Online multiplayer games are usually a no go for me. No time to dedicate on a regular basis for clan based stuff, and not enough time to compete usually with other players in PvP (player vs player). Sometimes a game makes it through these filters, but it’s pretty rare. Rare isn’t impossible though, and last week a new Early Access game called V Rising made it onto my play system.
I am not going to talk too much about V Rising right now, other to say if the developers did nothing else to the game it’s pretty awesome. If you regularly play video games, V Rising is a kind of Diabloesque take on Rust or Valheim. At its core, V Rising is a survival game. You need to explore the world, construct a base, collect resources and thrive.
You can choose to play Player vs Environment (PvE) or PvP, depending on the server you join. Or of course, make your own server and tailor the world to what you want. The small twist that got me interested in V Rising is the fact you are a vampire. You awaken after an extended sleep, and you are out to make your mark on the world.
This adds a fun mechanic to the gameplay – sunlight. Sure, you need to keep feeding on blood, but having a ‘hunger’ mechanic in a survival game isn’t new. Being hurt for exploring outside during the day though added a twist. You don’t instantly die in the sunlight, but you need to find shade pretty quick!
There is also research in the game. Sure, you do things and you learn new tricks in combat and building to help you progress. But in V Rising, you are a vampire, meaning as you defeat mini-bosses during the game, you can drain their V Blood. The name can use work in my opinion, but a side benefit is you absorb their knowledge, unlocking new tech for you.
V Rising has a lot of little nods to vampire lore mixed in the gameplay. It’s not only the absorption of knowledge through blood. Things like your coffin has to be on natural ground. You can’t have your coffin on a brick floor!
I started playing V Rising on a private PvP server with a pretty chill group of players. We weren’t outright going after each other, but in the back of my head future combat worried me a little bit. The server was set up so that you couldn’t destroy someone’s base unless it was ‘in decay’, a mechanic that meant you hadn’t played for a while. While this was a good idea, it didn’t fit my play schedule. I could play for an hour, get enough blood for the Castle Heart to stave off decay for 24 hours, then repeat.
This had me rethinking if I should be playing V Rising on a PvP server. And then late in the week, a new update came out that meant you could play solo! Sure, this means you miss out on either coop play or pitting your skills against others. But for me, it also means I can not come back for a week and be no better or worse off!
And then Friday I lost the internet. NBN issues, bummer, things happen. Solo play still requires an internet connection, which I wasn’t aware of. This happened about an hour in to restarting the game solo. So I figured I would download the dedicated server files, and run everything off my system when I want to play.
Well, I am writing this on Sunday afternoon. I still don’t have internet back. So I will see what happens with V Rising, as this weekend was going to be a fun run before work sets in too much in June.
I will have to see how things progress, but in July no matter what I will come back to V Rising. By then, I will see if I can talk a couple more people to join a PvE server maybe and see how it goes? The feeling I have is V Rising will be more fun with other players, but the few hours I had were pretty fun mostly solo.