What Are Blood Types and Qualities in V Rising?

It's been centuries. Your mouth, parched from the lack of blood that has graced your lips, is torn apart, dry beyond imagining. As a mere husk of what you were once, you set out to find blood — any blood — to quench this thirst, if only but for an iota of a second. More importantly, you can't wait to make this blood yours and reap its benefits-- wait, what?

In V Rising, you play as a vampire that drinks and steals the blood type of their foe. Although this isn't very forthcoming about what exactly that means, it is definitely worth learning a little about what blood types are, how the quality affects its perks, and which ones you should use at any given moment. So, let's start with...

What are blood types?

Every creature that bleeds can have its blood sucked out of them and used to your benefit, this is different from every "living" creature because you can't actually suck the blood from skeletons, but I digress. The blood type varies according to whichever foe you are fighting; bandits don't carry the same blood type, but all bandit archers do.

Learning these blood types will make it easier to know which ones you want in any given fight, as you'll be able to swiftly recognise it and take its blood if you so wish. You'll learn this naturally, so don't worry about spending brainpower trying to learn on purpose.

Each blood type has a number of perks available to it and its own unique playstyles. With different blood types, you gain benefits for numerous and differing occasions. Blood types have five perks, all of which you earn after gaining 1% (just having the blood type), 30%, 60%, 90%, and 100% blood quality. Depending on which type of blood you have, you'll get different perks, though perk V (100%) is always a 30% increase to all of the previous attributes. 

Different blood types have different uses, and it's important to analyse them and see what their best uses are. You'll want to hover over the blood gauge and check what the perks I–IV do, as these are the ones you unlock by percentages and are unique. By doing this, you should get a good feel for what you're supposed to use that blood type for, and whether you like it or should look for a high-quality but different type for any given task.

How do you get blood quality?

Use the shadows to stalk your foes and check their quality!

Blood quality is quite simple, and if you read my tips & tricks article, you know it's important to check the blood quality of each enemy. The reason for this is, as far as I could tell, blood quality is completely randomised. Although most enemies I could find have less than 30%, some would randomly have spikes of 70%+ or even higher, until one day you encounter a 100%.

This is why it is imperative to focus on enemy blood quality, as higher blood qualities can be quite rare at times, and having them is phenomenal. Usually, you'll be able to find an enemy with a high-quality blood type before your current one runs out, but that is why you'll want to pay attention closely before you go on a murder spree.

What happens if you run out of blood?

Immediately upon acquiring a blood type, you'll notice that the gauge begins depleting. Although this is a very slow process, eventually — inevitably — your blood gauge will run out. Not taking care of this closely will lead to you taking damage in chunks until you either eat another foe or perish to the blood loss... 

Well, not quite. Being out of blood will only really lower your health to 1, which allows you to find another enemy to eat or find a random rat to feast on and get frail blood to ensure you survive. Although managing your blood gauge is important, it actually won't be deadly if you're caught off-guard and far from anyone or anything you can eat without too much hassle. So instead, don't fret if your blood gauge is running low; you should have enough time to find an enemy or a rat to eat and ensure you don't take continuous damage. 

One thing that’s worth noting is that in the Private Game setup, you can set [Vampire] Blood Drain Rate to 0 so that you can keep the same blood type throughout the entire run without it draining. To learn more on what you can affect, check out this article!

Congratulations, batling! You should now be an expert on blood types and should be able to identify which are best for what tasks.