Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines – What I Wish I Knew Before Starting the Game

I started playing Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines way after it was released. It has become my favorite game even with its difficulties. I am starting to get friends into it so I feel I should share knowledge with new players.

Choose Your Clan Wisely

Please note: all credit goes to LunaNightbird !

Bloodlines has an amazing array of different characters to play and they can change how the story runs. The quiz is a good start to finding out how you want to play but for a first run-through, you want to be picky about especially clans.

Easiest clans: These clans make the game fairly easy. There is one. It is Tremere. They are overpowered and have always been even in the regular RPG. Thaumaturgy makes combat easy and Dominate can help with dialogue.

Easy but not Tremere: If you are starting but don’t want to do Tremere (maybe for reasons to do with their history) you should go for Toreador or Brujah. Celerity and social disciplines make the game easier. There are even some side missions that are almost impossible without high Celerity.

Medium: These clans are Gangrel and Venture. They are fine but do not have as overpowered powers as the ones above. The Ventrue’s weakness can be hard mid-game with sewer missions since they won’t drink low-quality blood.

Hard: Do not play this clan first time unless you want a fully stealth game! Nosferatu are so ugly that a mortal just seeing them is a masquerade violation. Obfuscate does make stealth missions easier but the fact that you cannot be seen makes the game so much harder. Also, they cannot have high seduction so options become out of the question.

Easy but oh boy spoilers: Malkavians are known for telling the future in crazy ways and this game is no exception. They say spoilers in weird ways so you may not know it was a spoiler until after it has come to pass. This was my first clan and I do not regret it. It can make it hard for dialogue too because you may not know what you are saying. Obfuscate and Dementation makes this an easy clan but a weird first play.

Doors Are Your Enemy

I can get very frustrated in games and Bloodlines is no exception. If you try walking through a door while opening it it will glitch and try to both open and shut at once. This is very annoying. My favorite thing to do to make these glitches and bugs better is yell at my screen. This relieves stress and takes very little effort. I wish younger me knew that rage can be good in games so long as you cause no harm.

Fighting Is Not Always the Answer

In most games fighting is almost always the answer. This game will punish you if you choose to go in guns blazing 24/7. You will want to figure out how to utilize dialogue options and stealth early on. The late game has a lot more fight or fight options but in the early game, it can be better to understand that you have options and that you need to treat people nicely so they don’t try to kill you.

I am sorry to the character I was rude to in my first playthrough and ended up killing even though they are usually a nice character!

Anywho, be nice and stuff I guess.

Volodymyr Azimoff
About Volodymyr Azimoff 15056 Articles
I love games and I live games. Video games are my passion, my hobby and my job. My experience with games started back in 1994 with the Metal Mutant game on ZX Spectrum computer. And since then, I’ve been playing on anything from consoles, to mobile devices.

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