V Rising: How to increase your gear score or gear level

V Rising eschews the traditional leveling system of most role-playing games. Instead, the focus is on acquiring better equipment to further boost your character’s capabilities. Here’s our V Rising guide to help you increase your gear score or gear level.

Note: For more information, check out our V Rising guides and features hub.

V Rising guide: How to increase your gear score or gear level

How gear score affects your progression in V Rising

Progression is directly tied to your gear score or gear level in V Rising. For instance, an enemy’s nameplate color will change depending on the weapons or armors that you have equipped at that given moment (i.e., red means it’s extremely dangerous and orange means that it’s tough but manageable). As such, take note of the weapon that you’re using during combat, as that can determine how strong or vulnerable a target truly is.

This is also seen when you interact with the Blood Altar. As you can see in the images below, there are bosses that can’t even be tracked if you’re wearing lower-level items. The same bosses would then appear on the list once you equip better stuff.

Crafting and looting better gear

There are two ways you can increase your gear score or gear level in V Rising, and they naturally involve wearing better equipment. The first is by obtaining items as loot drops (i.e., weapons like axes and spears). However, the drop rates are fairly stingy, so this isn’t as reliable as it seems.

The most common method is by crafting. You’ll start out with your character’s personal crafting menu (tab key) during the tutorial. From there, you’ll gain access to the Simple Workbench (i.e., 8x Plank, 80x Stone, and 120x Animal Hide). This will let you craft weapons and armor pieces, most of which will get unlocked as you advance further.

Additional workbenches that you’ll use include the Tannery, Furnace, and Grinder. You may also construct the Woodworking Bench to make the crossbow and fishing pole.

Unlocking recipes via technology

Upon reaching 30 gear score or gear level in V Rising, you’ll hit a hump where you can’t seem to find anything decent to boost you further. This is where Research Desk technologies come in. Keep your fingers crossed that Merciless-type armor pieces get discovered due to the random nature of this mechanic.

Shortly thereafter, you’ll stumble upon the Farbane Woods’ Bandit Stronghold, whose gates can only be destroyed once you have explosives. The boss inside, Quincey the Bandit King, yields recipes for iron weapons and the Hallowfang Battlegear.

Keeping your old stuff or dismantling them

In case you have several items that you no longer use due to reaching a higher level, you’ve got a few choices:

• Throwing the item away – This is done by mousing over an item and pressing the spacebar, but it won’t really help you much since you’re just dropping stuff on the ground.
• The Devourer – This structure dismantles items and converts them into raw materials. It’s essentially a partial refund of what you’ve used for crafting.
• Servant equipment – The thralls that are under your control can wear items to improve their expertise during hunts.

V Rising is available via Steam. For more information, check out our guides and features hub.