On paper, Vampire Survivors sounds like the most basic game imaginable. After all, you don’t even need to press any buttons, so how complicated could it be? Well, after just a few runs of collecting items, leveling up, and completing achievements, you’ll realize two things: this is probably the best indie game out there, and that you’ve stayed up until 1 in the morning without realizing it.
The only way to make meaningful progress after you understand how things work is to start evolving your weapons, which is not as easy as evolving Pokemon. This is a more complicated process than just leveling up normally, so we’ll do our best to help you survive by teaching you all about weapon evolutions and combos.
How weapon evolutions work in Vampire Survivors
Evolving a weapon does what you would expect in Vampire Survivors, which is mainly upgrading your base weapon into a more powerful one. There are three conditions that you need to meet before you can evolve any weapon.
The first condition is the most straightforward. All you need to do is level your base weapon up to the highest level. Each time you level up your character, you have the option between several weapon upgrades. If you choose your primary weapon each time it shows up, that will eventually let you level the weapon to its highest level. Each weapon has a maximum level of eight that you need to reach.
After getting your current weapon to Level 8, you then need to find and collect its paired item. Each weapon has one unique item that allows it to evolve that you have to either get by luck of the draw on level-up or by finding it somewhere on the map. This second item doesn’t need to be leveled up at all.
Finally, to complete the evolution, you need to collect a treasure chest that drops from a boss or elite enemy. This chest will always give you the choice for the evolved weapon if you meet the first two conditions, and will remove the base weapon if you pick it.
Note that you can only evolve one weapon on any given run even if you level a second weapon up, get its combination item, and beat another boss to spawn a chest.
All weapons and their evolutions
Between the weapons included in the base version of Vampire Survivors, plus the DLCs, there are a ton of weapons and items that would make stumbling upon the correct combination all but impossible. Here’s every weapon in Vampire Survivors, what they do, what you need to combine them with, and what evolution you get.
| Base weapon | Combination item | Evolution |
| Whip – forward horizontal slash | Hollow Heart | Bloody Tear – heals 8HP per attack if it crits an enemy |
| Magic Wand – shoots magic at the nearest enemy | Empty Tomb | Holy Wand – fires a group of magic projectiles at the nearest enemy with half the cooldown and twice the speed |
| Knife – shoots a knife forward | Bracer | Thousand Edge – fires an infinite stream of knives forward three times faster |
| Axe – throws an axe in an upward arc | Candelabrador | Death Spiral – fires 9 spinning scythes around the player |
| Cross – fires a spinning cross at the closest enemy that boomerangs back | Clover | Heaven Sword – fires a spinning sword toward the closest enemy that boomerangs back at more than double the speed and damage, plus adds knockback. |
| King Bible – summons an orbiting bible around the player | Spellbinder | Unholy Vespers – spawns a ring of symbols around the player that rotate and damage enemies |
| Fire Wand – shoots an arc of fireballs at a random enemy | Spinach | Hellfire – fires burning meteors that pierce enemies |
| Garlic – creates a damaging aura around the player | Pummarola | Soul Eater – increases knockback and has a chance to create hearts from killed enemies |
| Santa Water – calls down a bottle of holy water leaving a damaging pool | Attractorb | La Borra – water pools will move toward the player and grow in size |
| Runetracer – fires a slow projectile in a random direction that pierces | Armor | NO FUTURE – shoots a ricocheting laser in a random direction that pierces and explodes |
| Lightning Ring – strikes a random enemy with lightning | Duplicator | Thunder Loop – lightning strikes twice as fast and creates a damaging AoE on the ground |
| Pentagram – summons a glyph that erases all enemies and drops from the screen | Crown | Gorgeous Moon – no longer erases pickups and generates more experience |
| Gatti Amari – summons cats that might attack enemies | Stone Mask | Vicious Hunger – creates cat eyes that move and damage enemies |
| Song of Mana – creates waves of damaging particles | Skull O’Maniac | Mannajja – creates five concentric circle waves of damage |
| Shadow Pinion – spawns drills behind the player as they move | Wings | Valkyrie Turner – spawns flames behind the player as they move |
| Flames of Misspell – creates a flame in the direction a player is moving in | Torrona’s Box | Ashes of Muspell – creates a black flame that is larger, lasts longer, and has a shorter cooldown |
| Glass Fandango – attacks faster while moving | Wings | Celestial Voulge – adds the chance to deal critical hits and freeze enemies |
| Clock Lancet – shoots a freezing beam around the player in 12 directions one at a time | Silver Ring/Gold Ring | Infinite Corridor – fires a freezing beam around the player in 12 directions one at a time |
| Laurel – creates a shield to prevent one hit of damage | Metaglio Left/Right | Crimson Shroud – makes the player invulnerable when the shield is created and creates a shockwave when broken |
| Phas3r – shoots beams of light around enemies | Empty Tomb | Photonstorm – fires multiple horizontal beams, with crits shooting 5X as many |
| Pako Battiliar – shoots a group of bats every 8 seconds | Hollow Heart | Mazo Familiar – fires every 7 seconds and spawns another group whenever hit |
| Santa Javelin – creates two icicles to drop from above, dealing AoE damage | Clover | Seraphic Cry – creates a holy light from the sky with AoE damage |