The Pentagram is a weapon in Vampire Survivors. It is the starting weapon of Christine Davain. It is unlocked by surviving for 20 minutes as any character.
Its Evolution is the Gorgeous Moon, which requires the Crown.
Effects[]
The Pentagram summons a purple glyph with golden lining, which visual details of increase as pentagram levels up. After summoning, the glyph shatters, instantly erasing every enemy, their drops, and all items on the screen, with the exception of stage items. Pentagram always deals damage equal to the max health of the enemy. If it is lower than 660, the damage number is overwritten to display it between 655 to 665.
Pentagram's symbol gets progressively more complex as its level increases:
- At Level 1, the golden linings are an Eye of Ra in the middle within a hexagram symbol having some missing line from being two completed ones, a ring of small symbols, and three concentric rings on top of a purple circle. The inner ring is in the purple circle and close to its perimeter, and the outer ones are very similar in size, they are bigger than the purple circle. The smallest and the middle ring have a straight line connecting them at 12 points, similar to a clock.
- At Level 4, another golden ring is added and connects to the points at the hexagram, the symbols are much bigger and clearly forms words instead of being evenly spaced.
- At Level 5, the hexagram is replaced with a triangle with circles at the tips, each circle has a symbol in it. The triangle is partially covering another two rings with more symbols between them, also clearly forming words.
- At Level 7, two concentric hexagons are added to encompass the inner set of rings and symbols and touch the outer set. The lines connecting the outermost two rings at the cardinal direction are replaced with two lines spreading out from the outer ring, similar to a compass with arrows pointing out.
- At Level 8, the triangle with circle tips is replaced by three concentric hexagons which are rotated by 30 degrees from the original two. The smallest one is similar in size to the middle one. The biggest hexagon and the middle hexagon have lines connecting between the vertices. Between those two hexagons, each of the six sections has symbols, seemingly replaced and fused with the inner set of circles and symbols. The biggest hexagon's vertices touches the only set of circles and symbols left.
Depending on its level and the Luck stat, there is a chance for a blue symbol to appear instead, which only erases enemies and not the drops and items, similar to the effect of the Rosary. Pentagram can be affected by Cooldown, but there is a hard-coded limit of 15 seconds on how often Pentagram can trigger.
To reach Pentagram's 15 seconds Cooldown limit, a Cooldown bonus of:
- -83.33% is required at level 1
- -81.25% is required at level 2
- -78.57% is required at level 4
- -76.92% is required at level 6
- -75% is required at level 8
Some enemies are completely unaffected by Pentagram.
Pentagram can attack and defeat the otherwise intangible Stalkers, Drowners, and Tricksters in Dairy Plant, Gallo Tower, Cappella Magna, and The Bone Zone before minute 30. However, they do not drop chests from the blast even if it does not erase any items.
Chance to not destroy items[]
Pentagram initially has a 10% chance to not destroy items, which is increased at levels 3, 5 and 7. This chance is affected by the character's Luck.
For general purposes, the total chance to not erase items can be calculated as:
In more detail, the random number generation for the Pentagram is handled via the following procedure:
- First, a random number x is generated from the standard uniform distribution: x ~ U[0,1]. This is rounded to 2 decimal places.
- Next, x is scaled down by the character's total Luck to become x/totalLuck.
- Lastly, the result is compared with the current Pentagram activation threshold, and triggers item destruction if x/totalLuck > Threshold.
For example, assume a level 5 Pentagram, with x = 0.5. This leads to a threshold of 0.45.
- With +0% Luck (=100% total Luck), 0.5/1 = 0.5 is greater than 0.45, hence item destruction is triggered.
- With +60% Luck (=160% total Luck), 0.5/1.6 = 0.31 is less than 0.45, hence item destruction is not triggered.
With enough Luck, it is possible to ensure that items won't be destroyed even with the max roll of x = 1:
- At level 1, the threshold is 10%, +900% Luck is required (=1000% total Luck) as beyond 1/10 is always less than 0.1.
- At level 3, the threshold is 25%, +300% Luck is required (=400% total Luck) as beyond 1/4 is always less than 0.25.
- At level 5, the threshold is 45%, +123% Luck is required (=223% total Luck) as beyond 1/2.2 is always less than 0.45.
- At level 7, the threshold is 65%, +54% Luck is required (=154% total Luck) as beyond 1.538461 is less less than 0.65.
Arcanas[]
- Blood Astronomia (XXI) - Allows the Pentagram to place multiple instant kill zones on the ground.
Levels[]
Pentagram has 8 levels. At max level, Pentagram has a +55% chance to not erase Pickups and Treasure Chests, and has -30 seconds of Cooldown.
| Level 1 | "Erases everything in sight." |
| Level 2 | Cooldown reduced by 10 seconds. |
| Level 3 | 25% chance not to erase items. |
| Level 4 | Cooldown reduced by 10 seconds. |
| Level 5 | 45% chance not to erase items. |
| Level 6 | Cooldown reduced by 5 seconds. |
| Level 7 | 65% chance not to erase items. |
| Level 8 | Cooldown reduced by 5 seconds. |
Limit Break[]
With Limit Break, Pentagram can be further leveled up.
| Description | Rarity | Max Total |
|---|---|---|
| Chance +5% | 10 | 100% |
Combos[]
- See Combos for a list of all item interactions.
Stats and passive items[]
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Arcanas[]
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- ↑ Erasure chance affected by Luck; With Sapphire Mist (I), extra activation chance affected by Luck
- ↑ With Blood Astronomia (XXI), damage zone placement affected by Magnet
- ↑ Erasure chance indirectly affected by bonuses to Luck; With Sapphire Mist (I), extra activation chance indirectly affected by bonuses to Luck
- ↑ Indirectly affected by bonuses to Cooldown
- ↑ Indirectly affected by bonuses to activation
Tips[]
- Luck increases the chance to not destroy items, so the Clover is recommended unless destroying them is the intent of getting it.
- Since Pentagram has the ability to destroy Pickups and Treasure Chests, it is inadvisable to select it too early to evolve it into Gorgeous Moon. Even with Crown making up for the experience loss, Treasure Chests are not easily replaceable.
- Destroying Pickups could be beneficial in niche circumstances, for example, in no movement challenges once there are enough experience gems built up, a red one that consolidate extra experience will form and the character with limited Magnet cannot collect anymore gems to level up. After a purple Pentagram being summoned, enemies kills can generate experience gems to be collected again.
- Even though Pentagram erases Treasure Chests, if a boss that would've dropped one is erased, the Treasure Chest is then dropped by a different enemy. However, if the boss had no 100% guarantee to drop a chest, there is still a chance to receive none.
- You can mitigate the loss of items from this weapon by timing the activation, if you haven't had the circle pop for a while or using a table with Cooldown accurately calculated, simply run in one direction and keep your gems and chest off-screen, wait for the Pentagram to trigger and then move back in to collect the stuff you wanted before. With a little bit of luck, you will get to keep the gems from the enemies you screen wipe as well.
- Because some enemies like The Reaper or bosses at the 25th minute (in some stages) are immune to Pentagram's instant kill effect, it cannot be relied on as your only tool of killing enemies.
- Pentagram is a great weapon to take near the end of a run when you already have 4 or 5 good weapons and you don't need anything else. Since you don't need more experience, its main downside is meaningless.
- As with other weapons, taking or upgrading Pentagram, either from leveling up or upgrading it from a Treasure Chest - will instantly activate it. This can be used to your advantage, as it allows you to clear multiple screens in succession in late game, or to save yourself from a pinch. However, be mindful that picking it with bad timing may destroy your valuables.
Trivia[]
- Pentagram dealing damage to enemies with less than 660 health will never reach the number 666, the Devil's number.
- There was an update which was supposed to increase the base chance from 5% to 10%. However, due to an oversight, it remained at 5% as it was hard coded. The increases stayed at 20%, 40% and 60% because upgrading adds a value to the total value instead of being hard coded as the wording may suggest. It was fixed on update 0.3.1.
- With the update that the Gorgeous Moon comes with, the max level of Pentagram is increased by one from seven to eight. However, the new level up simply splits the original level 6 effect of reducing Cooldown by 10 seconds to 5 at level 6 and 8.
- Compared to other weapons that still have only 7 levels like Laurel and Clock Lancet, Pentagram originally might not had an evolution planned for it, but it was deemed not powerful enough with its downsides.
- In patch 0.8.0, Limit Breaking Pentagram to have a 100% chance of saving items and getting one more level up afterwards, will hardlock the game and require the player to close the game to restart. This has been patched in a follow-up patch a few days later.
- If the player has reached the 100% chance of saving items since the small patch, every level up prompts the Gold Bag or Floor Chicken choice, despite the player choosing the "always" options to not hardlock the game. There is no remedy if you have limited yourself to one weapon only and did not get Crown to evolve it into Gorgeous Moon.
- If the player has the Pentagram available, then collects a Gold Finger, the Pentagram will be used the moment the event of the Gold Finger begins, regardless of what moment of the cooldown timer the Pentagram would otherwise be at.
External links[]
| Weapons |
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