V Rising is jam-packed with ways to improve your vampire character. As a survival game, you can expect tons of crafting and looting to equip your lord of the night with new, more powerful gear as you progress, but your physical tools are only a small part of your arsenal. You’re not just a vampire for the fun of it, after all, and the game takes advantage of your undead status to give you a host of powerful skills and abilities to unlock related to your vampiric nature to unleash upon your foes.
Abilities don’t unlock like they would in a normal action RPG, or how you would expect in RPGs in general. Rather than just gaining new powers by leveling up, V Rising makes you work for these new powers by completing certain tasks. These abilities come in different types, and you can only equip so many of each on your hotbar for use at any one time, meaning early on you will need to start making choices on which ones are worth keeping around. If you want to be the deadliest creature of the night, here are all the best abilities you should equip in V Rising.
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How to unlock new abilities
Unlocking new abilities in V Rising is tied, as most things are, to how a vampire might actually acquire more power if they were real. In this case, by sucking blood from powerful enemies. V Blood is a special type of blood exclusive to bosses in the game, and by draining it after killing them, you will be able to spend it to unlock a new ability. You can take on these bosses at any time by going to your castles Blood Altar, which will direct you to where a source of V Blood is, and then going to that location on the map. Once you arrive, you will need to still pinpoint the boss via their Blood Scent, but once you’re in the right area you won’t have any trouble locating the boss.
After getting the V Blood, you can unlock and equip your new ability by hitting J to view all your abilities and set them to your hotbar.
Abilities come in three types: Basic, Travel, and Ultimate. You can only equip two Basic abilities, one Travel, and one Ultimate, for a total of four active abilities on your hotbar max. Finally, there are five different categories of abilities that all fall within the three overall types. These are: Blood, Unholy, Illusion, Chaos, and Frost. These all have different focuses based on their type, like Blood focusing on healing and Frost on inflicting Chill. Here are our picks for the best broken down by their type
Best Basic abilities
Sanguine Coil — Blood ability
This ability is a skillshot projectile you shoot that inflicts 75% magic damage, plus life leeches for 40% health when it lands. If that weren’t strong enough, if you hit an ally with it, you will actually heal them for 100% and yourself for 40% of your spell power. You get three charges, and each one on an individual cooldown so you can time them out to always have one ready. This obviously isn’t an ability that will deal tons of damage, but the ability to heal any time you need, and for such high amounts (almost too much in our opinion when using it against an ally), there’s no reason to leave home without Sanguine Coil on your hotbar.
Power Surge — Chaos ability
Power Surge starts out by cleansing you of any debuffs on the target, yourself, or an ally, giving them a shield for 150% of your spell power, then buffs movement speed and attack speed by 25% until the shield breaks. Debuffs happen way more than most RPGs in V Rising and are usually a major pain to deal with. Especially during bosses, you will find yourself inflicted with at least one status effect at nearly all times, so a single ability to remove all of them at once is already worth your attention. Adding in a powerful shield and double buff to movement and attack means you can turn a moment you would’ve had to go on the defensive into a chance to attack.
Crystal Lance — Frost ability
This is another projectile ability that has your vampire throw a frozen spear at an enemy that, assuming it hits, deals an initial 150% of your magic damage, plus inflicts the Chill effect. If you don’t know, hitting an enemy that is affected by Chill will cause them to become frozen, at which point they can’t move or act for four seconds (or half that time if used against another player in PvP). If you land the Crystal Lance, it will also shatter into additional projectiles that scatter outward for 50% of the initial damage, but still carry the Chill effect. Not only is this good single-target damage but also an amazing crowd control ability.
Best Travel abilities
Veil of Chaos — Chaos ability
Veil of Chaos causes your character to dash in whatever direction you choose, giving you a little over two seconds of invincibility frames, and buffing the next attack you use after the dash with 25% bonus damage. However, you can also dash twice in a row, which will spawn an illusion that explodes after a short time for 50% of your magic damage. The reason this is at the top of the Travel ability list isn’t just for its use, which is decent enough, but because it has a minuscule .3-second casting time. Since Travel abilities are focused on avoiding danger first and foremost, being able to use them on reaction is the top priority.
Veil of Illusion — Illusion ability
Our first look at an ability from the Illusion category is for its tricky Travel ability. This will be another dash that gives you the same amount of i-frames as any other, as well as the 25% bonus to your next attack. What’s different is that dashing spawns an illusion that will shoot projectiles that deal 40% of your magic damage, and if you cast it twice in a row, you revert back to your starting position and spawn a second illusion. This is useful for setting up more DPS, but is really great in PvP for giving you the option to fake out your opponent on where you’re going.
Veil of Bones — Unholy ability
You already know the basics of this one; i-frames on dash, but instead of getting a buff on your next attack, it is instead turned into a projectile that deals 25% magic damage. That sounds weak, and it is, but that projectile can chain between up to four enemies and also inflicts the Amplify status on them. Enemies with Amplify take an additional 25% damage for the next five seconds, letting you clean up a mob much quicker.
Best Ultimate abilities
Arctic Leap — Frost ability
Now for the powerhouse abilities. Arctic Leap sends your vampire up into the air, crashing down and dealing 225% magic damage in a small AoE that also freezes any enemy in range for up to six seconds (again, half that for other players). What’s not to love about this ability? The leap takes you out of danger, hits like a truck, and then freezes any enemy that could be in a position to hit you afterward for six seconds. If there’s a downside, we can’t find it.
Mirror Strike — Illusion ability
This is your full-on anime ninja move right here that will make you feel like a true vampire. You start by dashing in a direction and begin attacking all enemies within a set range for either three seconds or until you cancel the attack, dealing 600% magic damage divided among however many targets are in that area. All targets are also inflicted with Weaken, so they will take 30% more damage for five seconds if they survive the initial onslaught. All of that makes this an extremely flexible Ultimate. You can use it on a single target for massive damage or in crowds to spread it out, but either way get the extra damage afterward thanks to the Weaken.
Heart Strike — Blood ability
Finally, Heart Strike is a decent Ultimate as a fallback from the others if you prefer to stick to abilities that split damage with healing. This move dashes you in a straight line, attacking any enemy in your path for 150% magic damage and heals you for 150% of your spell power over the next 3.5 seconds. After your dash finishes, a bloody explosion AoE is triggered that deals an additional 150% magic damage to any enemies in the area. This has some utility, being a dash and heal, but the damage isn’t all that impressive for an Ultimate, which is what you should really be looking for when filling this slot.
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