Skip to main content

The best abilities in V Rising

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.

See more

How to unlock new abilities

A skill tree of blood abilities.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

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

A skill tree of blood abilities.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

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

A vampire glowing after performing a dash.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

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

A vampire slamming the ground in a frost explosion.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

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.

Editors' Recommendations

Jesse Lennox
Jesse Lennox loves writing, games, and complaining about not having time to write and play games. He knows the names of more…
The best ship modules in Helldivers 2
A scene from Helldiver 2's opening cutscene.

While the majority of your success lies in which weapons and armor you carry when facing off against the Terminids and Automatons on various missions in Helldivers 2, you shouldn't overlook what your ship can do to support you. Besides just naming your destroyer, there's far more you can do to customize it with modules. Whereas weapons and Boosters will impact you and your squad on a more constant basis, ship modules come in clutch when you need to bring out the big guns, aka Stratagems. These power weapons are already enough to turn the tide of a tough fight, but when you add in the right ship modules, you'll be cooking bugs for breakfast.
The best ship modules in Helldivers 2
Ship modules are purchased on your ship via the Ship Management Terminal. There are 18 in total, split between the Patriotic Administration Center, Orbital Cannon, Hangar Ship, Bridge Ship, and Engineer Bay categories. They are unlocked by spending samples you can collect during missions.
Donation Access License

Look, sometimes you can't argue with simplicity, and the Donation Access License is about as basic as they come. This mod gives any support weapons you call in more ammo by default, granting you more time blasting and less time waiting to call in your next one. It is a versatile mod as well since it can be applied to multiple Strategems. It applies to things like the Laser Cannon, Grenade Launcher, Railgun, Flamethrower, and more.
Liquid-Ventilated Cockpit

Read more
The best armor in Helldivers 2
A soldier in silhouette in Helldivers 2.

Armor sets in Helldivers 2 will affect more than just some stats and numbers behind the scenes. Just like your primary weapon, the type of armor you pick will dictate your playstyle and needs to be heavily considered before each mission. Each one comes with a different rating in three stats, plus there's a passive that makes it stand out, but all fall into either light, medium, or heavy roles. While the number of options isn't terribly overwhelming, comparing and contrasting all those stats and abilities on top of things like Boosters and Stratagems can become tedious. If you just want to get out there and blast some bugs, here are the best armor types to pick in Helldivers 2.
Best armor types
As of now, there are 19 different armor sets you can unlock with Medals and Super Credits, but more are likely to be added to the game in the future. When and if that occurs, we will update our rankings.
TR-9 Cavalier of Democracy

Especially when you're a fresh recruit in Helldivers 2, you can't go wrong with the Cavalier of Democracy if you happened to preorder the game. If not, it isn't a huge loss here since it is more of a great starter armor. It will give you very balanced stats for a medium build, with 100 Armor, 500 Speed, and 100 Stamina Regeneration. However, whether it's this one or any other you unlock early, make sure to get the Democracy Protects passive. This gives you a 50% chance to survive a lethal amount of damage and prevents bleeding damage from chest hemorrhages.
SC-34 Infiltrator

Read more
The 5 best PlayStation Portal alternatives in 2024
The Logitech G Cloud Gaming Handheld sits on a stack of comics.

The PlayStation Portal is a unique device. Designed to give you remote access to your PS5, it's a powerful streaming gadget that lets you take your favorite games with you while away from the big screen. Equipped with a massive 8-inch LCD screen and capable of playing games at 60fps in 1080p, it's one of the best ways to remotely access your PS5 games.

However, PlayStation Portal isn't perfect. For one, some users have noted that its performance is less than stellar when used outside your home network. You also can't store games on it, with the device intended to remotely stream titles from your PS5. And, as you'd expect from something called the PlayStation Portal, it'll only let you access PlayStation games with no options to play titles on PC, Xbox, or other platforms.

Read more