V Rising Beginner’s Guide: Tips & Tricks for New Players

by Mike Alexander / Game Guides, Tips & Tricks / 02 Jan 2023

After a long wait, V Rising is finally available to its hungry fans in Steam Early Access. The game, which is being developed and published by Stunlock Studios, is a vampire-themed survival game set in a massive open world designed to be inherently gothic in nature. As you go about the typical duties of a survival game, resource collecting, crafting, building, and fighting the elements, you will also need to deal with a vampiric curse that is simultaneously helpful and hurtful. Exposing yourself to the sun’s rays will cause you to take damage, but you’ll thrive at night. Your thirst for blood can be debilitating, but your vampire strength and speed make you a step above any threat you’ll face.

There are tradeoffs for everything in V Rising, which in conjunction with its survival elements can make it a little difficult to get into. If you find yourself having this trouble, you’ll find some helpful guidance in this V Rising Beginner’s Guide: Tips & Tricks for New Players. If you’re ready to build your vampire kingdom up from nothing and become the next Dracula, then extend your bat wings, and let’s get going!

Becoming a Better Vampire

Progression in V Rising is handled differently than in most survival games. There are no levels to be had. Instead, all of your upgrades and power boosts are tied to your equipment. As you make your way through the open world, you will face progressively stronger enemies, which will drop better and better equipment for you to take. There are also V Blood Targets you can take down which will give you access to different powers that you can switch up depending on your situation. No experience points farming here, your success will hinge mostly on your skill and engagement with the survival game elements.

Take Your Enemies Powers

Speaking of V Blood Targets, these are mini boss-style encounters that you can have in many different parts of the open world. In the current state of V Rising’s Early Access, there are 30 V Blood Targets for you to hunt down and claim the powers of. Hunting V Blood Targets will also give you other perks like new crafting stations to work with. Each target is unique and will be a test of your skills, but the rewards are more than worth the risk. Also, you don’t need to mark a V Blood Target to hunt and claim their rewards. It is possible to stumble across them in the world, and defeating them that way will grant you the same perks.

Bloody Buffs

In most survival games, you’ll need to eat food and drink water to continue surviving the harsh world you inhabit. In V Rising, however, it’s all about drinking that sweet, sweet blood. In fact, there are 6 different types of blood for you to drink, all of which give you separate buffs. The blood types are Warrior, Brute, Rogue, Scholar, Worker, and Creature. The benefits of each blood type are myriad, but here is a quick rundown: Warrior blood makes you a better fighter, Brute blood gives you combat bonuses and life leach, Creature blood increases your survival abilities, Rogue blood gives you critical hit boosts in combat, Worker blood increases your resource yields, and Scholar blood increases your spell powers.

You Need to Feed

While you get great buffs from all the different kinds of blood in V Rising, it is important to keep your blood supply topped up, regardless of the type. If you go too long without feeding, your vampire will become so weak that a single hit or a speck of sunlight will kill them in an instant. As your blood supply remains empty, your health bar will whittle away to nothing, but you won’t just drop dead, it’ll take one of the aforementioned interventions to put you in the ground. If you find yourself low on health after topping up, you can use the Blood Mend skill to regain that health over time, and then you’re back to your full strength!

Take and Break EVERYTHING

As you continue to explore and start to find human settlements, you will come across heavily guarded chests full of awesome loot and equipment. When you see these, it is always worth the hassle, so don’t hesitate to kill every one of those guards dead for their goods. Similarly, when you see boxes and crates around abandoned settlements, breaking those will often reward you with crafting materials, occasionally even rare ones. When you have an area cleared out, it’ll be worth your time to make a second pass over the zone to make sure you didn’t miss any chests or breakables, you’ll never know what they contain!

Mike Alexander

Mike has been playing video games since he was able to hold a controller, having been fascinated by Sonic 2 on his mom’s Sega Genesis. That fascination and passion for the art form has grown exponentially nearly 30 years later, and he doesn’t see that fading away anytime soon.
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