Infamy is the game’s measure of how much your war against the vrakhiri has become public. It is tracked as a level that climbs across your run, and specific levels gate content you otherwise could not reach — so it is not just a status number, it is a progression line on its own. For most of the game it runs quietly in the background; at the thresholds, it opens doors.
What Infamy gates
These are the confirmed thresholds in the game:
| Level | What it unlocks |
|---|---|
| Infamy 4 | Anca at the Crossroads Inn can give you A Bulwark Against Darkness — the quest that starts the Arbiter Armor set. (You can also pick up the Smuggler’s Letter earlier by exploring Svartrau.) |
| Infamy 6 | A headhunter miniboss spawns in the swamps east of Briar Sloughs, dropping the The Runner-Up weapon (otherwise it is sold by the Silver Trader in Svartrau City for 3,750 Denarii). |
| Maximum Infamy | Lets Brencis summon you to the final quest — the last gate before the endgame. |
How it rises
Infamy is built deliberately across your run, not by a single action:
- Resolving the vassal conflicts well is the main driver. All three — Ambrus, Bakir, and Xanthe — must be resolved before the endgame, and a clean resolution builds your Infamy (and your day budget) for the finale. The order and trade-offs are covered in the vampire vassals guide.
- Story-directed tasks also push it. Early in the game, for example, Crake hands you a task specifically to raise your Infamy.
- The Crossroads Inn functions as a progress checkpoint: as your Infamy climbs, the content available there changes, which is why it is a place you keep returning to.
What Infamy does not do
It is worth being clear about the boundary: high Infamy does not itself decide your ending. A clean resolution of each vassal keeps your Infamy and your days where they need to be, and it determines which options and ally-route offers are on the table for the finale — but the ending is decided by the dialogue in A Deal with the Devil, not by how high your Infamy climbed. The key choice timeline and the all endings guide cover how the final conversation resolves.