History YMMV / VampireSurvivors

*** Zi'Assunta Belpaese has the level scaling passives of all four coffin characters, albeit at halved effectiveness compared to each of theirs. Her only downsides are that she starts with additional Curse and the difficulty of using her starting weapon, the Vento Sacro.

** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_X6-_RBYK_o "Unholy Invocation,"]] a tense and foreboding track quite fitting for the [[DroughtLevelOfDoom Bone Zone.]]

* SuspiciouslySimilarSong: "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8UajtMkN-I When the Clouds Drown]]," one of Moongolow's themes, is a clear homage to "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYwS6481oQk Lost Painting]]" from ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaSymphonyOfTheNight'', particularly in the first thirty seconds of the song.

** Pugnala is the only character with ''two'' starting weapons, Phiera Der Tuphello and Eight The Sparrow, both excellent weapons on their own and components of the extremely powerful Phieraggi. She has a passive 20% movement speed increase, just behind Krochi's, and an uncapped +1% Might bonus per level. This means that by level 100 she hits for twice the damage of any other character, and in a high-Curse run she can potentially even get up to ''triple'' damage, all without suffering from any EarlyGameHell the way that most characters with strong lategame performance do. As of version 0.6.1, her high movement speed even makes it easier for her to reach the new BonusBoss enemies, and her high damage makes it easy to defeat them to gather the Golden Eggs they drop, which will further amplify her already impressive stats.
** Avatar Infernas, who, while his Might bonus is lower than Pugnala's (0.5% as opposed to Pugnala's 1%) and he gains 0.5% Curse per level up, he also starts with an additional 50% Might, 10 additional Rerolls, 1 additional Revive, an additional 50% Luck, 100% Magnet, gains 2% Movespeed per level and most important of all, he gains 0.25% Cooldown reduction per level with no cap, a trait shared only by Smith. Additionally, Infernas actually has the fifth highest base health in the game, behind only Queen Sigma, Gyorunton, Mask of the Red Death and Megalo Syuuto, respectively, unlike Smith who has a base HP of 7, the second lowest in the game (above only Toastie, who is a OneHitPointWonder), not counting missingN▯'s variable HP. He also starts with a decent weapon in the Flames of Misspell, which can be evolved into the powerful Ashes of Muspell with a max level Torrona's Box.
** Zi'Assunta Belpaese has the level scaling passives of all four coffin characters, albeit at halved effectiveness compared to each of theirs. Her only downsides are that she starts with additional Curse and the difficulty of using her starting weapon, the Vento Sacro.
** Gains Boros has the passive ability to gain 2% Growth per level. With rapidly increasing XP gain, they can build a run well beyond what the game expects you to have at any given minute, making early game waves a joke. Their XP scaling also means that if you bring them into a stage with Limit Break enabled, they'll rapidly outpace to max build and start gaining the extra power from breaking weapon limits, turning them into a monstrous kill zone. And unlike other characters who balance their strength with drawbacks like abysmal movement or low HP, Gains' starting stats are completely average. While Heaven Sword is the most unimpressive evolved weapon, it's still an evolution from the start of the run.
** Queen Sigma is the BraggingRightsReward character for completing the Collection, and more than lives up to the effort to get her. She boasts the combined scaling passives of Pugnala and Gains, five Arcanas instead of three, functionally infinite Rerolls, Skips, and Banishes, and one of the game's most powerful weapons, the Victory Sword. She can't use Golden Eggs, but doesn't need them.
** Megalo Menya Moonspell is a DLC character who can only be unlocked by killing 100,000 enemies in a single run as regular Menya. What makes her so powerful? She's Menya permanently locked into her SuperMode, meaning that ''she's invulnerable to enemy attacks.'' This trait disappears after the stage time limit runs out, but by that point you really shouldn't need it anymore.
** Syuuto Moonspell starts the game as a MightyGlacier, abysmally slow but with a ton of Might, native armor and an enormous health pool. To help compensate for his slowness, he also retaliates upon being hit. Once you evolve his main weapon (not a big investment as it merely requires a Duplicator, which almost every build wants '''anyway'''), he [[OneWingedAngel evolves into a powerful demon]], turning into a monstrous LightningBruiser with '''even more''' health and infinitely scaling Might, at which point he is basically Pugnala 2.0. In case that wasn't enough, his evolved starting weapon basically covers the whole damn screen. In case you want to skip the EarlyGameHell, his super form is also available as a standalone character once you kill 100 000 enemies in a single stage with him - not a tall order as he natively starts with 50% Curse.
** Cosmo Pavone gains ridiculous amounts of regeneration and luck each level with no cap, but is balanced around the fact that its health is low, so heavy damage may kill it before it has a chance to regenerate. Or rather, is '''supposed''' to be balanced around said fact, but it can simply pick Divine Bloodline at first level (weapons that deal retaliatory damage also help) and start '''pecking enemies to death''', permanently increasing its max health. It's not out of the question to end up with over a thousand health by the lategame, at which point no enemies except Death can really do anything to you.
** Gallo Tower isn't a particularly hard level to begin with. With the Song of Mana, it turns the level into a cakewalk - having a vertical WaveMotionGun in a stage where enemies can only generally come from above or below turns the hordes into chaff and, with enough strong weapons to handle the tougher foes, makes it difficult to lose except by intent.
** The Torrona's Box is a passive item that at level 8 grants a whooping 25% might, projectile speed, duration, and area, making it a huge boon for just about any build. This is suppose to be balanced out by the fact that it slaps the player with +100% curse when maxed out. While this can be circumvented by using Banish on it after getting level 8, there's still benefit to leveling it all the way, as maxing Torrona's Box is mandatory if you want to evolve the Victory Sword into the Sole Solution. At this point, the +100% curse becomes an afterthought due to the raw power said evolution possesses. Patch 1.0 also added the Ashes of Muspell, which also requires a maxed out Torrona's Box.
** Arcana VIII, the Mad Groove, is perfect for saving you endless amounts of running around the vast maps. Every 2 minutes (as well as immediately when you acquire it), it summons ''every'' item on the map into a neat circle around you- every single pickup (from basic EXP gems to chests and Nduja Fritta Tantos), every unbroken light source, and crucially, every stage item, ''including'' the Gold and Silver Rings and Metaglios. This makes getting all the upgrades on the map within 30 minutes a complete breeze and streamlining farming by constantly bringing all the gems that drop from enemies within easy reach. You probably wouldn't want to start with it, but as a second or third pick, it's handy.

* ThatOneBoss: The Sketamari in the Bone Zone has proven to be a roadblock for people attempting to complete their Relic collection [[note]]which is ultimately required to unlock the FinalBoss stage[[/note]]. Sketamari starts small but will absorb all enemies that come into contact with it, not only growing bigger and bigger each time (which also means absorbing enemies even faster), but also gaining large amounts of health in the process. Like any other enemy in the Bone Zone, it also benefits from growing stronger with every minute that passes. As a result, you're forced to be ''very'' precise in when to tackle it: Too early, and you'll be too weak to kill it. Too late, and it will swallow up enemies faster than you can kill it no matter what you have; both of these end in a giant ball of indestructible bones that doesn't even fit in your screen. The only saving grace is that it won't grow offscreen until you first see it, so you can at ''least'' chose your time relatively safely.

** Exdash and Peppino tied themselves as the worst secret characters in the game. For Peppino, the inability to move (without the movement speed powerup at least) really seals the deal for Peppino as they lack the ability to avoid enemies or collect experience gems and they aren't exactly shown to be tanky either, only having +20 HP and +2 armor. If you didn't get enough EXP for Peppino to get alternative weapons besides Soul Eater aforementioned before, then you'll shit out of luck. For Exdash... Well, you can say that [[JokeCharacter he's just lucky]].

* UnwinnableByMistake: During patch 0.10.0, if the player acquired Golden Eggs for every single playable character, they would no longer be able to unlock Cosmo Pavone, who requires bringing a character who's never had any Golden Eggs to a certain map, and even applying Golden Eggs to all of the good characters would make this a frustrating task. Patch 0.11.0 addresses this with the addition of Queen Sigma, who refuses to pick up Golden Eggs and is more than powerful enough without them to fulfill Cosmo's unlock conditions.

* NightmareFuel: The game just offer up some ''unexpected'' moments of creepy.
** Under normal circumstances, once the clock hits 30 minutes, every enemy dies and a red GrimReaper will rush towards you and kill you [[OneHitKill in one hit]]. Another one spawns for every minute that passes after that. That's already creepy enough, but what if you somehow manage to ''kill Death''? [[spoiler: Through certain item combinations and exploits, it is possible to kill The Reaper. However, doing so will cause the [[SuddenSoundtrackStop music to suddenly stop]], replaced by an [[ForDoomTheBellTolls ominous bell ringing]] as the camera slowly starts zooming in. Once it strikes 12 times, everything goes silent and the ''White Hand'' appears, a white reaper with its face completely hidden by its hood. Even more creepy, its movement is locked to the screen rather than following you like any other enemy, meaning it will always approach from the same angle and takes its time reaching you. You can't kill it, you can't outrun it, you can't stop it and you can't survive it.]]
** The Stage Killer bestiary entry: "How many heroes have fallen now? How many campaigns have blazed a trail to power unimaginable and ended with a weak, pathetic bleating? Fight us if you will, forget us if you can. You soon shall be just another one of us. Defeated." Yes, it implies that the Stage Killers are all fallen Survivors.
** Unlocking [[spoiler:Avatar Infernas]] and [[spoiler:Leda]] involve some creepy sequences:
*** After the initial set of unlock conditions for the former are fulfilled, you'll end up in a [[spoiler:seemingly glitched out area, with limited light and a lot of dark enemies that don't seem to give any experience, along with the music changing to Avatar's theme, which is creepy and foreboding. There are nine coffins that you need to search, and upon opening the right one, all the enemies disappear and suddenly you're under attack from the demonic-looking figure in the coffin. Of course, you have all the time in the world to take him out and at this point you've already been able to defeat the Trickster and he doesn't do anything special to be at all a threat, but the atmosphere is still ''creepy as all hell''.]]
*** Unlocking the latter is entirely possible to do ''by accident'', just [[spoiler:keep going south in Gallo Tower. As you go down, The screen outside of your character's immediate area will get darker, and eventually the music will be replaced by ominous whispering. Those runes in the background outside of the tower suddenly change into letters reading "IAMALIVEHERE". As you continue downwards, you'll likely run into Leda, who is a person attached to some kind of flesh cocoon. Oh, and Leda [[NothingIsScarier has no description on the character select screen,]] making you wonder ''what'' they are and how they ended up like that.]]
** Your first visit to Moongolow starts as an odd BreatherLevel with plenty of items and tons of weak enemies... and then [[spoiler:a horde of {{Angelic Abomination}}s invades, the [[InterfaceScrew screen distorts]] until you're transported to Holy Forbidden without any gear, and you're forced to flee a barrage of explosions that chase you down a twisting hallway in the sky. You walk ''off'' the map into a glitchy skybox to pick up an item without a sprite, the screen goes black and ''someone'' slowly claps, and the game resets itself, depositing you at a distorted title screen.]] The whole experience feels like something out of a Creepypasta.

** Syuuto Moonspell starts the game as a MightyGlacier, abysmally slow but with a ton of Might, native armor and an enormous health pool. To help compensate for his slowness, he also retaliates upon being hit. Once you evolve his main weapon (not a big investment as it merely requires a Duplicator, which almost every build wants '''anyway'''), he [[OneWingedAngel evolves into a powerful demon]], turning into a monstrous LightningBruiser with '''even more''' health, impressive bonuses across the board and infinitely scaling Might, at which point he is basically Pugnala 2.0. In case that weren't enough, his evolved starting weapon basically covers the whole damn screen.

* ThatOneBoss: The Sketamari in the Bone Zone has proven to be a roadblock for people attempting to complete their Relic collection [[note]]which is ultimately required to unlock the FinalBoss stage[[/note]]. Sketamari starts small but will absorb all enemies that come into contact with it, not only growing bigger and bigger each time, but also gaining large amounts of health in the process. Like any other enemy in the Bone Zone, it also benefits from growing stronger with every minute that passes.

** Under normal circumstances, once the clock hits 30 minutes, a red GrimReaper will rush towards you and kill you [[OneHitKill in one hit]]. That's already creepy enough, but what if you somehow manage to exceed the time limit? [[spoiler: Through certain item combinations and exploits, it is possible to survive the Red Death and even ''kill it'', tough more will come to take its place. However, about three minutes after the 30 minute mark, the [[SuddenSoundtrackStop music suddenly stops]] and is replaced by an [[ForDoomTheBellTolls ominous bell ringing]] as the camera slowly starts zooming in. Once it too goes silent, the ''White Hand'' appears, a white reaper with its face completely hidden by its hood. Even more creepy, its movement is locked to the screen rather than following you like any other enemy, meaning it will always approach from the same angle and takes its time reaching you. You can't kill it, you can't outrun it, you can't stop it and you can't survive it.]]

** Gatti Amari's evolved form, Vicious Hunger, loses a huge chunk of what makes Gatti strong in favor of becoming a money-generating/farming tool, losing the massively damaging catfights in favor of turning things into coins. While it does do damage, it's not nearly as strong as Gatti, and it also turnsz XP gems into coins as well at a surprising rate. If you don't save picking up the stone mask or maxing out Gatti as the last possible thing in your build, you can potentially completely hamstring your run strength because you've drastically reduced your speed of level-ups. Especially with Limit Breaks encouraging leveling after reaching max build, unless you go into a run with the specific intent of money farming it's never worth evolving Gatti.

** Under normal circumstances, once the clock hits 30 minutes, a red GrimReaper will rush towards you and kill you [[OneHitKill in one hit]]. That's already creepy enough, but what if you somehow manage to exceed the time limit? [[spoiler: Through certain item combinations and exploits, it is possible to survive the Red Death and even ''kill it'', tough more will come to take its place. However, about three minutes after the 30 minute mark, the [[SuddenSoundtrackStop music suddenly stops]] and is replaced by an [[ForDoomTheBellTolls ominous bell ringing]] as the camera slowly zooms in. Once it too goes silent, the ''White Hand'' appears, a white reaper with its face completely hidden by its hood. Even more creepy, its movement is locked to the screen rather than following you like any other enemy, meaning it will always approach from the same angle and takes its time reaching you. You can't kill it, you can't outrun it, you can't stop it and you can't survive it.]]

** Under normal circumstances, once the clock hits 30 minutes, a red GrimReaper will rush towards you and kill you [[OneHitKill in one hit]]. That's already creepy enough, but what if you somehow manage to exceed the time limit? [[spoiler: Through certain item combinations and exploits, it is possible to survive the Red Death and even ''kill it'', tough more will come to take its place. However, about three minutes after the 30 minute mark, the [[SuddenSoundtrackStop music suddenly stops]] and is replaced by an [[ForDoomTheBellTolls ominous bell ringing]]. Once it too goes silent, the ''White Hand'' appears, a white reaper with its face completely hidden by its hood. Even more creepy, its movement is locked to the screen rather than following you like any other enemy, meaning it will always approach from the same angle and takes its time reaching you. You can't kill it, you can't outrun it, you can't stop it and you can't survive it.]]

* BreatherLevel: Inlaid Library is this compared to the Mad Forest. The stage layout is narrow and straightforward, the hordes are nowhere as tough as other stages, the stages has no real annoying gimmick, and there are spots where you can create a cheese strat for easy farming. It's also the only place so far where you can defeat Red Death through cheesing.

* AwesomeAnimation: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9xLGO9ujEk The Legacy of the Moonspell DLC launch trailer]] features an absolutely ''awesome'' animated segment featuring the four featured playable characters, courtesy of Studio Yotta and their collaborators.

** Pugnala is by far the strongest of the coffin characters, and a prime candidate for the strongest character in the game. She's the only character who comes with ''two'' starting weapons, Phiera Der Tuphello and Eight The Sparrow, which are both excellent weapons on their own and components of the extremely powerful Phieraggi. She has a passive 20% movement speed increase, just behind Krochi's, and an uncapped +1% Might bonus per level. This means that by level 100 she hits for twice the damage of any other character, and in a high-Curse run she can potentially even get all the way up to ''triple'' damage, all without suffering from any EarlyGameHell the way that most characters with strong lategame performance do. As of version 0.6.1, her high movement speed even makes it easier for her to reach the new BonusBoss enemies, and her high damage makes it easy to defeat them to gather the Golden Eggs they drop, which will further amplify her already impressive stats.
*** As of Patch 1.0, Pugnala has been dethroned as the strongest coffin character by Avatar Infernas, who, while his Might bonus is lower than Pugnala's (0.5% as opposed to Pugnala's 1%) and he gains 0.5% Curse per level up, he also starts with an additional 50% Might, 10 additional Rerolls, 1 additional Revive, an additional 50% Luck, 100% Magnet, gains 2% Movespeed per level and most important of all, he gains 0.25% Cooldown reduction per level with no cap, a trait shared only by Smith. Additionally, Infernas actually has the fifth highest base health in the game, behind only Queen Sigma, Gyorunton, Mask of the Red Death and Megalo Syuuto, respectively, unlike Smith who has a base HP of 7, the second lowest in the game (above only Toastie, who is a OneHitPointWonder), not counting missingN▯'s variable HP. He also starts with a decent weapon in the Flames of Misspell, which can be evolved into the powerful Ashes of Muspell with a max level Torrona's Box.

** Gains Boros has the passive ability of gaining 2% Growth per level. With rapidly increasing XP gain, they can build a run well beyond what the game expects you to have at any given minute, making early game waves a joke. Their XP scaling also means that if you bring them into a stage with Limit Break enabled, they'll rapidly outpace to max build and start gaining the extra power from breaking weapon limits, turning them into a monstrous kill zone. And unlike other characters who balance their strength with drawbacks like abysmal movement or low HP, Gains' starting stats are completely average. While Heaven Sword is the most unimpressive evolved weapon, it's still an evolution from the start of the run.

** The Torrona's Box is a passive item that at level 8 grants a whooping 25% might, projectile speed, duration, and area, making it a huge boon for just about any build. This is suppose to be balanced out by the fact that it slaps the player with +100% curse when maxed out, which means under normal circumstances, you would want to hold off on taking that last level until you have everything else leveled up and ready to go. However, this can be easily circumvented by using Banish on it after getting level 8, giving you all of the benefits with none of the drawbacks.
*** With that being said, there's still benefit to leveling it all the way, as maxing Torrona's Box is mandatory if you want to evolve the Victory Sword into the Sole Solution, at which point, the +100% curse becomes an afterthought due to the raw power that said evolution possesses. Patch 1.0 also added the Ashes of Muspell, which also requires a maxed out Torrona's Box.
** Arcana VIII, the Mad Groove, is incredibly good for saving you endless amounts of running around the vast maps. Every 2 minutes (as well as immediately when you acquire it), it summons ''every'' item on the map into a neat circle around you- every single pickup (from basic EXP gems to chests and Nduja Fritta Tantos), every unbroken light source, and crucially, every stage item, ''including'' the Gold and Silver Rings and Metaglios. This makes getting all the upgrades on the map within 30 minutes a complete breeze, as well as streamlining farming by constantly bringing all the gems that drop from enemies within easy reach. You probably wouldn't want to start with it, but as a second or third pick it's exceptionally useful.

** If you're doing gold farming runs, [[TimeStandsStill Orologion powerups]] will be your worst enemy, especially if you have a large Magnet stat. Gold Fevers rely on enemies constantly swarming you to keep running. Collecting an Orologion will briefly halt this oncoming stream, more often than not ending the current Fever in progress. And since it's a powerup that's spawned from candles rather than being something received from a level-up, there's no way to use one of your Banishes on it.
*** You can, however, Seal it from appearing at all. Assuming you have that powerup available.

** The developers are very intent on making sure that players cannot accidentally lose their game progress. Perhaps too intent. There is no method aside from going into your file folders and manually deleting your save data folder after turning off Steam's automatic cloud backups to do something as mundane as replaying the game from the beginning.

** Garlic and its Soul Eater Evolution are very middling knockback weapons, especially if not building around it. Even with the Sarabande of Healing, its DPS, sustain, and farming power is greatly overshadowed by Bloody Tear. Unless you're playing Poe or trying to unlock the achievement, you're better off Rerolling, Skipping, or Banishing it as the effort you need to make it viable pales compared to other equally-powered-up weapons. The best use of the Garlic/Soul Eater is to be a support entity when fighting bosses. The Blood Astronomia Arcana makes it better by leaving damage zones in the user's wake, though the arcana also benefits Song of Mana in the same way as well.

*** As of Patch 1.0, Pugnala has been dethroned as the strongest by Avatar Infernas, who, while his Might bonus is lower than Pugnala's (0.5% as opposed to Pugnala's 1%) and he gains 0.5% Curse per level up, he also starts with an additional 50% Might, 10 additional Rerolls, 1 additional Revive, an additional 50% Luck, 100% Magnet, gains 2% Movespeed per level and most important of all, he gains 0.25% Cooldown reduction per level with no cap, a trait shared only by Smith. Additionally, Infernas actually has the fifth highest base health in the game, behind only Queen Sigma, Gyorunton, Mask of the Red Death and Megalo Syuuto, respectively, unlike Smith who has a base HP of 7, the second lowest in the game (above only Toastie, who is a OneHitPointWonder), not counting missingN▯'s variable HP. He also starts with a decent weapon in the Flames of Misspell, which can be evolved into the powerful Ashes of Muspell with a max level Torrona's Box.

*** As of Patch 1.0, Pugnala has been dethroned as the strongest by Avatar Infernas, who, while his Might bonus is lower than Pugnala's (0.5% as opposed to Pugnala's 1%) and he gains 0.5% Curse per level up, he also starts with an additional 50% Might, 10 Rerolls, 1 Revive, 50% Luck, 100% Magnet, gains 2% Movespeed per level and most important of all, he gains 0.25% Cooldown reduction per level with no cap, a trait shared only by Smith. Additionally, Infernas actually has the fifth highest base health in the game, behind only Queen Sigma, Gyorunton, Mask of the Red Death and Megalo Syuuto, respectively, unlike Smith who has a base HP of 7, the second lowest in the game (above only Toastie, who is a OneHitPointWonder), not counting missingN▯'s variable HP. He also starts with a decent weapon in the Flames of Misspell, which can be evolved into the powerful Ashes of Muspell with a max level Torrona's Box.