While it was not unexpected, it would require a little work to get back to where I was. I had been having so much fun in V Rising when given the chance to play with others, I went for it.
The good news is that I had outgrown my old base in my solo game. While I had just gone on a bit of a boss-killing spree. I now knew so much about the game, I had a feeling I could catch up in quite a short amount of time.
It can be a bit rough having to start over with nothing. While I'd get a little help. It would not take long before I caught up to the progression of the person I had joined. Any help you can get in the early game to boost yourself is always welcome once you know the basics of the game. So it was at least nice to have.
I ended up setting up right next to one of the people I was going to be playing with. While we were not in the same clan yet so they showed up as red on the map. That would be changed in short order.
I also knew the location I was building at was really going to be rather temporary. I had an idea of where I wanted to have a base elsewhere. I just lacked the progression to be able to do that right away.
So I cleared out my new lot of land. I then got down some of the basic crafting stations I'd be needing. I knew this time around I needed to build a castle as quickly as possible. I wanted crafting stations indoors to get the bonus fast. It would save me a lot of time. Even more so if I could get down the right kind of flooring. That way, I'd get reduced materials needed and reduced time by 25% each. With all the building materials I'd need, this would help me quickly get back on my feet.
I then went out and killed quite a lot of bosses. You would think that having more players to clear sites, kill bosses, and gather things. That it would be, in fact, easier. It turns out V Rising scales areas and boss fights according to how many are engaging with a target. They get boosted health, damage, and even adds. Instead of them being easier, it felt like some boss fights were even more challenging now. The boss's damage scaling was quite the nail in the coffin on some attempts.
It was then time to relocate to a much better area. A castle I'd be using for quite some time. For the short term, it will be quite the central location for everything I need to do. Even for the long term, it will be a decent spot as well.
Relocating a castle in V Rising is not as bad as one might think. Thankfully, I did not need to move one inventory item at a time to the new spot. You, however, can’t just copy and paste your old setup either. My old castle layout was not going to cut it anyway.
Instead, what you can do is relocate each piece. That also means every type of flooring, wall, and machine is all I get access to until I've finished the castle transfer. This would also mean I'd be quite short on things like floors. I was, however, fine with that.
Since there are now a few things I know about the game. That had a huge impact on how I'd end up setting up my new base. I also knew this one was going to need to last me beyond what progress I had made in my solo game.
While I wish I could say I spent a decent amount of time planning out the layout. The fact is, I was just planning luck with how it turns out. I wanted a central location for storage. With the rest of the rooms in the sizes I'd need around it. Without fully knowing all crafting stations I'd need in the late game. For the most part, once I got enough building resources, it ended up working out quite well.
I did end up needing to spend a lot of time gathering further wood and stone. I was also rather thrilled going back into the Iron Mine at quite a low gear level. It had iron I'd need alone with some stone. This place is quite terrifying until you get some better gear on.
It was also kind of fun fighting bosses. I now knew the ins and outs of dealing with them. There were so many things I had learned the hard way. This time around, what should have been rather challenging for my gear level was not that hard to deal with.
There were, as expected, still a lot of deaths. Still, many times when night turned into day during a fight messed things up quite a lot. Lots of missteps as well, just not as many when I played for the first time around. There was also a lot of time being saved. I knew where I could push my luck and where I had to build up my gear level before pushing forward.
The crazy part is this won’t be the last time I'll end up changing servers either. At first, I'd be on a private game with another. That would end up creating some issues for the host, needing to be on for me to do anything.
At one point, I kind of bounced between my own solo game and a shard game. At some point, we then got a dedicated server. A lot of repeated stuff, I'll just be skipping over for the most part. There are, however, still quite a few fun moments that just happen when playing with others.
I also feel this speaks a lot about the game itself. It’s rare I'd be willing to not just have to start over once, but twice. While I do wish the game handled things a little differently, like another game I'll be posting about soon enough that went a different route regarding player progression and wanting to play on different servers. I still ended up having so much fun that I really did not mind starting over with next to nothing.
Screenshots were taken, and content was written by @Enjar about V Rising (Tracking link that takes you to the game's Steam page. I receive no commissions on sales. It’s simply a request to be used by the game publisher).
Disclosure: A review copy of the game was received for free.
