The new survival game V Rising was a huge surprise hit for the creators. The indie title delights tens of thousands of players on Steam, and new players continue to join. But is it even feasible to catch up? After all, the game is based on PvP. MeinMMO explains what you can expect.
What is V Rising? In V Rising, you play as a weakened vampire who builds their own castle and gradually strengthens their powers. The new survival game does many things right and captivates with a fresh gothic setting.
A special feature of the game is blood. As a vampire, you naturally need to drink blood to survive, and different blood types also give you unique advantages. Additionally, V Rising offers:
- an active combat system with various weapons and spells
- mounted combat on horseback
- classic crafting and base-building with your own castle
- different areas with various enemies and bosses
With 88% positive ratings on Steam, V Rising can certainly be considered quite successful. Over 150,000 players played simultaneously at peak times, and on average, the game maintains over 70,000 players (via steamcharts.com), and according to the developers, over 500,000 copies have already been sold.
Is it worth starting late? The short answer is: Yes, you can start V Rising at any time. However, there are a few peculiarities that you need to pay attention to.
An important feature in V Rising is the action combat, which also includes PvP. V Rising gives you the option to play on both PvP and PvE servers, and the experience differs significantly there – as do your chances of being able to join in easily.
Find everything about V Rising here in the video – in compact 2 minutes:
PvE is problem-free, PvP could be challenging
How easy is the entry? In principle, you start in V Rising with nothing but your bare hands and must always begin with a new character on a new server. There are special settings where you start with better equipment – however, the standard is level 0.
You will quickly reach a higher level and be able to defend yourself against your surroundings, gather materials, and create your own home. This way, you are initially protected from attacks.
However, you should only need a few hours to reach a somewhat secure status. Therefore, within a weekend, you should easily be able to establish a reasonably safe base:
- stone walls that protect your castle and create rooms
- workshops for crafting equipment
- a coffin to have a respawn point after death
- chests and containers for storing resources and potions
- enough blood to keep your castle heart operating without it decaying
- possibly some prisoners to supply you with strong blood or servants to protect the castle
Your walls can only be destroyed by other players using explosives and protect you from most enemies, especially in early areas. No enemies respawn in claimed territory, so if you have enough space, you can enjoy some peace. The biggest danger mostly lurks in doors that you do not close – then wolves, monsters, or humans can enter and destroy your interior.
For a small advantage, you can find all the resources and bosses of V Rising on the interactive map. Here are some more tips for starting:
What difficulties are there? In pure PvE, you will only compete with other players for rarer resources. The worst that can happen is a shortage of raw materials. This makes everything take a little longer, but you don’t experience any real hindrance.
In PvP, however, the situation is a bit different. Higher-level players can easily kill you, and you generally lose everything except your equipment when you die. If you start later, you need to brace yourself for the local strong players to make life difficult for you.
That being said, an ascent is not impossible, but it is quite tricky. After all, you receive a “newbie protection” of 30 minutes during which you cannot be killed. We spoke with the German streamer CoRRoNa, who runs a PvP server for about 30 players. He told us:
On my server, there are always cases where people are picked off while farming by much stronger players, but many also help each other. The server is quite active in the Global Chat.
But there is also a small group of players who strongly enforce PvP and hunt down individual players in groups. However, I must say that despite a full server, you only occasionally encounter other players. Many joke about wanting to fight but not finding anyone.
Server selection in V Rising – PvP or PvE?
How does the entry work? V Rising relies on a server system. Through a browser, you can play on official and private servers. Private servers have an administrator and can change settings unexpectedly, restart, or reset.
Official servers offer the same conditions for everyone, but they tend to be quite full in V Rising. You might have difficulty finding a building spot here, and especially in the beginning, you will be punished if you don’t invest enough time.
Depending on the settings, up to 60 players share a world and must somehow get along – or conquer and secure their place in PvP. Clans usually take in up to 4 players, although this can vary depending on the server.
In the server browser, you can find more information on the settings of each server, as well as special features such as increased resource harvesting, reduced decay time for your castle, and more.
However, a note on this: the community is currently complaining about the server browser. It is said to be difficult to find suitable servers. During our test, we had no problems with this, but be prepared for not hitting luck immediately.
What modes are available? When playing online, you can choose from different modes:
- PvE, recommended for groups of 1 to 4 players
- PvP, recommended for groups of 2 to 4 players
- PvP+, recommended for groups of 4 players
- Duo-PvP, recommended for teams of 1-2 players
What should I choose? If you just want to explore the beautiful, eerie world of V Rising and engage in survival against humans and animals, you should play PvE. If you are interested in battling for dominance over the realm or enjoy competing against other players, try PvP.
By default, there are groups of up to 4 players in PvP. In PvP+, you are punished harder and lose more of your loot upon death. Duo-PvP is specifically designed for two-player teams.
Play casually on the local server
If you just want to experience V Rising, you can also play almost offline. Just start a private game, where only you and anyone you invite directly can play. You simply protect the local server with a password.
This way, you can play at your own pace. This has advantages but also disadvantages:
- The advantage is that no one disturbs you and you can set the server as you want. All the power lies with you.
- On the downside, the server only runs when you are playing on it. This means production and hunting by your servants only continue when you are playing. Simply producing a few things overnight won’t work – unless you leave the PC, game, and server running.
- However, your castle will not decay while you are not playing.
With the right settings, you can balance out the disadvantages. However, you will lose a bit of the entry experience because faster production and more resources also affect the early stages.
Nevertheless, you will certainly get at least 40 hours of gameplay enjoyment before you have explored the entire map and researched all content. Ultimately, how you play is up to you. If you are hesitant to jump into V Rising, perhaps another one of the top survival games will appeal to you:
