UPDATE: It seems like Missingno is now a more “official” part of Vampire Survivors. Check out our new guide on how to get this strange character without all the tinkering under the hood.
A while back, players discovered it was possible to manipulate some text file data in order to kill Death and unlock Missingno in Vampire Survivors. As more people played the game and figured it out, Death became beatable in-game, and Missingno was ostensibly replaced by Mask of Red Death. Well, it turns out you can still get Missingno if you play around with that text file.
As a precaution, you need to understand you’ll be messing with stuff under the hood a little bit. If you can’t follow instructions to the last detail you might break something. So do this at your own peril.
Related: How to Kill Death in Vampire Survivors
It’s also important to note that Vampire Survivors is an Early Access game and therefore constantly changing. This method has had to be updated at least once or twice, so make sure to confirm you’re using current information. This guide is accurate as of May 5, 2022.
First, you need to find your local Steam directory and the Vampire Survivors folder within. This can vary depending on your OS. There’s a shortcut in Steam to “Browse Local Files” under the “Manage” option. You need to find the following path:
steamapps\common\Vampire Survivors\resources\app.webpack\renderer
In this folder, locate the file “LastRunBackup.sav” and make a copy to store elsewhere as a failsafe. Then, open the file up in a text editor (NotePad, etc). Now you’ll need to make some specific, exact changes to the text so be sure to follow each step accurately.
- Search for “BoughtCharacters” and a list that starts with “ISMELDA.”
- Add “FINO” to that list
- Now search for “UnlockedCharacters” and a list that starts with “CIRO.”
- Add “FINO” there as well.
- Next scroll down to the bottom of the file and find a line that starts with “checksum” which includes the quotations.
- There should be a bracket with lots of numbers in it right next to that, and you need to erase the numbers and brackets but leave the quote marks.
- Now Select All to copy the entire document.
- You have to “Hash” this copied text now. The easiest way to do that is go to https://emn178.github.io/online-tools/sha256.html and paste the copied text from the previous step.
- You’ll get a new string of alphanumeric garbage to copy and paste in the place of what you deleted earlier. Any capital letters need to be changed to lowercase.
- Save the changes, start Vampire Survivors and head to the Options menu from the title screen.
- Choose “Restore Backup,” then “Confirm.”
At this point the game should reboot itself, and Missingno should be available in Character Select now. If it doesn’t work, try to set Steam to offline mode first because cloud sync may have interfered. If it still doesn’t work, don’t look at me! Tis your faith or birth that wrongs you, not I. Consult the fan wiki or something.
Missingno is a bizarre character with completely randomized stats. This can even include negative values that will either make the controls weird or effectively render the round unplayable. This is what you asked for; have fun!
