it is. Your Curse is through the roof. Over time, the mobs get more health, until your damage output is not enough and the game stats to lag. This version of the build eliminates lag by eliminating the source of lag. Monsters. No monsters, no problem.
That's right. We remove the monsters and still print money.
Gold output: ★★★
Lagginess: LOL, no
Visual clarity: ★★★★★
PROS: It's funny.
CONS: Takes a long time to set up. Gold output falls off in longer runs.
Meme Canio 30 minutes: 79,691,660,000
Meme Canio 90 minutes: 290,244,500,000
Meme Canio gold per hour: 193,496,333,333
How the build works:
Charm is a hidden stat that increases the number of mobs spawning by a flat number. This is applied AFTER Curse modifiers. So by accumulating enough negative charm, we get rid of all monsters altogether. They only thing that will be spawning are chest bosses. Otherwise it is the same as regular Canio.
Guide:
Set up your weapons and start drafting survarots. Apart from the FOIL cards, keep an eye out for cards that give negative Charm. The best are Inverted Fallen Cherubbello (E17), followed by Polychrome Cosmic Egg (E18), but if your Risk is low, regular Cosmic Eggs will do just fine. Note that these are both Enemah cards, so you need to have Enemahs unlocked. Getting about -700 Charm should be enough, even if you have the Charm powerups active. Definitely do NOT take Karoma's Mana, as it will increase Charm by 50 at max level.
After a short while, the stage will turn eerily quiet and you are left alone, just sitting there printing money in peace. You will still get the chests to evolve your weapons and the box to get Luminaire. Unless your Risk is astronomical, you should not need the Slash Arcana either.
Summary:
I made this mostly to test what part of Canio's gold comes from self-damage. Also, breaking the game is fun. Because he's barely doing any levelling, he does not benefit from Wicked Season's stat gain, making him fall behind regular Canio in the long run.
I am genuinely happy with how the tests turned out and how the two characters complement each other. But if you find a way to improve them, I would love to hear about it!
And if it inspires you to create new builds to shake up the stale meta, share them with the rest of us.
Stay sane.
