V Rising brings a quirky top-down view to a tastefully done survival craft.
V Rising was published and developed by Stunlock Studios, an independent development studio. Stunlock Studios was founded in 2010 by game development students in Sweden. V Rising is not their only title, as they have developed both Battlerite and Bloodline Champions. It is quite popular for a game that’s pretty much a vampire-based building survival, with V Rising getting close to 50,000 players within a few hours of release and over a million within a week in 2022.
While Open World Survivals have shot to popularity in the past few years, games like 7 Days To Die and The Forest have brought a horror aspect to the survival genre. While Terraria and Minecraft are some of the first, both were released in 2011 and are still ongoing today.
V Rising, however, brings a new look to survival with its top-down view and Gothic aesthetic. The world you awaken to was once ruled by Vampires. Until humans rebelled and sealed them away. The tutorial is easy to follow as you hunt down your first meal. You learn about both the base-building aspect of the game as well as hunting for V blood.
When you first start building your base, you only have access to palisades and rough flooring that will not keep the sunlight out. As a vampire, you will burn in the sunlight if you stay in it for too long, so constructing Mist Braziers is a must. As long as you keep them stocked up with bones, you will be able to shroud your base. Unfortunately, you cannot build them along the rest of the map. So travelling at night or jumping from shadow to shadow is a must.
Don’t forget to keep an eye on your blood gauge. You don’t want to go hungry. Different Blood types give you different boosts. For example, eating something with a high-level creature blood will give you boosts to both movement speed and damage reduction. Although finding a victim with really pure blood can be hard.
When you finally unlock prison cells, this becomes much easier to deal with, As all you have to do is bring those humans back to your castle, which is easier said than done, as humans aren’t the only enemies. Once you get the humans back to your castle alive, you can place them into cells or a servant’s coffin, depending on what you are going to use them for. Placing them in the cells means they will be blood bags essentially. This presents its own problem as after draining them to make bottled blood, they tend to have low health afterwards. You will need to keep them fed to heal them.
Keeping them as servants means you have a line of defence for your castle in the PvP servers. As long as you give them equipment that will upgrade their level, it should be good enough to fend off enemy attackers. Servants aren’t just good for a home defence system; once you have the throne built, you can send them out on expeditions to gather resources.
In V Rising it is important to track down holders of V blood; you get V Blood from defeating bosses. Taking the blood of various bosses allows you to unlock new forms, such as a wolf form or bear form, to unlock new spells to fling at enemies. Defeating bosses also allows you to craft new benches. There are three acts in the game, each act having a range of different bosses to beat. Each act takes place in different parts of the map, with Act 1 having bosses all around the Farbane forest area and later bosses being within Gloomrot and Cursed Forest which are areas that have been added with the Secrets of Gloomrot Expansion.
V Rising doesn’t have a traditional levelling system instead your gear quality and strength determine your level. This means that in order to face higher-level bosses and reach much more difficult areas you will need to research and build stronger equipment.
Crafting Benches are a godsend since important ones like the research table and study allow you to unlock more things to build, whether it’s just pure decoration or armour depending on the research unlocked. When you eventually get the forge up and running, you will be able to craft much more powerful weapons and armour in order to survive against tougher enemies.
The Secrets of Gloomrot brings in new crafting benches such as the Jewelcrafters Station which allows you to craft spell-empowered jewels. The leatherworking station which as the name applies allows you to work with leather to create a variety of items such as a saddle for the horse and bags for extra carrying space. The Ancestral Forge where you can repair both legendary and non-legendary shattered weaponry. While legendary weapons have a huge boost to stats compared to normal, they usually cost a lot more to repair on the forge.
The latest expansion Secrets of Gloomrot introduces two new areas. Gloomrot and the Cursed Forest. Alongside this are new spells which bring in a brand new spell school. Thirteen new bosses to fight against, and new hazards within the world whether it’s getting through the blinding mists in the Cursed Forest or braving the Lightning storms within Gloomrot itself.
With the addition of the Secrets of Gloomrot spell school Storm, the remaining schools are Blood Magic, Chaos Magic, Unholy Magic, Illusion and Frost Magic. There are now six schools available each with its own set of spells. Each school includes a dash ability, five different spells and two ultimates for you to mix up for your play style.
Every area on the map is different, each with its own difficulties. For example, Gloomrot is an area that has sacrificed its environment for technological advancement. In Gloomrot, you will find humans wielding Tesla weaponry, but the environment looks like it has been hit by a nuclear bomb. Here you will find enhanced machinery and much tougher beasts that have mutated because of what the humans have done to the environment.
However, the Dunely Farmlands are filled with religious areas which burn with holy light. Here you will find priests and undead plenty. Unfortunately, holy radiation is not the only debuff you will get in this area. The villagers here grow garlic. Unfortunately for you, garlic decreases your damage output and increases your damage taken. It also increases the range of detection, so if you are trying to stealth around the area, it isn’t going to happen with this debuff active. But most noticeably compared to the advancement of Gloomrot, this area is far less advanced, with their most powerful weapons being pistols that some humans carry.
The social system within V Rising is great, although limiting about 4 players to a clan can seem pretty small if you are running a large server, but it makes sense considering the size of the map and the fact that each player can build up to two castles each. This means that one clan can place castles in strategic places around the map to get around quickly and without having to run there while dodging sunlight or facing a horde of angry humans.
Sound engineering in V Rising is a masterpiece to behold, especially since with The Secrets of Gloomrot update the developers have updated the soundtrack. From full voice acting for the bosses to just everyday sounds as you travel around the map. Your character’s comments as you build and hunt are amusing in some cases. And some of the boss’s lines are overly done and sometimes filled with witty innuendos. The soundtrack is great and is done in a way that it doesn’t get repetitive, even when you play for hours at a time.
The animations in V Rising are smooth whether you are switching to a variety of weapons mid-combat or reawakening in your coffin after dying. The beginning animation of transforming into the different creatures may be the same, but once it’s completed, each animal has its own animations and abilities. For example, the wolf has a spirit jump, and the bear has a heavy attack alongside a roar ability.
The graphics and appearance of V Rising are heavily influenced by gothic designs with Stunlock Studios’ own personal twist to them. It gives the game a very whimsical yet dark or foreboding feel to it without venturing into the horror genre. The character creation is simple and clean without being over the top.
Overall, V Rising is a great open-world survival that brings in a highly gothic vampire element. Unlock new forms and fight your way to the top of the food chain by killing boss after boss. Take it even further with the Secrets of Gloomrot expansion and explore new technological wonders that are available alongside thirteen new bosses. Whether you just stay near your base to build or venture out into the wilds to hunt down vampire hunters and other bosses is entirely up to you.
