How perks work in The Blood of Dawnwalker
Perks are the passive half of character development in The Blood of Dawnwalker. There are 54 ordinary perks plus 9 ultimate perks across the Swordmastery, Vampirism and Witchcraft trees, and each one is learned at a shrine by spending skill points.
Most perks have more than one level, and every level has its own effect and its own cost. Eleven perks stop at a single level, thirteen have two, twenty-seven have three and thirty-nine run to four, so a perk page here lists what each individual level does rather than only the headline effect.
Level requirements and spending order
Perk levels are gated by player level and by total skill points already spent, which quietly enforces a spending order. Level 2 of any perk needs Coen at level 5 with 2 points spent, level 3 needs level 10 and 4 points, and level 4 needs level 15 and 6 points.
That means the early game rewards breadth over depth: the points simply cannot be poured into one perk until the mid game. Planning a build in The Blood of Dawnwalker is mostly about deciding which perks to take to level 1 early and which to save for the level 15 window.
Manual gated perks
A number of perks cannot be learned at all until Coen has found and read the matching manual. There are 49 manuals in Vale Sangora, and each perk page names the manual it needs, so a perk that refuses to unlock at a shrine can be traced back to a book that is still out in the world.
Learning advanced perks also costs time, and time is a real currency in The Blood of Dawnwalker. Enough time segments turn day into night, which swaps Coen form and his equipment preset, so a shrine visit late in the day has consequences beyond the points spent.
Day, night and ultimate choices
Perks are tagged by the phase they work in. Across the three trees, 36 entries work in both forms, 30 work only at night and 24 only during the day, which is why the shown effect on each perk page states its working phase rather than assuming it is always on.
The nine ultimate perks sit at tier 4, and only one can be unlocked per tree. They are the only irreversible decision in the perk system, so each ultimate perk page lays out its full level list before the choice has to be made.