V Rising

I have recently been revisiting V Rising. I had played 60 odd hours of this game before but had the itch to return to it. This is a fantastic game. It is a great mix of top-down Diablo style ARPG with specials and attacks that are dependant of progression of spells and your weapons. It has a selection of weapons that can fit different playstyles each with their own move sets, my favourite is the spear which has a quick multiple hit repeat attack that can hit many enemies in a cone in front of you. This is mixed in with a group of increasingly more difficult boss enemies that each provide you with new craftable items, castle upgrades and new crafting machines and tables. This is all wrapped up in a survival game veneer. The game is single player, PVP, PVE, you can join public servers for both PVP and PVE games and you can host your own server for friends as well. There are also numerous options to customise the server for the game you would like to play.  

This game is made by Stunlock Studios, a Swedish game company, whose previous titles include Battlerite and Bloodline Champions. All three games are very positive on Steam. I would like to note that the game has DLC, but all story and game content is free. The DLC is all cosmetics and designed to be an added income for the developer. They did a crossover with Castlevania for instance that is £16.75 but contains a huge amount of cosmetics from new hairstyles to statues and other decorations, to variations to your shapeshifting forms, to a mount, stairs, paintings and so on. As an indication the DLC also has a very positive reviews on Steam. I think they just let their very talented artists free to go wild with aesthetic ambiance and they delivered. I have not bought any of the DLC cosmetics but looking at them (and the fact that the game itself is only £30 and I have seen it as low as £7.50 on sale) I would be seriously considering it even though I don’t buy cosmetic DLC. The game came out in May 2024 and they have actively been updating and balancing the game since then.

Also I played on keyboard and mouse, but controllers are 100% supported. I tried it and it worked fine, but I preferred to use my keyboard and mouse as I had learned the controls. It is also Steam Deck verified.

The basic story is vampires ruled the world until man destroyed them and forced them into a hibernation state. You are one of these vampires and you have awakened many years later and not only are you hungry, but you want revenge. You start in a crypt, and your first task is to extract yourself from your tomb. The game gently leads you through its mechanics and progression by setting you tasks that once completed net you a reward of new craftables. It doesn’t always explicitly tell you want to do (go here, do this, kill this boss and so on) but rather it suggests things that need to be done in order for you to get that next tier of reward (new flooring for your castle or crafting recipe and so on). The progression is steady but not too fast and there is often plenty to do along the way and you can often get lost in doing simple tasks like cutting down trees or collecting stone or any number of typical crafting game mechanics. This is similar to Valheim in that manner as I often found myself spending hours chopping trees or smacking rocks or cooper veins.

You start off basic with a wooden palisade and some simple crafting items but rapidly you are able to build your first Castle Heart and then some floors and then walls and thus you have a functional castle with walls and a roof over your head. With this the basics are out of the way, and you can start to spend time moving around the map, collecting the multitude of crafting items, killing humans and animals, taking on bosses and collecting new recipes and other items as well as slowly building up your vampire as you go.

Your vampire has many customisation options, from a pretty vampire that would be at home in Twilight, to one that will put the fear of the nightwalkers into their enemies, a sort of Malkavian vampire from Vampire the Masquerade. This includes many options for faces, hair, body, beards, skin colour and so on. Much of this doesn’t actually matter in the grand scheme of things as mostly your vampire is seen from the top in an isometric view from quite high up, but we all like to customise our character even if we never see them. You can zoom in but there isn’t really any need to and being able to see further is really of more use than seeing how pretty your vampire looks in their new armour. I did figure out that you can change the colour of your armour to stand out somewhat if you want to so there is that.

The survival mechanics are baked into this game at its core, and everything revolves around them. The game is a survival game first and the crafting and progression are required for making headway. There are specific vampire survival systems that I feel set the game apart from other similar games.

As a vampire, the day night cycle is important to you as the sun, unsurprisingly, damages you. You can venture out in the daylight but if you are caught in direct sunlight, you will take significant damage. There is plenty of shade to move between in most areas but there are significant spaces that are more sun-drenched. Walking around in the daylight is generally fine and if you come across small groups of enemies this tends not to be a problem, but if you come across a large group of enemies or one of the roving bosses this can become more of a problem. There is no reason to hide away during the day, and the day night cycle is relatively quick, sometimes too quick if I am honest, especially if you are having to repeat a boss. Beating the bosses during the day is more than doable but the sun adds an extra thing to be thinking about and some of the bosses require you to pay close attention and use all your tools sparingly and timely, so the added stumbling block of the sun just adds another dimension.

As any great vampire, you also need blood in order to survive and here in lies one of the great mechanics of the game. Each human, animal or creature has different blood types. These types of blood (creature, warrior, rogue and so on) have different benefits when you fill up on them. Each blood has different levels as well so the higher the level of the blood (which is depicted as a percentage above the creature\person) the bigger the benefits. They split the bonuses up into 5 levels. For instance, the worker blood gives you an increase in resource yield at the first level and an increase in damage to resource objects at the second and so on therefore 2 levels of worker blood increases both the yield and speed of collection. The brute blood gives you a small increase to your primary attack at level one and a small amount of life leech at second level. These stack as the level of blood increases but as soon as you feed on a different enemy you lose your current blood, as well as its bonuses, and replace it with the new enemy’s blood along with its bonuses. This can often be useful dependant on what you are looking to do or your playstyle. You use a lot of magic, a decrease in cooldowns might be handy. Or maybe you are going to spend your time resource gathering, well a high-level worker blood is your drink of choice. There are later mechanics that make this swopping of blood easier as looking for high level blood enemies, especially ones that are specific to what you are currently looking for, can be quite difficult. Finding particular types of enemies is not difficult as they tend to be at selected areas on the map (rogues and warriors in bandit camps, scholars in the monasteries and workers in the mines and so on) but finding that one with a particularly high blood level that gives the top bonuses is a little more difficult as it appears to be random.

The blood is also used for a few vampire skills such as healing. This drains the blood from you in order to use it. The blood drains slowly over time anyway and this is increased when you are passively healing. Eventually you reach zero blood and unless you find a new blood source you will slowly die. There is plenty of warning about this and your blood level is prominently displayed in a Diablo style blood ball in the UI including the blood type and percentage.

Dying is not a great loss in V Rising, you can just revive at a teleporter or directly in your coffin which you build at your base and your dropped items (excluding your armour and weapons which you keep on you) will be nice and tidily bagged up waiting for you in a drawstring bag where you died but any boss will be full health again. A nice touch though, for me anyway, is that if you killed the boss and then died (to ads or other enemies) and you hadn’t had a chance to drain them of their blood (more on this later) they will be downed and waiting for you when you return to them. This happened more often than I would like to admit to myself or anyone else.

Your level is set by gear. It is based on your armour (chest, legs, boots, gloves, helmet, cape and ring) and weapon level. These are crafted at various points along the way and can be researched (using scrolls and books at a research table) in order to get different armours, some with set bonuses. This is another way you can further customise how your vampire plays. The benefit to this is if you are up against a boss and your current weapon, armour, spells or set bonus isn’t working it is nothing to swop out to a different set, weapon and spells in order to better defeat the boss. This has no drawback as the gear levels for the different weapons and armour are the same, but they just have different attributes. You are not locked into a class or weapon\armour set as the game is classless.

There is a ‘family tree’ of bosses, called V Bloods, that get progressively higher level and more difficult as you move up it. Each boss has an area they hang around or are they patrol in the case of the roving bosses. Each boss has details of things to craft or new production machines or work benches which are required for you to progress which you receive once you defeat them and feed on them. For instance, the first boss is an Alpha Wolf that allows you to change into a large wolf that moves around a lot quicker than you do. As a side note this is a bugbear of mine how slow your vampire is. They seem to saunter around the map and there is no sprint\run button. The wolf moves faster but it is still a little slower than I would like personally. The second tier of boss has 3 enemies of the same gear level and for instance on the second tier is Keely the Frost Archer and defeating and feeding on her gives you blueprints for the Tannery (to turn pelts into leather) as well as the recipe for leather, the Travelers wrap coat and a waterskin used for potions. You also receive a Tier 1 spell point for one of the spell schools specifically Frost spells from her.

There is a helpful V Blood boss tracking system in the game where if you highlight a V Blood you wish to track in the V Blood menu you get a periodic blood line that comes from the direction of the boss. It also shows information on the boss and a vague distance to the boss (imminent, far Very far to the west and so forth) in the top lefthand corner of the screen. If you are close enough in level to the boss it will also show you what you will receive for defeating the boss.

There are 6 Spell schools: Blood, Frost, Chaos, Unholy, Illusion and Storm. Each has 9 spells some of which are similar in use (AOE or throwable type spell as an example) with others being unique to that spell school (such as summoning spells). The spells work similar to Diablos spells and special moves, so they are not unique in that regard. There is the usual breakdown of summon spells and spells that add damage over time and others that apply a debuff or status effect. Although these are still interesting this, I feel, is the least unique portion of the game.

I feel the developers got the difficulty spike just right. You very quickly start feeling like a badass and that you can take on anyone and then get owned by a roaming boss a few levels above you. I never felt like the higher-level enemies are impossible as I felt they were in Assassin’s Creed where if the enemy you are fighting is a few levels higher than you, you just cannot seem to do damage to them but then when you equal their level all of a sudden you destroy them. You can defeat any of the bosses with skill (something I sometimes felt I lacked with a few of the bosses) but it is certainly more challenging.

On the subject of difficulty there are 3 starting levels to choose from; Relaxed, Normal and Brutal. These are distinctly different and the contrast between Normal and Brutal is quite stark. The enemies on Normal are definitely doable and even the bosses are easy enough. But the difficulty on Brutal ramps up quite drastically. If you enjoy a difficult game, then this will test you. I believe you are handed all the tools to enable you to complete all the tasks and defeat the bosses, but it will require skill. I am sticking to Normal on this playthrough as I am just having fun.

I think the game is beautiful. The graphics are clean and sharp, and all the UI elements have all the information you need. There is some similarity to games like Diablo with the UI such as the blood ball telling you how much blood you have left (unlike in Diablo or POE where it indicates your health) with your health as a bar above the ball with a numerical indication as well as the bar. To the right of the blood ball is your basic attack, special weapon attack, your 2 spells and a third specialist spell that opens up later all of which shows the cooldown left once you use them. This also comes up on the screen above your character if you try to use it before it is ready, so you know how much time is left until you can use it again. You have a dodge as well on space. To the left of the blood ball are slots 1-8 for your weapons and items (like a fishing rod). There is a list of objectives and the current boss you are tracking in the top left of the screen and in the top right is a mini map and the current time of day broke into day and night. I find it all very unobtrusive but easy to read if you need the information.

Building in the game is simple but very effective. It uses a click and place system that works extremely well. Although you won’t be able to build Valheim style buildings where you place every single block, there is a certain amount of freedom to build using the Lego style system where you place different types of floors, walls, windows, and so on. They have added many quality-of-life things like a treasure room where you store all your items in chests (which you can label) and any room that is touching the treasure room you can use items directly from those chests. There is also a great system where each crafting machine gets bonuses to speed and cost of production as long as certain criteria is met. These are: is the machine indoors and does it have the relevant flooring. For instance the sawmill and crusher need to be indoors and on a workshop floor in order for them to receive a 25% increase in speed of production and a 25% decrease to materials used respectively. This make a huge difference in the long run and getting this set up early is just a no brainer and beneficial.

On the subject of production this is where I feel the game lets itself down a little and can, in time, feel grindy. It is a bit like an GOTCHA or game like Warframe where gaining resources, the amount of resources and the time it takes to process those resources is just too much and too long making it feel really grindy. For instance it takes 12 Stone to make 1 Stone Brick and 1 Stone Dust. This changes to 9 Stone with the correct flooring. To build one floor tile you need either 2 or 4 Stone Bricks. So to build a 3X3 room you need 18-36 Stone Bricks (that’s 432 Stone or 324 Stone if you use the right tiles in the room ). A wall is 9-10 Stone Bricks so for the same room you will need 12 walls so that is 120 Stone Bricks (made from either 1440 or 1080 Stone). So to build a 3X£ room with 12 walls around it (the castle entrance or doorway is the same as a wall) you will need upwards of 1872 Stone. Now each Stone outcrop gives you a 100-150 Stone yield and this take maybe 30s to destroy. That’s 5-6mins of resource gathering just for a basic 3X3 room. Then the grinding of the Stone to Stone Bricks takes 20s (16s if you have the correct flooring) so to make 156 Stone Bricks it will take 52mins (20s X 156 Stone Bricks divided by 60). This is very much an early game issue as once you have built a castle and floors and so on you don’t need nearly as many bricks and as long as you continue to keep the grinders going when you can, you should continue to have bricks when you need them. But this is just one of multiple craftable items (there is Planks from Wood, Whetstones, Copper and Iron Ingots, Sulphur and so on) so the time sink can very quickly add up. That is why getting the correct floor tiles can make such a difference. Just by getting the machine indoors and using the correct tile you can change the above example from 52 minutes to 41minutes, the 25% decrease in time is significant.

Another thing to note about building is you can build up. You can have 3 floors (up to 6 by changing the server settings). This does open up many options for creative building, but obviously you will need more of those pesky Bricks and Planks.

There is so much to speak about in this game. There are so many small nuances that the game gets right. The grind can be a drag at times while waiting for stuff to process but I find in general there is always something to do (usually resource gathering). I do wish the blood you feed off of lasted a little longer and that those higher-level blood enemies were more common or at least you managed to get what you need faster to make that be less of a drag on your time. You can get times where you just feel you are waiting constantly for the game to get stuff done so you can progress but there is a lot that is interesting in this world that I feel you can get lost in it quite easily. The V Blood enemies are interesting and although I have never actually completed the game I cannot really comment on the last few bosses as I still had at least 20 V Bloods to go. You can fly through quicker if you follow guides and don’t faff around as much as I do or spend hours building a castle. The world has many unique areas and enemies and although the materials and crafting can be slow it is interesting, has unique ideas and all the resources feel needed and thoughtful rather than a waste of time with slightly different variants of the same thing. I know this will be a game I will play again and again (although I feel I will play for 10-15hrs then get my fill) and I will be interested as to what Stunlock Studios do next.