Putrid Rat is a weird boss. You can search for it all you like, but you won’t find it. Instead, you have to craft it. So without further ado, let’s dig into how to find, craft, and defeat it in our little vermin hunt!
If you’re here, you’re probably an ambitious vampire seeking to get the most out of V Rising! So why not check out some of our other guides:
- 11 Beginner Tips to Help You Sink Your Fangs Into V Rising
- Polora the Feywalker (Strategy & Location)
Where can you find Putrid Rat?
Putrid Rat is located in your castle. Literally – you won’t find it anywhere else. When you go to your Blood Altar, you’ll find that you can’t track blood. This means that you can choose where you want to fight this battle. What a luxury! But you can’t just summon Putrid Rat right away. You’ll need to craft it, using a Vermin Nest.
To build a Vermin Nest, you need 360 stones and 120 bones. You can find it in the refinement section within the production tab. You’ll unlock the Vermin Nest early on in the game, so you won’t have any trouble being able to build one.
Once you have the Vermin Nest, place it somewhere inside your castle. This way, when you fight Putrid Rat, you won’t have to deal with sunlight at all.
A nice and enclosed era! No sunlight in my Putrid Rat battle!
You’ll notice that you need specific ingredients to summon Putrid Rat.
- 6 Grave Dust
- 3 Fish Bone
- 1 Twilight Snapper
Let’s get gathering!
Grave Dust
For Grave Dust, you need to convert 100 bones into 1 grave dust using a grinder. If you live near a cemetery, you won’t have any problems finding bones. What’s more, in cemeteries and graveyards, powerful enemies have a chance to drop grave dust directly.
Fish Bone
Fish Bone is fairly common too, you’ll find it when you raid bandit camps, or by putting living fish into your Devourer. Of course, to get fish, you’ll need a fishing pole. You’ll also need a fishing pole for a Twilight Snapper, so let’s get into that.
Twilight Snapper
For a Twilight Snapper, you need a Fishing Pole. You need to create one using a Woodworking Bench. You unlock this after beating Rufus the Foreman. Craft it with 12 planks and 60 animal hides.
Once you build a Woodworking Bench, you can create a fishing pole. This costs 8 planks, 4 copper ingots, and 4 course threads.
A fishing pole is always useful. Sometimes even necessary!
Twilight Snappers appear all over the Farbane Woods. Go to various lakes in the area and fish on the wide spots in small lakes to catch a fish. The chance of getting a Twilight Snapper is pretty low, so you’ll have to repeat this process for a while. It’s a bit grindy, but you fortunately only need one.
With that, you’ll have all the ingredients for Putrid Rat. Before you put them in the Vermin Nest though, read the strategy below. The Rat will start spawning once you insert the ingredients, and it’s always good to prepare for combat beforehand.
How can you defeat Putrid Rat?
When you encounter Putrid Rat, it’s level 30. So if you’re anywhere from level 25 or higher, you’ll be completely fine. Of course, as always, do check the durability of your items before you engage, and repair them if you have to.
For your weapons, a Copper Sword will do the job. You can go for a Merciless Copper one if you like, but if you don’t have to recipe there’s no reason to postpone the fight. For a reliable source of copper, head to the Bandit Copper Mine, where you’ve been before to fight Errol the Stonebreaker.
You are likely fighting in a small, enclosed space. Since you won’t have too much freedom to heal using Blood Mend, you should take some Vermin Salves with you just in case. Also, check that your blood meter is full, so you don’t lose HP mid-combat.
Spells – Creating a perfect Counter
For your spells, I prefer to stay out of direct range. Putrid Rat mostly uses bite attacks, so focusing on ranged attacks pays off big time. I’m suggesting the same spells as I did for your fight against Polora the Feywalker:
- Frost Bat is a fantastic long-distance spell attack. Although you do have to aim it, once it hits an enemy it deals 100% magic damage and chills the enemy briefly. If you hit a chilled enemy, it will suffer brief freezing. You can get Frost Bat by defeating Keely the Ice Archer, who’s located in the Bandit Trapper Camp.
- Chaos Volley launches two bursts of chaos magic that have some aim assist. When you hit the enemy, the spell deals 125% magic damage and lets the enemy experience chaos burn. You can get Chaos Volley by defeating Lidia the Chaos Archer, who roams the Farbane Woods, often near the Forgotten Cemetary and the Logging Camp.
- Veil of Chaos lets you dash and boosts the next melee attack you do. Not only do the clones you leave behind explode and deal magic damage, but you can also recast the spell after doing it once. Essentially, it gives you a double dash. You can get Veil of Chaos by defeating Clive the Firestarter, who is located at the Bandit Sulfur Quarry.
By the time you’re finished, your setup should look something like this:
The old, trustworthy setup. It works for me – and it will work for you, too.
Now, put the Grave Dust, Fish Bone, and Twilight Snapper into the Vermin Nest, and wait for Putrid Rat to spawn. Let’s battle!
Fighting Putrid Rat
Putrid Rat isn’t a very strong boss, but it can definitely be annoying. It has three types of attack:
- Its most common attack is a simple bite. Putrid Rat will lunge towards you and will bite either 1, 4, or 5 times. If it plans on biting multiple times in a row, there’ll be a red aura around it. As long as you don’t stand directly in front of it, you can easily dodge this attack.
This is the exact position you shouldn’t be in when you fight Putrid Rat.
- It can spawn additional rats. Putrid Rat digs itself underground, after which it will spawn a bunch of smaller, very weak rats. You can take care of these very easily with a spin attack from your sword.
These small rats are pretty pathetic. One spin attack and they’re basically toast.
- Its final attack is a poison attack, which you can recognize as a green cloud appearing around Putrid Read. If you get near it, you’ll take some damage. Simply stay outside of the AOE (Area of Effect) and you’ll be perfectly fine.
As you can probably gather from these attacks, Putrid Rat doesn’t have many long-range options against you. So let’s abuse that! Whenever Putrid Rat just finished an attack, do in and deal some massive damage with your sword. Save your spin attack for when the little rats come, so you can take them all out very quickly. Whenever it is attacking or seems close to doing so, just dash out of range and throw projectiles at it. I found both Frost Bat and Chaos Volley to be very effective.
Simply repeat this strategy until you got his HP down to a beautiful 0. Drain its V Blood, and mission complete!
What are your rewards?
It shouldn’t be a surprise – you’ll get the beautiful Rat Form! To equip it, you have to open your Vampiric Power Wheel and select it.
Although this form isn’t worth much in itself, it’s perfect for little excursions where you have to be able to escape quickly. When you start raiding the Dunley Farmlands, this form is incredibly valuable to leave your enemies standing as you run off with glass, cotton, or other valuables.
I hope you found this V Rising guide helpful! Leave a comment for suggestions, comments, or simply if you want to share your battle strat or how you use the Rat Form in your adventures!
