Vampire Survivors – Giovanna Character Spotlight

An overview of Giovanna with some observations and tips to play her.

Giovanna Character Overview

The Stats

The other hot witch on the roster, Giovanna starts with a 20% bonus to Move Speed, kinda cheating for her as she’s flying on a broom and not running around. She’s one of the faster characters to use, like Pugnala, her mobility being one of her stronger points. But Move Speed isn’t all she gets. Giovanna also gains a 1% increase to Projectile Speed as she levels. It doesn’t take Giovanna long to over take characters like Dommario, with high starting Projectile Speed, as she just needs to get leveled to 41. And she’ll need the Projectile Speed, badly, cause of…

The Weapon

Gatti Amari…. there’s no weapon in the game as fickle as this one. Gatti Armri is a summon weapon, summoning cats meowing, A LOT, via hexagrams on the edge of the screen. Early on, they are as much a hindrance as they are helpful due to being as close to random as possible. They tend to walk in straight lines, changing direction here and there. they do attack, if they feel like it, and aren’t to partial to if it’s a enemy or Giovanna, doing twice as much damage to her as they do enemies. And they get into fights with each other as well, making a B.B.O.V. (Big Ball Of Violence) fight cloud. a common strategy with Giovanna is to go into the B.B.O.V when a breather is needed, as it lasts for a bit and is fairly big starting out. And there’s a good chance if you start getting Amount and Luck up, the B.B.O.V. happens more often.

That said, the cats do something else as well. They eat pick-ups off the ground. Depending on the pick-up, the cats can:

• Explode, like Heart of Fire causes including the AOE, from Nduja Fritta Tanto.
• Freeze in place from Orologion.
• Run twice as fast from both Clover drops, Little and Guilded.
• Gain Damage from Floor Chicken, probably at the worst time possible when Giovanna is low HP.
• Orologion, Rosaries, and Vacuums can be used by Giovanna instead.

Luck affects the cats as much as it does the drops on a run. The more Luck, the better chance they don’t attack Giovanna and go after enemies, as well as a B.B.O.V. happening.

Evolving Gatti Amari, with Stone Mask, turns it into Vicious Hunger. The cats go away and are replaced by a large cat’s eye that leaves a trail of black smoke behind it. It moves the same as Gatti Amari as well as eating things it goes past. But it no longer gains different effects from doing so. Instead, it ether eats the item, including XP gems, or turns the enemy it killed or item it ate into coins and both money bags. Now this is FANTASTIC for gold runs. But leveling is reduced to a crawl, as they’re busy munching on the XP dropped. Don’t be surprised if leveling runs grind to a halt if Gatti Amari gets evolved. Normal runs, like with Cross, will go smoother if it’s not evolved.

Why and Why Not (Pros and Cons)

Why Giovanna?

Giovanna’s growing Projectile Speed and greater mobility from her 20% Move Speed allow her to a very versatile character on a run. Slow weapons pack way more punch in her hands as she levels. And fast low damage weapons, like Knife and Magic Wand, will absolutely riddle enemies with how fast they’re going. Add in some Cooldown and even Elites and Bosses can’t withstand the firepower Giovanna is sending their way.

Why not Giovanna?

The f***ing cats! Gatti Amari can really hamper Giovanna on runs just cause it’s a fickle weapon. At lower levels, the cats are slow and will attack Giovanna as much as they attack enemies. Maxing out Gatti Amari just means more cats and they won’t stop attacking Giovanna until they’ve eaten about 25 or so Floor Chicken. Which itself is a big issue as well. As that WILL be needed cause Giovanna isn’t just trying to avoid enemies, but the cats as well. And given that they get stronger as they eat up Floor Chicken that she could be using to heal up with, that double damage they do to her making them just as bad as the enemies being fought. And the worst thing is the cats make you give up weapon and passives slots if you want to counteract them eating pick-ups and attacking Giovanna. Which can really limit the types of builds to use with her.

How to Get

Giovanna is a coffin character. which means you have to find and open her coffin in the Inlaid Library. It’s guarded by gargoyles. But she’s worth going after. After finding her, Giovanna is unlocked for 1000 gold before scaling

Tips and Builds

Get a second weapon for Giovanna quick. Early on, Gatti Amari is too unreliable to try and do a run with. It’s great later on. but till then, get something that will carry her much better. Magic Wand is a good choice as it frees up targeting so you can concentrate of avoiding the cats till they can be dealt with. that said, the cats are a great weapon to buff up. getting them Area, Cooldown, Luck, and Duration make them insanely potent. Luck will also reduce them attacking Giovanna as well as increasing the chance of Floor Chicken being dropped. Which they use to do more damage the more they eat. As they don’t gain damage by leveling or evolving. if not evolved, the cats will keep eating Floor Chicken and keep gaining damage. even after eating a hundred or so Floor Chicken, they’ll just slow down some in their damage gain and will be fighting all around Giovanna almost constantly, which is both great and funny to watch.

Money money money! build

• Weapons: Bone, Garlic, King Bible, Magic Wand, Santa Water
• Passives: Attractorb, Clover, Endless Tome, Pummarola, Spellbinder, Stone Mask

Giovanna does a decent job at making gold on her own. this build lets her push her gold making even farther while providing great survivability with The Holy Trinity backed up by Bone and Magic Wand. only real thing to do with the build is to evolve Gatti Amari last. that way Vicious Hunger will be much stronger while Luck is giving better chances for more gold to be gained

The f***ing cats! build

• Weapons: Laurel, Runechaser
• Passives: Armor, Attractorb, Clover, Duplicator, Endless Tome, Torrona’s Box, pick up both Metaglios and Silver Ring
• Arcanas: Beginning, Gemini, Silent Old Sanctuary

As the name suggests, this build relies on cats for the run. And you’ll have a lot of them. If I remember right, they’ll be around 10 cats running around when duplicator, beginning, and gemini are going. With just beginning, giovanna starts with 4, 5 if the amount power-up has been filled. This makes the build a ‘risk versus reward’ build as you work on getting laurel, armor, and clover leveled while getting the cats to eat as much floor chicken as you can get them to. By the time you have both beginning and gemini, you should be decently armored up and runechaser evolved into no future so taking on the guardians won’t be too much of a issue with the sheer number of cat fights going on around giovanna so you can evolve laurel. Then roam around enjoying a screen covering b.b.o.v.

In Conclusion

When I unlocked Giovanna, I was REALLY put off by Gatti Amari. a weapon that damages its’ user is a weapon you don’t want to use. It wasn’t till Trouser was added that I started to see just what Gatti Amari could do for gold runs. After that, I started to enjoy playing Giovanna more. Like Poe, she takes a bit to run and has her drawbacks. But with some planning, she’s a powerhouse of a character that just flies around on her broom while her cats absolutely decimates anything that dares to come on the screen. Besides, playing the hot witch barefoot waifu is a joy in its’ own right.