V Rising building guide: How to build a castle in V Rising
Learn how to make the best gothic castle in V Rising
Want to know how to build a castle in V Rising? Building a well-fortified castle is one of the first things you’ll want to do in Stunlock Studio’s new survival MMO V Rising. However, there are lots of steps to work through before you’ll have the gothic castle of your dreams, and it might not be as easy as you think. While you can just throw up some wooden walls and call it a day, that won’t actually class as a castle in V Rising, which might leave you stumped.
Since building a castle is an important quest in V Rising, we’re here to help. In this guide, we’ll explain how to build a castle room in V Rising, and offer some tips on improving and defending your castle.
How to build a castle in V Rising
To start building a castle in V Rising, you must place down a Castle Heart. This is a small fountain of blood that powers everything inside your castle and allows you to mark the boundaries of your base. After all, if there’s one thing any good vampire respects, it’s personal space. With that in mind, you’ll need to mark out your castle territory using borders. You can do this by heading to the Fundamentals tab in the build menu, which you access with the “B” key.
After placing your borders, it’s time to look through the other options in your build menu. These will include walls, floors, gates, and various other decorations for your lair. You’ll also gain access to crafting stations as you make your way through V Rising's bosses, which allow you to make better materials, such as planks and stone bricks. These crafting stations must be placed within your castle boundaries and will only work if your Castle Heart has blood essence. If not, your Castle Heart will start to decay.
After making a few crafting stations, you’ll want to erect some walls to protect your castle. While you can use a private server or join PvE lobbies to avoid fighting other players, there are plenty of dangerous enemies in V Rising that will attack your base. However, the standard wooden palisades that you have access to early on won’t class as a castle. To build a proper castle, you must build and interact with a Research Table, which will unlock the castle crafting tab in the build menu.
To make a castle, you must use the reinforced walls and floors found under the Castle building tab. These cost more resources to build than palisades, as each reinforced wall requires 6 planks and 10 stone bricks, so you’ll need to hoard plenty of materials to build multiple rooms. While you can’t simply place roofs down in the same way, building an enclosed room will automatically generate a ceiling.
Other V Rising building tips
Now that you know how to establish your first castle, it's time to start thinking about expansion. A powerful vampire lord should have a castle befitting of their status, so we have a few tips that will help you create the best castle in V Rising.
Prepare to move further into the map
During the first few hours in V Rising, you'll probably want to slap down a base as soon as possible. Early quests slowly teach you how to build key crafting stations, and you'll spend plenty of time cutting through the bosses scattered across the Farbane Woods.
However, as you improve your gear score and grow stronger, you'll start spending much more time in other areas throughout the world of Vardoran. The Dunley Farmlands are the key region for players between levels 20 and 50, while high-level players will want to explore the Silverlight Hills. Getting to these locations from Farbane Woods takes a long time, so we recommend making your proper castle somewhere more central, such as the Dunley Farmlands.
In our V Rising tips and tricks page, we talk more about the best spots to place your Castle Heart. High spots on the map are particularly popular, but also consider placing a base near either the iron mine in the Dunley Farmlands or the silver mine in the Silverlight Hills. Having easy access to these resources is incredibly important for making late-game gear.
Use mist braziers outside
While your castle interior will probably occupy most of your territory, you might also want some outdoor space for your base. If you do want an outdoor section, we recommend placing mist braziers around. Mist braziers cast a shadow to prevent you from taking damage from sunlight while outside, so scattering a few around your base will let you relax in nature while avoiding those harmful rays.
Be warned that mist braziers use bones as fuel, so you won't be able to just leave them on all the time without hunting.
Place a gate to prevent other players trespassing
If you want your castle to be a private space, you'll need to place a gate in the entryway. This prevents other players from simply wandering into your castle. On PvE servers, players will only be able to pass through your castle gates if you let them inside. On PvP servers, hostile players may use explosives to blast through your gates, but they still act as an important defence from those who haven't unlocked explosive boxes.
Whether you're still making a quick base out of wood or have upgraded to a full stone castle, you will find gates in the build menu. However, you will need to place down an entryway before you can place a gate, so check the resource cost for both parts.
Use servants to defend your castle
As you progress through V Rising's quests, you will unlock the servant coffin recipe and the Dominating Presence power. You can use this power to enslave humans and send them to your castle, where they can perform different tasks to make your vampiric life easier. If you're on a PvP server, we suggest using these servants to defend your base. You can make them patrol around, ensuring that they are always alert and ready for any attack should another player choose to besiege your castle.
Of course, any fledgling vampire will be able to rip and tear through common peasants with ease. To ensure your servants defend well, make sure you provide them with the best weapons in V Rising so that they can inflict plenty of damage.
It's important to note that you'll also need a throne from which you can command your servants, but you'll also unlock this by progressing through quests.
That wraps up everything you need to know about building a castle in V Rising. If you are planning to take a trip away from your castle, take a look at our guide on how to get a horse so that you can travel quickly across the map. There are also plenty of other resources that you'll need to find, so check out our guides on how to get Whetstone, how to get Leather, and how to get Copper in V Rising.