V Rising: A Wishlist

V Rising launched on May 17th and I’ve successfully put about 50 hours into the game. I don’t think I’ve gone this hard or messed up my sleep schedule this terribly since Conan Exiles first launched. Admittedly, I have a problem when it comes to multiplayer survival games. It happened with Rust, ARK: Survival Evolved, Dark and Light: just to name a few. I’ll sink hours into building my perfect base and decorating every corner perfectly so I can go out and troll my friends through PvP. A lady has to get her kicks somewhere. With that being said, there are a few things that I hope to see in the future for V Rising’s development. Is this considered a review?

1. Named Castles

Servers with larger clan sizes have a bit of a harder time keeping up with who owns what castle. I’d really love to be able to rename our castles so that we can embrace that vampire gothic fantasy and come up with something edgy like the “Lair of Darkness” or the “Den of Cuddles”. Anything to distinguish between the plethora of castles on the map. When you can place down two castle hearts at once, things start to get a little crazy and contested. This is number one on my list because we’re currently struggling to keep track of all our vampires and their castles with how frequently things are escalating and moving.

Our map is starting to get a little crowded.

2. Unique Named Items

All of the items in V Rising that drop off of V Carriers typically go towards materials and ingredients that you use to upgrade your existing gear. In addition to running uphill and hitting the max gear score equipment wall, I think it would be interesting if bosses dropped more unique items like named helmets or weapons with interesting visual effects. You could even make it so that those items aren’t able to be repaired, so you’d have to go out and farm them again or steal them from an enemy player to get another copy and continue to use it. Since there are no levels, it’s also easy for a veteran player to just give a full set of max gear to a new friend. Boom, you’re ready for endgame content. What do they do after that? If you’re like me, you’d like to actually customize your playstyle and tweak its efficiency by testing out blood types, gear stats, and vampire abilities.  

The one way you can customize your vampire-fighting prowess is with your abilities.

3. Diverse Equipment and More Sidegrades

Additionally, equipment needs a bit more variety both in terms of visual identity and build freedom. When you get to your max gear score, everyone has the same equipment, and the only thing that makes your kit any different from the next no lifer’s is what skills you use. Maybe it’s like this as a way to balance things. Some people might prefer to rely less on their spell abilities and more on melee, while others might prefer to just use their claws and sling spells. We already have a tier of craftable necklaces that let us choose bonuses related to this, but they’re quickly out geared. What if we could change the bonuses of our gear with specific materials? Diablo III has gem sockets, and we already have gems in the game. Or we could just find or craft different sets with unique bonuses.

Different necklaces give you slightly different stats.

4. More Decoration Groups

The decorating in V Rising is so, so satisfying. I have been having an absolute blast with tweaking my castle, but I need more! More carpets, and the ability to actually sit in the chairs we place down would be a godsend.  The building grid is small enough that you can basically put any decoration where you’d like-it just snaps into place and you have a nice looking castle with little effort.  I’d really like to see more varieties of decorations like different carpet collections (We only have different colors of “Dux” right now) and the ability to place items on tables like food, wine bottles, candlesticks, etc.

Lots of beautiful colors, but just one carpet style.

5. Clan Name Visibility

Player name colors still elude me. The people in your clan have blue names, and the people in another clan we have on the server all have purple. Yesterday I just noticed a green name. Does that mean he’s in the…green clan? Or that he’s clan-less? Does green mean attackable/hostile? I think we really need to at least be able to view clan names underneath the player’s name to help differentiate between clans since we’re not able to have allied clans at the moment. 

*Stares in bear.*

6. Loot Pinatas

More loot types! The main reason for fighting bosses is to gain their V blood, but what is their purpose afterward? For those that have gained the abilities, there is none. I want the floor to be showered with different loot when I’ve spent ten minutes struggling with Ungora the Spider Queen. She’s a spider, I know she’s been hoarding some good stuff or has eaten plenty of adventurers that carried a variety of trinkets. You can up the loot drop rating on servers, but that doesn’t really change the loot table. It would be way more interesting if we had more  unique drops from enemies, kind of tying back into no. 2.

Weapons and armor are pretty straightforward and linear.

7. Expanding Lore

The world of V Rising has so much lore potential, and there are several areas with interesting names and stories that need to be told. For example, there’s a sacrificial site in the farmlands that hints at its use during an equinox or special event. You only find that out by hovering over its area on the world map, and we haven’t discovered any way to activate it or discover its secrets. Similarly, there’s a giant arena/coliseum just waiting for a boss fight. I’d love to see it populated with randomly generated, named NPCs that are looking for challengers.

My modest little throne room is starting to come together.

8. Dynamic Events

Piggybacking on the topic above, I’d love to see more dynamic events out in the world. Some that could maybe trigger due to the time of the year. The humans could have festivals that dress up the towns and villages, or change the NPC attire. That could be a fun way to get a unique servant with an interesting appearance. For bragging rights to other vampire lords: “Yeah, I got this one during the solstice festival. Her dress is actually white and clean, and her flower crown is always fresh since she’s immortal. No big deal or anything.” The most dynamic event we have is the absolute fear that’s instilled in your undead soul when Styx pops up behind you in the Cursed Forest, or when a scarecrow comes to life and teaches you the true meaning of fear.

I couldn’t bear to get rid of both scarecrows. Now I let this one live in my garden. We have a love-hate relationship.

9. Holiday Events

I haven’t played Ark: Survival Evolved in years, but just recently downloaded it again to play with a friend. While I was looking up some guides, I realized they have holiday-themed events where the creatures are dressed up, the weather changes, and you get special emotes, outfits, and weapons for participating. This would be such a fun idea for V Rising! We already have emotes in-game, and this could be another great way to add diversity to your character’s equipment appearance. With that said, this might require implementing some kind of transmogrification/glamour system that lets you change your appearance. It might also call for a list of emotes that you can then slot into your radial emote menu.

10. An NPC named after me if you decide to go with any of these features!

Obviously, a stretch. I just think it would be pretty awesome if anyone at Stunlock Studios saw my wishlist and liked any of these suggestions. It would obviously be enough just to see these items implemented in V Rising.  I know a lot of this is stretching towards probably making V Rising feel like a Diablo clone, and that may not be exactly where the developers want to take it, but it already feels so much like Diablo (and that’s a good thing) that I can’t help but wish you could stretch it just a bit further. I have enjoyed V Rising so much in the past week, that I want to see it survive long past the wave of hype and continue to bring more content to its player base. Till then, I’ll probably adopt ten more horses and move my base a dozen more times till I get the right view.