Key Takeaways

• Strategic castle location determines defense & resource accessibility.
• Blood types offer unique buffs; plan & strategize for specific in-game situations.
• Utilize multiple refinement stations and varied tools for efficient crafting and gathering.

V Rising got its 1.0 patch, meaning many players are new vampires heading into Vardoran for the first time. Like most other survival games, you’ll be exploring, building a base, gathering materials, and hunting beasts to get as strong as possible. But some of this can be somewhat daunting when getting started in V Rising for the first time, so here are some starting tips to help new players become the strongest vampire in all the land.

Where Should You Build Your Castle?

One of the biggest decisions you have to make at the start of V Rising is where to start building your castle. If you are playing by yourself, this choice isn’t going to be as daunting. You can teleport your base and rebuild it repeatedly, finding better and more ideal locations as you progress through the game.

Some of the best locations for easy travel in a co-op or single-player, for instance, will be in the center of the map. They’ll have some bigger locations ideal for building a bigger base and make it easier to travel throughout the map in general. Castle locations are going to be some of the bigger areas on the map that are empty, with typically 1–2 entrances to the opening.

If you are playing on a multiplayer server PvE or PvP, it might be a little harder to find a new location to brood in as a vampire lord. Castle locations are going to be on a first-come, first-served basis, and you may need to travel quite a bit to find one. For a bigger server, you may want to stick to making a castle out of the way of other players.

Suppose you’re trying to avoid attracting another player's attention. In that case, you will want to avoid building near the starting areas or the center of the map, as other players will most likely have a castle there and will be ready for any raids. Building a castle in some of the elevated areas is also going to be a big help in mitigating what comes knocking on your doors. It’ll force anyone with malicious intent to come through natural choke points and risk only being able to move forward or back when attacking.

Blood Types and Their Buffs

Hunger in V Rising is unique compared to other survival games, and it’s great. When you go out on a food run, you’ll notice that each enemy has a type underneath their name along with a percentage. The higher the percentage, the more blood type tiers you get, which means more buffs you’ll get from feeding on that creature. There are a lot of choices you can make when hunting down creatures for your sweet blood buffs.

The different blood types available are:

Once Vincent the Frostbringer is defeated, you are capable of charming and imprisoning multiple enemies within your castle to farm blood off of them to keep a variety of high-end blood types on hand at all times. Depending on your build or activity, you’ll want to always keep an eye out and have the right blood type for the moment.

Make Use of More Refinement Stations

As you progress through V Rising more, you are going to have to craft a lot more as well. Mitigate what you need to craft by setting up multiple stations. Depending on the size of your castle, you might look at having 2-5 refinement stations you’ve unlocked.

For example, two furnaces will help you get more materials, of course, but you can also eventually split up which one is making certain materials so that you don’t have to wait for copper ingots before your glass bottles have been made. The same goes for all the refinement stations, split up the jobs for faster work or use multiple to pump out more of the material you need.

Each Tool Has a Different Job

Each tool can be effective against different enemies, of course, but they will also be effective against different gathering nodes. When it comes down to gathering materials, maces will be great against rocks, swords or slashers are best for gathering vegetation, and axes or greatswords are best for gathering wood.

While those are all useful for gathering, they also all have unique combat abilities that make them effective for fighting, but some of the other weapons also have some bonuses for fighting creatures. Spears will have a bonus for being used on creature-type enemies, while Reapers are going to have a bonus against undead enemies.

Use Wolf Form or Horses to Travel Quickly

There are going to be multiple forms for you to use in V Rising after you beat certain bosses. One of the first ones you’ll encounter is going to be Alpha the White Wolf. This boss will give you the ability to shapeshift into a wolf and allow you to run around the world even faster than normal.

As you go deeper into the map you’ll also find horses in villages or bandit encampments. You can steal the horse and provide it with some Plant Fibre to keep it from starving. Once you snag a horse, it’ll be there for you to use as long as you’d like. Do be careful though, enemies will most certainly kill your horse if you start a fight near it.