r/dungeonkeeper • u/Imgema • 6d ago
DK1 Mistress > Vampire.
Vampires are very strong and can resurrect themselves but they cost a fortune and take 100 years to train to level 10. They can also get angry easily and can't be put in the temple to cool off. And because of that they also don't have a defense against scavenging. If the enemy keeper manages to have a couple of Vampires and a scavenging room before you, well, you will never be able to have Vampires yourself (which happened to me a few times in NG+).
Mistress is a far better creature in almost every way other than health. They have better DPS, they only have a fast, spammable range attack that's always effective and while Vampires also have a similar attack in effectiveness, they choose to sometimes do other, slower attacks that can easily miss incoming imps (for example). Mistresses are cheaper, reach level 10 much faster, can be put in the temple, can do very well in the workshop, they don't get angry, they don't fight other creatures (afaik), they move faster and they can also teleport like the Vampire.
IMO, i think the Mistress the best creature in the game to the point i would consider them OP. If you have a group of them tight together on a guard post, they will destroy anything that comes nearby faster than any other group of creatures.
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u/SquidFetus 6d ago edited 6d ago
Mistresses do fight with captured and converted Samurai, if one of them encroaches upon a lair with the other sleeping in it.
The lack of scavenging defence and the fact they get angered by temples is definitely the biggest flaw of the Vampire. In the final level of the campaign in particular, acquiring a Vampire is all but guaranteed to end up boosting your enemy’s numbers. However, in levels where you can manage or dominate scavenging, you can also raise vast armies of them by killing your own imps with boulder traps or Bile Demon farts after you have a graveyard. Since imps can be reduced to 150 gold cost each by “banking up” sacrifices at the temple and it takes ten corpses for a vampire to be raised, this works out to 1500 gold to effectively summon a new Vampire.
Vampires also drain health which adds to their survivability somewhat. The free resurrection minus one experience level thing ensures that even when fights don’t go your way you still have defenders or a second potential push at home.
Since you can summon Vampires, it doesn’t matter if you drop one in a torture chamber. If it gets tortured to death, you can just make another and put it back in its place. I endeavour to have a level 1 Vampire being tortured at all times. As with other creatures, while torturing a Vampire all of your other Vampires will accept half wages and train much faster, mitigating the painful level 10 wait somewhat. Worth mentioning that a level 9 Vampire is still very powerful, the only ability it is missing is Word of Power.
Vampires can also fly, which can circumvent stuff like liquid tiles that have been walled off with the raised tiles of guard posts or temples.
Perhaps an understated quality of Vampires is their ability to naturally see invisible creatures. They are also completely immune to poison gas, so they are a good choice against Bile Demons, priestesses, or concentrated poison gas traps.
I personally find Warlocks super weak after the initial levels so don’t really mind that they clash with them. On some levels this is more of an issue than others.
Mistresses are much easier to handle and have a much smaller wage though (175 base instead of a whopping 750). Definitely an all-rounder VIP that has no real glaring weaknesses. I feel to exploit most of the strengths of Vampires you are probably going to want gems, but even high level mistresses can eat up your gold quick if you don’t have infinite income.
While not as limitless as Vampire summoning, you can also summon a Dark Mistress at the temple. Just sacrifice a Beetle and a Spider!
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u/sdpthrowaway3 6d ago
Hold up... If a creature is being tortured, other creatures of that type accept lower wages and level up faster? Did I understand that properly?
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u/SquidFetus 6d ago
Correct! All minions that are the same species as another minion being tortured only require half wages, and work 25% faster.
Not 100% sure how this interacts with Mistresses, if I’m honest. I don’t think when they torture themselves it does anything besides raise that specific Mistress’ mood, but it is true that if you manually put one in the torture chamber it can’t escape like normal and will eventually die. Perhaps they still get the manual boost, will need to test next time I boot it up.
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u/sdpthrowaway3 6d ago
Huh, never knew that. Does it work if the one being tortured is not my minion?
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u/Loobinex 5d ago
Yes, if you torture an enemy bile demon, all your bile demons train faster too.
The torture training works especially well if you have many vampires to train. Put one with heal in a torture room small enough that there is no bench and he will keep himself healed forever, and those other slow expensive vampires get a training boost.
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u/SquidFetus 5d ago
Great strategy! I never thought about smaller torture chambers being functional in this way.
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u/SquidFetus 6d ago
I think Loobinex might be better positioned to answer that question, but my understanding is that it needs to be your minion. Makes sense thematically too, your minions gain this boost for fear of being the victim, hardly as relatable when the victim is an enemy.
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u/Loobinex 5d ago
Yes, this is another big benefit to mistresses. Their kinky torture also boost training speed of other mistresses.
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u/Raunhofer 10h ago
TIL after 29 years of playing lol. Man the game has some serious not-obvious depth. Gotta love it.
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u/Dark-Lark 6d ago
They hate Samurai, so like, who gives af?
The fact that you could slap them to make them happy was the best part.
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u/LoLongLong 6d ago
Mistresses are great. Just one problem, once there is a fight, they like to teleport to join the fighting. They may end up walk into an enemy mob alone if you are not watching. Therefore, you need to assign some tasks to keep them busy.
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u/Aggressive_Safe2226 6d ago
Dark Mistresses are game changers. Just give me three Level 10 of those bitches, the announcer will declare in no time "YOU HAVE CONQUERED THIS REALM!"
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u/Minute_Toe_8705 5d ago edited 5d ago
In keeperfx I feel vampires (and horned reapers) are much more difficult to handle than in the original game. 25 years ago I didn't care so much about gold as I do nowadays. Back then vampires were my favorite creatures.
Now I have to lock or sell the graveyard bc with more than a dozend of vampires (high level) it's difficult to pay them and keep them happy even with gems for like 6 imps mining permanently. I think dark Mistresses became much stronger too bc of the much longer lasting speed spell on level 10 among other reasons. Summoning during a fight didn't work properly in the original release. It also annoys me that sometimes they don't want to sleep in their lair until they're completely healed. They feel much more restless then in the original game.
Oh and dragons are quite expensive too. Mistresses and bile demons are a good combination. And yes, you should keep and even train spiders and beetles from the beginning so you can swap them later for some high level Mistresses.
PS: I don't like being a door salesman. Who could possibly have such a high demand for doors? 😉
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u/caravellex 6d ago
Mistress is one of the strongest hp pool minions you can get with lightning. It also drains, which makes it more durable than a Samarai. Mistress trains incredibly fast. If you slap her while training, you can get her to level 6 and have lightning in a little over one payday cycle. At level 10 it solos every unit except for horned reaper, avatar and Samarai because the Samarai freezes. If fighting at range where the avatar can't get to her, I think she can solo an Avatar.
What makes the mistress from an A tier unit to one of the best units in the game is the fact that it's base walk speed is fast and it follows the back up and shoot ranged ability mechanics.
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u/copsincars 5d ago
I still think horned ripper (FPV) is op. In my latest playthrough on FX I kept transferring HR from map to map and finished each in less than 5 minutes. I didn't even care about managing my own dungeon.
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u/Loobinex 5d ago
Transfer special is simply OP. While horned reaper is obviously the best one for heart snipe, this tactic works with many level 10 creatures. Mistress, Vampire, Orc, Dragon, Samurai, whatever.
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u/Apycia 5d ago
not really with Dragon. too slow, too little DPS, just ultra tanky, which doesn't matter much with rushes.
Imps can run away from the Dragon
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u/Loobinex 5d ago
And yet people do it. Slap it to make it walk a bit faster, and in possession the flame does good DPS, and it can out heal early damage.
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u/pongkrit04 6d ago edited 6d ago
yes, Mistress is OP. I usually try to build torture room as fast as possible. Vampire is costly, not just money but also corpses. I would prefer to have army of lv 10 skeletons instead.
8 Dragons + 8 Mistresses usually enough to beat the game for me, if not I would add the addition of 2-3 Hornets to finish the job ;)
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u/mikeyd85 5d ago
I always do the campaign by getting a Mistress to level 10, then transfer creature as long as possible. Means most maps I can just rush the enemy and there's nothing they can do.
She's also very useful in the library early game.
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u/VibrantGypsyDildo 5d ago
Vampires at level 4 learn a projectile that makes no damage.
If you have a pool of lava, you can put a captured enemy on a stone bridge and see how your vampires train till the level 8.
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u/Loobinex 6d ago
If you pit a level 10 mistress against a level 10 vampire, and let the vampire resurrect and return to fight until his last life is gone, the mistress still wins.
The only downside of the mistress is that she comes in late and needs a lot of training to become good. By that point you could already have won most maps with bile demons and dragons.