Vampire Crawlers Merchant Spending and Relic Guide

To maintain a winning run in Vampire Crawlers, spend your merchant gold on deck trimming services and core passive relics before buying individual action cards. Banking currency between rooms ensures you can afford high-tier artifacts and card removals when you encounter a vendor node.

Merchant Service Priority

Vendor inventories offer active cards, passive relics, health restoration, and card removal services. Pruning weak cards and acquiring passive scaling provide permanent value, whereas purchasing extra attack cards often dilutes your card rotation.

Skip consumable health purchases if your life total is stable. If rest sites are available ahead on your dungeon map, save your currency entirely for mechanical upgrades and deck purges.

Card Purging Rules

Every run begins with basic strikes and guards that clutter your hand once stronger spells are drafted. When entering a shop, purchase up to two available card purge slots before browsing the rest of the inventory.

• Limit Deck Size: Aim to keep your deck under fifteen cards unless you have acquired significant cycle acceleration.
• Prioritize Starter Removals: Remove baseline strikes and basic guards first. This increases how frequently your primary area-of-effect spells and defensive barriers return to your hand.
• Pass on Filler Attacks: Avoid buying common attacks during early shop visits unless your current deck lacks the baseline damage required to clear standard enemy swarms.

Relic Selection Priorities

Passive relics trigger automatic effects that scale your turn-to-turn efficiency without costing extra card draws or action points. Focus your relic budget on items that enhance multi-target clear or automate defense against elites:

• Energy and Cooldown Reductions: Lower the cost friction of heavy spells to maintain consistent offensive turns.
• Projectile Multipliers: Duplicate spell effects to double room coverage against enemy clusters.
• On-Hit Status Amplifiers: Apply burn, bleed, or freeze when spells land to whittle down high-health targets over multiple rounds.
• Automated Defensive Barriers: Generate temporary shielding upon entering a room or restore modest health after wave clears to prevent gradual attrition.

Automated shield relics are more reliable than reactive defense cards against elite enemies, as they absorb heavy incoming hits even during poor card draws.

Gold Management and Pathing

Map routing dictates how much gold you bring to each merchant. Plan routes through combat encounters and high-yield treasure vaults immediately before a shop node to arrive with maximum currency. Avoid routing directly into a merchant after spending your funds, as entering a shop without sufficient reserves leaves run-defining rare relics out of reach.