Items & Equipment

Coen carries the economy of a valley under occupation: gear that levels with him, blood that heals him and corrupts him, silver the vrakhiri still covet. This page is the item reference — what fills the nine inventory tabs, which of them are safe to sell, how rarity and upgrading work, and where the notable pieces of the early game are hiding. For how this folds into a 30-day plan, see the guides.

The Nine Inventory Categories

Every item in the game sits in one of nine tabs, and most of them exist to be sold eventually. The rules of thumb:

Two details worth knowing. A day set and a night set overlap heavily early on, then drift apart: swordplay and witchcraft favor the first, claws and vampiric ability damage the second. And the encumbrance limit of 200 at the start is generous — shrines double as unlimited storage and free fast travel, so a bag full of weapons is a reason to visit a vendor, not to invest perk points in carry weight.

Rarity and Gear Rules

Rarity runs gray → green → blue → purple → legendary. Weapon arts — the charged special attacks with invincibility frames — appear on swords and bracers from blue upward, and epic/legendary gear supports higher upgrade levels than the rest. A gray piece at the same level can carry more raw armor than a rarity piece with the right affixes, but the affixes usually win.

Loot scales to Coen's level at the moment it drops. Some legendary pieces have a minimum spawn level above yours; taken later, the same item rolls higher stats and affixes. Equipment also gets better the further south you push — red-skull territory guards the good chests, and a surgical loot run is a legitimate (if dangerous) errand.

Affixes beat armor rating. A bonus like +10% maximum health or a widened perfect-block window regularly outvalues a slightly higher defense number. Read what a piece does for your build — witchcraft cooldown for a witchcraft build, claw critical for a night build — instead of equipping whatever arrow points up.

Armor comes in three weights. Light, medium and heavy, in rising order of protection. Medium and heavy carry stat penalties until the Second Skin perks (bought as manuals from armorers — the second one, for heavy, is sold in Svartrau) remove them rank by rank.

Notable Early Finds

The named pieces worth a detour, roughly in the order a new game can reach them. None of them are locked behind story progress except where noted.

The Durandal deserves its reputation: bonus damage against supernatural enemies, cheaper attack and dodge stamina, sword mastery cooldown, and a weapon art — a genuinely endgame-capable sword picked up in the first hour. The permanent health elixir raises maximum health for both human and vampire form, permanently, and comes with a skill point; the catch is the quest itself: investigate the potion maker's house, plant and blood-feed the seeds, return a day later, and let Anca handle the brewing for free.

Upgrading

Any blacksmith, armorer or witch can raise an item's level for gold — up to one above Coen's current level. Upgrading scales base stats and affixes together; it never changes rarity or crafts new equipment. A single button maxes the job out in one payment, which gets expensive fast on epics and legendaries.

The practical rule: don't fund gray, green or blue gear past a level or two, but keep a good legendary at or near your level. And if a low-level piece has the perfect affix synergy for your build, upgrading it beats swapping to a higher drop with worse traits.

Consumables and Elixirs

Healing is split by form. Stamina potions work in any form; health restoration is tied to the current one — food and crafted human remedies by day, blood by night. Crafted remedies outclass plain food by a wide margin; a player eating raw provisions for hours is a player who hasn't found a recipe yet.

Elixirs are the buffs, and they run on time segments, not minutes. A Potent Fortitude elixir holds +15% weapon damage for three full segments — and since time only moves when Coen acts, that is effectively a permanent buff until the next time-consuming activity. The witchcraft tree extends durations and batch sizes; only one elixir is active at a time (before perks), so slot the strongest. The 30-second stamina buffs found in the world are vendor fodder.

Combat logistics: with default settings, only quick-slotted consumables can be used mid-fight — four quick slots, refill them deliberately — and crafting is disabled in combat. Before a hard fight, stock healing for the form you'll be in.

Blood, Vials and Leeches

Vampiric healing doubles as progression. Drinking blood — by feeding or from vials — restores health and raises corruption, the currency of the Vampirism tree. Vials of animal and human blood are common loot; leeches from the swamps work as instant healing with a corruption side effect. A saved stockpile of twenty vials drunk back to back is a corruption level in one sitting.

Vrakhiri blood vials are different: each unlocks a specific vampiric ability outright. They drop from Court-adjacent sources — the Blood Letter that hunts you after clearing Ambrus's leech camps, blood guards recruiting in the capital for Xanthe — and drinking one teaches the ability it carries.

Currency and Trade

Dinarius is the coin. Early money is made by looting everything and selling in bulk: the vendor's sell all junk button clears the junk tab, the trade-goods tab is junk at higher prices, and read manuals and notes sell freely once the green tick confirms Coen knows their contents.

Silver is a second currency waiting to happen. Lumps, crosses and chalices of silver fill chests and hidey-holes — including a small hoard behind the waterfall with the Arbiter's Medallion. Around Infamy level 3–4, the silver trader in Svartrau unlocks: he buys the whole silver stock and sells legendary items, making him a vendor worth revisiting.

Two systems squeeze the coin purse. The Bewitching Influence perk (Witchcraft tree, no manual needed) takes two points for 15% off purchases and 15% better sale prices. And every Infamy tier under Brencis's edicts raises vendor prices — twice across the game — which is why big purchases and the trading perks belong early, before the valley starts overcharging you.

Treasure Maps

Maps found in the world activate from the inventory, mark an X nearby, and then essentially walk you to it: follow the trail, pick up the shovel waiting at the dig site, deal with whatever guards the spot, and dig. The loot is consistently worth the stop — the Polished Long Cleaver route above starts from exactly such a map.

The walkthrough covers the prologue pickups in step order; the guides page covers the money and time strategy around them.