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Red Death is an enemy sprite that is designed to one-shot your character. In the bestiary, they are simply referred to as The Reaper. To you, the player, they are the end or, at least, they were until noꦆw.
Red Death has really high stats which are purposefully meant to be an obstacle that is nearly impossible to overcome. The reason is simply because the game can't have you running around forever on a single stage, especially after you've already reached the end of it.
Red Death's Stats
Red Death's HP is tied in with its skill, HP✕Level, which multiplies their HP based on your level. It takes effect immediately once they’ve spawned. In this case, Red Death’s HP is 655,350 multiplied by your level at the time of their spawn, and even if you're only at level two that still sets them at over a million HP.
Their power is at 65,535 and their speed is at 1,200, making the job of beating Red Death like playing Dark Souls for the first time, so be ready to die over and over, again. Since they are designed to forcefully end your run, Red Death has one job, and you can bet your sweet bippy that they’ll get the job done.
Where Can They Be Found?
Red Death can be found in any stage, whether it’s a normal, challenge, or bonus stage. They typically spawn once every minute after the stage’s time limit has been reached, which is 30 minutes. For every minute you survive past the 30-minute mark, additional Red Deaths will spawn.
Since Endless Mode doesn't feature a time-limit, Red Death will not spawn here. They still spawn during other modes like Hyper and Regular.
How To Defeat Red Death
Not only will it be a challenge to beat Red Death, but equipping yourself with the necessary items, skills or character is an immense undertaking in itself. Although, it is doable, regardless of the difficulty.
Bear in mind that there are different ways to beat Red Death, and there are some that are easier said than done. Although, there's nothing like a challenge to make the reward ever sweeter.
The Best Way To Do It
The best and most accessible way of beating Red Death is by using the character Suor Clerici and should be done in the Inlaid Library. This method is going to get you to the end of the stage to spawn Red Death, but for it to work, you’ll also need specific items and evolutions to have the highest chance of success.
For the best result, you should try to unlock all the power ups before attempting to beat Red Death, as these power ups are going to boost your stats a lot.
Unlocking most of the PowerUps, except for Magnet, Growth and Curse, is essential for this method to work. You can try to do it without any PowerUps, but it's going to be much harder.
What You Need
First thing’s first, you need to have the character Suor Clerici unlocked, because her starting passive will give you a temporary area bonus. The exact amount of that area bonus is 310 percent, which is huge, and is also the reason why this method works.
Secondly, you also need to have unlocked Stage 2, the Inlaid Library. The layout of this stage involves many obstacles and tight spaces. Your starting position, in particular, is important for this method to work.
Finally, you’ll need Runetracer as your first item to unlock. Since Vampire Survivors' item spawn and unlocking system is totally random, you might have to restart the stage until you can unlock Runetracer. It’s crucial to have Runetracer equipped as it will be dealing most of the damage against Red Death.
Essential Items
While Runetracer and Santa Water are items that’ll get you to the end of the stage, you still need other items before you are fully equipped to take on Red Death. Here’s a few of the most essential items that you’ll need to pick up, besides Runetracer and Santa Water:
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Laurel |
Shields character from enemy attacks and is essential for protecting yourself frꦦom Red Death. |
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Clock Lancet |
Has a chance to freeze enemies in time. You need this to keep Red Death at bay since they've got a high movement speed. |
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Bracer |
Projectiles have an increased speed, wh๊ich is necessary for items like Runetracer, Knife, and Magic W🔥and. |
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Candelabrador |
This makes the area of attacks bigger, increasing the﷽ effectiveness of items like Santa Water. |
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Spellbinder |
The duration of weapon ef🌺fects last longer. For items like Clock Lancet, this means enemies can be frozen in time for longer. |
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Empty Tome |
Weapons receive a shorter cooldown, which 🥀means that someℱ weapons and effects will be able to activate faster. |
These items should be your top priority, every other item should not be picked up until after you’ve got all of these first. Once you’ve got the essentials covered, you can go ahead and pick up the fo🦂llowing items:
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Knife |
The Knife weapon fires in the direction your character is facing, it can be lev🎉𒁃eled up to the extent that an entire barrage of knives can be fired. |
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Duplicator |
Equipping the Duplicator will allow your weapons to ♏fire more projectiles. |
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Spinach |
Picking and leveling up Spinach will boost your base 🥀attack damage. The more damage you can inflict, the better your chances are of beating Red Death. |
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Cross |
The Cross behaves like a boomerang and shoots at the nearest enemy. Depending on any active effects, this can cover a large areꦛa 🌳and multiple enemies. |
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Magic Wand |
It fires a magical projectile at the nearest enemy. Once it's fully leveled up, it can fire multiple projectiles in quick succession. |
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Tiragisú |
This allows you to revive with half of your health for one time only. It's a fail-safe for the inevitable defeat at the hands of Red Death, should something go wrong. |
Having picked these up, you’re ready to duke it out with Red Death. Additionally, picking up these items means you’ll be able to evolve some of them too, so it&rs♍quo;s good to know a few evoluti🍒ons by heart.
The Strategy
Suor Clerici’s area bonus, along with Runetracer, is going to work best in Inlaid Library since the bonus inflates the size of the Runetracer by a large amount. That, and your position will get the Runetracers stuck within the library’s geometry.
Keep in mind that Clerici’s area bonus is temporary, and you’ll no longer have it after a certain level. At level one, the area bonus is 400 percent and decreases by 100 every time you level up. By level five, your area bonus will be z🔯ero percent.
You won’t get to use the 400 percent area bonus while you’re at level one, and you’ll primarily rely on the 300 percent area bonus you’ll have at level two. This is because leveling up once is unavoidable to unlocking Runetracer.
Once you’ve got Runetracer, you should immediately take the position and avoid leveling up until the staꦯge’s time limit has been reached.
Tactical Positioning
Finding the spot for your run is easy, since your spawn point is close enough for you to get to it. Once you’ve spawned into Inlaid Library, you can simply move to the upper-left corner where you’ll see a table and two chairs with bookshelves on either side of it.
You’ll also notice a clock and a landscape painting on the wall just behind the table. You should position your character underneath the clock so that your hand is lined up with its pendulum and your character’s belt is slightly above the wall’s skirting.
Be sure to grab the green gem sitting on top of the table as soon as you can. Picking it up will immediately let you gain one level and, hopefully, unlock Runetracer. Once you’re in position, you’ll notice that Runetracer will get caught between the chair and the bookshelf because of its size.
Clerici can now simply hide behind Runetracer, as well as Santa Water, for protection and will be able to survive through hordes of enemies for 30 minutes at level two, and then spawn Red Death at the end.
Other Strategies
Of course, there’s more than one way to beat an enemy like Red Death. Keep in mind, however, other methods are also likely to have you jump through a few hoops to get what you need. In the end, however, you should try everything without feeling like you’re bound to a single method.
Using Crimson Shroud And Infinite Corridor
Crimson Shroud and Infinite Corridor are evolutions of Laurel and Clock Lancet, respectively.
Infinite Corridor deals the most damage because it can damage an enemy by half of their health, so an enemy with 100 HP is dealt 50 damage, which makes relatively short work of Red Death. Crimson Shroud minimizes all incoming damage to ten, m𒆙aking at🦂tacks from Red Death much less effective.
It’s possible to do this without evolving Laurel, although it’s more risky, and would require you to be an expert in using Clock Lancet or Infinite Corridor’s time-freezing effect. Not only that, but every minute longer it takes to ✤beat Red Death, more are going to spawn and eventually stop you.
With that being said, using Crimson Shroud and Infinite Corridor is a method that you’d typically use if you want Red Death to drop an item called Golden Eggs, or if you want to spawn the White Hand. The White Hand is essentially the game’s equivalent of John Wick, the guy that's sent to kill the boogeyman or, in this case, Red Death.
Getting Toastie To Level 200
Toastie was originally the character that was supposed to beat Red Death in earlier versions of the game.
By leveling them up to level 200, they’re able to go head-to-head w꧂ith Red Death.
This can be done by using the maximum amount of armor in combination with healing abilities from either Bloody Tear, Soul Eater, Pummarola, or the Recovery powerup. With these, Toastie will ༺be able to deal enou💛gh damage to Red Death and beat him.
Toastie starts out with one HP but gains 9,998 HP when he gets to level 100, and at level 200 he also gains 65,520 armor which reduces incoming attacks from Red Death to 15. More armor can also be gained by upgrading the Armor powerup and equipping the passive item, also called Armor, granting eight more armor points to Toastie.
The trick here is getting Toastie to level 200 and equipping them with all the necessary stats within a 30-minute time limit, and still deal with the other Deaths that spawn every minute.