Of all the new characters introduced in Vampire Survivors’ Tides of the Foscari DLC, Sammy is the most unique. This applies both visually, with his distinctive caterpillar cake design, and mechanically, with his ability to gain experience by collecting Gold.
This encourages a playstyle that incorporates elements of Gold farming in order to boost your run to new heights and requires you to think a little differently from the norm when it comes to cooking up the best Sammy build-in Vampire Survivors. Read on for what we believe is the ideal recipe.
Best Weapons for Sammy in Vampire Survivors
Sammy begins with an evolved weapon, the powerful Vicious Hunger, which has a higher-than-normal chance of turning enemies into Gold in his chocolatey hands. To back this up, you’ll want to grab the following additional weapons:
Flash Arrow
Vicious Hunger is a projectile-based weapon, which makes a projectile build a solid option for Sammy to lean into. The Flash Arrow is a good choice here: it covers a wide area once evolved, a process that requires the Bracer and Clover, two passive items you’ll want to pick up anyway. Its evolved form, Millionaire, also benefits greatly from Sammy’s constant Gold consumption, firing additional projectiles each time Gold is collected.
Knife
If you’re running the Flash Arrow, you might as well throw the Knife in as well. It requires the Bracer, which you’ll also need to evolve the Flash Arrow, so picking up both will round out your slots nicely, and give you a plethora of projectiles to work with.
Magic Wand
A timeless projectile build classic, the Magic Wand turns into a homing machine gun once evolved. It also pairs up with the Empty Tome, lowering the cooldown on all of your other weapons and giving your enemies no room to breathe amid your onslaught.
Summon Night
Notable for covering a wide area once evolved, and for letting you throw in the excellent Duplicator passive item to evolve it, Summon Night is a solid choice for any build. It works particularly well with the projectile-focused Sammy we’re putting together here, however.
Greatest Jubilee
Sammy works best when you have constant access to light sources, since those will be your main source of Gold and Gold Fever triggers, and therefore experience. Greatest Jubilee has a chance to spawn in extra light sources, making it a no-brainer for this build. If you haven’t done so yet, you can learn how to unlock the Greatest Jubilee in Vampire Survivors here.
Best Passive Items for Sammy in Vampire Survivors
Since we’ve established this build as projectile-focused through our weapon choices, we’ll want to choose passive items that support this style of play, while also leaning into Sammy’s experience-from-Gold ability.
Stone Mask
A no-brainer choice for a Sammy build. More Gold means more experience, means more levels, means more power from Limit Breaks and Arcana. It doesn’t help to evolve any of our weapons, but the choices listed above leave two free slots, so we can throw it in regardless.
Clover
Not only does it help to evolve our Flash Arrow, but the Clover also boosts our Luck, which increases the chance of extra light sources spawning during play. As mentioned above, these are crucial to success with Sammy, so the Clover’s spot in the build is secure.
Bracer
The other passive item we’ll need to evolve is the Flash Arrow, and the one we’ll need for the Knife, the Bracer increases the speed of all your projectiles. In a build like this, that can result in much more efficient play, and let you ‘path’ your way through the enemy ranks with ease.
Empty Tome
While cooldown does eventually stop mattering for some of the weapons in this build (the Knife and Magic Wand) once they evolve, the rest all receive a nice boost from the Empty Tome. More regular attacks deal more damage overall and bring in more Gold in the case of Vicious Hunger.
Duplicator
One of the best passive items in the game, the Duplicator increases your Amount stat, which increases the number of projectiles each of your weapons fires at once. This pairs perfectly with the weapon suite we’ve chosen and evolves the Summon Night to boot.
Spinach
This final slot is negotiable, and not particularly important when it comes to the success of the build overall. That said, we’ve opted for the Spinach here since its damage boost will work brilliantly when multiplied by the huge number of projectiles we’ll be firing by the end of the run.
Best Arcana Cards for Sammy in Vampire Survivors
Now that we’ve covered the weapons and items, we’ll get down to what may be the most important element of a good Sammy build: your choice of Arcana cards. You get one of these right at the start of each run, then receive the other two at around the 11 and 21-minute marks. Lake and Abyss Foscari are exceptions since you can pick up purple Arcana chests on the ground in those Stages to get more Arcanas earlier, but in general, those are the times you can expect to get each Arcana, which does factor in when choosing them.
Disco of Gold (Start of run)
The most important Arcana for Sammy by far, Disco of Gold triggers Gold Fever whenever you pick up a Coin Bag. Given that this build leans into the generation of extra light sources, you should be able to maintain a near-constant Gold Fever with this Arcana. And while Gold Fever is running, you’re gaining extra experience, thanks to Sammy’s passive ability. In addition, it also provides a constant stream of healing during Gold Fever, making you nigh-invincible as long as you can keep it going.
Wicked Season (11-minute pick)
Once you’ve got your experience engine up and running, you’ll want more ways to take advantage of it. Wicked Season is one of the best, increasing your Growth, Luck, Greed, and Curse every time you level up, and doubling each at fixed intervals. This will turbo-charge your leveling, giving you access to more Gold, more light sources, more experience, and more enemies to fight.
Chaos in the Dark Night (20-minute pick)
Another great level-scaling Arcana, Chaos in the Dark Night lets you increase your projectile speed by 1% every level, which pairs brilliantly with everything else in the build. After a short spell with this Arcana, your weapons will be firing too fast for you, and your enemies, to comprehend.
And that’s that! A complete guide to the best Sammy build-in Vampire Survivors. This is the setup that lets you make the most of the character, leaning into the advantages offered by his starting weapon and passive ability to create a fun playstyle that feels distinct from that of other characters in the game. By the end of our test run with this build, we had amassed over 600 levels and just over a million Gold: a great result by any metric. Try it out for yourself if you’re in need of extra Gold, or just a good time.
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