Hunting Guide: the Wilds and Their Creatures

Beyond Death Valley lie four wards of wilderness, deadlier the deeper you go. Here is how hunting works, and what waits for you out there.

How hunting works

Every vampire must feed, and the blood is out in the wilds beyond Death Valley. You hunt on expeditions: pick one of the four wards (Gallows Moor to the north, the Rookery to the east, the Drowned Fens to the south or the Ashen Reach to the west), plan a route out from your Lair, then meet each creature on the way and choose how to fight it. You can strike, savage, guard, feed or mesmerize. The deeper you go, the richer the blood and gold, and the more dangerous the creatures.

Short on time? A Quick hunt spends a few Actions in one tap. Once a day the Daily Hunt sends every vampire down the same route, scored on a shared board. And beneath the Underbelly lies the Ossuary, a crypt you descend floor by floor, alone, with a party or with your coven.

The hour matters. Night pays best. By day the sun, thinned by the Pall but never gone, saps your strength and makes your prey fiercer: 15% for a new vampire, easing to 5% as your blood grows strong (level 500). About once a day the Pall wears thin and the sun bites twice as hard, but the night after pays +25% instead of +15%. The weather the Pall breeds changes what you meet out there too.

Chain kills to build Bloodlust for bigger rewards, but bank them before an elite or a champion takes it all. Other vampires work the same trails: meet a rival hunter and you can duel them for triple spoils, or slip past.

Every creature you kill is logged in the Hunter's Codex. Kill 50 of one to study it and 250 to master it. Studying or mastering a whole ward earns a permanent bonus to hunting blood and gold, up to +12% in total, and the Codex awards titles: Beastmaster, Extinctionist, Apex Predator.

The four regions of the Codex

Whichever ward you choose, the wilds change with distance from your Lair, and the Hunter's Codex groups them into four regions by depth. The 20 creatures below are the ones each region is known for.

The Blighted Outskirts · up to 50 steps

The edge of the wilds, close to the valley. Starved scavengers and ferals: the place to learn the hunt.

The Wildwood · 51–200 steps

Dead forest and the things that thrive in it, along with the first of the old Spire engines still walking their beat.

The Barrows · 201–500 steps

Burial mounds and plague marsh. The creatures here are old, cold and venomous, and some of them hunt vampires.

The Hollow Deep · beyond 500 steps

The deepest wilds, where the darkness itself takes shape. Only well-prepared vampires come back.

Familiars in the wilds

Expeditions are also where you meet wild familiars. Over 140 species roam the wards, each from its own depth, and you can catch them in a capture battle and raise them to fight beside you.

Dredging the canal

Not every hunt goes out of the city. At the River Stairs you can cast a line into the canal (1 Action a cast) and haul up lost things: keepsakes, oddities and, rarely, one of four Drain Terrapins, familiars that are never found in the wild. Keep at it and you may meet Ruskin, the canal rat.

Questions