Vampire Survivors – Unlocking All the Secret Characters

This guide will explain how to unlock all the secret characters in the game in 0.9.0 update.

Exdash Exiviiq

Note: Credit goes to OHSHIET

• Features: +100% luck. Every 10 levels gets +10% more luck until level 50.

To unlock them you need to quickly type x-x1viiq on your keyboard while in the main menu. Then you should hear a jingle – that means you’ve unlocked Exdash. The character is free.

If you’re using a French AZERTY keyboard, you’ll need to set your keyboard from FR to EN in Windows, and instead of x-x1viiq you’ll need to type x)x&viia. Then you can change your keyboard back.

If this doesn’t work for you try using the on-screen keyboard.

Alternatively every time you pick a little clover on the ground which increases your luck by 10% you have a TotalCollected/65535 chance to unlock Exdash. TotalCollected is how many little clovers you’ve collected so far.

Toastie

• Features: 1 health, +100% luck, every 10 levels gets +20% more luck, on level 100 gets +9998 health, on level 200 gets +65520 armor.

You can unlock Toastie only after you’ve already unlocked Exdash.

To unlock them you need to kill one of these enemies:

• Stalker (green)
• Drowner (blue, always spawns at the bottom of the map)
• Trickster (pink)

After that you’ll hear a sound, and you’ll see Toastie for like half a second at bottom right of your screen (see image) – in that time you need to be fast enough and press the down arrow key ↓ and Enter on your keyboard simultaneously (just spam and you’ll unlock it). For WASD players S does not work. As I heard, for controllers it should be down and Start button, but I’m not sure.

If everything was done successfully, you’ll hear a jingle. This character is free too.

The easiest way to defeat these enemies is Pentagram or Gorgeous Moon but note that Pentagram doesn’t always kill enemies: when enemies don’t drop experience gems it means that Pentagrams erased them, not killed, so it won’t count. You can kill Stalker, Drowner and Trickster with normal weapons too, but outside of Capella Magna they have insane amounts of hp so I wouldn’t recommend.

Also you can try Rosary (a pick up on the ground that kills all enemies) or minecarts in the Dairy Plant.

All of the three spawn in Capella Magna as a scripted event (Drowner – 5:10, Stalker – 10:10, Trickster – 15:10), where they have less hp, but only while you haven’t defeated the main boss of this map.

Drowner and Stalker appear in The Bone Zone (Stalker – 10:00, Drowner – 20:00), but they both disappear after a minute has passed.

Drowner alone appears in Gallo Tower on 25 minute mark, when the crab boss arrives, but if you kill the crab, Drowner will also disappear.

In Dairy Plant Stalker can appear on 1:00 with 1% chance, on 8:00 with 30% chance and on 12:00 with 30% chance too. But this chance reduces the more luck you have.

Smith IV

• Features: 7 health, +100% luck. +0.01 health recovery, +0.7% might, +0.7% area, +0.7% speed, +0.7% speed, +0.7% duration, +1% luck and -0.25% cooldown every level. Vandalier from the start.

Toastie and Exdash need to be unlocked.

You need to type spam in the main menu – this activates a hidden 30-second timer. Then go to character selection, type spam there too, select a random character, type spam in the stage selection, select random stage, and then type humbug. You should hear the unlock jingle. Smith costs 7777 gold which scales with other characters purchased.

If it doesn’t work for you, before typing humbug, try typing spam also in the arcanas menu, if you have them unlocked. Or use the on-screen keyboard.

Boon Marrabbio

• Features: -80% greed, +10% curse, -110% speed. Thousand Edge from the start.

To unlock him you need to have collected at least 100 floor chickens. The last chicken can be collected in the current run. Also you need to obtain Yellow Sign (on how to unlock it see note 1 in the notes section).

Then you need to go to Mad Forest and pick up Pummarola and Skull O’Maniac. You can either pick them up from the floor or choose from the level ups. To make it easier for you you can use the Mad Groove arcana (see note 4 on how to unlock it). Other guides say you need to get them to max level, but I didn’t do it and it worked fine.

If you did everything you should see a trail of pies appear. Follow it and you’ll see a shadowy boss (some people say they didn’t follow the pies and the boss still came). After defeating it you’ll hear a jingle meaning you’ve unlocking the character. It costs 666 gold which scales with other characters purchased.

Minnah Mannarah

• Features: -70% might. +10% might every 3 levels until level 24. Stats change every minute. Bloody Tear from the start.

You need to have Yellow Sign unlocked (see note 1 on how to unlock it).

After that a cheese will appear on the Dairy Plant as a pick up item (see image). You can select the Mad Groove arcana so you don’t have to find it by yourself (see note 4), but some people say it’s to the top right of the starting location.

Upon picking up the cheese 7 werewolves will appear (see image). You need to kill them all to unlock the character. It costs 666 gold which scales with other characters purchased.

Leda

• Features: -80% greed, +5 armor, +100% might. Holy Wand from the start.

To unlock the character you need to go very far down in the Gallo Tower. After a while the screen will get darker, and the music after that will completely disappear. You still need to go further down, and soon a boss will spawn, which looks exactly like the character (see image). It doesn’t teleport to the player and moves very slowly, so make sure to take a break sometimes and check whether the boss has spawned. After defeating the boss you’ll unlock Leda, which costs 666 gold.

Peppino

• Features: +100% magnet, -100% movespeed. Soul Eater from the start.

To unlock Peppino you need to unlock O’Sole Meeo first (this character isn’t secret). See note 5 on how to unlock it.

Choose O’Sole in character selection and Il Molise in stage selection. There you need to heal the plants for 100 000 health. Celestial Dusting, the O’Sole’s starting weapon, heals the plants, instead of damaging them. The jingle will notify you when it’s done. Peppino costs 666 gold which scales with other characters purchased.

So you can see you’re healing the plants you can turn on damage numbers.

Also you can pick the arcana Silent Old Sanctuary (see note 6) so it’d be faster. If you have Mindbender (see note 10) it’d be easier for you not to accidentally pick up any weapon from the level ups.

Gains Boros

• Features: +2% growth every level (no limit). Heaven Sword from the start.

You need to choose The Bone Zone in the stage selection and go up. There you’ll see a flower ring which heals the character. After standing in it for approximately 10 seconds you’ll hear the unlock sound. Gains costs 666 gold which scales with other characters purchased.

The ring should be right above the spawn location.

Red Death (Mask of the Red Death)

• Features: 100% movespeed, +155 health, +20% might. Death Spiral from the start.

To unlock Red Death you need to kill the Reaper that comes to kill you after the 30 minute mark (or after the 15 minute mark in bonus locations as I know).

The easiest way is to unlock Yellow Sign (see note 1), choose a random stage (for me Mad Forest was the easiest), pick Mad Groove arcana (see note 4) and evolve Clock Lancet with Laurel into their better versions. This way you’re almost invincible for the Reaper. For 4 left weapon slots you can pick something that deals heavy damage.

I of course don’t recommend getting any curses, however to evolve Clock Lancet and Laurel you need to max out the items that give you curse, but it’s a sacrifice you need to make.

Other arcanas that can help you are Out of Bounds (see note 7) and Awake (see note 8).

Red Death costs 666 gold which scales with other characters purchased.

Gyorunton

• Features: 300 health, +2 revivals, +30% might. +1% curse every level (no limit). Can find evolutions in every chest.

This character isn’t secret, but I find the method of unlocking it kinda secret-y, and no achievements mention this character, so I decided to put it in here.

You need to survive 15 minutes in Boss Rash with only one weapon to unlock Gyorunton. Items are allowed. To unlock Boss Rash, you need to unlock hyper mode for all the 5 main stages.

The easiest way to do it is to choose a strong character, preferrably a secret one, with a good weapon from the start. I chose Leda and it worked fine.

Silent Old Sanctuary arcana would be good right from the start (note 6). When you have already maxed out everything, you can pick up the Game Killer arcana (note 9) to get even more damage. If you also have Mindbender unlocked (note 10) it’d be easier for you to avoid accidental weapon pick ups.

Gyorunton costs 5000 gold which scales with other characters purchased.

MissingN▯

• Features: random stats, weapon also changes from Death Spiral to axe.

You can unlock this character only by modifying your save files. However if you do it it’ll make you ineligible for technical support, as the game dev says. Previously you could unlock this character by killing the Reaper.

I tried but nothing worked (0.9.0). Some people say you need to turn off cloud sync in Steam (right click on the game in your library, then properties, after that you can turn it on), or you need to launch Steam in offline mode. The game should be closed when you perform operations with save files.

If you have Windows 10 or 11 there is also a script below.

Manually

• 1) Find in your file explorer:
  • Windows: %appdata%
  • macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/
  • Linux: ~/home/$user/.local/share/Vampire_Survivors/saves

• 2) Find the folder Vampire Survivors, then saves
• 3) Make a backup of SaveData.sav (do not mix it up with SaveDataBackup.bak.sav)
• 4) Open SaveData.sav in a text editor
• 5) Search (ctrl+f) for BoughtCharacters. After that you should see a list that looks like this: [“IMELDA”,”PASQUALINA”,…] (order may differ)
• 6) Add “FINO” to the end: [“IMELDA”,”PASQUALINA”,…,”FINO”]
• 7) Search (ctrl+f) for UnlockedCharacters. After that you should also see a list of characters: [“CIRO”,”PORTA”,…] (order may differ)
• 8) Add “FINO” to the end: [“CIRO”,”PORTA”,…,”FINO”]
• 9) Search (ctrl+f) for “checksum” (it should be at the end of the file). You should see something like that: “checksum”:”<bunch-of-hexadecimal-digits>”
• 10) Remove that bunch of digits: “checksum”:””
• 11) Select everything in the file (ctrl+a) and copy it
• 12) Go here and in the input field paste the file you’ve copied. Press “Hash”
• 13) Copy the output result, paste the result into the checksum field: “checksum”:”<result>”
• 14) Save the file, start the game

You don’t need to restore from backup data. You should see missingN▯ in the character menu. It is free and should be unlocked.

Automatically

If you have Windows 10 or 11.

• 1) In your file explorer go to: %appdata%\Vampire_Survivors\saves
• 2) Hold Shift and right click in an empty space and select “Open PowerShell window here” or “Open in Terminal” for Windows 11.
• 3) Run this script in the terminal that has opened:

#Back up the .sav file, if there isn't one
$TargetSaveFile = (get-item ".\SaveData.sav" -ErrorAction Stop).fullname
if (-not (get-item ($TargetSaveFile+".backup") -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue)) {copy-item $TargetSaveFile ($TargetSaveFile+".backup")}
#Load the file as a JSON object
$json = Get-Content $TargetSaveFile | ConvertFrom-Json
#Add FINO to the unlocked and bought character arrays
if ("FINO" -notin $json.UnlockedCharacters) {$json.UnlockedCharacters+="FINO"}
if ("FINO" -notin $json.BoughtCharacters) {$json.BoughtCharacters+="FINO"}
#clear the checksum
$json.checksum = ""
#generate the SHA256 hash of save data
$Sha265 = [System.Security.Cryptography.SHA256]::Create()
$hashAsByte = $Sha265.ComputeHash([System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetBytes(($json | ConvertTo-Json -Compress)))
$hashAsString = ($hashAsByte | ForEach-Object {[System.Convert]::ToString($_,16).padLeft(2,'0') } ) -join ""
#update the checksum value and write the new JSON data to the file
$json.checksum = $hashAsString
$json | ConvertTo-Json -Compress | Set-Content $TargetSaveFile

The changes should take effect immediately when restarting Vampire Survivors.

Notes

Note 1 (Yellow Sign)

Allows you to see hidden items on the map (note 3 on how to unlock the map). You can find it in Moongolow, after defeating the final boss of the location. To unlock Moongolow you need to unlock hyper mode for 4 stages.

Note 2 (Randomazzo)

Randomazzo allows you to unlock arcanas. Randomazzo is located in Gallo Tower, its location is shown on the map (note 3 on how to unlock the map)

Note 3 (Milky Way Map)

Enables the map in the Esc menu and shows the items on the stage. You can unlock it in the Dairy Plant, its location is shown by an arrow.

Note 4 (Mad Groove arcana)

See note 2 on how to enable arcanas.

You can unlock the Mad Groove arcana if you survive more than 31 minutes in Mad Forest. It pulls all the items, pick ups and light sources from the stage towards the player.

The easiest way to unlock is to evolve Clock Lancet and Laurel after unlocking the Yellow Sign (note 1).

Note 5 (O’Sole Meeo character)

To unlock this character you need to kill 3000 Dragon Shrimps (see image). They’re located in Gallo Tower.

To see how many you’ve already killed you need to unlock Ars Gouda (see image) in Dairy Plant.

Note 6 (Silent Old Sanctuary arcana)

See note 2 on how to enable arcanas.

You can unlock the Silent Old Sanctuary arcana if you survive more than 31 minutes in Dairy Plant. For every weapon slot left empty it improves your stats and gives you +3 Rerolls, Skips and Banishes.

The easiest way to unlock is to evolve Clock Lancet and Laurel after unlocking the Yellow Sign (note 1).

Note 7 (Out of Bounds arcana)

See note 2 on how to enable arcanas.

You can unlock the Out of Bounds arcana if you survive more than 31 minutes in Gallo Tower. With this arcana it becomes easier to find orologions, which freeze enemies in place, and freezing enemies also generates explosions.

The easiest way to unlock is to evolve Clock Lancet and Laurel after unlocking the Yellow Sign (note 1).

Note 8 (Awake arcana)

See note 2 on how to enable arcanas.

Gives +3 revivals. Consuming a revival gives you 1.1x max health, +1 armor, +5% might, +5% area, +5% duration and +5% speed.

You can unlock the Awake arcana if you reach 99 level with Krochi. To unlock Krochi, you need to kill 100 000 enemies.

Note 9 (Game Killer arcana)

See note 2 on how to enable arcanas.

With this arcana the player can no longer earn experience. Instead, all experience gems turn into exploding projectiles, and chests contain at least 3 items.

You can unlock the Game Killer arcana if you defeat the final boss in Capella Magna.

Note 10 (Mindbender)

Allows you to change the characters’ appearence in the character selection and limit the amount of weapons you can get in the run.

You can get Mindbender if you fill 100 entries in the collection.