There is power in blood. This is the truth upon which all vampires must not simply accept but embrace, even revel in. Yet our revels must not be simply an orgy of violence, a mindless frenzy which wastes not only energy but the very object of our desire. Like so many things, acquiring the blood we need to survive and prosper is a matter of good taste.
While your gear might define your relative strength in V Rising, it’s the blood type you’re currently sporting which is going to be the difference between building your empire and being just another dead vampire. Our beginner’s guide touched on it briefly, but now we’re going right to the heart of the matter with a guide on all the different blood types and their effects.
Good & Bad Humors
As you hunt around, you’ll notice that each living creature has two pieces of information under their name tag. The first is their Blood Type, and we’ll get into the specifics on those in a second. The second is their Blood Quality, expressed as a percentage. The higher the percentage, the better the quality. The value of Blood Quality is also expressed in terms of Quality Thresholds. When you look at your Blood Pool, you’ll notice there’s a list showing five different tiers of quality. Each tier provides an aggregate bonus, depending on the specific type, so low-quality blood (single digit and very low double digit values) will give you the first tier bonus, while higher-quality blood will give you first, second, and even third tier bonuses.
Rare individuals who have a Blood Quality of 100% have a Quality Threshold of five (expressed as the Roman numeral “V”). This Blood Quality not only grants you all the possible bonuses for that particular Blood Type, but also increases the effects of those bonuses by 30% in all but one Blood Type. Depending on your progress, it’s not a bad idea to either recruit such rare individuals as Servants or stuff them in Prison Cells to make Blood Potions.
The Books of Blood: V Rising’s Blood Types
When you first rise from your coffin in the crypt outside Farbane Woods, your blood type is listed as Frailed. It’s essentially the “default” setting for a Blood Pool. As such, it has no special abilities to grant you, no purity levels, and is really only something you should use when things have gone completely sideways. You gain Frailed blood from consuming Rats, Tainted Hearts, and Unsullied Hearts. Needless to say, you shouldn’t be Frailed unless you’re really in trouble and can’t get a better blood source right away. It’ll keep you alive, but you won’t be enjoying it.
With that said, let’s get down to the gory details about Blood Types that do help you out. Note that there’s going to be a lot of ranges involved. The higher the Blood Quality, the higher your bonus will be within those ranges. A Blood Quality of 99% will max out every value listed in a given range.
- Creatures covers wild animals of all stripes from deer to moose, wolves, and bears. They’re usually pretty easy to find, which makes them a useful source of blood which you don’t normally have to fight too hard for (depending on the animal). The one real drawback is that you’ve got no good way to “farm” the blood the same way you can with humans. Creature blood is good for when you’ve got long trips between one of your castles and a particularly distant target area or V Blood hunt. While it doesn’t contribute directly to your combat abilities or your spell powers, it does help your survivability with faster Movement Speed, improved Damage Reduction, and improved Health Regeneration. The Sun Resistance bonus lets you keep loping along outside shaded areas for longer during the day. This is useful if you really need to get back home and can’t use a teleporter.
- Tier I: 3-15% Movement Speed
- Tier II: 10-25 Sun Resistance Rating
- Tier III: 10%-20% Damage Reduction
- Tier IV: 50%-100% Health Regeneration
- Tier V: All effects boosted by 30%
- Worker blood comes primarily from miners, farmers, and other laborers who aren’t active soldiers or bandits. The utility of this Blood Type is in resource gathering. You know: mining, woodcutting, farming. The Tier I buff is basic and straightforward, an increase in resources when you’re swinging a weapon against an ore node or a tree. Tier II makes the work go faster by bumping the damage inflicted on Resource Objects, allowing you to harvest more rapidly so you can get back home and start refining the haul. Later on, when you try your hand at horse stealing, the Tier III buff will let you make a faster getaway. Tier IV gives you a chance to make the work of mining out an area or clearcutting a forest a lot faster.
- Tier I: 10%-30% increased yield
- Tier II: 15%-25% increased damage vs. Resource Objects
- Tier III: 10%-20% increase in Mount Gallop Speed
- Tier IV: 3% to instantly destroy a Resource Object and gain a speed boost
- Tier V: All effects boosted by 30%
- Brute blood, as the name implies, is all about raw power in a fight. It doesn’t do much to make direct improvements to your weapons or armor, but it does give you an edge in any fight by helping you keep your health up. At Tier I, your Primary attacks (with a weapon of some sort or your claws if you go “bareknuckle”) gain the “Leech” effect, healing you as you damage your opponent. Tier II gives you a bump to your Primary Attack Speed, as well as giving you a flat increase of one Gear Level, always helpful in any fight. The Tier III buff increases the amount of healing you receive from various sources (potions or spells), as well as giving you a bolus of healing when you kill an opponent. The Tier IV ability is a little funky and oddly conditional, giving you a small chance to boost movement and Primary attack damage by 20%, based off relative health recovered. Basically, you’ll have to check above your action bar to see if the buff appears.
- Tier I: 5%-10% Primary attack Life Leech
- Tier II: 8%-15% increased Primary attack speed; gain 1 Gear Level
- Tier III: Healing received increased by 15%-30%; Heal self for 4% of victim’s health when striking a killing blow
- Tier IV: 6% chance per relative health recovered to boost movement speed by 20% and Primary attack damage by 20%
- Tier V: All effects boosted 30%
- Rogue blood is primarily obtained from humans who deal physical ranged attack, such as bandit Deadeye archers or Militia Crossbowmen. This particular blood type is centered around mobility and critical hits. If you like playing tag with ranged weapons, or even adopting a “stick-and-move” fighting style with melee weapons, this will suit you nicely. Tier I buffs your chances of landing a critical hit to begin with. Tier II grants a modest increase in your Movement speed, good for outflanking certain Brutes or avoiding hails of arrows. The Tier III buff is the kicker, since it ties into “Travel Skills” such as Veil of Blood, improving the cooldown on those skills/spells while also giving you a guaranteed critical hit. As for the Tier IV buff, it gives you a chance to increase all damage after a landing critical hit for a few seconds.
- Tier I: 10%-20% chance for critical hit on Primary weapon attacks
- Tier II: 8%-15% Movement speed
- Tier III: 12%-25% reduced cooldown on Travel Skill; 100% chance for critical hit on next physical strike after using a Travel Skill
- Tier IV: 50% chance for critical hit to expose victim’s armor, increasing all damage taken by 15% for 4 seconds
- Tier V: All effects boosted 30%
- Warrior blood types are the melee weapon masters of V Rising. Melee fights not burly enough to be Brutes often have this blood type. If you can perform a weapon skill of some sort, chances are so can they. If you’re relying on your weapon skills in melee, you’ll want to regularly top up with Warrior blood. At Tier I, there’s a modest bump to your Physical Power stat, which translates to how much damage you’re doing. Tier II reduces the cooldown on the higher quality special move Weapon Skills. The Tier III buff is all about getting your licks in first against unbloodied opponents, reducing damage against you and increasing initial damage against them. With the Tier IV buff, you have a chance to parry an attack, reducing damage against you and increasing the damage on your riposte.
- Tier I: 10%-20% increase to Physical Power
- Tier II: 8%-15% cooldown reduction on Weapon Skills
- Tier III: 8%-15% reduced damage taken AND 25% increased damage when striking enemies at full health
- Tier IV: 15% chance to Parry an attack, reducing damage by 50%. Parrying an attack increases damage against opponents by 25%
- Tier V: All effects boosted 30%
- Scholar blood types are for those who want to center their efforts around spells. The earliest you’re likely to run into them is in the Dunley Farmlands, essentially the Act II area, with Nuns and the occasional Villager possessing this blood type. For a multiplayer group, this will be a lot of help. Solo players might have a harder time in this area. At Tier I, you get a bump to your Spell Power stat, improving the effects of spells the same way the Warrior’s Physical Power stat helps weapons. The Tier II buff reduces the cooldown on all Spells. Tier III adds some survivability by adding a “Leech” effect to any spell (the Blood-based ones all have this effect inherently). With Tier IV, you potentially become a faster spellslinger with a chance for an instant reset on your spells.
- Tier I: 10%-20% increase to Spell Power
- Tier II: 8%-15% cooldown reduction on Spells
- Tier III: 5%-10% Spell Life Leech
- Tier IV: 15% chance to reset spell cooldown on cast
- Tier V: All effects boosted 30%
- Mutant blood doesn’t show up till later in the game. It’s essentially an improved variant of Creature blood. Like Creatures, you can’t really farm Mutants the same way you can humans. One of your refining workstations, the Vermin Nest, can spawn one type of Mutant, the Mutated Rat, after defeating the V Blood carrier Angram The Purifier (Act III). The quality of the blood will, of course, be random. Nevertheless, Mutant blood has a lot going for it. The Tier I buff reduces the drain from your Blood Pool, letting you survive longer. At Tier II, all of your resistances improve. Tier III gives you a bump to your Movement speed when Shapeshifting, handy when you need to make a fast getaway. The Tier IV buff offers up interesting possibilities for mayhem by giving you a good chance to convert an enemy into a random Mutant of some sort.
- Tier I: 25%-50% reduced Blood Drain
- Tier II: 10-25 increase to all Resistance Ratings
- Tier III: 10%-20% increase to Movement speed
- Tier IV: 40% chance to convert victim to random Mutant when killing them with a Bite
- Tier V: All effects boosted 30%
- Draculin blood is a little different than any other Blood Type out there. You probably won’t run into one until the endgame areas and they do not appear to be farmable. Essentially, these are vampirekin, distant cousins to yourself. As such, the Tier V bonus is actually reduced a bit. At Tier I, you move faster at night, which is certainly handy. The Tier II buff increases damage against all enemies who are below a certain threshold on health, making clearing out mobs a lot easier. For Tier III, you gain an increase in the amount of health restored by the Blood Mend power, helpful for getting back into the fight faster. The Tier IV buff relates to the Bite ability, granting you a second use of it and giving you some healing when you kill an enemy with it.
- Tier I: 10%-20% Movement speed increase at night
- Tier II: 10%-20% damage increase against enemies below 30% health
- Tier III: 40%-80% increased healing received from Blood Mend
- Tier IV: Grants 1 additional Bite charge; heal 5% of maximum health when killing an enemy with Bite
- Tier V: All effects bosted 25%
With this knowledge at your command, your ascent to be the newest vampire lord of Vardoran will be more calculated and sanguine. Go forth and rule the night (and keep an eye out for more V Rising guides here at GameLuster!)