Beginner's Guide: Basics, Features, and Tips For Getting Started - V Rising Guide - IGN (2024)

V Rising is an online, open-world Vampire survival game developed by Stunlock Studios. Playing as a vampire, rise from the ashes as you hunt for blood from unsuspecting settlements scattered across the mysterious land of Vardoran. Construct castles, research new technology, evade the scorching sun, and team up with allies as you attempt to regain power and conquer the land of the living.

This beginner's guide will cover everything you need to know about getting started in V Rising, including understanding game modes, how combat and exploration work, defeating bosses for unique rewards, helpful tips and tricks for those early hours of gameplay, and even more.

V Rising Game Modes Explained

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 set 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.

Understanding the Blood Pool and How it 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 and creatures 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 percentage, which is displayed next to their name when feeding.

The higher the Blood Quality, the better bonus increases you'll receive -- a complete list of all stat bonuses can be found when hovering over the Blood Pool. 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 using skill shots and dodging projectiles with WASD controls and cursor-based aiming, which can be considered significant advantages for those looking to engage in PvP battles.

Unsurprising, combat in V Rising is more than meets the eye. Your traditional Sword and Axe gameplay has been spiced up with abilities and magical powers that you can use to unleash upon powerful V Bloods and other rival vampires.

Weapons and Armor

V Rising initially offers four weapon types that can be crafted from your Character menu -- these all require fairly common resources.

While these weapons won't be the most powerful, they will act as your starter weapons until you unlock further 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 cost. These weapons can include the Crossbow, Slashers, and the Reaper.

• 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.
• Reaper:
  • A Two-handed weapon that deals slash damage and has a greater effect on undead.
• Slashers:
  • Dual-wield blades that deal slash damage and has a greater effect on vegetation.

Each weapon type will offer three unique Weapon Techniques, which 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 bosses, you'll unlock various magic spells that can be assigned to your action bar. With up to five different categories of spells available, including 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 10 unique Vampire Powers that can be unlocked through the completion of Quests and by defeating V Blood carriers. 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 and Abilities for more details on each particular power and how it can be unlocked.

Defeat Powerful V Bloods (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 still 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 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 Bloods. 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, and craft powerful weapons, armor, and stat-increasing consumables.

In addition, you'll also be able to imprison charmed humans, who are great 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 -- a resource that is looted from slain enemies or harvested from the likes of Tainted Hearts, Rats, and more. Without Blood Essence, your castle will begin to decay and eventually disappear, along with all of your items inside. As you can imagine, letting your castle decay is a rather devastating occurrence as hours of progress will be completely wiped from the server, so be sure to keep up with the 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 storage containers can store up to fourteen items and cannot be looted by other players.

Buffs and World Events

Occurring randomly throughout the day and 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 game-changing, 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 they may not necessarily be considered 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.

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 could 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 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 Fast Traveling Works in V Rising

In order to fast travel in V Rising, you’ll need to uncover Vampire Waygates, which are represented by green portal-like icons on the map. Unfortunately, these icons will only appear on the map once you have traveled within a certain distance from them.

It's important to note that Vampire Waygates aren't as helpful as you may think, as V Rising does not allow you to use Waygates while carrying resources and loot in your inventory. This means that Waygates are incredibly limiting, as you'll need to either drop items or simply travel to your desired location by foot.

Thankfully, Vampire Waygates aren't your only fast travel options in V Rising, as you'll also be able to use Cave Passages, which offer some pretty handy features that you'll want to take full advantage of.

Complete with custom maps detailing all Cave Passages and Vampire Waygate locations, see our comprehensive Fast Travel guide below for more information!

• Fast Travel Guide: How to Find All Waygate and Cave Locations

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 build.

Key things to consider are nearby locations, general location on the map, distance from Vampire Waypoints, and ensuring that the location is friendly towards your gear level.

So in short, it's important that you don't build your initial castle in a region that's too far north, instead work with a makeshift base until you find a location that best suits your needs.

Depending on your game mode, it is possible to construct two Castle Hearts, meaning you can have two castles built at a single time, however, you will only be able to bind one Stone Coffin as your respawn point, so in order to travel between your Castles, you'll need to ensure you have built your own Vampire Waygate.

V Rising System Requirements

You will need the following 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.