Here’s our Vampire Survivors passive items guide. Everything you need to know about passive items in Vampire Survivors.
Weapons and Passives
Vampire Survivors items come in two varieties – weapons and passives. During each run, you can have up to six unique weapons and six unique passive items from level-ups. As your inventory space is finite, and there’s no undoing a choice mid-run, you have to be very deliberate when choosing items.
Upgrading Passives
Most passives can be upgraded five times. You may choose to purchase a new passive item or upgrade one each time you level up.
Unlike weapons, passive items can also be picked up on the ground. Each map has a predetermined set of passive items that spawn when the game begins. In the Mad Forest, for example, you can find Spinach or the Clover.
Picking up these Stage Items is highly recommended! If you already have the item in question, picking another of the same kind up from the ground will upgrade it. If you do not have the item, you now get it for free without having to spend a level up. If you already have six passive items, the newly picked up item becomes an additional, seventh, passive item and can be upgraded thereafter from level-ups.
Weapon Evolution
In a vacuum, certain passive items are objectively more useful than others. However, every passive item has value because they have a corresponding weapon that they help evolve.
Spinach and the Duplicator are, for example, two objectively fantastic passive items. The Spellbinder, on the other hand, is somewhat lackluster and doesn’t synergize with every weapon. That said, the Spellbinder is used to evolve the King Bible into one of the best items in the game, Unholy Vespers.
The Best Passive Items
These items are always a fantastic choice and should be grabbed every time.
Spinach
Spinach raises your damage by 10% with each upgrade. This is probably the most universally useful passive item in the game, as the damage multiplier applies to all weapons that deal damage. The only weapons that don’t benefit from Spinach are the Laurel and Clock Lancet, but those weapons aren’t recommended to begin with. Spinach has extra synergy with weapons whose damage scales up with upgrades, such as the Axe and the Cross.
Spinach evolves the level eight Fire Wand into Hellfire, which is one of the strongest items in the game and handles large groups of enemies exceptionally well.
Duplicator
Like Spinach, the Duplicator is a fantastic passive item that can and should be picked up on every run. Virtually every weapon benefits from additional projectiles, but the Duplicator has extra synergy with weapons that gain more projectiles with upgrades, such as the Knife and Magic Wand.
The Duplicator evolves the Lightning Ring into the Thunder Loop. This item is great at dishing out area-of-effect damage and can be crucial during the mid and late game when more and more enemies begin to surround you.
Empty Tome
Empty Tome is yet another universally useful passive item. Every weapon has a certain weapon cooldown, and a reduced cooldown directly translates to more damage per second.
The Empty Tome is necessary to upgrade the Magic Wand into The Holy Wand. This upgrade removes cooldown entirely and your Wand shoots out missiles that knock enemies back continuously. A must-have for a successful run!
The Worst Passive Items
These items are generally useless except for the purposes of evolution.
Skull o’Maniac
The Skull O’Maniac buffs your enemies by increasing their movement speed, health, frequency, and general quantity. It is also necessary to evolve the Song of Mana into the Mannajja. Pick it up if you’re playing for a challenge, otherwise avoid it.
Clover
Clover increases your luck by 10%. Luck scales the number of options you have when leveling up, which can sometimes be useful but is mostly unreliable. It is also useful for the Pentagram, a weapon that you should generally avoid. Finally, you can upgrade the Cross into the Heaven Sword with Clover. This is by no means a bad weapon, so if you’re going for the Heaven Sword, grab Clover. Otherwise, there are better options.
Stone Mask
Stone Mask grants you more coins, which can be useful when you’re starting out, but it won’t really benefit your runs or make you any stronger.
Pummarola and Hollow Heart
Both of these items impact your health, the former increasing your health regeneration and the latter increasing your overall max health. If you’re not planning on running Garlic or the Whip, these passive items are more or less useless.
And that was our Vampire Survivors passive items guide. Looking for more content? We also have:
Vampire Survivors is available to play on Steam.