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Notoriety System
September 11, 2026 at 01:25 AM
Added the Court screen and the named infamy ranks, the boyar terminology, the shipped ways to raise infamy, the effect on prices and silver trading, and the rebel-faction entry requirement
Coen's notoriety increases as the player disrupts Brencis's operations, whether by slaying his soldiers, completing quests that undermine his authority, or otherwise working against the vampire regime in Vale Sangora. The system creates a dynamic where the player's aggression has visible, escalating consequences in the game world.
The in-game UI labels this meter as infamy, which is the term Coen and the developers use in their commentary; both names refer to the same mechanic. The May 2026 press cycle settled on infamy as the proper noun. Older preview material called it notoriety. They are the same gauge.
In the shipped game the meter is not a bare number. Infamy runs on a numbered track with named ranks, and it lives in a menu tab called the Court, alongside portraits of the regime's senior vampires. Guide coverage of the released build gives the fourth rank the name Notorious and reports that new kinds of enemy presence appear as the track climbs: soldier pickets and military checkpoints start showing up from the second level onward.
That coverage also records the in-world word for Brencis's senior vampires. They are boyars, and each one's portrait in the Court screen carries its own anger reading. This page uses officer and boyar interchangeably; the game's own term is boyar.
As notoriety rises, Brencis responds with increasingly restrictive countermeasures.
Edicts: Brencis issues new rules designed to thwart the player. A new edict is proclaimed at sunrise, when the night ends and a new in-game day begins, so each cycle on the 30-day clock can carry a fresh restriction. The higher the infamy meter, the harsher the edict and the more challenging the world becomes.
Increased patrols: more soldiers on roads and in villages.
Curfews: restrictions on movement during certain hours.
City lockdowns: in extreme cases, Brencis locks down Svartrau, making traversal through the capital far more difficult.
Higher notoriety also makes feeding at night more dangerous. With more guards present, the blood craving system becomes harder to manage safely, increasing the risk of involuntary draining incidents.
One consequence that only surfaced after release is financial. Commodity prices across the valley climb as infamy climbs, so an aggressive run pays more for everything it buys. Silver cuts the other way. Silver is contraband under the regime, and selling it is tied to infamy rather than blocked by it: coverage of the shipped game reports a trader in the capital who will buy silver once a quest has opened the conversation, with a high enough infamy level eventually opening the same trade on its own. A notorious Coen is a worse customer and a better smuggler.
Notoriety is not purely negative. Citizens and rival factions notice the player's actions. People recognize and fear Coen. More importantly, high notoriety improves standing with anti-Brencis factions who are actively rebelling against the vampire regime, including the resistance led by Marat, known in the shipped game as Crake.
That is more than flavour. The rebels will not take Coen in until he has reached the Notorious rank, so infamy is the entry requirement for the faction questline rather than a side effect of it. Guide coverage also reports a quest chain for a legendary armour set opening at the fourth infamy level. See Factions.
Creative director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz described the social dimension: notoriety is more than Brencis and his soldiers; it is also the people in the valley, who recognize Coen and respond to him. The same statement underlines that elevated infamy actively helps in specific quest situations.
Killing soldiers or officers
Completing quests that undermine Brencis's authority
Stealing when caught
Going on rampages in populated areas
Specific dialogue choices that publicly oppose the regime
Direct attacks on Brencis's operations: blood warehouses, supply convoys, officer outposts
Coverage of the shipped game is more specific about which of these pays best. Each boyar has a set of named operations scattered through the regions they hold, with names built from the boyar's own: cellars, transports, collectors and prisoners. Clearing one of those raises both infamy and that boyar's anger. Soldier camps are the cheap option, because they cost only one segment of the 30-day cycle and frequently drop a Swordmastery manual on top of the infamy. Defeating a boyar outright is the single largest jump.
Infamy has a defined maximum. An achievement is awarded for reaching peak infamy in Vale Sangora, which confirms the track has a ceiling rather than climbing indefinitely. Reaching it is a deliberate playstyle rather than an accident, since it closes off as much as it opens. Launch coverage reports that the top of the track is reached by defeating all three of the named boyars, Ambrus, Bakir and Xanthe.
Two of the repeatable ways to provoke Brencis are confirmed by their own achievements. His flags are placed around the valley and every one of them can be torn down, and the vrakhiri transports that move blood through the valley can be destroyed, with an achievement for taking out eight of them. Both are attacks on the occupation's visible infrastructure, so both feed the escalation the system tracks.
The notoriety system intersects with several other mechanics. The time limit means that countermeasures like lockdowns cost the player precious time to navigate around. The Quest System responds to notoriety levels, with some paths opening or closing based on the player's reputation. And the Narrative Sandbox ensures that the consequences of notoriety ripple outward in unpredictable ways, affecting NPCs and quest outcomes throughout the valley.
Players face a genuine strategic choice about how openly to oppose Brencis. A cautious approach keeps notoriety low, making movement and nighttime feeding easier, but may limit access to anti-Brencis faction quests and rewards. An aggressive approach builds notoriety quickly, gaining rebel allies but triggering harsh countermeasures. The right balance depends on the player's priorities and how they want to approach the assault on Greifberg.
Infamy is the global meter that tracks Coen's overall threat level to the regime, but each of Brencis's officers also tracks their own personal aggression bar toward the player. When the player is interacting with an officer's territory or operations, that officer's aggression level appears in the upper-right corner of the screen as a separate meter from the global infamy display.
These two meters are distinct. Infamy is regime-wide and is expressed through edicts, patrol density, and city lockdowns. Officer aggression is local to a single lieutenant and reflects how much the player has personally disrupted that officer's plans. Both meters rise in parallel when the player attacks operations tied to a specific officer, so striking the same lieutenant repeatedly fills both bars at the same time.
Filling an officer's aggression bar to its peak unlocks a new questline focused on that officer. Each questline shapes the player's eventual confrontation with Brencis in a different way, depending on which officers the player has fully provoked and how those personal feuds resolve. Multiple open world activities are tied to each officer, all connected to that officer's specific operations, so the player can deliberately pick a target and escalate. The May 2026 press cycle confirmed the same panel surfaces individual gauges for Ambrus, Xanthe, and Bakir simultaneously.
The clearest illustration uses Ambrus, one of Brencis's lieutenants. The vrakhiri store collected human blood in officer-managed warehouses, where the drained blood of prisoners awaits distribution to Brencis and his officers. Ambrus is the lieutenant responsible for safeguarding several of these blood-storage warehouses scattered across Vale Sangora. When the player clears a soldier camp tied to Ambrus or destroys one of his blood warehouses, both the global infamy meter and Ambrus's personal aggression bar rise. Sustaining that pressure long enough to max Ambrus's bar opens a dedicated questline against him, branching the larger Brencis confrontation accordingly.
Clearing soldier camps tied to a specific officer's command
Destroying officer-managed blood warehouses, such as Ambrus's storage sites
Completing open world activities flagged on the map as belonging to that officer
Interrupting supply runs and patrols connected to the officer's logistics network
Each completed disruption raises both the regime-wide infamy meter and the targeted officer's aggression bar, so a focused campaign against one lieutenant produces faster questline unlocks while also escalating the global response from Brencis. A more scattered approach across multiple officers spreads aggression thinner but still fills the global infamy meter through the same actions.