Servants in V Rising are one of the game’s best features and not just because they do your work for you – though that certainly helps. Outside of gathering resources, your servants can also fight nearby monsters, help with boss battles, and defend your castle in PvP raids. If you feel like being a very cruel vampire, you can even get a nearly endless supply of high-quality blood to boost your stats.

The question is, how do you get Servants and Coffins to put them in? We've put together this guide that shows you how to create your unwilling helpers from human NPCs, how to get Coffins to keep them in, and how to pick the very best Servants to become one of the most brutal but powerful Vampires in V Rising.

How do you get a servant coffin in V Rising?

Your first servant coffin pops up as part of the tutorial, before you’re tasked with using Dominate to bring a human NPC under your thrall. Building this requires:

• 16 Planks
• 8 Copper Ingots
• 1 Greater Blood

The last component comes from Unsullied Hearts, which are a bit of a pain in the neck to find.

Build your coffin, and then follow the prompts to go out and Dominate your first human. Bring them back, stuff ‘em in the coffin, and after a short time, you’ll have your first servant.

How to get the most from servants

Interact with the castle’s throne to issue commands to your servants. They can patrol areas to gather loot, which means you don’t have to do it yourself, and they’ll fight any enemies they come into contact with. That includes bosses, so they’re handy to take along if you’re planning on hunting down some V Blood.

Servants can also defend your castle when it’s under siege in PvP battles or attack rival clan castles. When you need a servant to patrol your castle, make sure to use Servant Lock doors. These prohibit servants from entering an area and make it easier to set a path you actually want them to travel.

Whatever task you set them, make sure to outfit your servants with high-level gear so they’re up to the challenge. In most PvP fights, servants are the best line of defense – and also the first to get targeted – so don’t neglect their equipment if you’re on a PvP server.

How to pick the best servants in V Rising

When you go out hunting for new servants, you’ll want to cast a wide net and pay attention to the servant type and their blood quality. NPCs have varying blood quality, which affects how their stats develop and what perks you get from draining them, and characters from different regions will have unique perks suited to that region.

An NPC taken from Farbane woods, for example, may have a perk that sees them harvest more materials from that region. Whatever the perk, it’s always better to go with a servant who has higher blood quality. Five percent, for example, isn’t really worth the time and equipment, especially since you can just go Dominate some more people.

Servant types are similar to classes and include bandits, thugs, defenders, and archers. Bandits excel at gathering resources, while archers are better at hunting, and so on. Make sure to check your perks before choosing to send your servant on a mission, so you get the most rewards for your time.

The hunt select screen shows you what loot your servant will (probably) bring back, along with how long it will take. You can alter the hunt’s duration, and it will take several real-world hours for them to return. Keep that in mind when deciding how to divide your servants, since, as you’d expect, you can’t do anything else with them until they return.

In general, though, it’s best to opt for longer hunts, since these usually have lower risks, which means your servants will (probably) come back alive.

Why you should imprison your servants

If you want to be especially cruel, take one of your high-level servants, and put them in jail. Bring along a glass vial or two, then drain their blood. Drinking it from the glass vial will boost your stats, including speed and critical rate, and depending on the blood and its level, it may even reduce some cooldown timers. You can keep this up indefinitely, so long as you remember to feed your servant and reduce their misery.

How many servants can you have in V Rising?

You can have up to nine servants per player in your clan, for a total of 36 servants, and while it's a costly investment to kit them all out, the rewards are well worth your time.

If you're looking for more help in V Rising, check out our guides for how to salvage and where to find cotton.