Diablo 4: How to Equip and Use Vampiric Powers

Diablo 4’s Season of Blood recently launched, just in time for Halloween. This time, the season revolves around everything vampires. Players can fight new, vampiric enemies and also channel some of their powers to gain an advantage in battle. This new season lets you fight fire with fire, but only if you figure out how to use these new abilities.

Before you can even start unleashing vampiric powers on your foes, you have to progress a bit through the season’s story quest chain, specifically up to “The Hunter’s Chase” (the mission where you investigate the Magistrate’s blood shrine in Ken Bardu). Once you have a vampiric ability, simply open your character sheet (“C” key on PC), and select the new tab labeled “Vampiric Powers” (it should be next to the Equipment tab). Then select a power, drag it into the “Sanguine Circle” in the Vampiric Powers tab, and slot it in. You can have up to five powers active at a time, and you can switch them out any time you want, but unless you have the correct armor, they won’t do you any good.

At the center of the Sanguine Circle, you will see the words “Vampiric Powers,” “Active” and “Inactive.” The numbers next to the latter two tell you how many abilities are, well, active and how many aren’t.

You see, each vampiric power is connected to the Season of Blood’s new mechanic: Pacts. These are a stat/resource unique to the season and come in Ferocity (the spiked cap), Divinity (the grail), and Eternity (the skull), and each piece of armor has combinations of Pacts. The rarer the item, the more Pacts it can have, but like other loot stats, these are primarily random. You can add Pacts onto an item with special Pact consumables that drop from enemies, and if you want to get rid of an item’s Pacts, you need another consumable, Cleansing Acid.

Once an armor has been reset, you can add whatever Pacts you want. So long as you have armor with enough relevant Pacts, you can have all five vampiric powers active. If the Sanguine Circle says you have one inactive ability, you will need to either redo your Pact build or equip different powers. Or both.

In order to acquire new vampiric powers, you need to start killing monsters in special areas known as Blood Harvest zones. Shocking, I know, but it gets more complicated. Some will drop an item known as Potent Blood. You can also acquire this seasonal resource by killing Seekers (you can find them in dungeons or summon them with Blood Lures), opening Seeker’s Caches with Seeker Keys, and opening certain rewards from the Hunter’s Acclaim Board. To progress through the board, just keep killing enemies in Blood Harvest zones until you have enough Hunter’s Acclaim to acquire a reward.

Once you have 25 Potent Blood, you can trade them in on the Vampiric Powers tab for one of three random abilities. While you can unlock most skills through this process, some skills are only available through the Hunter’s Acclaim Board. If the upgrade pool provides a power you already own, you can choose to upgrade it instead. When spending 25 Potent Blood, keep in mind that you cannot take back your decision. If the game pulls powers you don’t want to unlock or upgrade, you are out of luck. You must pick one of them, and if you don’t and close the power tab, the game will pick one for you. 

And that’s really all you need to know about vampiric powers. Since these seasonal skills are all passive, read what each one does and pick the skills you think will suit your playstyle best. Just keep in mind that stronger abilities require more Pacts, so don’t expect to equip the best the game has to offer, especially if you don’t have a full set of Legendary or Unique armor.