13 Beginner Tips to Help You Sink Your Fangs Into V Rising

Here are some hot tips to get you started in V Rising, the addicting new open-world vampire game from Stunlock Studios. Like any game of this size, there is a learning curve but with this guide you'll be hunting with the best in no time!

V Rising is a hot new survival crafting game that puts you in the role of an aspiring lord of the night. You will be taking on the inhospitable world of Vardoran and other vampires as you slay, craft and build your way to glory. Whether you’re just getting on board or have been playing for a few days, here are some V Rising beginner tips to help you on your way.

I have been grinding V Rising (allow me to shamelessly plug my Twitch channel – feel free to check it out) and have put together a few crumbs of knowledge that I believe will be invaluable to new players hoping to get into what could otherwise be an intimidatingly vast game. Some of these tips might also be cautionary for more experienced players who could be playing more efficiently. 

Learn About V Rising Blood, Blood Types, and Blood Quality

Vampires survive by consuming the blood of mortals. In V Rising, blood does a whole lot more than sustain you. It can also buff your attack speed, resource yields, spell power and much more. There are a lot of blood types to choose from, and you get them by feeding off of specific enemies carrying the blood. The strength of the blood is expressed in a percentage. You are granted buffs on a tier-based system. 

Buffs are class-based, for example worker blood will give you better resource yields. Higher level rogue blood will grant you movement speed and additional critical hits. This is an interesting mechanic that adds a unique layer of strategy. Blood types are fixed, but the strength is assigned via RNG meaning you have to stay alert for potentially strong blood.

Take Advantage of the Blood Moon

Blood moons happen periodically, and you should always try make the most of these in-game nights by going out hunting. You get a movement speed increase, as well as a buff to your blood type bonuses. If you’re quick, you can take down multiple V Blood Carriers in a single blood moon.

Keep Your Blood Full

As a vampire, you will be consuming a lot of blood in this game. Here’s how it works – weaken an enemy enough, and you can Feed off of them. Once you’ve activated Feed, you can either tap attack for a quick kill or wait until you drain your target. There is a short cooldown on the Feed ability.

Draining your target will grant you their blood type and associated percentage. This will also fill your blood tank. It is in your best interest to keep it full, as you will start taking damage once it’s empty. Having no blood won’t kill you, but you can’t heal and you will die from even a single hit once your health bottoms out.

You will have to strategise and try keep your blood tank as full as possible. Abandoning a blood type for a weaker one and refilling your tank is far preferable to going into a tough battle with low blood. You need the blood to heal yourself, and it will be a lot tougher escaping if you can’t maintain your wolf form.

Blood Mend Between Fights

Activating Blood Mend between fights is a must. Health regeneration doesn’t happen automatically. This is another seemingly obvious piece of advice, but in my own experience and haste I have been downed a few times purely because I didn’t refill that 1/4 HP bar when I had the chance, and arrogantly continued exploring.

Tough enemies like V Blood Carriers roam the map so there is constantly a danger that you might run into one at an inopportune time, like just after you’ve taken out another tough enemy.

Befriend Your Blood Altar

Your Blood Altar is your main point of call when you want to unlock items and recipes, and track down bosses to fight. Like your sawmill and grinder, you can craft this from the Build menu. Certain essentials – leather, for example – are unlocked by beating specific bosses.

The Blood Altar is also handy in giving you a brief summary of what kind of enemy you are up against, as well as what kind abilities and recipes of you will unlock when you beat them. You can also get an idea of exactly how strong the enemy is compared to your equipment level. You can take them on if you find them without tracking them via the Blood Altar, but if they are still locked your equipment level is likely too low and you’ll need to upgrade.

In short, when you aren’t sure what to do next visiting your Blood Altar can point you in the right direction. There might be a boss you haven’t beaten yet, and if not, you probably need to look at upgrading your equipment as much as possible.

Improve Your Equipment 

In V Rising your level is determined by your equipment. There are no tricks here. You should be upgrading your weapons and armor at every opportunity. In fact, focusing on this will enable you to improve other things faster.

You definitely need to upgrade your castle and add new crafting and refining stations, but I would recommend prioritising upgrading your equipment at the earliest convenience as this directly affects your survivability throughout the game.

Once you get to Copper weapons, you will be able to use weapon-based special attacks that add another layer of strategy to combat. You might also find new for even stronger weapon as loot – just take it to your research station.

Stack Up On Sun Resistance

You’re a vampire, and as such this means you are terminally allergic to sunlight. I have touched on this already, but it’s worth mentioning again because it’s a critical gameplay Element. V Rising has a fairly novel take on the cycle of night and day, whereby you can roam freely at night but have to limit yourself to the shadows during the day. 

This might seem like obvious advice, but I am including it in case you feel tempted to go exploring in the daytime due to the fact that you can survive in the day if you stick to the shadows. If you do, take it easy and limit yourself to basic gathering of resources, avoiding tough enemies. 

Stronger enemies have a tendency to destroy cover when attacking, and some areas just don’t have all that much cover to begin with. I have found myself being punished for playing too aggressively in the daytime, and that it’s better to hang around my castle crafting and refining before going out at night.

You will eventually unlock or find equipment that will gran sun resistance. This helps you survive a little longer in daytime, but only to a point. You can also construct Mist Braziers in and around your fledgling base to help ward of the cruel star. 

Farm Resources Constantly – Even In Battle!

An important V Rising beginner tip is to take advantage of the full arc of your swings. You can fight while you farm, and farm while you fight. Farm what exactly? Resources, of course! There’s a boat load of basic and more advanced resources to collect, and you will likely be doing a fair amount of that, provided you aren’t on a server that grants additional yields.

Collecting them is simple – you’ll be picking things up constantly as you fight enemies and loot their remains. You also gather from hitting rocks, vegetation and trees. Raw lumber and stone can be used for building, but are also refined into other items.

To save yourself time, you can even take advantage of destructive combat to aid you in your resource collecting. I do this by aggroing a Treant or Golem and baiting them into attacking trees and rocks. This is risky but makes the process much easier. Just be careful when doing this close to your castle – they can also break your stuff, or kill you if you aren’t careful.

Travel Faster in Wolf Form

I found the traveling mechanics to be a little perplexing at first. The map is fairly large, and in the beginning you will be traversing it mostly on foot. Periodically, you will happen upon Vampire Waygates, which allow you to travel between gates you have discovered.

This is neat, helpful and good, but there is a catch – you cannot fast travel with items in your inventory. This means you will have to choose between dropping your loot or trekking across the map to retain your items. Once you’ve beaten the Alpha Wolf, you can transform into a wolf and travel at much faster speeds. Getting hit or attacking in this form will cancel it, so it’s best to just yeet past any enemies to get to your destination.

Of course, you could just join a server that allows Waygate travel with items, but if you are determined to play the game as intended then you will have to rely on Wolf Form. There is a Cave Passage system that allows you to travel large distances with your inventory, but unless you specifically build your castle near an entrance this might not be convenient.

Brace Yourself For Bosses

Like many online multiplayer titles, V Rising has a veritable pantheon of bosses lined up for you to take a literal stab at. One should never challenge a boss while unprepared, unless you are far stronger than the boss. There is always a danger of running into one unexpectedly, so keep that in the back of your mind while you’re out and about in Vardoran.

I have found that taking on bosses procedurally is the best way to succeed, especially when you’re underleveled. The process I follow is locating the boss, preparing my character for battle, isolating the boss and finally taking it down.

Tracking can sometimes take you quite far. In these cases, I have found it quite useful to put together a rudimentary base nearby where your target likes to hang out. This helps if you need to respawn after a loss, or need to cool your jets after clearing out any potentially problematic mobs that might interfere in your boss fight.

Join the Discord from the Title Menu

There isn’t much to see in the title menu. You can load an old save, start a new game, fiddle with some options or view the credits. There are also links to various social media. I would recommend at least joining the Discord, there are hundreds of V Rising players on it so you will likely find this to be an invaluable resource especially when new patches come out.

On the V Rising Discord, you can interact with other players and even the developers. There is a wealth of information being shared on the platform, as well as channels for various social aspects such as joining clans and sharing gameplay footage.

Other than that, there isn’t much to do in the title menu aside from viewing some game announcements, there are also different expansion packs on offer. After you’ve joined the Discord, go ahead and select “Play” to start a new game.

Avoid PvP At First

Whether you avoid PvP or not is a decision, I think, that should be based on a few factors. First and foremost, as one player succinctly put it, new players are essentially roaming loot boxes. On a busy default settings server that doesn’t allow Waygate travel, it is quite easy to gather your resource by letting other players do it for you, if you have a friend or 2.

Not having Waygate travel with items forces players to cart their inventory across the map in the hopes of avoiding unwanted attention. Other players can also feed off of you and steal your blood, so you will be a target especially if you have a strong blood type. If you like this type of challenge, by all means jump int.

On the other hand, it might be best to learn the basics of V Rising in a PvE server with as few distractions as possible. Trying to learn with risk of other players beating you up and stealing your things isn’t ideal. You could even play on a solo server, just until you are more confident in your abilities to defend yourself. Playing against other players difficult to prepare for, but I think a basic familiarity with the controls and mechanics goes a long way and will save you a lot of frustration.

Don’t Fret Over Character Creation

No need to spend too much time on this screen, you can edit your appearance later once you unlock and build a mirror. If you do decide to indulge yourself, you will find a pleasant variety of cosmetic options to tweak. In the end, it’s all purely cosmetic.

In fact, it’s probably best not to get too attached to your first character unless you are planning to play on a server for an extended period of time. Even then, there is no need to spend all this time creating a character that you’re just going to put armor on anyway!

To be frank, there are only 2 character models – male and female. No different body types, so they all have the same general appearance. So, make your choice and proceed. Upon starting your game, you will be dropped into a graveyard that serves as a tutorial area. Go ahead and follow the prompts, and start crafting your first few items rather than getting stuck on this screen.

Don’t Fret Over Character Creation

No need to spend too much time on this screen, you can edit your appearance later once you unlock and build a mirror. If you do decide to indulge yourself, you will find a pleasant variety of cosmetic options to tweak. In the end, it’s all purely cosmetic.

In fact, it’s probably best not to get too attached to your first character unless you are planning to play on a server for an extended period of time. Even then, there is no need to spend all this time creating a character that you’re just going to put armor on anyway!

To be frank, there are only 2 character models – male and female. No different body types, so they all have the same general appearance. So, make your choice and proceed. Upon starting your game, you will be dropped into a graveyard that serves as a tutorial area. Go ahead and follow the prompts, and start crafting your first few items rather than getting stuck on this screen.

When In Doubt, Run Away

Balthier from Final Fantasy XII once said that discretion is often the better part of valor. This comes to mind while playing V Rising –  there is no dishonor in running away from a battle you’re going to lose.

There are some insanely strong enemies in V Rising and while you may have things under control, you might aggro another enemy and as a result the battle is no longer in your favor. Rather than indulging in the exercise in futility that is trying to beat an enemy that is too strong for you, regroup instead and come back with a better plan of action.

The sun could also be working against you – if you’re caught in a fight close to sunrise, either end it quickly or consider trying again later. Fighting strong enemies is bad enough at night, and things will quickly go from bad to worse for you while trying to avoid their attacks while also avoiding the sun.

Don’t Be Afraid to Start Again

To make it clear, V Rising might take some experimentation before you find the right game setup that suits your needs. You will likely end up with a few characters across a few servers before long. 

I did in a previous tip encourage players to consider avoiding PvP until they were able to hold their own in-game, and this final tip isn’t intended to contradict that. I was mostly referring to more active servers that likely have seasoned players roaming the lands.

Starting a private PvP server with your friends might be the way to go here. It will be of great interest to collaborate and/or compete with someone else on a smaller scale, serving to teach you the dynamics of player interactions in the game. The Discord I mentioned is going to be a great place to find other players if you don’t know anyone who’s already interested in the game.

Conclusion

Here’s hoping these V Rising beginner tips will help save you time in learning the basics of the game. Once you’ve mastered these, I would encourage you to go and explore different servers.V Rising is a highly versatile game, and there is a lot to discover.

A game of this scale might discourage some gamers, but in closing I would like to reassure those that are on the fence about jumping in that it’s a lot simpler than one might think. Go ahead, sink your teeth in!

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