Systems
Shrines, Skill Points and Corruption
Short answer
Perks are bought at shrines, of which there are dozens, and nowhere else. The currency is experience points earned by completing objectives, and the purchase also costs up to two time chunks depending on the skill — out of the same thirty days the rescue is measured in. All three trees draw on one shared experience bar and one type of skill point, so a point spent on Vampirism is a point Swordmastery will not get. Every tree carries a second gate on top of points: Swordmastery and Witchcraft want manuals, and Vampirism wants Corruption, which rises only when Coen feeds.
This is the part of the game that most resembles a trap for players arriving from other open-world RPGs. Levelling is not free, it is not instant, and it is not available wherever you happen to be standing. It is an errand with a price, and the price comes out of the same budget as the rescue.
One bar, one pool, three trees
Bandai Namco has confirmed that Swordmastery, Witchcraft and Vampirism all draw on a single experience bar and a single pool of skill points. There is no per-tree allowance to spend down, and nothing is wasted by playing in one form rather than the other: objectives cleared as a swordsman pay for hexes.
The cost of that generosity is that every purchase competes with every other purchase. Spreading points across three trees is not free breadth — it is depth given up in all three, and with an Ultimate Perk reported at 35 points, two of them is a serious fraction of a run. How many points a level awards is not published, so the honest position is that a build can be costed but not yet checked against a budget.
When the trees can be used is confirmed too, and it matters more than it sounds. Swordmastery works during both day and night. Witchcraft is daytime-only. Vampirism is nighttime-only. Two thirds of what you buy therefore works in half the run — so a point in Swordmastery is the only one that is never idle, and a route weighted heavily toward night is a route that should think twice about the hex tree.
The four steps between finding a perk and having it
- Unlock it. Some nodes open as you go. Others arrive as a manual — a physical book found in loot, read from the recipes tab of the inventory, which then makes the perk appear in the character tab. Bandai Namco names a different supply line per tree: Swordmastery manuals are left around the world by soldiers and bandits or sold by fencers, Witchcraft manuals are in ancient ruins and haunted places or taught by other practitioners, and Vampirism is not manual-gated at all — it opens with Corruption.
- Earn the points. Experience comes from completing objectives, so the currency is generated by doing the things you were going to do anyway.
- Reach a shrine. An available perk is flagged with an exclamation mark and simply waits. Nothing is spent until you are standing at one.
- Pay twice. The purchase costs experience points and up to two time chunks, shown by an hourglass on the node.
Shrines are not just shops
A shrine is also a fast-travel point, and shrines double as quest objectives in their own right. They are not all working when you find them: the walkthrough reaches one that has been desecrated and is missing its heart, and cannot use it until the heart is recovered — from a camp of Brencis's soldiers nearby — and put back.
So a shrine on your map is a lead rather than a guarantee, and repairing one is a genuine investment: it buys a purchase counter and a travel node in one, in a region where you may not have had either.
Ultimates are passives
Each tree publishes three Ultimate Perks at a reported 35 skill points, and exactly one of the three may ever be taken. A retail review confirms what the skill screen's layout implied: they are all passive. An Ultimate is a permanent modifier, not a finisher you press.
That matters for how you value one. Thirty-five points out of a shared pool is a large commitment to something that never appears on your bar — worth it for what it does to everything else you own, and a poor purchase if you were expecting a button. Picking one also forecloses the other two in that tree, so it is the single least reversible decision in a build.
Corruption: the second gate on the vampire tree
Vampirism has a requirement the other two do not, and it is stated outright rather than inferred: vampiric abilities awaken at night, are fuelled by health and Corruption, and unlock deeper as Coen's Corruption rises — which happens only by feeding on blood. Corruption sits next to the health bar and determines how much of the tree is purchasable at all. Each gated node names the level it wants in its tooltip. Bandai Namco adds that most vampiric powers demand a sacrifice to use, so the tree charges twice: once to buy, and again every time you cast.
Read that structure honestly and it is uncomfortable by design. Experience points are earned by playing well; Corruption is earned by drinking. A player who feeds sparingly to avoid hurting anyone is choosing, in the same motion, to leave the bottom of the vampire tree shut. The game does not present the humane route as free.
| Currency | Earned by | Spent on | Spent where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Experience points | Completing objectives | Perks in any tree — one shared pool | At a shrine |
| Time chunks | Nothing — you start with 480 and only lose them | Perks (1–2 each), quests, some dialogue | Wherever the hourglass appears |
| Manuals | Loot from soldiers and bandits, ruins and haunted places, or bought | Unlocking Swordmastery and Witchcraft nodes | Read from the inventory |
| Corruption | Feeding | Nothing — it is a gate, not a cost | Unlocks deeper Vampirism nodes |
What this means for a route
- Budget for training, don't improvise it. Every perk is a scheduled action costing up to two chunks, not a free menu interaction between quests. Ten purchases is between one and two and a half phases of the run.
- Route against two, not one. Nobody has published which skills cost one chunk and which cost two, and you find out at the shrine — after the walk. Plan the worse case and bank the difference.
- Batch the walk, not the cost. Buying three perks in one visit does not make them cheaper — each still moves the clock — but it saves the travel and lets you compare the whole list before committing.
- Repair shrines opportunistically. A working shrine near where you intend to operate is worth more than one near where you happened to start.
- Weigh a point by how much of the run it works in. Swordmastery works day and night; Witchcraft only by day and Vampirism only by night. Two of the three trees are idle half the time.
- Decide your feeding policy early. It is a build constraint, not only a moral one, and Corruption is not reported to fall.
- Read what you loot. Manuals gate perks, and books elsewhere are reported to teach skills or grant experience outright.
Training is a costed action like any other. Schedule your perk purchases alongside your quests and see what the clock actually allows.
Open the 30-Day Planner →The progression rules — the shared bar and point pool, which tree works in which phase, the manual and Corruption gates — are stated by Bandai Namco. The purchase loop around them comes from a developer-narrated walkthrough of a pre-beta build, and none of the values are published: not the size of a time segment, not the experience needed, not the Corruption thresholds.
- Game version
- retail
- Last reviewed