NOTE: The guide is still under construction, but the content itself is already done. Just needs some pictures and videos to pretty things up and organize things better.
Disclaimer:
This build was written without consulting any other build guides, as I wanted to be surprised by the loot and abilities I could acquire in the game and to come up with my own build without being affected by the meta established by others. If there are any similarities to any builds out there, it is purely coincidental.
Preface:
This build requires that the game be completed at least once. There is no need to start an NG+ run. Just finishing the game will be sufficient to fulfill the conditions. Although this build can’t be used for the beginning of the game, it can be used for any succeeding playthroughs and for co-op.
Expect build-related minor spoilers in this guide.
Introduction:
This is an all-rounder 2H sword build that plays fast and is highly effective in clearing maps, hunting bosses, and playing co-op.
Equipment:
Each time an NG+ is started, the items sold and the loots dropped are reset, so make sure to complete the following loadout before starting an NG+ run.
Main Weapon: Argent Wolf King’s Blade Fortification +10
The strongest great sword in the game and the namesake of the guide. Its strong attack, when held or pressed, releases an arc-shaped dark-red energy beam reminiscent of Kurosagi Ichigo’s Getsuga Tenshou from the popular anime series, Bleach; hence, the name of the build. When pressed, this strong attack quickly covers a wide arc in front of the player, staggering any non-boss enemies caught within its range. It has the fastest strong attack for great swords, completing at around 0.6 seconds versus the 1.2 seconds of Zweihander or the nearly 3.0 seconds of the Judgment Edge. For the largest non-boss enemies, a second attack is required to inflict the stagger, but there’s a way to make that a non-issue. The arc shape of the attack is perfect for catching multiple enemies in a single blow, and while the strong attack consumes one ichor to use due to the energy beam, each physical hit grants one ichor back, cancelling out the ichor consumption, and making it possible to stock up ichor when multiple enemies are hit. The energy beam also makes it so that even enemies further back are not spared from its wrath. The fortification augmentation increases both the attack of the weapon and its already high-defense, making it possible to block many physical attacks without taking any damage. Be it in power, speed, range, the shape of its cleave, or defense, the Argent Wolf King’s Blade Fortification excels in them all. It is truly the strongest sword in the game.
Where to find?
This weapon can be looted from the last boss of the game. In my experience, it is a 100% chance drop in a single player run. I have not tested it with a distress signal on my end, but I do know that helping other players fight the boss does not drop this weapon. The ‘Fortification’ augmentation can be added after getting the weapon by first procuring the ‘Atlas Chrome’ from Yakumo, and then having Murasame apply it.
Blood Veil: Blackblood Liberator/Tracer/Strife Fortification +10
The Blackblood Liberator can be found in Ashen Cavern, and the other colors (tracer or strife) can be purchased from the store after finding the base version in Ashen Cavern. You will want to augment it afterwards with the Fortification Transformation to maximize the dark gift stat, which we want as high as possible to increase the efficacy of our Bloodsucking Blades. Of course, this also means that any bloodveil with high dark gift stat like Suicide Spur will also do.
Should you not wish to use the Bloodsucking Blades, or prefer to gear up for higher defense/resistance, then refer to the list below. For an NG run, I recommend getting one of everything except the drain-related bloodveils, as they’re more playstyle dependent than situational. If you’re getting only one, then get the Garb Fire, as it’s a really huge help to the fire map.
Best Balance, Fire Defense, and Overall defensive and resistance stats: Silver/Sanguine/Dusk Garb Fortification/Fire (Augment with fortification for better defensive stats, and fire for fire defense)
Best Drain Rating: Blackblood Liberator/Tracer/Strife Devour
Best Drain Attack: Venous Claw Intensification +10 (DLC)
Best Balance, Defense, and Venom Resistance: GXL Defender/Guardian/Overgear Fortification (There’s a venom res bonus augmentation as well, but I don’t recommend it given how high the base venom res already is and how trivial venom is in the first place)
Best Blood Defense: Nightspear/Midnight Sun Spear/Dawn Spear Fortification
Best Ice Defense: Winter/Tireless/Sanctuary Mantle Ice
Best Lightning Defense: Seraph/Swan/Raven Fatigues Lightning
Best Slow Resistance: Blue/Umber/Dark Hounds Slow
Best Leak Resistance and Stun Resistance: Night/Midnight Sun/Dawn Fang
Best Lightest Bloodveil and Inhibit Resistance: Ivory Grace Inhibit (Has a weight of 12.)
Blood Code: Queenslayer
This blood code is automatically acquired after progressing through the story. It is impossible to miss out on, short of never progressing the story. This is arguably the best blood code in the game due to its two unique skills, which we will be taking full advantage of.
Passives
Two-Handed Sword Mastery
Blood Code: Atlas
How to get: The blood code is acquired by talking to Yakumo after activating the first mist in the Hollowing Pit.
Effect:20% bonus to attack while using two-handed swords.
Swift Destruction
Blood Code: Hephaestus
How to get: Talk to Murasame after completing the desert story mission.
Effect: 20% damage bonus when mobility is quick. The damage bonus is applied upon hit and not shown on the ‘attack’ attribute in the status page.
Strength/Willpower Up
Blood Code: Scathach
How to get: Gather the scathach vestiges from the fire map and choose to restore the memory when given the option to at the end of the map. You will get the blood code afterwards.
Effect: +1 strength and willpower
Tirelessness
Blood Code: None
How to get: Complete the sidequest given to you by an NPC at the Provisional Government Center. It’s just at the end of the halls along the way to the main boss. You won’t miss him.
Effect Increases your stamina regeneration rate.
For the first two passive skills, we’re only stacking up damage. The Two-Handed Sword Mastery and Swift Destruction offer the most damage at 20% each. There’s another passive which grants bonus damage, but it only gives us around a 10.9% damage increase despite its stringent condition of requiring that our hp be at or below 50%. Compared to that, the Two-Handed Sword Mastery and the Swift Destruction have much easier conditions to fulfill and give much more damage. The Two-Handed Sword Mastery only requires that we use a two-handed sword, while Swift Destruction only requires that our mobility be Quick. For the former, that just means equipping our choice of weapon, and for the latter, that just means activating Final Journey. Final Journey will always be active when fighting bosses, so that’s a non-issue. Of course, that means it’s only in effect when fighting bosses, but it’s still a non-issue, as we already have more than enough damage to deal with non-boss enemies. If you still want to switch it out with something else outside of boss fights, then Goddess’s Smile (HP restore when focus gauge is maxed) is a worthwhile contender for co-op and Weapon Drain Rating Up is always a welcome addition
Relevant stat bonuses increase attack by around 2.9%, and then 3% from A+ to S, and then 4% from S to S+, so there’s not much damage bonus to get from there. We have one just to meet the prerequisite of Flashing Fang. If the specific strength increase passive listed above is not available, then replace it with another strength increase passive. There’s a lot of them.
Lastly, we have Tirelessness to increase our stamina regen rate. This will significantly reduce our downtimes and keep us in the fight more frequently. I previously used the Weapon Drain Rating Up for this slot, but after finding out that the Bloodsucking Blades scale with the Dark Gift stat, I decided to use Tirelessness here instead.
Active Skills
Blood Sacrifice
Blood Code: Hunter
Effect: Restores ichor in exchange for health
Bloodsucking Blades
Blood Code: Artemis
Effect: Increases your and your partner’s weapon drain rating. Scales with the dark gift stat.
Cleansing Light
Blood Code: Queenslayer
Effect: Restores up to 75% of damage taken
The first ability gives us ichor in exchange for hp, allowing us to overcome our max ichor limitations to cast all of our buffs before a boss fight. It is to be switched out with Merciless Reaper or Flashing Fang upon fulfilling its purpose, as these are the two skills that don’t need to be activated before a fight.
During battles, our ichor recovery will be reliant mostly on Bloodsucking Blades, which when coupled with a bloodveil with a very high dark gift stat, significantly increases our weapon drain rating, allowing us to recover about 3 ichor per hit on the enemy. This gives us all the ichor we will ever need.
The third skill mitigates damage by up to a whopping 75% by restoring our health after a second or so of receiving damage. This is a skill unique to the Queenslayer blood code and is arguably one of the best skills at increasing survivability. This should be kept active at all times, regardless of whether we’re fighting a boss or not. With Bloodsucking Blades, there is simply no way to run out of ichor normally.
Shifting Hollow
Blood Code: Ranger
Effect: Dash forward in mist form. A blink-esque ability.
Code Vein’s version of the ‘Blink’. It paints a very Bleach-esque picture when combined with our ‘Getsuga Tenshou’ strong attack. Use this to attack or run, or even better, to attack and run. This ability also directly counters the boss that afflicts slow, as slow only affects movement, and with this ability, movement doesn’t really matter. I’ll talk more about how to use this in its own section later.
Concentration
Blood Code: Assassin
Effects: Temporarily reduces stamina consumption. The effect ends when you take damage.
At my current level as of the time of this guide’s writing, Level 255, using this allows me to use the strong attack 7 times or dodge 17 times consecutively as opposed to 5 consecutive strong attacks or 12 consecutive dodges without it. As most of our maneuvering will rely on Shifting Hollow, this skill’s main purpose is to increase our uptime and keep us attacking for longer.
Flashing Fang
Blood Code: Atlas
Effect: Doubles the damage of the next attack.
Merciless Reaper
Blood Code: Assassin
Effect: Ignores some armor on the next attack.
Overdrive/Flame Weapon/Blood Weapon/Frost Weapon/Lightning Weapon
Blood Code: Assassin/Prometheus/Dark Knight/Fionn/Mercury
Effect: Temporarily increases your and your partner’s attack. Effect ends when you take damage / Temporarily adds [choice of element] to your and your partner’s current weapon.
For our choice of nukes we’ll be using gifts that buff our attack instead of skills that directly deal damage. These are to be used in conjunction with either a normal strong attack (174% damage more than normal attack) or, ideally, a charged strong attack (330% more damage than a normal attack.) The charged strong attack when coupled with attack buffs such as the two listed above trump any other skill when it comes to damage. The only downside is that it takes two seconds to use it, so it is only really usable when there’s a big enough opening. Fortunately, these openings do present themselves after hitting any boss for a while. Just be careful not to confuse the boss preparing to fight or invoking a big skill for an opening, as they usually have significantly higher defense then.
Unlike, the first two skills, the third skill isn’t limited to only one attack. It fulfills the same purpose of increasing damage. Use Overdrive if the boss has high elemental defense, and use one of the elements, if the boss has an elemental weakness. You can refer to this post here by /u/CrayzMike1991 CLICK HERE FOR LINK TO REDDIT GUIDE If you don’t want to think, then just use Overdrive. It does plenty of damage either way. Personally, that’s what I do.
Final Journey
Blood Code: Queen Slayer
Effect: Restores HP to full. Increases attack by 50%. Sets mobility to quick and enables the 20% damage buff from Swift Destruction. Last for 3 minutes, upon which the player dies.
A skill that increases damage at the cost of putting our life on a timer. Use this only before fighting a boss.
Note that you will not be revived by your companion should you die because of the timer. Also, this skill can be cancelled by the inhibit ailment and it will also automatically be cancelled upon defeating a boss.
Gameplay
Using the Argent Wolf King’s Blade
To effectively use the Argent Wolf King’s Blade, always use the uncharged strong attack. If there is more than one enemy, then try to get all of them caught in the arc of the attack to stunlock them – if the situation allows it – to death. Each physical hit will grant you around three ichor minus the ichor consumption of the blade’s strong attack. Remember that disengaging the lock is an option if a better angle is needed to hit all enemies.
If getting the enemies to clump up is not an option, then focus on reducing their numbers instead. Leave the tankiest ones for last, and focus on the ranged enemies first, and then the lowest hp melee enemies. You can gauge their hp by how big they are. The bigger they are, the more hp; the smaller they are, the less hp.
Avoid using the square attack and the forward R1 + triangle attack because they tend to miss, and even if they work, they can usually only hit one enemy at a time since they’re both downward slashes. The enemies need to line up in front of you in a column in order for these to hit multiple opponents, which isn’t going to happen often since you enemies normally want to surround you, and the natural tendency is to line up in a row as they try to swarm you.
The few exceptions when a normal attack could be used:
1.) Reaching an enemy that’s standing on a ledge above you. The square attack will allow you to hit that.
2.) If you need to quickly fill up ichor and don’t want to use Blood Sacrifice. You can press triangle, then square, then triangle, then square again… And so on and so forth . This will use the second attack of the wolf king blade which is a diagonal instead of a straight downward slash, and will hit more enemies.
3.) The enemy is on the ground and can’t move. Normally, this is when you use your charged sword attack, but if you want to take this opportunity to recover ichor, then you can use the normal attack instead, as it doesn’t consume ichor. Just hope the enemy doesn’t somehow manage to get away or the aiming system doesn’t screw you over, because it’s very easy to miss with the first normal attack.
Lastly, remember that the Argent Wolf King’s Blade has a very long reach. Practice with it because it’s really longer than it looks. Also, you have to take into consideration that there’s about a .6 seconds delay before the strong attack is completed, so if your target is approaching you, you can start your attack earlier to make it land right as soon as he enters your range.
Using Shifting Hollow
Basic: Engage Lock -> Shifting Hollow
This will teleport you in the direction of your locked-on target. If you’re already right next to them, it will just vanish you and change your position slightly. Although your position isn’t changed much at point blank, you can still cast this gift blank at the right timing to dodge attacks.
Basic 2: Shifting Hollow
If you don’t engage lock, then you will just blink toward whatever direction you’re facing. By playing with the lock system, you can blink toward enemies, past them, or in a completely different direction.
Basic Combo: Shifting Hollow -> Strong Attack
This is the simplest way to use Shifting Hollow in conjunction with Argent Wolf King’s Blade. This will teleport you in front of the enemy and then land a strong attack.
Double Blink Combo: Shifting Hollow -> Strong Attack -> Disengage Lock -> Shifting Hollow -> Reengage Lock -> Forward -> Strong attack
This is a continued version of the basic Shifting Hollow combo. What this does is it teleports you in front of the enemy, so you can smack them, and then it teleports you behind them, so you can smack them again from behind. Although there’s no backstab damage in this game, by positioning yourself behind them, you open them up to a pincer position, with you behind, and your companion in front. If they want to attack you, they will have to turn around first (most of the time, anyway), but doing so will open up their back for your companion. This is particularly useful for the enemies that need to be attacked twice to be staggered or just a way in general to get out of the way of an attack while simultaneously getting a better position.
Continuous Back Stab: Disengage Lock -> Shifting Hollow -> Reengage Lock -> Forward -> Strong Attack -> Repeat…
You can repeat the Double Blink Combo by just repeating this part of the combo. If it’s a non-boss enemy, then you can repeat the combo indefinitely, as they won’t be able to get out of it, if it’s a boss, then you’ll eventually have to stop. This is useful for dodging or keeping the enemy in a pincer position.
Also do try to avoid pre-pressing the attack buttons after a Shifting Hollow, as doing so will lock you into attacking, preventing you from dodging in case you misjudged the attack timing.
Boss Strategy
Bosses in Code Vein are more or less the same, so this strategy should work for all of them.
Begin by switching out Merciless Reaper with Blood Sacrifice, then buff yourself in the following order:
Bloodsucking Blades
Blood Sacrifice
Overdrive/Element Buff
Blood Sacrifice
Concentration
Blood Sacrifice
Final Journey
Blood Sacrifice
Cleansing Light
Blood Sacrifice to max ichor, using potions as needed
Use potions to max hp
Switch out Bloodsucking Blades with Merciless Reaper
After buffing and healing yourself, go to the boss (don’t run) and hit them. You won’t do much damage at the start, because when they’re preparing to fight or when they’re in the middle of casting one of their bigger skills, they’ll have significantly higher defense. Hit them and move out of the way as needed, either via Shifting Hollow or your basic dodge. Remember, if you’re slowed, just use Shifting Hollow to move instead. When they start moving, you’ll start doing significantly more damage. Continue hitting them, moving out of the way as necessary, and eventually, you’ll get your first down. Keep a sharp eye out for this down. You want to catch it as soon as it begins to happen.
When you see the down happening, immediately cast Merciless Reaper and Flashing Fang (spam those buttons), and then hold down your triangle button while facing the enemy (charged strong attack). Holding down the triangle button while you’re casting a spell won’t begin the strong attack, and if you spam the triangle button, you’ll just end up doing a normal strong attack. You have to time it properly.
When you invoke Flashing Fang, your character will rest his sword on his other hand. Your cue is when that sword is moved out of that other hand. Hold that triangle button the moment that sword begins to move out of that hand.
If you do all this properly, the boss will either be within an inch of his life or just straight up die. It depends on your level and how much damage you did prior the charged attack.
If the boss is still alive, just repeat the previous strategy. You probably won’t need to do a second charged strong attack.
Last tips
1. Just because you can teleport, doesn’t mean you should always teleport. If the enemy has already seen you and is approaching you, and you blink right in front of him, you’re likely to get hit. You can just deal with those enemies normally by blocking first and then attacking. If you want to be flashy, then use the double blink combo.
2. The largest non-boss enemies need to be hit twice to stagger, the double blink combo when properly executed can deal with them effectively. I think it might also be possible to just attack them from range, and then walk up to them and hit them, but I need to confirm that first.
3. The combos I wrote about are just examples. You can mess around with the locking system and shifting hollow to adapt to any situation. You can also synergize shifting hollow with your dodges (particularly in Final Journey mode) and your special attacks when focused if you feel it’s necessary.
4. Keep cleansing light active whenever there are enemies around or when you’re taking damage. We have plenty of ichor, and that skill’s job on top of giving us more ichor is to mitigate damage, so even if it costs 10 ichor to cast, keep casting it. We have more than enough ichor.
5. If you miss your strong attacks, it will cost you ichor. Don’t miss.
6. The Argent Wolf King Blade Fortification +10 can stagger any non-boss enemy in one hit with few exceptions that require a second hit. This only applies to non-bosses, though, and bosses and unique enemies will always be able to escape your stunlock, so beware.
7. Keep Cleansing Light and Bloodsucking Blades active at all times.
Closing Remarks
…And it’s done. Finally. I said it in the last guide, and I’ll say it again, but these guides always take way longer than I think they will. But it’s not really the end, though, as I still need to add pictures – it’s very bare-bones right now – and test some stuff. I’m guessing people are going to start demanding for videos again, but well… This time I have OBS, so we’ll see.
Well, that’s it for now. Thank you for reading my guide, and if you do choose to follow it, I hope you enjoy it. Cheers!
FAQ
I’ll copy any answers to questions in the comments here.
Change Log
1.0 to 1.1
*Blood Offering now to be used only before a boss fight to activate abilities.
*Weapon Drain Rating Up replaced with Tirelessness
*Blood Offering replaced with Bloodsucking Blades
*Now recommending blackblood liberator as the main bloodveil due to the inclusion of Bloodsucking Blades
*Changed the Boss Tips section to Boss Strategy
*Fixed Shifting Hollow Blood Code from Prometheus to Ranger
*Fixed Overdrive Blood Code from Overdrive to Assassin
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