Blade Game Guide: Combat, Builds, and 100% Completion

Mastering Blade's combat isn't about flashy moves - it's about ruthless efficiency. This guide cuts through the noise to deliver the core defensive pillars, resource systems, and combat loops you need to dominate. Learn the timings, manage your rage, and execute the punish combos that separate the survivors from the dead.

Core Combat Fundamentals Every Beginner Must Master

Listen up, because you're about to get thrown into the deep end, and button-mashing will get you killed. Blade's combat looks flashy, but it's all built on three defensive pillars and one greedy damage system. Nail these, and you'll be unstoppable. Miss the timing windows? You'll be eating dirt.

The Combat Trinity: Parry, Dodge, and Block Explained

You've got three ways to stay alive, but they couldn't be more different. Parrying is the high-risk, high-reward play - you've got a brutal 150ms window to land that perfect parry, which is roughly 9 frames at 60fps. Nail it, and the game rewards you handsomely: zero Guard meter cost, a Bloodlust counter-attack window, plus 15% health and 25% Guard restored. But here's the catch you can't ignore: there's an 800ms global cooldown after any perfect defense, so spamming is off the table. You need to make each one count.

Blocking plays it safer but drains your resources. Holding block projects a 90-degree arc in front of Blade, and each hit you absorb chews through your Guard meter. However, if you time your block perfectly within that 133-166ms window, you'll nullify all damage and get 30% of your Guard meter refunded. It's the reliable middle ground when you're not confident in your parry timing.

Then you've got your dodge options for when things get really hairy. The Quick-Step costs 20% Guard and grants 0.25 seconds of invincibility, while the Slide-Dash burns 40% Guard but stretches those i-frames to 0.45 seconds. So you're trading resource cost for safety, and the choice usually comes down to how telegraphed the attack is.

Keep your eyes glued to enemy weapon glints, too. White means you can block it, red means it's unblockable so you better dodge or parry, and orange is a guard-breaker that'll shred through your block if you try to tank it. Learn these colors or die wondering what happened.

Blood Rage System: Your Ultimate Resource Management

This is your damage engine, and managing it separates good Blades from great ones. You build Blood Rage stacks by doing exactly what you should be doing anyway: melee hits grant 1 stack, successful parries dump 2 stacks into your meter, and eliminations flood you with 3 stacks. You can hold up to 10 stacks, and each one gives you +4% damage on katana swings. But it gets spicy against weakened targets - against anyone below 50% HP, that bonus doubles to 8% per stack.

The life-steal scales with your stacks, starting at 20% base and adding 1.5% per stack until it caps at 35% when you're maxed out. This means at full power, you're healing for more than a third of all damage you deal, which is absolutely bonkers for sustain.

But you can't just build it and forget it - stacks decay at 1 per 1.5 seconds when you're out of combat, giving you roughly 15 seconds to find your next victim before the meter empties. This is why you need to keep the pressure on and chain fights together.

Your Daywalker Ultimate consumes every stack you've built, adding true damage equal to 15% of your target's missing HP per stack. Most players find the sweet spot is 6-8 stacks for a team-wiping ultimate, but you can start bursting down squishy targets with as little as 3 stacks if you catch them below half health. Just don't let yourself overcapped at 10 stacks for too long - that's wasted potential.

The Poke-Parry-Punish Combat Loop

This is where everything clicks together - your bread-and-butter loop that dominates duels and team fights. You poke with the shotgun, parry the retaliation, then punish with your sword combo.

Start by peppering enemies with your Hunter's Shotgun - you don't need to land every pellet. Tagging 2-3 pellets per shell builds Blood Rage stacks and grants 4% ultimate charge per clean hit. Fire two shells, then instantly reload-cancel by pressing Alt-Fire (Form Swap). This animation cancel skips the reload timer entirely and keeps you mobile, which is crucial for positioning.

When enemies retaliate, you've got parry options. The Daywalker Dash (E) gives you i-frames for a hard parry, but you can also soft parry by side-stepping or crouch-sliding off ledges to dodge attacks entirely. The red glint attacks require these parries, so don't try to block them.

Once you've baited the attack, punish with this exact sequence: Dash-in (E) → Auto-attack → Bloodlust Slash (Shift) → Auto-attack → instant Form Swap back to shotgun. This combo steals life, applies anti-heal, and melts health bars. The real mastery comes from animation canceling - you can truncate recovery frames by inputting sprint, swap, or another melee chain. Your primary-fire can cancel 0.18s after the muzzle flash, which is huge for keeping up relentless pressure.

Master this loop, and you're not just playing Blade - you're conducting a symphony of death.

The Daywalker's Workbench: Your Paris Safe House

Your safe house in Paris isn't just a static menu screen - it's a proper hub that evolves as you push through the story, kind of like Dishonored's Hound Pits Pub. The real heart of it is the Daywalker's Workbench, which splits crafting into three tabs: Maintenance (repairing what's broken), Assembly (building new gear), and Infusion (adding elemental effects).

Essential Recipes and Where to Find Components

Silver bullets aren't cheap, but you'll need them. Each batch requires silver shards from antique shops, casing packs looted from human gangsters, and gun-powder scrap pulled from police vans. It's a scavenger hunt across the district, so you'll want to mark those locations early.

UV grenades are trickier. You'll need xenon flash tubes from cameras and lighting rigs, rechargeable battery cores (you'll find plenty in tech-heavy areas), silver-foil liners, and the cross-key housing schematic - which is locked inside Notre-Dame's bell tower. Don't worry, the climb is worth it.

Here's how the resource economy breaks down:

• Silver residue drops from feral vampires
• UV capacitors are always guarded by elite Sang-ra captains
• Weapon parts come from disassembling firearms you confiscate from human cultists

Upgrades and the Daywalker Serum

Workbench upgrades don't use cash - they run on Influence you earn from mission objectives. Go loud and lethal, you'll get some. Rescue civilians without raising alarms, you'll get more. The system rewards whatever playstyle you choose, so you won't feel locked into stealth or combat.

The rarest crafting material is Daywalker Serum, and it's a boss-only drop used for weapon infusion. You can only snag four per playthrough - one from each story boss, plus an extra if you track down the optional Alpha Vampire. Spend them wisely because you won't see more until your next run.

Darkhold Chapters and Dracula Letters: The Collectible Grind

If you're hunting achievements or that sweet katana skin, you'll need all eight Darkhold Chapters and the DRACULA letters. This isn't something you can brute-force; it requires hitting specific locations in a precise order.

Darkhold Chapter Locations

You can only collect these during the Night Cycle, and they light the Extra Ball while unlocking the 'Darkhold Chapter' trophy. The eight spots are:

• Left Orbit
• Left Ramp
• Centre Scoop
• Right Ramp
• Right Orbit
• Pop-Bumper Lane
• Spider-Centre Target Bank
• Forsaken Shrine

Here's the catch: you have to manually cash them in by shooting the Forsaken Shrine while each chapter is lit. They don't auto-collect, so if you forget, you'll have to backtrack.

The DRACULA Sequence

Completing DRACULA opens the Blood Feast mini-wizard mode and automatically lights the 8th Darkhold Chapter. You collect letters by shooting major shots in this exact order:

• D (Left Orbit)
• R (Left Ramp)
• A (Right Orbit)
• C (Right Ramp)
• U (Centre Scoop)
• L (Upper Mini-Loop)

The fastest route is: left orbit → left ramp → centre scoop → right ramp → right orbit → pop-bumper lane → drop-target bank → Forsaken Shrine. Nail that sequence and you'll finish the set before the Night Cycle ends.

Your reward? A classic comic-accurate silver-striped katana skin for 100% completion. It's purely cosmetic, but you'll definitely turn heads in photo mode.

Weapon Blueprints and Hidden Bosses

Not every weapon is handed to you through the main story. Some of the best gear is locked behind hidden bosses or tucked away in side content.

Blueprints You Don't Want to Miss

The Sun-Dog shotgun fires magnesium flares and absolutely shreds armored vampires. Its blueprint drops from an optional pyro-vampire mini-boss lurking in the industrial district. There's also a stake-launching SMG that was labeled 'not story critical' in leaked UI footage, which means you'll need to explore thoroughly to find it.

Blade's signature titanium katana splits into two upgrade paths:

• Tech path: Adds a collapsible hand-guard and UV-edge emitter for extra damage against undead
• Occult path: Carves runic etchings into the blade for life-steal effects

Finding Erebus shards reportedly unlocks a hidden third form that merges both tech and magic mods, but you'll need to complete an optional quest chain to make it work.

Hidden Bosses and the Trials

The game doesn't advertise its secret fights. Datamined text references bosses like Varnae (the first vampire), Deacon Frost, and Yiki Onna tucked into hidden lairs across Paris. These aren't just tougher enemies - they're full encounters with unique mechanics.

There's also the 'Trials of the First' - timed combat gauntlets that spawn after discovering hidden sigils scattered throughout the catacombs. Complete them all and you might trigger something bigger.

Here's a tip: clearing every vampire nest in a district can spawn a secret Alpha Vampire in the subway hub during the endgame. It's Arkane's immersive-sim tradition paying off for thorough players, and it's your only shot at that fourth Daywalker Serum.

Advanced Techniques for Quick Progression

Movement Tech: Dash Cancels and Verticality Exploits

Here's the thing about Blade's dash - it's not just movement, it's a hard counter. That single tap will shut down Venom's swing, knock Invisible Woman out of her jump, and ground flyers mid-ability, which means you're playing full denial while you reposition. But the real sauce comes when you chain that dash off ledges for invulnerability frames, and once you get a feel for the timing, you'll be untouchable.

The triple-dash combo is your bread and butter: open with a normal dash, flow into the double-dash finisher by holding LMB for those vampire slashes, then immediately hold E to swap to your gun - you'll cover ground and keep pressure up without dropping your combo. For pure distance, though, you'll want the jump-attack cancel tech. Jump, dash, then cancel with a jump-attack the moment you land; rinse and repeat, and you'll blaze through streets faster than any sprint.

Now for the nasty part - verticality. The slide-uppercut launch lets you chase flyers or reach rooftops from street level in under 1.2 seconds. You execute a grounded string, then hold down+jump on the third-hit freeze-frame, dash within four frames, and buffer an air heavy for a second vertical bump stacked on top of the launch. It's frame-tight, but once it clicks, you'll be bouncing between elevation layers like a pinball. Don't sleep on the wall-run reset either - it's independent of your dash charges, so you can get four to five vertical bounces before stamina decays, which makes it perfect for stalling objectives from high ground.

S-Rank Strategies and Speedrun Tips

If you're pushing for S-rank on Nightmare IV solo, the bar sits at roughly 16 minutes 30 seconds - world record starts at 15:55, so there's absolutely no fat on the run. Every second feeds into three core glitches: Heavy-Jump-Cancel propel, Moonblade Wrath snapshot, and the second train wall-cling skip.

The Heavy-Jump-Cancel is simple on paper: hold Heavy, tap Jump, then Dash within four frames. You'll exit the heavy animation instantly while keeping a forward momentum of 7.8 m/s instead of the base 6 m/s sprint, which adds up to six seconds saved per segment. Next, the Moonblade Wrath snapshot - if you swap to Reaper Mode during the last 0.25 seconds of its activation, you freeze the 3-stack multiplier at 42% extra DPS. That's how you delete 380k HP bars in nine seconds instead of sixteen.

Route optimization is where runs live or die. Bypassing the second train with a wall-cling reset saves eight seconds flat, but the biggest time gain comes from the Blood-Nuke double-dip. Tag two bosses with separate melee combos, pop your ultimate on the lower-HP target, then swap to the second before the animation ends - both take execute damage, which shaves fifteen seconds off multi-boss encounters. One brutal reality check: you need 10k health points before wave twenty on Nightmare IV, so anything that doesn't feed that breakpoint gets skipped, no exceptions.

Ending Variants and 100% Completion Guide

Blade's ending isn't set in stone - your choices during side missions yank the story in three different directions. The Day-walker Redeemed ending is the "good" outcome, but you'll need to rescue at least 80% of civilians while keeping Darkhold temptation events at two or fewer. If you slip below 60% civilians or trigger five-plus temptation events, you'll get the Switchblade ending, where Blade morphs permanently - stats skyrocket, but you lose control forever.

Then there's the hidden King of Death ending, and this is where it gets dark. You must keep a specific civilian named Luzie alive through every single side mission, then pick the dialogue option "You deserve the power, not me." The civilian counter will show 100% saved, but you've just handed a Darkhold Chapter to an unpowered mortal - long-term fate is grim, but it's the only way to see this variant.

For 100% completion, you're looking at a massive checklist: finish the campaign, max out Lily's progression bar, collect 138 items split between cans, data entries, body suits, and Beta energy upgrades, plus knock out every side quest and hidden boss. Speaking of hidden bosses, four only spawn inside specific quest lines - Raven appears during "Rooftop Runner," Sand Wyrm after fishing ten times, and Root Maw only if you spared the previous boss in its chain. It's a completionist nightmare, but that's the price for seeing everything.

From the fundamental parry-dodge-block trinity to the advanced movement tech and speedrun strategies, consistent execution is your key to victory. Internalize these systems, master the poke-parry-punish loop, and you'll be ready to claim your S-ranks and uncover every secret Paris has to offer.