V Rising has multi-floor castles, so why no basements?

With the release of V Rising's newest free update, Secrets of Gloomrot, players can finally build multi-floor castles yet, unfortunately, there's no basements.

Female vampire sitting upon her throne in V Rising

I love vampires, I love building, I love crafting, and I love gathering. What better game for me to play, then, than V Rising? After its initial release, V Rising became one of my most beloved survival games almost immediately. It has managed to hook me like no other game has for years, keeping my eyes glued to its dark, gloomy world. I loved most of what it had to offer, even upon its initial launch, but I wanted more options while building my castle. I wanted mutliple floors and levels. I wanted basements.

When Secrets of Gloomrot was announced, I was thrilled. I had been waiting to learn more about how Stunlock Studios would expand V Rising, especially after spending so long gazing at the greyed-out portions of the map. I knew that the developers had a lot planned, and the fact that such a massive update would be given to players for free was the cherry on top of all of the announced features.

The new enemies, V Blood bosses, and, of course, the Gloomrot map all had me very excited. However, it was more creative-based additional content that I was really anticipating. After already spending hundreds of hours building and customizing castles with the relatively few options given in-game, I needed more, and Stunlock Studios would give it. V Rising was finally going to introduce multi-level indoor building, meaning that my castles no longer needed to awkwardly expand up hills outdoors. This could also mean basements and cellars… right?

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Wrong. Upon reading the V Rising patch notes following Secrets of Gloomrot’s release, I was left a bit disappointed. There would be no functional basement building after all. My servants and their prison cells would have to stay amongst the main floors of my castle, much to my aesthetic displeasure.

I am not alone in wishing I could make underground rooms. Many of my friends, some of whom I play with, have also been holding out for basement building since the game’s release last year. We all told ourselves that Stunlock Studios were surely prioritizing them. After all, the official Discord server’s channels were flooded with requests for underground building, as were threads on Reddit.

A castle interior with a vampire seated upon a throne in V Rising

For those who value medieval castle feng shui, basements offer limitless possibilities. One of my friends suggested a potential alchemy lab under his castle, filled with the new green Gloomrot decor. It could be a Frankstein-esque laboratory, packed to the brim with bookshelves and crafting tables. My partner and I discussed placing our prison cells and servants in a basement room, much like a dungeon would function, away from our other living quarters. Another player on our server thought that a basement could make a decent sleeping area for a vampire. After all, what better place to put your coffin than underground, away from any possible sunlight infiltration?

There are definitely cons to every pro, though. I can respect that adding basements would likely be more complicated than adding upper-floor functionality, especially in servers heavy on PvP. As an avid fan of The Sims, I understand how weird building underground in a game can be. I mean, the screen literally goes black aside from your basement rooms in The Sims if you switch to the underground floors. I am not going to pretend I know how basements could or would work in V Rising, but, as every selfish player does, I still want them.

A gloomy outdoor courtyard of a castle in V Rising

If you are just as irrationally passionate about vampires as I am, you can check out some of our other favorite vampire games, or have a look at some other great sandbox games to get your castle-building creativity flowing. You can also read upon some V Rising beginner tips and tricks to help you get back into the groove after Secrets of Gloomrot’s launch.