Beginner’s Guide: Basics, Features, and Tips For Getting Started – V Rising Wiki Guide

All Game Modes

At launch, V Rising will feature four official game modes that you can choose from, so whether you’re looking to compete or cooperate, the choice will be yours as you explore the vast open world teeming with mythical beings and danger around every corner.

Here’s the official breakdown of all four game modes that will be available at launch:

• PvE (Player verse Environment)
  • In these honorable realms, vampires fight alongside one another as they reclaim Vardoran. Rise on your own or join a clan with up to four vampires as you conquer the world together.
• PvP (Player verse Player)
  • In these war-torn realms, vampires compete for supremacy as they reclaim Vardoran. At certain time frames, vampires may siege each other’s castles and raid them for goods. Gather allies in the game of blood and power by joining a clan with up to four vampires as you expand your domain.
• Full Loot PvP
  • In these chaotic realms, vampires compete for supremacy as they reclaim Vardoran. Risk it all in every encounter as you drop all loot upon death. At certain time frames, vampires may siege each other’s castles for goods, conquer them, or even destroy them completely. Improve your chances of survival by joining a clan with up to four vampires.
• Duo PvP
  • In these war-torn realms, vampires compete for supremacy as they reclaim Vardoran. At certain time frames, vampires may siege each other’s Castles and raid them for goods. Rise on your own or make a blood pact with another vampire to conquer the world together.

Complete Journal Quests to Unlock Key Mechanics and Features

Throughout your journey in V Rising, you’ll be tasked with completing a series of Journal Quests that appear in the top left corner of the game. While they may appear optional, these Quests essentially act as a very lengthy tutorial process that will guide you throughout most of the game, teaching you new mechanics as they are unlocked. Unfortunately, V Rising doesn’t necessarily explain this very well, so if you’re struggling to understand the purpose of a particular structure or mechanic, chances are you haven’t quite reached the quest that will explain it further.

With that said, it’s important to note that these Quests are vital to your in-game success as without their completion, your in-game progress will be halted as many of V Rising’s core mechanics and key features are claimed as rewards for completing test tasks. These rewards can include recipes for essential items, blueprints for core building structures, and even more.

So, to keep progressing in V Rising, be sure to work your way through each new Quest as they come available.

How the Blood Pool Works

As the common saying goes, you are what you eat, which remains true in V Rising as you’ll adopt the same Blood Type and Blood Quality when feeding on hostile, living humanoids with low health. For example, if you choose to feed on a Brute, you’ll adopt the Brute Blood Type and their stated Blood Quality that is displayed by a percentage next to their name when feeding.

The higher the Blood Quality, the better bonuses you’ll receive. It’s worth noting that despite feeding on several humanoids of the same Blood Type, your Blood Quality will not stack but rather be replaced by the most recent quality of blood that you’re feeding on.

It’s also important to remember that for a feed to be successful, you must let the feed bar fully complete, as pressing the Left Mouse Button while feeding will instantly kill your victim and no blood will be granted, nor will your current blood type/quality be altered.

Combat Basics: Understanding Weapons, Magic Abilities, and Vampire Powers

Doing away with the traditional point and click controls, V Rising will have you aiming skill shots and dodging projectiles using precise WASD controls and cursor-based aiming, which are significant advantages for those looking to engage in PvP battles.

Combat in V Rising is more than meets the eye. Your traditional Sword and Axe gameplay has been spiced up with the addition of wicked new abilities and magical powers that you can use to unleash upon powerful V Blood foes and other rival vampires.

Weapons and Armor

V Rising offers four weapons that can be crafted from your character tab with fairly common resources. While these weapons won’t be the most powerful, they will act as your initial weapons until you unlock the recipes to craft structures such as the Simple Workbench, Smithy, and Anvil, which all offer the ability to produce higher quality weapons at a much higher price.

• Swords:
  • An all-round weapon that deals slash damage and has a greater effect on vegetation and thickets.
• Axes:
  • Dual-wield axes that deal chop damage and has a greater effect on wood.
• Maces:
  • A heavy weapon that deals blunt damage that has a greater effect on minerals and rocks.
• Spears:
  • A spear with a long-ranged attack and deals thrust damage that has a greater effect on creatures.
• Crossbows:
  • A range weapon that fires bolts.

Each weapon type will offer three unique Weapon Techniques that are assigned to your action bar. It’s important to note, that all three weapon techniques won’t always be available, as they are unlocked through the following gear progression.

• Weapon Technique 1: Primary Attack, available immediately.
• Weapon Technique 2: Unlocked by equipping Copper or higher quality weapon.
• Weapon Technique 3: Unlocked by equipping Iron or higher quality weapon.

Magic Abilities

Upon defeating powerful V Blood foes, you’ll unlock various magic spells that can be assigned to your action bar. With up to five different categories of spells available — these include Blood, Unholy, Illusion, Chaos, and Frost — you’ll have the freedom to mix and match your spells to create an arsenal of deadly weapons and abilities that perfectly fit your playing style.

So whether you’re looking for the Freezing effect of Frost spells or the passive burn effect from Chaos spells, there’s a little something for everyone.

Your action bar will allow you to select one Travel Ability, two Basic Abilities, and an Ultimate Ability. These four magic abilities are in addition to your three unique weapon abilities that come with each weapon type.

Vampire Powers

There are ten unique Vampire Powers that can be unlocked through the completion of Quests and by defeating V Blood carries. These abilities can then be assigned to the Action Wheel and activated freely to enhance your vampire.

Vampire Powers can only be activated if your character is not moving. In addition, it will take several moments for Vampire Powers to activate, so be sure to factor that in when using them in-game.

Many of these powers can boost your resistance to elements and damage taken, health regeneration, shapeshifting into different forms that can disguise you from humans, increase your travel speed, and more.

See our complete list of Vampire Powers for more details on each particular power and how it can be unlocked.

Defeat Powerful V Blood Carriers (Bosses) for Essential Rewards

Upon building a Blood Altar inside your Castle, you’ll unlock the ability to track powerful V Blood carriers that can be found all across the map of Vardoran. When selecting Track Blood via the Blood Altar menu, you’ll be able to track down the exact location of each of these NPCs.

Just be warned, though, that these NPCs are very powerful; however, if you’re successful in defeating them, you’ll have the option to claim their powers and knowledge as your own. In addition, each V Blood carrier offers a unique reward, which can range from abilities that allow you to shapeshift into different forms such as Humans and Bears, key Structure unlocks for your Castle, as well as essential crafting recipes such as empty vials.

Before adventuring into the vast world of Vardoran to take on a V Blood carrier, just be sure that you are adequately prepared with appropriate level gear and potions as returning to collect your loot after death isn’t always easy and the trek back is often very time-consuming. Fortunately, V Blood carriers won’t appear trackable without the required gear level, so there’s no real fear of ever facing a boss that’s far too powerful for you to defeat.

It is worth noting that V Blood carriers can be defeated without tracking them, so should you happen to stumble upon them while exploring, you’ll receive full rewards for defeating them.

For more, why not check out our complete guide to All V Blood Bosses and Rewards to learn more about every item they unlock, and their known locations.

Fear the Light – Avoid Sunlight at All Costs

V Rising is unique because it works off a dynamic Day and Night cycle that ultimately affects the way you approach the game. Taking note of the famous vampire lore, you’ll receive damage when exposed to sunlight.

• Daylight hours take place from 10 AM to 6 PM.
• Night hours take place from 7 PM to 9 AM.

While it is entirely possible to explore Vardoran during the daylight hours, it will just be increasingly difficult to fight enemies and traverse the environment effectively without taking damage from sunlight, which is why it is highly recommended that you avoid leaving your Castle during these hours.

Should you find yourself caught out in the daylight, your best option will be to slowly make your way back to your Castle, using the treeline and its casted shadows to avoid standing in direct sunlight. Should you become exposed to the sunlight, you’ll have a short grace period before you begin to take damage. This grace period can be extended with the likes of potions and armor recipes that are obtained as rewards from V Blood’s. It is worth noting that the grace period can be reset by re-entering shadows.

Raise Your Castle From the Ashes and Build an Empire

Early on in your journey, you’ll be tasked with completing a Journal Quest that will require you to construct the fundamentals of your castle. In short, a castle is best described as your home base and will be a location where you can store valuable loot and grow a mighty army of darkness.

In your designated castle area, you’ll have the ability to build key production machinery that can be used to refine raw materials, research powerful new ancient techniques and recipes, as well as craft powerful weapons, armor, and stat-increasing consumables. In addition, you’ll also be able to imprison charmed humans, which are not only great for a late-night snack but also for boosting your Blood Type and Blood Quality. Humans can also be charmed into becoming loyal servants that you can eventually command to hunt for treasure, knowledge, and even blood.

To have a functioning castle, you’ll need to always ensure that your Castle Heart is kept stocked with Blood Essence. Without Blood Essence, your castle will begin to decay and will eventually disappear, along with all of your items inside — a rather devastating occurrence that can force you to lose countless hours of progress should you not carefully keep up with maintenance.

Raising a castle from the ashes won’t be easy and will take countless hours of resource preparation to construct a functioning and efficient castle. Just be warned, if you’re playing on a PvP server, your castle is vulnerable to vampire rivals, so you’ll want to ensure that your castle is built strong and secure. Therefore, one of your first steps to action will be ensuring your loot and resources are kept safe at all times. To do so, be sure to craft Vampire Lockboxes. These unique containers can store up to fourteen items and cannot be looted by other players.

Buffs and World Events

Occurring randomly throughout your day/night cycle, you may experience World Events. One such event is the Blood Moon, which boosts the effects of your current blood type by 20% and increases your Movement Speed by 10%. While this isn’t necessarily massive, these full night-occurring buffs can be huge advantages during your early game experiences, especially when you don’t have access to Servants and Prisons, where you can boost your Blood Quality quite quickly.

Other random events that can occur are NPC battles. While not necessarily a World Event, it’s not uncommon for you to find random NPCs battling it out along the roads. If you’re lucky, you may even catch the tail end of these battles, where you’ll have the chance to loot valuable and helpful resources such as Bones, Animal Hides, and Blood Essences.

Team Up with Allies and Consider Joining a Clan

While V Rising can be played solo, much of its core gameplay is best experienced with friends and other players. For this reason, we highly recommend joining or forming a clan. Not only is it extremely simple, but it’ll allow you to take down V Blood carriers much easier, gather resources quicker, build and craft together, and ultimately defend your castle from other Vampire raiders.

In addition, clan benefits include a private chat channel, friendly fire off, and the ability to build together.

How to Create and Join a Clan

In order to create or join a clan, simply open the Clan menu (P by default) and select Create Clan. Enter both a Clan Name and Clan Message and press Create Clan. It’s that simple, you’ll now be the owner of a brand new clan!

To invite players to a clan, simply open the Clan menu and select Invite Player. Then, type the name of the player that is active and currently online in the server and they’ll receive an invite to join.

How to Talk in Global Chat and Voice Chat

If you’re looking to chat with those currently on your server, press Return and use the Tab key to cycle through both Local and Global chat. As you would expect, messages sent to Global chat can be seen across the entire server, whereas Local chat will only be seen by players that are within a certain distance.

Furthermore, V Rising has an inbuilt voice chat that allows you to verbally communicate with any nearby players that happen to be connected. To change your Voice Chat settings, head into Options and select Sound. Next, scroll down to Voice Chat and you’ll find options that allow you to Use Voice Chat, Auto Join Voice Chat, adjust the Voice Chat volume, and opt for Push to Talk.

Once you have adjusted your settings, you’ll find the Voice Chat menu when selecting the Social button — this is the last button along the right side of the screen and is displayed by a microphone.

Tips and Tricks for Getting Started in V Rising

Whether you’re chasing tips for exploring the vast open world of Vardoran or using unique Vampire Powers to increase your resistance to dangerous elements, we are several tips and tricks that can help make your early game experience just that much easier.

General Quick Tips

• Quests are essential to your progress and will unlock vital mechanics and features such as Castles, abilities, and key building fundamentals that you’ll need to progress in the game.

• During the early game, you’ll encounter the need for items such as Paper, Leather, and Whetstones. While you’ll be able to craft these items later down the track, you’ll first need to obtain quite a hefty amount of them from killing humans and raiding settlements.
• Resources taking a while to obtain? Speed up the process of gathering resources by using the correct tools.
  • Swords have a greater effect on vegetation and thickets.
  • Axes have a greater effect on wood.
  • Maces have a greater effect on minerals and rocks.
• In addition, you can speed up the process of gathering resources by positioning yourself between multiple resource types. For example, if you position yourself close enough to a stone wall and tree, you may be able to take out both resources while swinging your tool.

• Blood is essential in V Rising, so never let it fully run out, or else you’ll take damage until it is refilled. If you’re completely out of blood and you don’t refill it in time, your health will remain at one until you feed on an unsuspecting humanoid or consume items such as Tainted Hearts, which will provide a small about of Blood. These items are important to always keep on you while traveling, as they can often be the difference between life and death.
• As you progress in the game and unlock new items to craft, you’ll notice that your resources will quickly begin to disappear, so get a head start by gathering as many resources as possible early on — you can always place them in storage should your inventory begin to fill up too quickly.
• Refineries are essential machinery that help turn raw materials into refined items such as Stone Bricks. However, as you’ll quickly notice, many of these machines take quite some time to refine the materials. For this reason, you’ll want to ensure that they are always running, so there’s no need to wait around. If you’re still finding that you’re stuck waiting for these resources, you can decrease the time in which it takes to craft the item by ensuring the structure is inside a confined Castle Room.

• As you travel the many roads of Vardoran, you’ll often come across loot from fallen enemies that NPCs or fellow players have slain. This is often an easy way to collect essential resources during your travels passively.
• When exploring the likes of abandoned farms, you’ll come across scarecrows. Destroying these will at times reward you with Plant Fibres and Planks.

Exploration Tips and Tricks

• When first starting out, it is highly recommended that you avoid traveling too far into the northern regions as the further you travel, the more challenging enemies and V Blood carriers will be.
• As you begin to explore Vardoran, you’ll likely encounter traveling merchants along the roads of Farbane Woods and Dunley Farmlands. Unfortunately, these merchants are hostile when attempting to trade them in Vampire form. Instead, you’ll need to activate the Vampire Power, Human Form, which is unlocked by the level 38 V Blood carrier, Beatrice the Tailor. When Human Form is activated, you’ll be able to sneak around unnoticed in human settlements.

• Before leaving your Castle, remember to deposit your items in storage chests. Not only will you lose your hard-earned resources in PvP but traveling back to obtain your items from your grave can quickly become quite the hassle as Vampire Waygates cannot be used to fast travel when carrying resources and other key items.

• While it’s not always possible, try to gather resources and explore Vardoran mostly during the night hours. This is a great way to avoid the dreaded sunlight that can make navigating during the day quite the hassle. For this reason, we recommend spending the majority of your day managing your Castle as with the right walls build, you’ll be protected from the sunlight.
• If you do happen to get caught out during the day, don’t panic and simply make your way back to your Castle by traveling between shadows that are cast on the ground. As the day/night cycle is dynamic, you’ll need to be wary of the changing shadows, so make sure to utilize your travel ability to make those dashes between shadows much safer.

• While there’s no complete protection from the sun, potions and certain crafting structures can be used to create equipment that provides increased resistance to elements such as the sun, garlic, silver, fire, and holy.
• Unlocking different Vampire Powers such as the Bear Form and Wolf Form can significantly increase your resistance to certain elements and even increase your movement speed. This can make both traveling easier but also safer during the daylight. Vampire Powers can be obtained by defeating V Blood carriers.

• Exploring human settlements such as Farms, be wary of roaming guards that will occasionally check in on the premise.
  
• Caught out in the sun or need a place to hide from enemies? Approach the piles of hay that you’ll often find within fields to hide inside them.

Combat Tips and Tricks

• Avoid running too far away from V Blood carriers and enemies as once they leave your screen, their health will be replenished to full. However, do note that while certain enemies and V Blood carriers will follow you for a certain distance, they will eventually return to their main roaming area, which will also see them returning to full health.
• Before leaving your Castle or engaging in combat, be sure to investigate both your weapons and armor for any durability issues. If they’re running low, it’s best to repair them to ensure they are always performing to the best of their ability.

• Utilize all of your weapons during combat as sticking to just one weapon type will leave you at a disadvantage. Performing combinations with both your Mace and Crossbow will allow you to attack enemies from afar, especially those that have quite powerful close-range attacks that you may not be fully equipped to handle when starting out.

• While you won’t have access to a Crossbow straight up, you can unlock the necessary crafting recipe by defeating one of the early V Blood bosses, Rufus the Foreman. In addition, Rufus will also unlock the Fishing Rod which will allow you to catch fish from lakes and streams. Fishing will be vital during the late game, as Fish Oil is an essential resource that is quite hard to efficiently farm.

Frequently Asked Questions About V Rising

From changing your character’s appearance to fast traveling across Vardoran, here are several frequently asked questions that you might find helpful during your early-game experience.

How Long is V Rising?

While V Rising doesn’t have a linear storyline to follow, Marketing Director, Johan Ilves stated during an Early Access Q&A that new players can expect anywhere from 30 to 60 hours of PVE gameplay. However, some players clocked upwards of 80 hours during the Closed Beta, so depending on your playstyle, V Rising will likely have plenty of content to keep you and your friends busy at launch.

How to Change Your Character’s Appearance and Name

Unfortunately, you can not change your character’s name. Once you have selected your name when first arriving on a server, you cannot change it, so choose wisely.

While you can’t change your character’s name, you can in fact change your appearance. To do so, simply build a Mirror as it will allow you to customize your Vampire. A Mirror can be crafted with 4 Copper Ingots and 8 Planks.

How to Fast Travel in V Rising

To fast travel in V Rising, you’ll need to uncover Vampire Waygates, which are represented by green portal-like icons on the map. Like other games, you can not travel in V Rising if you’re carrying resources, instead, you will need to drop these items or simply travel by foot to your desired destination. 

Thankfully, as you progress through the game you will eventually unlock the ability to construct a Vampire Waygate at your Castle, which makes traveling around the world much easier.

Can You Move Your Castle in V Rising

Unfortunately, no. Once you have built your castle, you can not move it to a new location so it is highly recommended that you think long and hard about the location of your initial castle. Key things to consider are nearby locations, general location on the map, not too far away from Vampire Waypoints, and the location is friendly towards your gear level — basically don’t build your initial castle in a northern region.

Do note, depending on your server, it is possible to construct two Castle Hearts, meaning you can have two castles built at a single time.

V Rising System Requirements

While no recommended system requirements have been revealed, you will need the following minimum requirements to play V Rising on PC through Steam.

V Rising Controls (Default)

Looking to Auto Run or potentially speak via Voice Chat? Below are the default key bindings for V Rising.