V Rising Difficulty Levels and More Detailed Ahead of Launch

Stunlock Studios has released a new dev diary ahead of next week’s V Rising 1.0 launch, detailing what you can expect from the game’s new difficulty modes, as well as what will happen regarding servers and save files closer to launch.

Back in April, Stunlock revealed exactly what’s coming as part of V Rising 1.0, including three new difficulty levels: Relaxed, Normal, and Brutal. In today’s new dev diary, the studio provides new detail about what those modes will entail.

In Relaxed mode, damage from enemies and the sun will be reduced, while blood will drain more slowly and V Blood bosses won’t have as much health. You’ll already be familiar with Normal mode if you’ve played V Rising before.

As you might expect, Brutal mode ramps up the tension. V Blood bosses have more health, deal more damage, and have new abilities to look out for, while enemies deal a lot more damage. 

However, to compensate for these changes, loot drops more frequently “from all sources”, and your item durability will also go down more slowly.

Further modular difficulty settings will also be available so that you can tweak your experience however you like. Difficulty can be changed whenever you want, but you will need to restart your game in order for changes to take effect.

As well as difficulty, Stunlock also provides information on what you can expect from V Rising‘s server types, its maintenance leading up to launch, and what you should do with your save files.

Several official server types will be available in supported regions, including PvE and PvP servers, raid and Brutal difficulty-focused options, and more.

In addition, Stunlock says you should play on a new save if you want to experience the content that’s available in V Rising‘s 1.0 patch (which will include a crossover with Castlevania in which you can fight the legendary Simon Belmont).

You’ll still be able to play your old save thanks to a new Steam branch Stunlock is introducing, but that save won’t include any of the features introduced in 1.0.

V Rising 1.0 launches on PC on May 8th. Servers will be unavailable from May 6th through that date, so you’ll have to wait a little while to get your vampire fix. The game is also due to arrive on PS5 at some point this year.