Archive / Virtue, Alliances and Sigils in The Duskbloods

Virtue, Alliances and Sigils in The Duskbloods

Virtue is the ranking currency of a Dusk Battle. Alliances temporarily share some of that ranking. Sigils give you a personal objective tied to another Bloodsworn. In the test, only the highest Virtue holders survive each culling, and three are called to the end.

Virtue

Virtue decides who survives the culling in Phases II and III. The guide lists five ways to earn it in the test:

• Repulsion Virtue comes from great foes and trespassers. The guide warns they are strong, so strengthen your Bloodsworn first.
• Flame Virtue comes from lighting flames inside the skulls of corpses sitting on chairs around the land. Larger lantern corpses pay more, but only the first person to light one gets it.
• Sword Virtue comes from defeating other Bloodsworn at ritual sites. You do not earn it outside ritual sites.
• Pledge Virtue comes from swearing at blood pledge pillars inside ritual sites. If another Bloodsworn overwrites your pledge, that Virtue is lost.
• Commendation Virtue goes to the top two players in each of two scores at the end of a phase. Bloodfang counts enemy defeats. Collector counts exploration items. Rarer and newly acquired items contribute more, and enemy drops do not count.

Two stones change how the ritual math works. A redstone raises Sword Virtue gains. A goldstone raises Pledge Virtue gains. You can hold only one type at a time, so the stone you take says what you plan to do next.

The final phase pays off the ranking. The three Bloodsworn with the highest Virtue after Phase III are beckoned. Each gets two lives from the grail, plus extra HP scaled to the Virtue they earned before the final.

Alliances

You can petition a Bloodsworn you lock onto, or one you have encountered, from the info screen. If they accept, you become confederates until the final phase. Confederates cannot harm each other. They also share the Sword Virtue and Pledge Virtue they earn at ritual sites.

Alliances break at the final phase. You say your farewells and fight for the bestowal alone. The exception is the Bloodbound Alliances rule, which keeps pairs together through the end. The guide says the release version is planned to let you enter matchmaking already in a blood pact with a friend you invite.

Sigils

A Sigil etches a relationship with another Bloodsworn and gives you a unique objective that can pay Virtue. Objectives can ask you to defeat a specific Bloodsworn, or to form an alliance and aim for the final phase together. The test has four Sigils: Sigil of a Sworn Enemy, Sigil of an Old Friend, Sigil of the Eye of Muralis, and Sigil of Love Ephemeral. The guide says these can be changed freely in the release version. Some emotes matter for certain Sigil goals, so the emote menu is more than decoration.

Still unknown

The exact Virtue cut lines, the full text of each Sigil objective, and how much of this ranking math ships unchanged.