Can I still start with the new Steam hit V Rising or will everyone knock me out?

The new survival game V Rising was a huge surprise hit for the makers. The indie title inspires tens of thousands of players on Steam and newcomers are still coming. But does it even work if you follow suit? Finally, the game builds on PvP. MeinMMO tells you what to expect.

What is V Rising anyway? In V Rising you play as a weakened vampire who builds his own castle and slowly strengthens his powers. The new survival game does a lot of things right and inspires with a fresh gothic setting.

A special feature of the game is blood. Of course, as a vampire you have to drink blood to survive and different blood types also give you special advantages. V Rising also features:

• an active combat system with various weapons and spells
• mounted fight on horseback
• classic crafting and base building with your own castle
• different areas with different enemies and bosses

With 88% positive ratings on Steam, V Rising can call itself quite successful. Over 150,000 players gambled at the same time at the peak, the game has an average of over 70,000 players (via steamcharts.com) and according to the developers, over 500,000 copies have already been sold.

Is it worth starting later? The short answer is yes, you can still jump into V Rising at any time. However, there are a few specifics that you need to pay attention to.

An important feature in V Rising is the action combat and the associated PvP. V Rising gives you the opportunity to play on both PvP and PvE servers, and the experience there is vastly different – as are your chances of getting in easily.

Everything about V Rising can be found here in the video – in compact 2 minutes:

PvE is fine, PvP could be difficult

How easy is it to get started? Basically, you start V Rising with nothing on your body and you always have to start with a new character on a new server. There are special settings where you start with better equipment – but the default is level 0.

You get to a higher level quite quickly and can defend yourself well against your environment, collect materials and create your own home. This way you are protected from attacks.

However, you should only need a few hours to get on a reasonably safe footing. In a weekend you should be able to easily create a reasonably secure base:

• Stone walls that protect your castle and create rooms
• Equipment manufacturing workshops
• a coffin to have a respawn point after death
• Boxes and containers for storing resources and potions
• enough blood to run your castle heart without it falling apart
• possibly already prisoners to provide you with strong blood or servants who protect the castle

Your walls can only be torn down by other players with explosives and protect you from most opponents, especially in early areas. No enemies will appear again in the claimed area, so you can rest easy if there is enough space. The greatest danger mostly lurks in doors that you don’t close – then wolves, monsters or people can get in and destroy your interior.

For a little perk, you can find all of V Rising’s resources and bosses on the interactive map. Here are some tips to get you started:

What difficulties are there? In pure PvE, you only fight other players for rarer resources. So the worst thing that can happen to you is a lack of raw materials. Everything takes a little longer, but you don’t have a real handicap.

In PvP it’s a little different. Higher level players can easily kill you, and you lose everything but your gear when you die by default. If you join later, you have to expect that the top dogs of the server will make your life difficult.

Climbing up is not impossible, but it is definitely tricky. After all, you get a “puppy protection” of 30 minutes in which you cannot be killed. We spoke to the German streamer CoRRona, who runs a PvP server for about 30 players himself. He told us:

There are always cases on my server where people are picked up by much stronger people while farming, but many also support each other. The server is quite active in global chat.

But there’s also a small group of players who push the PVP very hard and then hunt down individual players when they are outnumbered. But I also have to say that despite the full server, people are only occasionally encountered. Many also joke that they would like to fight but can’t find anyone.

Server selection in V Rising – PvP or PvE?

How does the entry work? V Rising relies on a server system. You can play on official and private servers via a browser. Private servers have an administrator and can change settings, restart or reset unpredictably.

Official servers offer the same conditions for everyone, but are usually quite full in V Rising. So you might have trouble finding a building site here, and especially at the beginning you will be penalized if you don’t invest enough time.

Depending on the setting, up to 60 players share a world and somehow have to get along with each other there – or conquer and secure their place in PvP. Clans usually take up to 4 players, but this can also vary depending on the server.

In the server browser you will find more information about the settings of the respective server as well as about the special features such as increased resource depletion, reduced decay time for your castle and more.

One note though: the community is currently complaining about the server browser. It is said to be difficult to find suitable servers. We didn’t have a problem with this during our test, but expect that you won’t get lucky right away.

What modes are there? If you play online, you can choose from different modes:

• PvE, recommended for groups between 1 and 4 players
• PvP, recommended for groups between 2 and 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 pretty, spooky world of V Rising and indulge in survival against humans and animals, you should play PvE. If you’re into fighting for domination of the realm, or if you like to compete with other players, try PvP.

By default, PvP has groups of up to 4 players. In PvP+ you will be punished more severely and lose more of your loot on death. Duo PvP is specifically designed for teams of two.

Play relaxed on the local server

If you just want to experience V Rising, you can also play offline. To do this, start a private game in which only you and everyone you invite directly play. You simply provide the local server with a password.

So you can play at your own pace. This has advantages but also disadvantages:

• The advantage is that nobody disturbs you and you can set the server the way you want it to be. All power is yours.
• On the other hand, the server only runs when you play on it. This means that your minions will only continue to produce and hunt if you are also playing. Simply crafting a few things overnight won’t work – unless you keep the PC, game and server running.
• In return, your castle does not expire while you are not playing.

With the right settings you can compensate for the disadvantages. However, there is also a bit of entry lost, because faster production and more resources also affect the early levels.

Nevertheless, you will surely get at least 40 hours of gameplay until you have explored the whole map and researched all the content. Ultimately how you play is up to you. If you don’t dare to start V Rising yet, then maybe another of the top survival games will appeal to you:

The 24 best survival games for PlayStation, PC and Xbox