How progression actually works
You gain experience from enemies and quests as usual, but points alone do not unlock a perk. Most ranks additionally require you to find and read a book, manual or scroll in the open world. Those can be looted from bodies and chests or bought from vendors, which gives you some control over what you can research next.
Each tree also has its own currency on top of experience. Witchcraft ranks need points earned through witchcraft activities and haunted sites, and the Vampirism tree is gated behind your corruption level rather than experience.
The cost that catches people out is time. Unlocking or upgrading a perk consumes a time segment, shown in the skill tree interface. Across dozens of abilities in three trees, that quietly eats days — so do not dump every point the moment you earn it.
Swordmastery: the tree to build first
Swordmastery applies whether Coen is human or vampire, so anything here is worth roughly twice what a form-locked perk is. Generic stat nodes such as maximum health and stamina fall into the same category.
The core chain is built around perfect blocking. Put one point into Omni Block — it lowers the stamina cost of assisted blocking and, more importantly, is a prerequisite for the perks below it. Perfect Riposte then lets you follow a perfect block with a directional attack marked by a chevron for a guaranteed critical hit.
From there, Perfect Block restores stamina on every successful parry, which effectively removes stamina as a constraint if you are blocking well, and Counter Attack adds roughly 10% damage after a perfect block that stacks with your critical bonuses. Swiftness is passive and raises attack speed after each perfect block.
- Endless Effort — raises maximum stamina, which funds both blocking and attacking.
- Artery Strike — a chance to instantly decapitate, starting around 10% at rank one and climbing with investment.
- Sustained Focus — more activation charges, which matters as you unlock more active abilities.
- Master Fencer — lets you slot multiple Swordmastery abilities at once.
- Second Skin 1 and 2 — remove the stat penalties on medium and heavy armour, which otherwise makes most looted gear underperform.
Witchcraft: daylight utility
Witchcraft is your daytime toolkit and covers far more than damage. Hexes are cast at the cost of your own health and cover weapon buffs, area interrupts, shields and crowd control, plus non-combat utility such as speaking with the dead.
Two traversal and economy picks stand out early. Mercurial Fervour, in the bottom right of the tree, adds a haste effect to sprinting that dramatically speeds up daytime travel — one point is enough, since the upgrades only shave a little more speed and stamina. Forager doubles your yield when harvesting plants.
Medicus 1 raises how high your four quick-slot items stack, up to 12 when maxed, which matters a great deal on higher difficulties. Medicus 2, further down the tree, lets you craft multiple items for the cost of one. Ravenous Flock is a strong combat hex, and its upgrade manuals come from the windchime activities scattered around the world.
Vampirism: gated behind corruption
The Vampirism tree progresses on corruption, which you gain by drinking blood. That makes Nourishing Blood, and the Hastened Corruption perk it leads to, the practical foundation — faster corruption gain is what unlocks everything else.
Shapeshift is the other early must-have, sitting in the bottom right of the tree. It turns Coen into a wolf for much faster night-time travel and long leaps up and down terrain, and like Mercurial Fervour it is not worth upgrading past the first point.
For a durable night build, Endless Hunger raises your vampire health segments to five, Closing Wounds adds regeneration so you feed less often, and Blood Theft gives all attacks life leech. Scholar Shield adds a chance to heal on block — around 20% chance for 20% health on a perfect block, half that on a normal one.
- Vrakhir Might — more slots for vampiric abilities, needed to run the passives below.
- Razor Sharp Claws — claw damage only, so skip it if you intend to keep using the sword at night.
- Shred — a chance to apply a bleed damage-over-time effect.
- Crimson Rush — your active abilities hit harder the higher your health is.
- Death from Above — an instant kill from height, useful in the game's limited stealth moments.
Corruption: the cost of power
Human blood heals far more and raises corruption faster; animal blood is a slower, gentler alternative with a much weaker healing return. Higher corruption unlocks the deeper vampire tree, but it also makes Coen more likely to lose control.
That loss of control is not cosmetic. Your vampire health is split into segments, and running on your last one can push Coen into feeding during cutscenes and conversations — potentially killing story or side-quest NPCs you had just saved. Several avoidable NPC deaths across a playthrough trace back to poor hunger management.
If you want corruption quickly, feeding on defeated soldiers and on animals is the low-consequence route. Feeding on civilians raises it fastest but has obvious narrative costs, and you always choose whether to stop at unconsciousness or drain a victim entirely.
Slots, cooldowns and toggles
You have four quick slots, configured separately for day and night, holding consumables and abilities. Some powers overlap and work in both forms, though they can behave differently.
Active sword abilities run on cooldowns in roughly the 20-50 second range and cost activation charges, which makes them situational compared with always-on passives. That is a large part of why the passive perfect-block perks outperform flashier actives on a first run.
One easy mistake: unlocking a passive perk does not switch it on. You have to equip it in the active abilities menu before it does anything.
Perks worth skipping
Carry weight is the clearest trap. It costs four perk points for an additional 100 capacity when you already start with 200, and shrines double as unlimited storage as well as fast-travel points. Offloading gear at a shrine and selling it later solves the problem for free.
The Forager doubling perk is also skippable if you simply harvest plants as you travel using focus sight, which highlights them. Most players end up with a surplus of ingredients without spending the point.
Because the game lets you save before testing, you can trial a perk and reload if it disappoints — a cheap way to avoid wasting both a point and a time segment.
Still to be confirmed
- Exact numeric values for several perks, including Artery Strike's scaling and Counter Attack's damage bonus at higher ranks — to be confirmed.
- Whether skill books spawn at fixed locations or drop randomly — to be confirmed.
- Precise corruption gain rates for animal versus human blood — to be confirmed.