All About Blessings
Blessings are powerful buffs that form a major component of your build in Death Must Die. Every time you level up a god will give you a choice of three blessings, and you’re only allowed to choose one. Additionally, picking one will lock that god into the run, so make sure you’re picking ones that compliment your build.
While they are an essential part of gameplay, if you’re a beginner to Death Must Die they can feel like a complex mechanic that begs some clarification. Specifically, what types of blessings are there? How do you know which ones are stronger than others? What can you do to make sure you get the blessings you want? In this guide, I will teach you all about blessings and how to manipulate the odds to increase your chances of getting the ones you want.
Types of Blessings
There are seven different types of blessings. each one affecting a different aspect of your character. The seven types are Attack, Dash, Strike, Cast, Power, Summon, and Passive. Here is a quick description of each type.
Attack
These change the way your primary attack functions. They will usually increase the base damage, while also causing some extra effect. For example, some blessings will give your attacks a chance to set enemies on fire, or cause enemy seeking orbs to bounce between targets.
Dash
They alter the way your dash works. However, they don’t typically increase dash distance or recharge speed. These blessings can cause gravity wells to appear when you dash, or turn you into a ball of lightning that zips through the battlefield.
Strike
These cast powerful spells that are triggered by your attacks. This may sound similar to Attack blessings, but is actually very different. There is often a bit of confusion when it comes to Attack vs Strike, so it’s important to remember that they are completely different. Strike blessings can cause you to shoot chain lightning when triggered, or cause an earth pillar to stun enemies.
Cast
Casts cause powerful effects to occur once a cooldown timer expires. These blessings will happen automatically once the timer is up, and will keep repeating until you lose the blessing or the run ends. These are some pretty fantastic effects, such as causing landslides under your enemies, or even completely negating the next instance of damage.
Power
Powers are a bit tougher to explain. They are similar to Passive blessings, but they have a much stronger and more direct effect. You generally do not have to activate a Power, it will occur automatically. They are also incredible effects, such as a chance to stun enemies that are about to attack you, or creating a freezing trail wherever you move.
Summon
These function exactly how they sound, by conjuring powerful creatures to fight by your side. They are sometimes triggered when an enemy dies, or they can just be always active. You can create an army of frost wolves, or spawn an unkindness of ravens.
Passive
These provide automatic benefits or bonuses to stats that you do not have to activate. Every god can confer Passive blessings, not just the Moirai. These effects could include restoring life every time you hit an enemy, or having a chance to instantly kill a minion when you attack it.
Each character has a limit to how many blessings they can hold. You can check this limit in the stat screen, or the buffs screen when you’re in the middle of the run. Once those slots are filled, blessings of that type will cease to appear in the god offers.
Of course, there are more to blessings then just their type. There is also the strength of the blessing’s stats to consider. And when it comes to stats there are two factors that play a major role: level and rarity.
What are the Best Blessings?
There is no direct answer to ‘What is the best blessing?’, the best one is whatever fits your build. You can however directly measure a blessing’s strength. A blessing’s level and its rarity determine how powerful the benefits it grants our heroes is. Whenever we level up, as part of the three blessing selection sometimes there will be either a level or rarity upgrade to select. Sometimes, gods will just offer a higher rarity blessing outright.
Level increase upgrades are self explanatory. A level 3 blessings is stronger than a level 1 blessing. It will have slightly stronger stats increases, the effects will deal more damage, or both. Also, gods will typically not just offer blessings of a higher level. You have to have the level 1 version before you start receiving upgrades. You can get level upgrades for a blessing until they reach their max level, which is different depending on the blessing. Most let you level up to 10, others 5, and some extremely powerful ones max out at level 1.
Rarity tier is different. Increasing a blessing’s rarity usually provides massive upgrades to the stats and effects of blessings. The tiers in increasing order of rarity are as follows:
- Novice
- Adept
- Expert
- Master
- Legend
When you receive a blessing, the game rolls to determine its rarity. First, it always starts at Master tier and checks to see if the roll succeeds. If it does, you get a Master tier blessing. If that roll failed, it then checks for the Expert tier. When that roll fails it then checks for Adept, before finally defaulting to Novice when the Adept roll fails.
In the beginning of the game, all characters have the same chances for blessing rarity tiers to appear. In order to get the more rare ones, you have to get better items. Items can have bonus chances to get any of the rarity types from Adept onwards. If you keep stacking the higher types, pretty soon you will see increased offers of those types.
In fact, as you start collecting equipment this will be one of your primary goals in order to progress. The Death Must Die wiki does an excellent job of explaining the base roll percentages, and I highly encourage you to check it out.
You may be wondering if I forgot to mention the Legend tier blessings. Rest assured, I did not, they just take a bit more explaining.
Legend vs Master
When I said that succeeding on the Master roll grants you a Master tier blessing, that wasn’t exactly true. Legend tier blessings can only spawn on Master offers. So when you succeed on a Master roll the game makes one final check for a Legendary offer spawn. If it succeeds, you get a super powerful Legend blessing, and if it fails you get the powerful Master one.
Even with better gear and stacking Master offer percentage boosts, it can still be difficult to get the higher tier blessings. It can feel frustrating and downright unlucky. At times like these you need to manipulate the blessings using a few tools: alterations, banishes, and rerolls.
Manipulating Blessings: Alteration vs Banish vs Reroll
Blessing offers you get in Death Must Die are not set in stone. You can further manipulate the offer pool and fish for the individual blessings and rarities you want by using alterations, banishes, and rerolls. While the three tools all change up your blessing offers, they do so in completely different ways.
Alteration
Alterations completely switch which god is currently offering you blessings. You can use these during the beginning of a run to properly fish for a god that you want. Equipment also seems to boost the amount of alterations more than the other options. Most characters also have a talent that increases the amount of alterations they get. It’s usually found in the first tier of talent trees, so you can freely experiment with alterations that way.
Banish
Banishes will remove one blessing from the offer pool for the remainder of the run. These are great for when there is a boon that you know you will never take, so you can completely remove it as an option. This will free up the pool to allow for hopefully more useful ones to show up. If you use a banish, make sure you do not follow up with an alteration (unless you already have your three gods locked in). Since alterations change out the god, it is a waste of a banish if you opt to banish first.
Reroll
Rerolls will clear the current offers and regenerate offers from the same god. You can use this to hopefully reroll for a higher tier of blessing, or just reroll all the options entirely. Be warned though, you can still get the same offer to appear even when you use a reroll.
By properly utilizing these three tools you can get the blessings you desire, and also increase their rarity.
Blessing Prerequisites
Not all blessings will be available for you to choose right away. Some are locked behind over blessings, meaning you will need to collect the prerequisite ones first.
There are quite a few of these, and they tend to have some pretty powerful effects. They usually cause an exaggerated effect of the prerequisites, or increase in damage based on their type. Let’s take a look at the blessing, Intensity.
As you can see, before this even shows up in the offer pool, you need to already have selected another power specific type blessing. And in fact, Intensity itself is a prerequisite for another blessing Pandemonium. So once you select Intensity, there is a chance for Pandemonium to show up.
It can be pretty difficult to keep track of which blessing causes which others to appear, so it may be best to consult the wiki. If your build calls for a particular blessing, make sure you plan to grab it’s prerequisites as well.
Conclusion
In conclusion, learning how to properly work the blessing mechanic will greatly increase the success rate of your runs. Make sure you take note of the blessing capacities of your character, because once you reach the cap for a particular blessing you will no longer be offered any of that type.
You cannot easily remove a blessing, so be mindful of what you select. Starting out, you will see a lot of novice and adept rarities, but that will change as you gather equipment. Prioritize getting master and legendary offers to really see a difference in your gameplay.
It may take some time getting used to manipulating blessings with alterations, banishes, and rerolls, but mastering this skill is key to perfecting builds. Do not be afraid to use these abilities to fish for your ideal blessings. Pretty soon you’ll be getting high tier blessing offers and enjoying overpowered builds.
I hope you found this guide helpful and have a better understanding of the blessing system in Death Must Die.