Skip to content

Vampire Crawlers: All 25 Character Unlocks

There are 25 Crawlers (their cards, triggers and Duration are on Characters), and getting one takes two steps. First you discover it by meeting a hidden condition somewhere in a run. Then you recruit it at the Gorton Bell Inn in the Village, which costs gold. The gold price is not the unlock condition, and a character you have discovered but not bought will sit in the Inn waiting until you can pay.

The roster was 22 at launch; Death Parade added 3. Of the 25, exactly one (Antonio) is handed to you, one (Imelda) unlocks by clearing the first floor of Mad Forest, and the rest have a specific discovery condition. Below is the full list, then the part most guides skip: the price you pay depends on how many Crawlers you already own.

The discovery-then-recruit loop

Polygon describes the structure plainly: you must discover a character before you can recruit them, and recruiting costs coins. A discovered character only has to be bought once; after that you can swap between everyone you own at the Inn for free, between runs.

Three things follow from that, and they explain most of the confusion around unlocks:

  • Progress is cumulative across runs. Defeating 444 Skeletons does not have to happen in one dungeon. Neither does playing Fire Wand 100 times. Failed runs count.
  • Conditions chain. Porta needs Lightning Ring played 100 times, and Lightning Ring itself has to be unlocked first (the wiki puts that at 2,500 enemies defeated). Some Crawlers are gated behind other unlocks rather than behind skill.
  • The Town Hall tracks it. Roonby's guide points at the Town Hall as the place where the game shows you what each unlock still needs, which is faster than guessing.

All 25 Crawlers and what discovers them

Prices are the base gold cost listed on each character's wiki page. Read the next section before you budget, because the Inn does not always charge this number.

Crawler Discovery condition Base price
Antonio Complete the Tutorial 0
Imelda Unlock the Inn (clear floor 1 of Mad Forest) 10
Arca Play Fire Wand 100 times 300
Poe Play Garlic 25 times 300
Cavallo Defeat 250 Lion Heads in the Inlaid Library 500
Porta Play Lightning Ring 100 times 500
Christine Find and play a Pentagram card 1,000
MissingN0 Defeat Red Death 6,666
Ambrojoe Destroy 10 breakables in Gallo Dungeons not documented
Pasqualina Reach level 20 with Imelda in the Inlaid Library 100
Mortaccio Defeat 444 Skeletons 300
Gennaro Defeat Mantichana in the Mad Forest 500
Dommario Collect 5,000 coins 800
Lama Complete a dungeon with 10% Curse or more 500
Ramba Defeat the Milk Elemental in the Dairy Plant 700
Clerici Recover 1,000 HP 800
Concetta Find the coffin in Gallo Tower 800
Giovanna Find the coffin in the Library Sanctum 800
Pugnala Find the coffin in Berserk Wood 800
Krochi Defeat 6,666 enemies 1,250
O'Sole Defeat 15 Dragon Shrimps in Gallo Tower 1,000
Poppea Find the coffin in the Milk Factory 1,000
Gallo Defeat Gallo at the end of Gallo Tower 2,000
Leda Defeat Leda on floor 14 of Gallo Dungeons in Endless Mode 666
Troubler Find the coffin in Moongohigh 5,000

Two rows need a footnote. O'Sole is 15 Dragon Shrimps in the wiki's current data, but Polygon and Into Indie Games both published 50 at launch, so the requirement has probably been lowered in a patch; if 15 does not trigger, keep killing shrimps. Ambrojoe has a discovery condition but no listed Inn price anywhere we could find, which is why the cell says so instead of carrying an invented number.

Divano is not in the table and not in the 25. The character exists in the game files, appears in the wiki's "Unused" list, and cannot be obtained.

Prices rise with purchase order

This is the single most-asked question about unlocks, and the answer is yes: the Inn charges more for a Crawler the later you buy it. Polygon gives four concrete data points from the same two characters.

Purchase position Pasqualina Gennaro
Third character (after Antonio and Imelda) 110 550
Fourth character 120 700

So Pasqualina is 110 as your third purchase and 120 as your fourth, while Gennaro runs 550 or 700 depending on where he lands. Every purchase pushes later prices up, but the step is not proportional to what you spent: Gennaro moves 150 between those two slots and Pasqualina moves 10. The exact pricing formula is not documented by poncle and has not been datamined publicly, so any guide that quotes one "real" price for a Crawler is quoting one save file.

This is also why the wiki contradicts itself on price. The Arca page's infobox says 300 while the same page's prose says 500 coins; Pasqualina's infobox says 100 and her prose says 1,100. Purchase order explains some of that spread, but not an elevenfold gap, so the infobox base cost is the number to plan around and the prose prices are not.

Who to buy first

The price escalation makes the early ordering decision more important than it looks. If every purchase raises the next price, then cheap characters bought early keep the rest of your shopping list affordable, and expensive characters bought early inflate everything after them.

The case for the first three:

  1. Antonio (free). He arrives at the end of the tutorial and his card adds Armor while his trigger adds damage on red cards. Nothing to decide.
  2. Imelda (10 gold). Ten coins is one-eleventh of the next cheapest purchase, and she is also the key that opens Pasqualina: reach level 20 with Imelda in the Inlaid Library. Buying her first is not a preference, it is a prerequisite.
  3. Pasqualina (110 gold as your third). Her card adds Area, and her trigger adds Hand every time a purple card is played. Hand is extra cards per turn, which is extra combo fuel, and she is the cheapest Crawler who does something you will still want at floor 5 of a late dungeon.

The alternative third purchase is Gennaro at 550: his card adds Amount and his trigger deals 60 damage on red cards, which is a much more direct damage package. It also costs five times what Pasqualina does, and that extra 440 gold is 440 gold you cannot spend on a Power Up. If you are racing to clear Mad Forest and Inlaid Library, Pasqualina's price is the better trade. If you already have a red-heavy deck and gold to burn, Gennaro is the stronger card.

Two later buys that change how the game feels, both documented by DualShockers: Krochi (Revival on play, more Revival per Wild card) is the standard answer to boss runs, and Gallo (Clock Lancet in the starting deck, Greed on play) is the gold-farming pick, and the gold farming route starts with him. Gallo costs 2,000 and unlocks late, so he is a second-half purchase. If you want the ranking rather than the shopping order, the tier list scores all 25 Crawlers on the same numbers.

What is missing from this page

  • Ambrojoe's price. Discovery condition is documented; the Inn price is not.
  • The price formula. Four data points from Polygon, no published rule.
  • Whether the Death Parade three follow the same price ladder. They were added in October 2026 and no source covers their ordering behaviour.
  • Divano. Files only, unobtainable, excluded from the count.

Everything else in the table comes from the individual character pages on the Vampire Survivors Wiki, which carry an unlocked by field for 24 of the 25.

Q: Do I have to buy a Crawler to unlock it?

Yes, but only once. Discovery and recruitment are separate steps: the hidden condition puts the character in the Inn, and gold takes them out of it. After that, swapping between owned Crawlers at the Inn is free, so the cost is a one-time purchase rather than a per-run fee.

Q: Why is my friend's Pasqualina cheaper than mine?

Because you bought different things first. Polygon's example is exactly this: 110 gold as a third purchase, 120 as a fourth. The same character has a different price in every save file, so comparing shop screenshots is not a useful way to check whether a guide is right.

Q: How many Crawlers are there?

25: 22 at launch plus Ambrojoe, Troubler and Leda from the Death Parade update. Divano exists in the files but is unobtainable, so it is not counted. Leda is the odd one of the three: she is unlocked in Endless Mode rather than bought at the Inn.

Q: Which unlock should I chase first?

Imelda, because she is 10 gold and gates Pasqualina. After that, the cheapest conditions are Poe (Garlic 25 times), Arca (Fire Wand 100 times) and Mortaccio (444 Skeletons), all of which happen while you play normally, and usually while you are working toward an evolution with the same card. Krochi's 6,666 kills sounds like a grind and is not: it counts every enemy in every run, so it tends to arrive on its own without any targeting.

Q: Can I unlock Crawlers out of order?

For most of the roster, yes. The conditions are independent counters, so a run that happens to play a lot of Garlic progresses Poe whether or not you have bought anyone else. The exceptions are the ones gated behind other unlocks: Porta needs Lightning Ring, Christine needs Pentagram, and Pasqualina needs Imelda at level 20 in a specific dungeon.

Sources