Take these Vampyr tips to minimize your mistakes - and hopefully stakes through the heart - as you roam Victorian London as a vampire. Being a dead, blood-sucking monster is just the start of your problems, as there are conversations to have, difficult decisions about feeding to make, and supernatural powers to unlock with XP. Here's what we've learned so that you can get off to the best start with these essential Vampyr tips.
Don’t eat anyone straight away
I know it’s tempting to chew neck and kill people at random - you’re a vampire, it’s what you’re meant to do. Just try not to rush into anything as it’s not always clear how important a person is, who they know, or if they’re even really good or bad. The more you talk to the community, the more you’ll learn about other people and their relationships. At best you might kill someone’s friend without realising, and lose any conversation topics and clues they might have given you. At worst you could kill an area’s ‘pillar,’ a pivotal member of the community whose death can have a catastrophic impact.
Don’t sweat the XP stuff early on
Vampyr keeps reminding you that eating people will make the game easier because of the juicy XP in their blood, but you don't have to worry too much about it initially. Okay, okay, the average mortal will give you at least 1500-3000 XP per neck in one bite, which would probably take you a hour or so to earn in game. But you can get it by doing missions to get the XP slower at first if you maybe don’t want to murder indiscriminately from the off. A good way to boost this is doing investigations, and exploring or talking to people to find more. Later on in the game upgrades can get pricey so you might have to make a few decisions about who to chew but don’t worry about doing it straight away.
Try to do everything you can before going to bed
When you go to bed in Vampyr you can spend your XP and level up but it also ends the night and weighs up anything you’ve done. So if you’ve eaten anyone or done bad things, that’s when the effects will be felt. Try to do everything you can before you do though, so finish any investigations, check there’s no conversations to have and try to leave nothing to carry over. Not only will this help you hit the hay with the maximum XP but also minimise the amount of times the world changes, which usually is for the worse.
Boost your stamina when levelling up
It’s easy to overlook the basics with all those sexy vampire skills on offer but don’t ignore your stamina. You can only attack and use abilities while it’s full, and it’s easy for a fight to turn bad because you’ve run out of the energy to hit things. Put some XP in that, almost more than into health, and you can keep hitting things until they stop being a problem.
When fighting in Vampyr, keep stunning things and keep your blood topped up
It’s easy to forget about your secondary stun attack as it doesn’t do much damage, just knock enemies back. However, using it deplete their stamina meaning you can bite them to top up your blood and use vampire abilities. Keep clocking people with your offhand weapon and whenever you see teeth, bite. That way you’ll always be able to heal and pull out whatever fancy undead tricks you have to hand. Some two handed weapons also let you parry which then also has a stun effect and can be very useful against harder enemies and bosses.
Keep talking to people, and then keep talking to people
Look, there’s a lot of talking in Vampyr. It’s probably about 60% of what you’ll be doing most of the time but it’s important. Very few people are what they really seem: obviously villainous people often turn out not to be quite so evil, while some of the good guys turn out to not be so good. The thing is that some of the hints and options you need to discover this can only be unlocked by chatting to other people and investigating. Make sure you really know a person before you judge or trust them.
Play doctor and heal the sick
Killing people for food is obviously going to have a negative effect on the district you’re in. If you heal and help people though you can counter that. Whenever you visit a hideout recycle all your pills and bottles and craft all the medicines you can. That way you can heal everyone's migraines, bronchitis and other ailments and, at the end of the night, you’ll see their districts improve. Even if you lose a pillar, or make thing bad, you can still claw your way back with some well placed first aid.
Pick up everything
There’s nothing in Vampyr that isn’t useful. What can’t be used to make medicine can be used to upgrade weapons or sold, so just hoover up anything and everything. Every time you see a flashing bin lid or glowing cupboard door, grab whatever’s inside and you’ll never run out of resources.
Look up
Dr Reid has a very vampy teleport ability that can only be activated when you look at certain raised areas. It’s handy for finding new routes into areas, or to sneak past enemies but because it’s usually above you it’s easy to miss. Just get into a habit of looking up when you’re in a new area, or a little stuck as you might find somewhere to jump to that makes life a whole lot easier
Keep an eye out for rats
Eating rats is not nice, admittedly, but it’s free blood and the only way to top up your blood power bar between fights. Keep an eye out for the teeth prompt as you explore, or use your vampire sense to help locate them. A few rodent munchies along the way can keep you at full health and power and make all the difference when entering a fight.
