Corruption is the meter that your entire vampire half is built on. It is not a separate skill tree or a level bar — it is a value that climbs every time you drink blood, and the Vampirism tree is gated directly behind it. If you are playing a night-leaning build, Corruption is the real progression line for the second half of your character, which is why managing it is as important as spending skill points.
How Corruption rises
The only way to raise Corruption is to drink blood — and the source does not matter for the meter:
- Humans (feeding on a person, or on a corpse)
- Animals (wild game, livestock)
- Monsters (drinking from enemies after a kill)
Feeding is therefore doing double duty on every vampire night: it restores your Vampiric Health (your night durability bar) and it pushes Corruption up. You are not choosing between healing and progression at night — the same bite does both. That is the core of the night economy.
What Corruption unlocks
The Vampirism tree does not open flat. It opens as your Corruption rises through blood-drinking and collecting Vrakhiri blood vials, so early in a run you are funding that unlock before the deeper, stronger night nodes become available. Concretely:
- Lower nodes of the Vampirism tree become purchasable as Corruption climbs.
- Higher Corruption tiers gate the stronger perks — the ones that make the night genuinely dangerous to your enemies.
- The tree’s Ultimate Perk sits at Corruption 15. Swordmastery and Witchcraft use point thresholds (35 each); the night tree is gated by Corruption instead.
That last point is why a Vampire build cannot reach the top of its tree without keeping up its feeding. A build calculator plan only works if the run actually generates the Corruption the plan assumes — the build calculator and skill route planner both let you check your Vampirism assumptions against the meter.
How it fits the rest of the loop
Corruption is the link between the three systems that make the vampire half work:
- Blood Hunger is the pressure — the craving that runs through every night and forces you to feed.
- Vampiric Health is the bar feeding restores, so hunger and durability are the same resource.
- Corruption is the progression you get for feeding — the meter that opens the night tree.
So the night is a single loop: feed to survive, and the feeding is what unlocks the next tier of power. The day/night system guide covers how the two halves split, and the skill trees overview lists every Vampirism node with its timing label. If you want to go all in on the night, the Predator build is the point plan that assumes a high-Corruption run.