Vampire Survivors: How To Beat Boss Rash (2024)

Vampire Survivors is made up of several unique stages; some of them are either Bonus stages or Challenge stages. These in particular have special modifiers that include 15-minute time limits, adding bonuses to enemy health or speed stats, and even a few modifiers that are applied to your character, too.

RELATED: Vampire Survivors: Every Stage, Ranked

What makes one Challenge stage so unique is that its layout resembles an arena, and even the stage's description supports this idea. This is Boss Rash, where the challenge is to survive for 15 minutes while bosses from all other stages are going to spawn and try to kill you.​​​​

Boss Rash

Boss Rash appears as a stage once you've unlocked Hyper Mode for the five normal stages in the game. You can do this by surviving for 25 minutes in every normal stage. By beating this stage under certain conditions, you will unlock the secret character, Gyorunton.

The stage has a 15-minute time limit, which is half the amount of time you'd normally have on any normal stage. This adds to the challenge when you're planning on using evolutions, since you'll have to act much faster to gain the levels your weapons and items need.

Although, it's easier said than done, and you'll be lucky to pull off even one evolution during the entire run of the stage. It's recommended that you choose a character that uses an evolution as their starting weapon, like Gains Boros, who has Heaven Sword - the evolution of Cross and Clover.

The wave of enemies also includes several bosses from other stages, too, and to make things just a little harder on you, the stage has a modifier that adds a 50 percent bonus to enemy health. This means you'll also have to be able to put out enough damage to get through these kinds of bosses - even when some of them can tank a lot of damage under normal circ*mstances.

RELATED: How To Unlock All Characters In Vampire Survivors

Stage Hazards

Boss Rash also features two hazardous elements in the stage. There are two pressure plates on either side of the stage, which spawn every 30 seconds. The pressure plate to the left is blue and has an hourglass symbol on it while the plate on the right is red with a skull symbol.

The hourglass pressure plate triggers the next wave of enemies to spawn, which would normally spawn by the minute. The pressure plate with the skull on it immediately respawns all the monsters that were in the current wave.

While these mechanisms do make the stage more challenging, they can also serve as a way to level up faster. The only other way you'll be able to gain experience points is by beating the small clusters of enemies that spawn in, however, these alone won't be enough to level up faster.

How To Beat Boss Rash

Beating Boss Rash is, as the nature of the stage would suggest, challenging. With the right setup, however, you'll be able to beat it without a hitch. At the moment there's no way of going beyond the 15-minute mark in Boss Rash, since Death is simply going to swoop in and end you.

Using Arcanas

Arcanas are modifiers that can be unlocked in Vampire Survivors, and they are able to modify the game in certain ways. You can unlock Arcanas by collecting the item Randomazzo in Gallo Tower, which also unlocks the first Arcana, Sarabande of Healing.

To unlock the Game Killer Arcana, you have to beat the final boss in the Cappella Magna stage, and either survive for 31 minutes in Mad Forest or beat Death to unlock the Mad Groove Arcana.

Game Killer modifies the game by completely stopping your experience point gain, which also means you won't be leveling up and turning the gems you'd usually pick up into explosives. Mad Groove pulls all stage items, bonfires, and pickups toward you every two minutes.

Mad Groove is especially useful for a stage like Boss Rash, since there are many stage items on the map, but there's no way out of the arena to go pick them up. It also affects all gems that are lying around.

You can also pick the Silent Old Sanctuary Arcana which, if combined with Gains Boros, can put 200 percent Might behind his starting weapon, Heaven Sword. This is going to sweep through most of the enemies in the first couple of minutes in Boss Rash.

Picking The Right Characters

Some characters, like Clerici and Porta, have bonuses that decrease by a certain amount with every level you gain. For example, Clerici at level one has a 400 percent area bonus, which fully depletes at level five. Porta has a 90 percent cooldown bonus that is gone by the time you reach level four.

Game Killer, while you're stuck at level one, turns their temporary bonuses into permanentbonuses. Although Porta and Clerici benefit from Game Killer the most, the Arcana is very effective on its own, which allows you to play any character you like.

The Merchant

After buying the Glass Vizard from the Merchant in Moongolow, he'll appear on all other stages. You'll be able to buy several items from him including Golden Egg, Bone, Cherry Bomb, Carréllo, Celestial Dusting, and La Robba. Golden Egg will cost you 10,000 gold coins while the other items only cost 1,000 gold coins each. Once you're done interacting with him, he'll disappear and won't reappear until you've restarted the stage.

Bosses To Watch Out For

Among the several bosses you'll encounter, there is one that'll put the pressure on you - Ender. You've already encountered him in Cappella Magna, and now he returns with a posse of reapers, including the Drowner.

Between Ender's maze of hazardous columns and the Drowner's ability to flood the entire stage, you're going to be forced into a corner if you're not careful.

There are two ways you can counter the Drowner, which are by using either Pentagram or Rosary. Pentagram at its base level destroys everything on screen including pickups, bonfires, and gems. The safer bet is the Rosary, which only targets enemies. It can usually start dropping after you've reached level eight, but its drop rate is also affected by Luck.

You should try and save as many Rosaries as you can because it's incredibly effective against an enemy like the Drowner, and any enemies that aren't immune to it.

Next: Vampire Survivors: Best Passive Items