There’s no shortage of weapon options for those attempting to challenge the armies of the night in Vampire Survivors. As of the Chilling Update, there are currently 48 in total, all of which offer a different method of turning everything that moves on the screen into a mass of red lights and damage numbers.
Not all weapons are created equal, however. Some are much more powerful, and can put you on a path to victory much more reliably, than their peers. The following are at the absolute peak of this category: the 10 best weapons in Vampire Survivors.
The 10 best weapons to pick up in Vampire Survivors
Garlic
The go-to weapon for those just starting out in the game, due to the ease with which it can dispatch swarms of small enemies early on, the Garlic is often overlooked as players progress further and add more tools to their belts. This is, quite simply, a mistake. The Garlic remains viable across all of the game’s content, including the two DLC packs, if you know what weapons to pair it with.
When combined with the King Bible and Santa Water (which we’ll get to later), the Garlic’s damaging aura forms part of an impenetrable barrier around your character, making it nigh-impossible to lose once it’s properly leveled. Its evolved form, Soul Eater, also throws in some incidental lifegain, which synergizes nicely with the Sarabande of Healing Arcana Card and the like.
Knife
Builds dedicated to rapid-fire projectiles may not be as effective as those dedicated to general AOE damage in Vampire Survivors, but they’re still more than capable of getting you to the end of any stage in the game. And in those builds, the most important weapon by far is the Knife.
The Knife is simplicity incarnate: all it does is launch a single projectile in front of you roughly once a second. As you level it up, however, it fires additional projectiles, pierces through enemies, and eventually completely loses its cooldown once it evolves into Thousand Edge. Throw in some Might boosts via Spinach and the bounce effect of the Iron Blue Will Arcana Card, and you have an absolute powerhouse of a weapon.
King Bible
The King Bible quickly became a staple of the early Vampire Survivors metagame upon release, and subsequent updates have done nothing to dull its papercut-inducing edge. It creates a constantly-rotating barrier of books around you, dealing damage to enemies and intercepting projectiles as it spins.
While the King Bible isn’t amazing early on, due to the short initial duration of its effect, it ramps up quickly as you level it, culminating in the fantastic Unholy Vespers, a version of the weapon that just never stops spinning. The passive protection and solid damage offered by this weapon make it a shoe-in in AOE builds, and a great addition to pretty much any other build as well.
Santa Water
The Santa Water might be the best example of ‘it gets better later’ that Vampire Survivors has to offer. Early on, it feels absolutely terrible: it hits at random, does little damage, and is generally useless for dealing with the concentrated groups of enemies you’ll encounter right from the start of each run.
Persevere, though, and you’ll end up with one of the most powerful weapons in the game. As it levels up, the area covered by the Water increases, until it pretty much surrounds you completely. This makes it an essential part of the AOE builds featuring the Garlic and King Bible, particularly once it evolves into the LA Borra later on and the pools it leaves start moving towards you. Once it hits its peak, few enemies can cross the sea of flame the Santa Water leaves behind.
Greatest Jubilee
Greatest Jubilee isn’t a weapon you see discussed often in the Vampire Survivors community, and I think that’s a crying shame. It may be due to how late in the game you unlock it, or how underwhelming its damage can be compared to other top-tier options, but in either case players are missing out on one of the most uniquely synergistic weapons the game has to offer.
The key feature of the Greatest Jubilee is its ability to create additional light sources in the stage. This is something that no other weapon can do, and combined with the Seal Power Up and increases to Amount and Cooldown Reduction you can really go all in on particular items. This is great for Gold farming with the Disco of Gold Arcana, or to get regular Orologions to fuel the new Glass Fandango weapon.
Phiera Del Tuphelo and Eight the Sparrow
It may seem like cheating to put two weapons in the same entry on this list, but they really are meant to be together. Not only do they shore up each other’s blind spots in terms of projectile coverage, but they also merge together into the incredible Phieraggi if you fully level them both up and grab a chest.
The Phieraggi is the real reason to pursue these weapons, since it’s one of the best evolved weapons in the game, but the base guns can be fairly powerful in isolation. They pair nicely with the Gemini Arcana Card, as well as Awake, which lets you stack up to 7 revivals. Since Phieraggi scales its damage based on your stock of revivals, this is a great way to invest in the future of your run.
Four Seasons
The first DLC weapon on our list, the Four Seasons comes to us live from Legacy of the Moonspell. It’s a fairly unique weapon, dealing sequential damage to the four corners of the screen, with a final central explosion being added once it evolves into the Godai Shuffle later on.
The reason this weapon is so powerful is because it perfectly fills in the gaps left by the core AOE build of Garlic, King bible, Santa Water. Those three create a concentrated damage zone around your character, then Four Seasons fills in the corners, creating a beautifully complete picture. Once all four are assembled your enemies will literally have nowhere to run. It’s also the weapon that consistently performs the best for me during runs, in terms of raw damage numbers at least.
Prismatic Missile
One of the more unique weapons in the game, the Prismatic Missile is very much a weapon of two halves. In its original state, it’s a very solid AOE-based weapon that creates explosions around your character. Once it evolves, however, it becomes one of the best tools at your disposal for both power leveling and Gold farming.
This is because Prismatic Missile’s evolved form, Luminaire, increases the value of both Gold coins and XP gems on the ground every time it attacks. Since most Gold farming strategies lean into the Wicked Season Arcana to spiral exponentially out of control, the extra XP Luminaire provides is a huge boost. The extra Gold, naturally, also helps.
Eskizzibur
The defining weapon of the powerful Divine Bloodline build, Eskizzibur can trivialize the majority of the game’s content once it gets going. While it’s slow compared to the other retaliatory swords in the game, the Night Sword and Victory Sword, it makes up for it with the unique shadow clone ability it gains once it evolves into Legionnaire.
This sends out a wave of clones every few seconds, all of which, like Eskizzibur itself, can deal retaliatory damage to any enemies they touch. Combined with the Divine Bloodline Arcana, which boosts your retaliatory damage and grants you a permanent maximum health increase each time you kill an enemy with it, you can easily build up a health total into the thousands, at which point nothing in the game will be a threat even if it does reach you.
Victory Sword
The Victory Sword is the signature weapon of the game’s most powerful character, Queen Sigma, and it’s a fitting reward for seeing the base game’s content through to the end. It has a wide range of uses, being an exceptional choice for a one-weapon Silent Old Sanctuary build, a key part of retaliatory-damage-based Divine Bloodline builds, and just one of the best weapons in general due to the raw power of its evolution, Sole Solution.
While evolving the Victory Sword requires more effort than most weapons, since you’ll need to level it up to level 12 and also max out all 9 levels of the Torrona’s Box passive item, picking up a 100% Curse increase along the way, it’s more than worth it. Sole Solution deals huge damage and makes you invulnerable for long stretches of time, and, crucially, it doesn’t replace the original Victory Sword, meaning you get to enjoy the best of both weapons even post-evolution.
And there you have it: my picks for the 10 best weapons in Vampire Survivors. There are many great weapons that could well have made the cut here, but those that did are guaranteed to deliver great results should you pick them up, and properly build around them, on your next run.
