Vampire Crawlers Guide: How to Heal and Mitigate Damage

In standard action roguelikes, you can just dodge. If you play perfectly, you take zero damage. But in a turn based dungeon crawler like this? Taking chip damage is a mathematical certainty. You are going to get hit.

If you do not have a reliable strategy to replenish your health, you will bleed out from consecutive encounters way before you ever reach the final boss.

The game does not hold your hand with standard health potions. You need to scavenge, draft specific cards, and invest heavily in your meta progression to stay alive. Here is exactly how the healing economy works, and more importantly, how to stop taking the damage in the first place.

The Difference Between Healing and Recovery

Before you even look at drafting cards, you need to understand that the game treats HP restoration in two totally distinct ways. Mixing them up will get you killed.

Healing is your burst mechanic designed to save you from an immediate threat. Recovery is your long term sustain.

Scavenging the Grid

In your first few hours, you will not have access to fancy spells. Your life completely depends on the dungeon environment.

• Floor Chickens: Smashing braziers and torches will occasionally drop a Floor Chicken. Each one heals you for exactly 10 HP. Do not eat these immediately if you are only missing a scratch! Leave the bird on the ground, clear the rest of the floor, and walk back to eat it right before you descend. If you struggle to find them, prioritize unlocking the Guiding Light relic to highlight breakable objects.
• Chicken Stands: Very rarely, you will stumble across a dedicated food stall. This is not a free heal. You have to sacrifice a card from your deck to receive 30 HP. It is actually a brilliant mechanic that lets you purge a useless card while getting a massive health injection before a tough boss.

Drafting for Sustain

Once you unlock Gennaro Belpaese and get him to Level 10, the Pummarola card enters your draft pool. This is your absolute best source of mid game sustain.

Pummarola grants Recovery points. The brilliant part is that it scales with your ascending combo multiplier. If you cast Pummarola dry as the first card in your turn, you get a pitiful amount of Recovery. But if you hold it and cast it at the end of a massive chain, the multiplier skyrockets the value. You can end a battle and instantly heal half your health bar if you sequence the turn correctly.

Evolving Weapons for Vampirism

Relying entirely on utility cards is dangerous because it clogs up your hand. The ultimate goal is to evolve your weapons so they deal damage and heal you simultaneously.

• Bloody Tear: You create this by evolving the base Whip card with a Hollow Heart. It hits multiple rows and heals you every single time it lands a critical strike.
• Soul Eater: Create this by evolving Garlic with the Pummarola card. It costs more mana, but it guarantees a flat 2 HP heal every time it is cast, completely ignoring RNG. It also has a massive chance to disarm enemies.

Damage Mitigation: The Real Strategy

Healing is great, but entirely preventing the damage is the mark of a true veteran. If you find yourself constantly bleeding out, you are probably ignoring the Armor economy.

If you manage your Armor correctly and hold onto those Clock Lancets for the bosses, you will barely need to touch the floor chickens. Upgrade your village smartly to keep your finances in order, build your defenses, and the sustain will naturally follow.

Check out more of my tips and strategies here: Novus Vektra Guides