V Rising tips and tricks: A beginner's guide to survival in V Rising

Use these tips to get started with V Rising

Guide by Ollie Toms Guides Editor

Updated on May 26, 2022

Looking for a beginner's guide to V Rising? It seems as though almost everyone who spends a bit of time with Stunlock Studios' new vampiric survival and crafting game comes away extremely impressed. It may not look like much at first, but V Rising scratches the same itch as Valheim did before it. And, just like Valheim, there's an awful lot of overlapping systems in play in V Rising, which means there's a huge amount to learn before you can call yourself a master vampire.

Below you'll find our beginner's guide to V Rising, which we've packed with useful tips and tricks for new players. You'll learn about avoiding sunlight, crafting equipment, tracking and defeating bosses, building spectacular castles, and much more. The sun has set. The Bloodmoon rises. Now is the time to venture out into the wonderful world of Vardoran.

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V Rising has all the basic pillars of a great survival and crafting game. There's exploration, there are enemies to fight, weapons and armour to craft, technologies to unlock, bosses to slay, and magnificent gothic cathedrals to build.

But the depth of some of these systems may surprise you. Combat is layered and skill-based. Buildings require careful planning, particularly on PvP servers. The day/night cycle is extremely important, because sunlight is deadly to vampires like you. If you want to get off to a roaring start in V Rising, check out the tips below and keep them in mind while you play. You'll be flying ahead (literally) of the other immortals on your server in no time.

V Rising tips and tricks

A vampire with a spear faces off against a giant grizzly bear in V Rising.

Play on the right server type for you

When you first start a game in V Rising, you'll be asked to choose a server type. All servers are divided into PvE and PvP. In PvE servers, you can't attack other players, or damage or steal their possessions. In PvP, you can attack enemies, and during certain times of the day you can raid other players' castles.

There are also extra settings beyond these two server types, which include how much of your equipment you lose upon dying; what times of day you can raid enemy castles; how many resources you get from mining and gathering, and so on.

If you want to just learn how to play and progress through the tech tree, you'd best pick PvE, at least at first. If you're interested in the extra layer and challenge of facing off against other vampires while you explore and expand your domain, then PvP is for you. Check the full list of servers to find one that fits your needs, and if you don't find one, you can feel free to start your own V Rising dedicated server instead using our comprehensive and easy to follow guide.

A human enemy in V Rising charges towards the player in the middle of a human village.

Learn the warnings signs of sunlight

The most common cause of death in V Rising is sunlight exposure. Sunlight is absolutely deadly in this game, so during the day you need to stay in the shadows as much as possible. The sun is a real object in the sky which moves throughout the day, so shadows will also move around over time. So be very careful before you step away from your keyboard for more than a few seconds.

If you step out into the sunlight, you have only a short time before you start taking massive damage. You can tell how near you are to taking damage by learning the warnings signs of sunlight:

An orange fiery spark effect will start to emanate from your character.
A ray of light will appear, shining from the sky down towards your character.
The screen will grow brighter over time.
A sound effect will play, growing louder over time.

If you experience any of these effects, you need to get to the shadows as quickly as possible, or you'll be dead in seconds.

A vampire in V Rising stands next to the stone coffin where they sleep inside their castle.

Spend time finding a good place to build your castle

Building is one of the key components of many a survival crafting game, and V Rising is no exception, giving players the chance to build massive gothic castles in which to house their vampiric possessions and necessities. But unlike many other such games, you can't just build anywhere you feel like it. You first have to place down a Castle Heart, which lays claim to the surrounding area.

You only have 1 or 2 Castle Hearts at any given time (depending on the rules of your server), so it's important to spend a fair bit of time exploring the starting region of the Farbane Woods and finding the ideal place to begin construction of your home.

Elevated areas are prioritised by most players, because the natural ramps up to these areas provide great chokepoints for defending against attacks. But you should also consider your surroundings. How close are you to key resource-gathering areas? If you're near the beginning of a game, you might also want to build close to a Waygate so you can fast travel from point to point with ease. It's well worth expending a bit of early game time exploring for a great location for your castle.

To learn more about the mechanics of building in V Rising, check out the guides below.

A vampire in V Rising prepares to fight an attacking mob of humans.

Use the right equipment for the job

Gear is everything in V Rising. Not only does it determine the types of attacks you can use on enemies, but it also increases your Gear Score, which has a dramatic effect on how easy or difficult you may find fights against different NPC enemies.

Your weapons in V Rising are simultaneously your resource-gathering tools. An axe is ideal for chopping trees for wood. A sword is great for cutting down vegetation. A mace is required for mining stone and ores from rocks.

At the same time, these implements each have different pros and cons when it comes to combat. Your starting weapons may not have much to differentiate themselves from each other, but as you upgrade your gear, you'll find that different weapons have different special attacks and abilities which force you to make important decisions about which tools to use for fighting as well as gathering resources.

If you want to learn more about how equipment works in V Rising, check out the below guides.

The player in V Rising feeds on the blood of a mortal in a human village.

Use different blood types to your advantage

When you feed on an enemy, your blood type will change and you'll adopt some of the qualities of the thing you fed upon. For example, feeding from a "Worker"-class enemy will give you better mining and gathering yields. Feeding from a "Creature"-class enemy gives you boosted movement speed and sunlight resistance. Feeding from a "Rogue"-class enemy gives you increased crit chance and damage potential.

If you stick to one single blood type all the time, then you're missing a trick. Each blood type is perfect for different situations, so I'd recommend looking around for high quality blood of the right type before going on any major adventures. To learn more, check out our guide to the different V Rising blood types.

A screenshot from V Rising showing the boss Tristan The Vampire Hunter approaching two players. The skull above Tristan's head indicates that they are far above the current Gear Score of the player.

Spend time preparing for each major fight

Vardoran is a dangerous place, and even seasoned blood-suckers can find themselves overwhelmed unless they come prepared for every fight. One important consideration is your current blood type, but it's also important to bring the right tools and items for the job. An early consumable item you should stack up on is Vermin Salve, which can heal you over time without you having to resort to using up your blood reserves.

You should also plan to fight difficult fights during the night, because it's much harder to fight effectively when you're also trying to stay out of the sunlight. Looking ahead really pays off in V Rising.

To learn more about surviving difficult encounters, check out our guide on how to heal in V Rising.

Two V Rising players on horseback ride past a field of cows.

Experiment with different forms of travel

There are various modes of transportation available to the vampiric immortals of V Rising. The simplest is running around on your own two feet, which is good for fighting and doing basic chores. But it's not very quick.

The fastest mode of transporation is via Vampire Waygates, which you can use to teleport instantly across the map. But these are very limited, so perhaps instead you want a horse to ride for covering great distances quickly. But you'll need to keep it alive and out of danger, which can be a hassle. Maybe the best thing is simply to transform yourself into a wolf, giving yourself greatly increased movement speed until you take damage or change forms again. Or perhaps you need to scale cliffs and avoid the terrain altogether, in which case a vampire bat form will do very nicely...

The point is: there are lots of ways to explore and travel in V Rising, and each has their pros and cons. Don't just stick to one method. Experiment! To learn more about exploring the world of Vardoran, check out the below guides.

A player in V Rising crosses a bridge over a river surrounded by auburn-coloured trees.

Use the quests and the Blood Altar to progress

V Rising cleverly guides you along a good starting path of progression with its series of quests. These quests appear in the top-left corner, and following them is the best way to get started if you don't know what's going on in the game.

At first these quests are fairly straightforward, covering things such as gathering the resources required to craft basic gear. But later on, the quests may require you to take several intermediate steps on your own before you can complete them.

If you're ever not sure what you have to do in order to complete the next quest, you should check out your Blood Altar. The Blood Altar is a building you can use to track down the game's many bosses, and each boss will unlock new abilities, recipes, and buildings for you. So if it doesn't look like you have what you need to complete your latest quest, your best bet is to see if you need to kill a boss in order to get what you're after.

To learn more about the most dangerous enemies in the game, check out the following guides:

Part of the map of V Rising, with the location of a Waygate marked.

Check the map to learn where to get resources

The map is a magnificent tool for new V Rising players. Unlike many survival games, there's no procedurally generated terrain in this game: the map is always the same, and you can learn the regions as you might learn a map in a traditional MMO.

There are areas of interest dotted about every region in V Rising's world of Vardoran, and you can hover over them in the map to view exactly what these areas are, and - most importantly - the resources that you can find there. So if you find yourself wondering where to find certain items or materials, your first port of call should be the map.

However, even despite the useful pointers on the map, certain resources can be very tricky to find. Below you'll find guides on how to find some of the most important resources in V Rising, and how to make use of the automated buildings that churn out new materials for you to use.

A vampire in V Rising casts a powerful spell while the woods around them burn.

Learn these minor tips and tricks to make life even easier

Finally, let's finish off with a medley of random but very useful tips and bits of advice that we all wish we knew when we'd first started playing V Rising:

You can hold left-click to attack. The same goes for chopping wood, mining rocks, and so on.
Trees provide shade from sunlight. If you chop them down, the shade disappears. Don't get caught out by this!
You can hold down the interact button and move your mouse over loot on the floor to pick it all up in one go, rather than having to tap the interact button once for each piece of loot.
Hover over enemies (both NPCs and players) to see their current blood type and blood quality.
You can use the "Sort" button in inventory windows to neatly arrange all items within. In your inventory, the "Sort" button won't affect anything on your hotbar; only items beneath.
You can use the "Compulsively Count" button while interacting with a chest or other storage device to automatically transfer any items from your inventory which already exist within the chest.
You can rename chests by clicking the icon next to the chest's name in the chest window.
While in Wolf form, NPC wolves won't attack you.
You can fight from horseback, but it's risky. Left-click attacks deal more damage than usual while on horseback, but if you get hit, you'll be thrown from your horse.
You can craft a Fishing Rod after defeating Rufus The Foreman, an early boss; and then you can use the Fishing Rod wherever you see bubbles in water. Fishing is a great way to gather not just fish, but random gear and even research books as well.
Occasionally, a Bloodmoon will rise during the night. During a Bloodmoon, you gain extra speed and boosted effects from your blood type.
Pay attention to an enemy's health bar. If it's orange or red, it's a higher level than you. If there's a skull next to its name instead of a level, then it's much higher level than you.
You can use the Mace's secondary attack as an extra dash to evade attacks while your primary dash is on cooldown. Note that you need a Bronze Mace or better to unlock the secondary attack.
Click the plus and minus icons next to the minimap to zoom the minimap in or out. You can also click the lock icon to change the minimap's orientation to be fixed or to change according to the player's direction.
Silver items such as coins will slowly inflict damage on you when held. This prevents you from using abilities such as the Wolf transformation, because the ability ends the moment you take damage.
Don't chop down every nearby tree around your house; it's useful to have shade nearby.
The Dunley Farmlands and other major regions of the map are far, far more dangerous than the Farbane Woods. Don't venture out of the woods until you're at least level 30.
If you see any yellow, orange, or red gear icons above your hotbar, that's an indicator that some of your gear has low durability and may soon break, meaning their effects are removed until repaired. You can repair it from your inventory as long as you have the required materials.
While extracting V blood (blood from bosses), you are completely invulnerable - even from sunlight. Once you finish extracting the V blood, you'll cause an explosion around you which severely damages all enemies and resource objects nearby.
Extracting V blood doesn't actually refill your blood supply, so if you're low on blood, don't look to bosses to satiate your thirst.
From the ability selection screen, you can reorder the abilities shown on your vampire powers wheel (accessible by holding CTRL).
Abilities like Blood Rage which increase your attack speed are also great for chopping down wood and mining rocks faster.

We'll be sure to add more tips to this list and continue updating this guide as we learn more about the game. If you've discovered a tip or trick that you think ought to be included in this list, then be sure to let us know in the comments below! In the meantime, for more talk on Stunlock's new masterpiece, check out Ed's V Rising preview You should also check out James's guide to the best V Rising settings, to ensure your vampire's prowling runs as smoothly as possible.