Virtue

Six first-party Virtue paths

The official gameplay guide and online manual name six rows: Repulsion Virtue, Flame Virtue, Sword Virtue, Pledge Virtue, Bloodfang Commendation, and Collector Commendation. Repulsion pays great foes and trespassers, including co-op trespasser wins. Flame pays lantern corpses on chairs, with a larger lantern corpse that only the first lighter receives. Sword pays ritual-site PvP only. Pledge pays blood pledge pillars and is overwritten. Bloodfang counts every enemy defeat. Collector counts exploration items, especially rare or new ones, and ignores enemy drops.

Redstones at ritual sites increase Sword Virtue. Goldstones increase Pledge Virtue. You may hold only one stone type at a time. Leaving a ritual site after entering costs HP, so a Flame or Collector route is a real alternative if you do not want to sit in the circle. Rankings for Commendations update during the phase; you can gain or lose converted Virtue as the order moves. The table on this page is the sealed record set, not a card grid.

How the grail reads the sheet

Phase I does not cull. Earn whatever mix you can while you level, compact with kin, and learn the land. Phase II and Phase III both cull on total Virtue. The three highest totals at the end of Phase III are beckoned. Moon Blood Bestowal then converts remaining Virtue into extra HP on top of two lives. Alliances share Sword and Pledge while they last, which is why a Bloodbound pair can ride ritual-site payouts together until the bowl — except Standard alliances still break for the final fight.

Miyazaki’s Creators Voice talks about Victory Points and opportunistic non-combat scoring. The first-party sheet is Virtue, not an unpublished formula. If you want to survive without hunting Bloodsworn, the supported path is Flame plus Collector plus Repulsion, then a late ritual visit only if the clock and your rank demand it. The Dusk Battles guide covers phase order; this page is the economy.

Practice the sheet before a live match

House of Night’s Battle Remembrance and Courtyard let you learn controls and dummy combat before an eight-player Casual Match. They do not replace a live cull. Use Remembrance to see ritual-site timing, then spend a Courtyard session on drink-blood and howl so Phase I is not your first stagger. Network Test Ver. did not carry saves into retail, so treating the test as a Virtue classroom was the point of the official FAQ.

If you are reading this after the August 2026 sessions, the same rows still describe the current product’s published match math. Retail may retune numbers; the named Virtue types and the cull-on-II-and-III structure are first-party for both the test and the Switch 2 2026 identity. Open the Bloodsworn roster when you want a kit that matches a Flame route or a ritual-site Sword route. Ranked Match stays listed in the hub even though only Casual was playable, so a Virtue classroom in Battle Remembrance is the first-party way to see ritual-site timing before an eight-player session.

Reading Virtue on the HUD

The online manual puts Virtue in the top of the game screen and says you win phases and claim victory in the Dusk Battle by acquiring enough of it. Lives appear only in the final phase. Commendation values for Bloodfang and Collector sit on the same HUD, updating as you defeat enemies and pick up exploration items. The clock is not Virtue, but it is the timer that opens ritual sites and ends the phase, so a Flame lighter who ignores the shining dot will still be ranked when the red dot hits.

Stamina regenerates automatically and is not consumed while out of combat, which is why a Collector route can sprint between pickups without draining the same bar a Sword fighter spends on charged attacks. Level sits next to an experience gauge; defeating enemies and other players raises HP and attack, and some Bloodsworn Skills unlock only at listed levels. Virtue and level are not the same resource. You can be high level and still be culled if your Virtue mix is wrong for Phase II.

Trespasser co-op is a Repulsion faucet: accept the request, you cannot hit fellow participants, and a win pays Repulsion plus a Powers of Blood pick. That is the first-party PvE on-ramp Miyazaki’s opportunistic scoring remark was pointing at. It does not disable the later cull. Bring whatever Virtue you earned back to the clock and the ritual-site decision, or the grail will still cut you regardless of how many lanterns you lit in Phase I.

Sword Virtue still requires a ritual-site kill. Outdoor Bloodsworn duels feed Bloodfang Commendation and experience, not Sword. Pledge still requires a pillar and dies if overwritten. That is why a Collector tourist can ignore Sword entirely and still post a Commendation conversion, and why a Sword specialist cannot farm the same number in Phase I before sites exist. Read the clock, then pick the row. Goldstones and redstones are the multiplier items at those sites; you cannot hold both, and desertion still costs HP if you walk out after tagging a pillar.