Are you new to the game and/or wondering what passive items to choose? Every item has its function, but some are much better than others. Choosing the right Vampire Survivors beginner passive items is critical, and can easily make the difference between sailing through a stage or failing.
Over time, each player will start to prefer certain items, and I have listed here the best early ones I have tested in the game.
For this article’s purposes, I focused mainly on the passive item itself. However, I do also mention which weapon it evolves.
Last update: September 2023
1. Best Vampire Survivors Beginner Passive Items: Attractorb
The passive item Attractorb, allows you to pick up items on the ground from a larger distance.
You can create the best build in the game, but without a way to quickly pick up the Experience Gems (they give your character experience), your run could end prematurely. You could wait for a vacuum pickup item (picks up all dropped gems in the stage) to drop, but who knows how long that will take? For levelling purposes, I find it much faster to run Attractorb in my builds.
Attractorb is needed to evolve Santa Water into La Borra, which in my opinion, is the best beginner weapon evolution for the Vampire Survivors late game.
Attractorb is also a staple for a no-move Vampire Survivors run. Since in such runs you can’t move towards the experience gems, you must make them come to you.
2. Empty Tome
Empty Tome lowers the cooldown time on weapons, allowing you to attack faster. It speeds up most of your weapons, if not all of them.
One of the most important effects of Empty Tome I can mention, is having strong defensive weapons such as King Bible and Santa Water on screen and protecting your character at all times.
Empty Tome is used to evolve Magic Wand into Holy Wand, which is probably the easiest to use beginner support weapon in Vampire Survivors, although not the strongest.
I usually don’t run Magic Wand in my builds, but whenever I have a free passive item slot to fill, I go straight for Empty Tome, it’s that good.
3. Best Vampire Survivors Beginner Passive Items: Candelabrador
This passive item will increment the area of attack and/or size of your weapons and evolutions. Therefore, it helps the top beginner weapons and evolutions do even more damage.
An example of the importance of this passive item is making Santa Water’s damage circles large enough to protect you on all sides from incoming enemies.
Another example would be making our Knife weapon larger, therefore making it easier to hit an incoming boss or open a path in a wall of enemies.
Candelabrador is used to evolve Axe into Death Spiral.
While Death Spiral is not the strongest evolution out there, I usually include it in my builds just because of Candelabrador.
4. Spinach
This Vampire Survivors passive item increments the damage output from your weapons and evolutions. This means that it is very useful if you can afford the slot to put it in.
Spinach is used to evolve Fire Wand into Hellfire.
During my weapon testing, I found that Hellfire is not that great due to its random nature. Therefore, unless Spinach is laying on the ground already, I rarely select this passive item.
Luckily, Spinach is one of the Vampire Survivors beginner passive items that you can pick up from the ground in Mad Forest (the first stage in the game). Just remember to fill up all your 6 passive item slots before picking it up. If not, it will just take up one of your passive slots.
5. Best Vampire Survivors Beginner Passive Items: Duplicator
This passive item allows you to fire more projectiles. It is also one of the best, if not THE best power-ups you can buy for gold in Vampire Survivors.
Duplicator is great early in a stage and then loses a some of its impact as the run progresses. When selecting Duplicator at the beginning of a stage, one of your weapons might now fire 3 projectiles instead of 2 which is a big difference. In the late game, that same weapon might be firing 13 projectiles instead of 11 which is still good but not essential.
Duplicator is used to evolve Lightning Ring into Thunder Loop.
Lightning Ring is a good beginner AOE (area of effect) weapon, and this means that you might find yourself often including Duplicator in your builds.
6. Spellbinder
This passive item allows the strongest beginner weapons/evolutions effects to last longer on screen. Hence, doing more damage. For example, La Borra. Spellbinder allows most of your weapons and/or evolutions to stay on screen until it’s time for them to activate again. This can translate to having powerful weapons like Santa Water active on the ground 100% of the time.
Spellbinder is used to evolve King Bible into Unholy Vespers, one of the best beginner weapons/evolutions in Vampire Survivors. This because Unholy Vespers is good both for AOE damage and boss damage. For this reason, you will probably find yourself selecting Spellbinder in many of your stage runs.
7. Best Vampire Survivors Beginner Passive Items: Wings
This passive item allows your character to move faster.
Wings works wonders when used with Attractorb. You can run around and quickly pick up experience gems.
Additionally, you can cover the distance between stage ground items in no time (for example, Silver Ring and Gold Ring in the Mad Forest stage).
Another benefit of including Wings in your build is that you can avoid bosses and/or escape sticky situations with ease.
A downside to selecting this Vampire Survivors beginner passive item is that you could be running an offensive item instead. If you are playing a balanced build, however, you should not have any problems with clearing a stage with Wings.
I have Wings at No.7 only because some characters already have increased movement speed and can skip this item. If no Vampire Survivors character had additional movement speed (such as Lama, Krochi, Death, etc…), this item would probably be No.4 on this list.
