Vampire Survivors Tips & Tricks
A beginner-to-intermediate guide covering hidden mechanics in Vampire Survivors. Explains stage progression, enemy behavior, item priorities, and early-game power-up strategies the game never clearly spells out.
25 Tips · 3 categories
9 tipsProgression
Check the Unlock Tab First
The Unlock tab in the main menu lists everything you can unlock in the game, including hidden ones that appear later. Checking it regularly answers most questions about how to unlock characters, stages, and items.
Buy Cheap Power-Ups First Then Refund
Each power-up purchase raises the cost of all future upgrades equally. Spend your early gold on the cheapest options you can afford, then refund everything once you have more gold to buy the upgrades you actually want. Refunds return every coin spent, so nothing is lost.
Farm Inlaid Library Before Other Stages
The Inlaid Library is an easier starting stage than Mad Forest. It has plenty of farming waves that let you accumulate gold and level up faster, making later stages significantly more manageable.
Quit via Options Menu to Keep Progress
If you need to leave a run early, press Escape and use the quit option inside the Options menu. You keep all the gold and unlocks earned in that run. Most players use this to quickly complete a new unlock and then leave within a few minutes.
Plan Around the Level 20 and 40 XP Gaps
The game's leveling formula causes level 20 and level 40 to take much longer than surrounding levels. Make sure your most important weapons and items are selected before hitting those thresholds, since you will be stuck at the same power level for a significant stretch.
Buy the Armor Power-Up Early
Armor is often skipped because it seems expensive for what it provides, but it dramatically improves your ability to survive the dense spawn waves that generate large amounts of experience. Getting through those waves in good shape accelerates your entire build timeline.
Take Curse to Reach Max Build by Minute 10
Curse causes enemies to spawn faster and in larger numbers, but the early spawns are the weakest enemies in the game. Killing them quickly floods you with experience, letting you max out your build around the ten-minute mark instead of the usual fifteen to sixteen.
Skip Gold Farming Until You Have All Unlocks
Early gold farming is inefficient. The most effective farming methods require characters and items unlocked deep into the game, at which point a single run can net tens of millions of gold. Focus on progression first and farm later.
Never Use Secret Codes for Progression Unlocks
Entering secret codes to unlock characters or items that are tied to story progression can permanently break your save. The game does not verify that you completed the required steps, so it skips ahead without marking them done. Avoid codes entirely unless you are finished with all progression content.
11 tipsCombat
Stop Running and Start Killing
New players tend to panic and kite enemies when they are not actually in danger. Running without killing means you miss experience, and each new wave spawns stronger than the last. Get familiar with how much damage your weapons deal and stand your ground whenever it is safe.
Keep Enemies On-Screen to Prevent Despawning
Enemies spawn just outside the visible area and despawn if they move too far away from you. Any damage dealt to a despawned enemy is wasted. Bosses are the only exception and teleport back into range instead of disappearing.
Open Runs with Garlic and Song of Mana
Both weapons excel early by clearing weak enemies quickly and generating large amounts of experience. Garlic in particular lets you walk through small enemies rather than dodging them, and can push you to level 20 within the first three minutes.
Pair Garlic with King Bible for Radius Defense
Garlic does not knock back enemies on its own, but it continuously reduces their knockback resistance. King Bible has the exact same radius as Garlic, so the two work together to push enemies away and keep you safe throughout the run.
Prioritize Empty Tome, Duplicator, and Candelabra
Empty Tome provides 40 percent cooldown reduction, making it the most universally powerful passive item. Duplicator adds up to two extra projectiles to nearly every weapon. Candelabra greatly increases your area of effect, which speeds up kills and therefore experience gain.
Don't Evolve Garlic — Skip Pummarola
Garlic's evolution requires Pummarola, which is one of the weakest passive items in the game. Garlic remains useful without evolving, so it is better to use that Pummarola slot on a stronger passive and leave Garlic at its base form.
Understand That Enemy HP Scales with Your Level
Most enemies in the game gain HP equal to your current level multiplied by their base health. A level 10 character faces enemies with ten times the HP they had at level 1. A handful of enemies have fixed HP and are not affected by this scaling.
Avoid Pentagram Due to Burst Enemy Spawning
Pentagram clears the screen but also destroys experience gems and chests. After it fires, the game detects that enemy count dropped below its threshold and spawns a large wave all at once. That burst arrives bunched together and is harder to deal with than normal enemy flow.
Skip Moon Without Limit Break Unlocked
Moon, the evolution of Pentagram, forces rapid level-ups when it activates. Because most enemies scale HP with your level, gaining levels faster makes the game harder without making you stronger. Moon only becomes worthwhile once you have Limit Break unlocked, which lets weapon stats continue climbing past the normal cap.
Amount Stat Boosts Almost Every Weapon
Despite being labeled as a projectile stat, Amount increases the output of nearly all weapons including area weapons like the Whip. Only a handful of weapons like Garlic, Pentagram, and Laurel are unaffected. Prioritize it broadly rather than only on projectile builds.
Use Infinite Corridor to Halve Major Boss HP
When Infinite Corridor activates and the colorful animation fires, it cuts the current HP of every enemy it hits in half. Using it against bosses makes even the toughest fights much more manageable.
5 tipsExploration
Find the Milky Way Map Relic Early
The Milky Way Map is found on the Dairy Plant stage. Picking it up adds a full map to the pause screen showing every relic, item, and stage pickup across all stages, which makes finding future relics and items much faster.
Collect Randomazzo to Unlock Arcana
The Randomazzo relic unlocks the Arcana system, which provides some of the most powerful effects in the game. Once you have the Milky Way Map, track down the Randomazzo and collect all Arcana as quickly as possible.
Wait for Six Weapon Slots Before Stage Pickups
Stage item pickups are added as extra slots beyond your core six. If you grab one with only five weapons equipped, it fills your sixth core slot instead of becoming a bonus. Always have all six slots occupied before collecting any stage items.
Hunt the Accumulated Red Gem in Corners
When roughly 400 to 500 experience gems are on screen, the game consolidates them into a single red gem to prevent lag. That gem spawns in whichever corner is farthest from you. Walking into a corner to collect it can level you up 20 to 40 times at once.
Break Braziers and Candelabras Often
Stage breakables drop a range of powerful pickups including gold, rosaries that wipe all enemies, freeze orbs, experience vacuums, chickens that heal you, and clovers that boost luck. Some maps restrict which drops are available, so results vary by stage.
Verified: 2026-05-23 · All content is original with full credit to original creators.