V Rising: How To Level Up Your Gear

V Rising has been an absolute fan favorite since its launch, thanks to its gothic theme and creative mechanics. In order to defeat mighty bosses and progress through the game, it is crucial to have advanced gear.

Although there is a somewhat natural increase in the gear level for players as they advance in the game, they can boost it significantly by improving their gear score. However, leveling up gear can be a bit daunting for some players, especially for new V Rising players. Therefore, this handy guide will outline some tips to help players level up their gear.

Updated June 15, 2024 by Marc Santos: V Rising’s graduation from Steam early access brought with it major overhauls to the game’s progression system. While the concept of slaying bosses, learning recipes, and crafting gear still remains, the game now has more ways for players to gain power. This guide from the early access version of V Rising is still accurate and correct, but we’ve expanded it to include other ways of how to increase the player’s gear score.

How To Level Up In V Rising

The simple answer to leveling up in V Rising is to obtain better equipment. Players have a small chance of getting new weapons as they explore the early areas of the game, but as they venture deeper into Vardoran, they’ll have to resort to crafting gear instead of finding items out in the wild.

Defeat Bosses

Fighting off enemies and defeating them in V Rising is important for two reasons. First, some of them reward players with the recipes for weapons, armor, accessories, and the crafting stations needed to make them. Second, they give players Spell Points, which are used to unlock V Rising’s many magical abilities.

Bosses in this game have fixed levels, and players will need to beat weaker ones before they can challenge those that are higher up on the chain.

Craft New Equipment

The player’s level is mostly dictated by the gear they wear, which makes crafting new equipment the primary way of progressing. All V Blood bosses in V Rising always give some sort of reward the first time they’re beaten, and if they unlock any new weapons or armor for you, it’s best to make them as soon as you can.

Merciless Weapons and Armor Variants

Weapons are divided by tiers based on their main material (Copper, Iron, Dark Silver, etc), and higher-tier variants of the same weapon will naturally have better stats and a higher gear score. While rushing from one tier to another may be enticing, players may want to find Merciless versions of their current gear first. These are basically enhanced versions of weapons with better stats, and you can find their recipes as random drops or as merchandise from book vendors.

Armor sets are also divided into tiers, but instead of having Merciless versions like in the early access days, they now have different variants that give bonus stats based on common RPG character archetypes (warrior, rogue, mage, tank, etc). For example, the Hollowfang set in V Rising can be upgraded into the Crimson Templar set, which increases attack speed and provides Weapon Leech. Wearing a three or four-piece set of matching armor gives you a +1 bonus to your total Gear Level.

Like Merciless weapons, recipes for these can be found randomly or bought from merchants.