In V Rising, you take the role of a Vampire freshly awoken from their dusty tomb, and your power has long since dried up. It’s time to get it back, and what else could that mean other than a blood-soaked adventure to drink your fill and find your footing once more as a nocturnal terror of the night.
Enter the V Blood. These people, monsters, beasts, and supernatural wonders are all descendants of powerful bloodlines. This magically enhanced blood proves a potent source of advancement for the Vampire, master hemomancer, to tap to absorb skills, knowledge, and even magical secrets to learn spells and abilities.
These boss-level encounters are numerous but notable. In this blog, we’ll give you a few examples of what you’ll have to face off against, and for those sinister strategists among you, we’ll offer a few tips to take advantage of.
Willfred The Village Elder
Willfred is the chief of a small, secluded village, its reclusive population hiding a terrible secret. Visiting this place during the day, you might notice strange details, such as scratched surfaces and empty cages. Only by returning at the right time will you uncover this place’s dark, twisted nature, and come face to face with a hunger for blood that might match even your own.
The Village Elder is the alpha of his pack, and the most vicious hunter you’ll encounter among his fellow werewolves. He’ll relentlessly chase you down with an onslaught of clawing and biting attacks. Bringing some defensive countermeasures in your spell kit will be of great help, and you should take special care to hold your dash ability to slip away during only the most critical moments. Toward the end of the fight, captive villagers will break free from their cages and try to escape. Willfred will switch his attention, going into a compulsive feeding frenzy. You should get to them before he does because you won’t like what happens after he feeds.
Ziva the Engineer
In the depths of Gloomrot, a gothic hellscape riddled with toxic waste and mutations born of the ambitions of mankind’s pursuit of higher evolution, you can find Ziva the Engineer. She’s the crazed head engineer of weapons development for the tech-savvy faction, the Trancendum. When facing off against her, it’s vital to learn the attack patterns of her three weapons, an experimental arsenal that demands respect if you don’t want to meet an early undead end.
She swaps regularly between her weapons during the fight, switching up her move set as she does. When she grabs her Electro Zapper, you’ll need to stay on your toes and keep moving. Her flamethrower is a deadly countermeasure to be feared like the sun, so you’ll want to keep your distance when she’s equipped with this one. Lastly, her Gatling gun will fill the battlefield with bullets, and you’ll need to find some cover to survive the onslaught.
Raziel the Shepherd
The Church of Luminance is the dominant force of power in Vardoran, and their adherence to and worship of the Light are rooted deep in the history of mankind. It was the Light that felled Dracula and drove Vampire kind into hiding centuries ago, and a challenge you’ll need to overcome if you have any hope of rising to greatness.
Raziel’s monastery is teeming with divine energies, burning away at any unprepared Vampire daring to set foot on the sacred ground. Brewing a concoction to give temporary resistance against holy powers will help protect you from the natural energies of the area, but also provide some layer of protection against his abilities.
Prepare for a menagerie of holy spells from this caster-type enemy, as he’ll rain down projectiles, area attacks, and sustained beams of light that you’ll need to avoid to survive the encounter. The beacons of holy light he’ll summon will make this more difficult, making it more challenging to move around unhindered. Destroy these beacons to free up space so you have room to dodge safely!
Talzur the Winged Horror
This is one of the end-game bosses of V Rising and very likely a necessary step to empowering yourself enough to face Dracula. A horrific beast and one of Dracula’s favorite pets, it has been horribly deformed and empowered by the favor of the Immortal King.
The massive size of the Winged Horror makes fighting it in melee a dangerous proposition. However, Talzur is no simple beast. It summons chilling frost to trap its victims and spews chaos fire to those unfortunate enough not to escape in time. Portions of the battlefield will continuously be set ablaze, so you’ll have to tread carefully and save your abilities to avoid being knocked back into one of the fire pits.
This is one of the longer fights in the game, an intense combat where any misstep could see you mauled for a single slip-up. Beware the Winged Horror.
V Rising will be released on June 11 for PlayStation 5. Pre-order a bundle to get five days of early access.