Valor Mortis Mechanics Explained

Every kill pays Catalysts. A level 1 Risen Soldier is worth 50, and bosses pay far more: Entity pays the most at 100,000 Catalysts.

Levels are bought at a Lantern. Level 2 costs 400 Catalysts, reaching level 10 takes 10,273 Catalysts in total and level 50 takes 602,002 Catalysts. The game's level table runs all the way to level 400, which would take 165,974,460 Catalysts.

Catalyst Clots are Catalysts in item form: use one to add its value to your total.

Return to where you died to pick them back up. Die again before you get there and the dropped Catalysts are gone for good.

You respawn at the last Lantern you Rekindled. Resting there restores Health and Nephtoglobin but also revives every non-boss enemy, so the road back to your Catalysts fills up again. Surrendering from the pause menu kills you on the spot and sends you to the last Lantern you rested at.

Three consumables change those rules: one pulls your lost Catalysts back to you, one drops them on purpose and one takes you home with them intact.

Levelling feeds the level-up board, 26 upgrades that include Maximum Health, Melee Damage, Maximum Endurance and Parrying Impact.

Ambers are equipped in the same menu, into Amber Slots that unlock at set levels: 5 slots, opening at levels 1, 3, 5, 7, 9. There are 29 Ambers to find.

Respeccing has its own cost table, starting at 50 Catalysts and rising to 15,000 Catalysts at level 52.

You start with a 100-point pool. You extract more by striking enemies with your melee weapon and by shattering their Nephtoglobin Weak Points, which drop Nephtoglobin Remnants that refill you when picked up.

Resting at a Lantern refills the pool completely, and a Nephtoglobin Vial restores 100. Filling a Stasis Segment on an enemy also expels a Remnant.

Nephtoglobin is part of the world too. Ranged weapons destroy Nephtoglobin Clogs, the Fire Transmutation burns away dry Nephtoglobin walls, Nephtoglobin Formations switch on when you interact with them, and you can wall-run along Nephtowall surfaces.

The level-up board grows the pool (Nephtoglobin Sufferance, +10 per purchase) and what you extract (Nephtoglobin Extraction for melee hits, Nephtoglobin Remnants for Weak Points).

An enemy's Posture bar builds up when you land melee attacks or parry its attacks, and parrying builds it faster than attacking. Break it and you can launch a Critical Attack that deals massive damage.

How much a Critical Attack deals is set per enemy. For 5 regular enemies with a Posture bar, including Carrion, Risen Lancer, Risen Sapeur, Risen Duellist, it equals their full health at level 1, so a broken Posture is a kill; tougher enemies and bosses take a fixed share instead.

Captain Raphael has the deepest bar at 2,000. Posture also recovers over time, at the per-second rate shown below.

The timing is consistent: 435 of the 449 enemy attack hits with a parry window (97%) give you 0.2 s. The tightest window in the game is 0.05 s.

A perfect parry deals a fixed burst of Posture damage set by your blade: 100 with the Saber and 150 with the Rapier, which parries harder but can't block attacks properly. The Claymore is too heavy to parry at all.

Parrying Impact on the level-up board adds 5% posture damage to parries per purchase, up to 4 times. The Shield Transmutation has its own perfect-parry window of 0.2 s.

Each blocked hit drains Endurance, from 18 to 100 per hit depending on the attack. Damage you take while blocking is recoverable: land a melee attack on an enemy shortly afterwards to win that Health back.

88 of 349 damaging enemy hits (25%) are Unblockable Attacks, marked by a red glow. Dodge them instead: you're invulnerable during a dodge, and dodging at the perfect moment during an Unblockable Attack is a Perfect Dodge that empowers your next attack.

General Lothaire leans on red attacks the most of any boss: 9 of its 18 attacks.

Stasis fills in segments. Completely filling a segment deals damage and expels a Nephtoglobin Remnant, and the stronger the enemy, the more segments must be filled to freeze it: up to 7 for General Lothaire.

Break damage scales with the enemy's segment count, from 100 for a one-segment enemy to 1,200 at ten segments, and the game's config applies a partial-break multiplier of 75%.

The Stasis Whetstone, Stasis-Clad Rounds and the Claymore's Wave of Stasis also build Stasis. It works on machinery too: freeze moving gears to stop everything connected to them.

Ignite is fire: once the status meter is full the target is Ignited and takes continuous damage for a set time. The Fire Transmutation, Flaming Whetstone, Fire-Clad Rounds, Oil Grenade and the Claymore's Burning Wave all build it.

5 enemies take extra fire damage, led by Carrion, General Lothaire, Remnants, Abomination, Experiment 83.

Enemies use statuses too: Captain Raphael, Shambling Civilians, Volunteers can set you alight, Entity, Sphinx build Crystallization on you and Entity, The Orphan spread Infection. A Cleansing Vial clears Ignite and Stasis, and the Shield Transmutation's barrier also protects you from Infestation effects.

Your own Ignite, Crystallization and Infection resistances all start at 0. The Orphan is immune to Infection itself.

You start with 3 charges that heal 50 Health each. Ferrofluid Flask Power Upgrades raise each dose to 140 Health (24 upgrades across the track) and Empty Ferrofluid Flasks add charges, 9 more in total. Both are applied at a Lantern.

Healing Effectiveness on the level-up board raises what every dose heals, and several Ambers change how the Flask works.

The short version: a dodge makes you invulnerable for 0.25 s (about 15 frames at 60 fps), the default parry window is 0.2 s, a block takes ×0.5 damage from a blockable hit and costs 20 Endurance by default, and you start with 80 Endurance. Everything below is the default an ability or effect asset defines; the source asset is named under each rule.

The 0.2 s parry window is a default, not a rule every attack follows: 435 of the 449 enemy attack hits that define a window use it, while 14 are tighter, down to 0.05 s for the hardest ones (Remnants of the Iron Regiment, The Iron Marshall, Volunteers). Those are the attacks to dodge rather than parry until you know their timing.

Block costs vary even more. 186 of 445 blockable hits cost the default 20 Endurance; the rest range from 18 to 100, with Cannonhand Upperbash* (Remnants of the Iron Regiment) at the top. A full 80-point starting bar absorbs four default hits, while the heaviest hits cost more than the whole bar.

Rekindle a Lantern and it becomes your respawn point. Resting at it fully restores Health and Nephtoglobin and revives every non-boss enemy.

You can travel freely between any Lanterns you have discovered; 47 of the 49 are fast-travel points.

Lanterns are also where you spend Catalysts on levels, equip Ambers and apply Ferrofluid Flask upgrades. Sands of Time sends you back to the last visited Lantern with your Catalysts kept, and Fading Light guides you to the last-lit one.

Each level raises Health, Catalyst reward and damage. A Risen Soldier goes from 100 HP and 50 Catalysts at level 1 to 400 HP and 200 Catalysts at level 6.

Damage multipliers top out at ×2.7 (Howler at level 6). Bosses have a single level.

Enraged enemies are a separate thing: they have red, glowing eyes, are in a constant rampage that makes them much more powerful, and don't respawn after dying. Many of the game's key and Amber drops come from them.

The game data has no difficulty setting: enemy levels 1–6 are placement strengths, not modes, and every player faces the same numbers.

The main menu's New Game option starts a fresh save and overwrites your current progress. The launch data shows no New Game+ mode.