Vampire Survivors – How to Complete Mad Forest Level

This guide contains some tips and advices to beat the Mad Forest map.

Mad Forest Level Guide

How to Survive

Garlic, even 1 level, lets you just pass through low-level enemies like bats (and more enemies if you use more general damage upgrades) which improves your maneuvering a lot. You can, and should, just run through bats. (unless a wave of bats pushes a line of stronger enemies, in which case run aside)

Can be replaced or supported by stuff like Bible (cooldown), whip (at least 2 levels for both directions) and evolved axe (but if you evolved a weapon, you’re already winning)

Laurel gives complete immunity to a bit of damage, so you can just walk through plant rings if needed. or tank some skeletons. More levels gives you more instances (I think 1 shield is blue, 2 shields is green… not sure about 3 shields)

If you get a hard wave, like whatever happens at 7 minutes, and skeletons later on, you can just run. Run in any direction, maneuver between enemies, if you can’t maneuver – wait a bit, see which ones die to your weapon, and pass there. Eventually the wave ends and you can go back and collect your EXP

Knife starts weak because it attacks the direction where you’re running, but some level ups later, knife means that wherever you go, will be a clean path.

By the way, the collection radius upgrade very conveniently speeds up levelling while doing evasive maneuvers.

If you get a boss, you can’t run away from bosses – they teleport to the same screen as you. Which means that you can separate them from the cloud of small enemies if you run into a clear direction, and the boss will appear there, where you can solo it.

Some Notes

In Forest you must upgrade. Nothing else matters. You need one weapon evolved by about 10 minutes in when the Werewolves start coming, or you’re just dead. Full stop. If you’re given the choice between upgrading your highest level weapon or getting a new weapon/support item that you really want… You upgrade your highest level weapon.

You end up stuck with a ♥♥♥♥ item or two more often this way, because you’re maxing out the items you have, so at some point all the game can do is offer you 3 new items all at once, and you’re forced to take one even if they’re all bad. But you can live with a few crap items, and you’re on an upgrade or die clock.

Another big issue with forest is that it can easly become very hard to get kills on elites. Since there’s no wall to trap them against, they get yeeted far away. Forcing you to give up on them or chase. Which isn’t allways possible. Even when you got the directed dps to do it, you leave a lot of XP behind that way.