How to start Adventure Mode in Vampire Survivors

Patch 1.8.200 of Vampire Survivors adds its narrative-adjacent Adventure Mode. However, it’s not unlocked off the hop, so how are you supposed to get to it?

Good question! Developer Poncle has stated how this is supposed to work, and my colleague, Steven “Pickle Barrel” Mills confirms that this is the way it’s done, but it doesn’t work for me. We spent some time trying to troubleshoot the problem but got no love. We think it’s a bug, because he also got some weird behaviour around the necessary relic, but we can’t confirm this for sure. So, if it doesn’t work for you, you might have to wait. Otherwise, here is how you do it.

[Update: Wait! I figured it out, thanks to the help of this Reddit thread. The part of this process that Poncle neglected to mention is that, in order to get the Atlas Gate, you need to have the Yellow Sign. So, that’s the first step here. You get the Yellow Sign from the Holy Forbidden stage, which becomes available after you survive for 14 minutes in Moongolow using a standard character. In Holy Forbidden, you need to keep moving to the right side of the screen, avoiding the Biblically correct angel’s attacks. Then, after death is defeated, you continue walking through the wall and over an invisible platform to get the Yellow Sign. Trust me, it makes more sense when you’re there. After you have the Yellow Sign, then you can proceed with the rest of this guide.]

To unlock adventure mode, you need a specific relic: the Atlas Gate. To get this relic, you need to go to the “Boss Rash” [sic] challenge stage and survive for 7 minutes. At that point, the Atlas Gate will appear in the middle of the stage for you to pick up. Getting this unlocks Adventure Mode.

To get the Boss Rash stage, you need to unlock Hyper Mode for all five stages. The requirements to unlock Hyper Mode are the same for each stage. You need to survive for 25 minutes, then defeat the boss that appears. You can also unlock it by first getting the Forbidden Scrolls of Morbane from the Bone Zone, and then entering “peakgamedesign” on the secrets screen.

It isn’t too difficult to survive 7 minutes in Boss Rash. You can even make it go faster by playing on Hyper Mode and grabbing the hourglass on the left side of the arena each time it appears. The Atlas Gate should then appear in the middle.

Finally, there’s one Adventure that you need to have the corresponding DLC for, and that’s Legacy of the Moonspell. To unlock that, you simply need to visit the Dairy Plant stage once, according to Poncle. I’m still stuck at square one, so I have to take their word on it.