Catalysts are the core progression currency in Valor Mortis. As William cuts down the corrupted soldiers of the Eternal Guard he gathers these Catalysts and carries them back to a lantern, where they can be spent to make him stronger. The system follows the familiar shape of a Soulslike economy: progress is earned through combat, banked at safe points, and put at risk every time you push deeper into hostile ground.
Earning Catalysts
Catalysts drop from defeated enemies as you fight your way through each region. The plague-twisted forces of Napoleon's army are the main source, so engaging in Combat is the primary way to build up a balance. Clearing tougher foes and pressing into new areas tends to yield more, which encourages players to keep advancing rather than grinding the same easy encounters. The exact drop values and any bonus sources have not been detailed ahead of release.
Spending at Lanterns
Upgrades are purchased at lanterns, which double as the game's checkpoints. Resting at a lantern restores William, refills his healing flask, and lets him convert his stockpiled Catalysts into permanent improvements. Because lanterns are also where you spend, the act of reaching one safely carries weight: it is both your respawn point and your shop.
"Catalysts" is the studio's own term, not a nickname coined by coverage. It appears in a playtest patch note describing a bug where the player, or the player's Catalysts, could respawn far from the place of death.
Character Levels and the Skill Tree
Spending Catalysts raises a character level and opens a skill tree. The October 2025 playtest build capped progression at ten character levels and exposed only the first section of that tree, which the studio described at the time as the first branches of the skill tree. A demo patch note refers to the same idea from the other side, listing a fix for the player progression cap in the demo build. Hands-on accounts add that the tree unlocks through levelling and that some skills sit behind prerequisite upgrades rather than being available from the start.
The attributes that have been named across the playable builds are health, stamina, damage and parry capability.
Named Upgrade Effects
The most detailed hands-on account of a 2026 build listed specific upgrade effects rather than generic stat lines:
Upgrade effect | What it changes |
|---|---|
Increased health | A larger health pool |
Reduced damage taken | Less damage from every source |
Reduced stamina drain while blocking | Blocking becomes sustainable for longer |
Increased posture damage on a successful parry | Parries break an enemy's guard faster |
The same account described a separate class of upgrade it called game-changing, built around a tradeoff rather than a straight improvement. The example given: lose all of your healing flasks in exchange for regaining health when you kill enemies. That is the clearest published sign that the tree is meant to support distinct builds rather than one optimal path.
No cost figures exist for any upgrade. No source has published a single Catalyst price, and the studio has not either.
Risk on Death
Catalysts you are carrying when you die are dropped at the spot of your death and must be recovered. Reaching the drop returns the stack. This is the loop that gives the game its tension and is what makes pushing toward the next lantern feel meaningful rather than routine.
What happens if you die again before you get back there has never been stated. No official post and no hands-on account of any build describes a recovery timer, a second-death wipe, or anything else lost on death besides the Catalysts you were carrying. Genre convention would suggest one, but convention is not a source, so treat the rule as unconfirmed until the shipped game settles it.
Enemies come back too. Hands-on accounts of the playable builds describe rank-and-file foes respawning when you rest, and note that you can choose whether to re-clear them or run past on your way back to where you fell.
Accessories
Beyond raw stat upgrades, William can equip accessories that improve him in specific situations. Hands-on coverage of a 2026 build described accessory slots filled with pickups found in optional side areas and on harder mini-bosses, with the suggestion that loadout tuning is part of how players answer different encounters.
The launch overview names these accessories Ambers. They are found throughout the game and equipped at lanterns as William levels up. A September hands-on build describes a passive bonus that reduces explosion damage. Earlier demo coverage also reported gradual healing and an explosion after destroying a weak point; those remain dated build observations rather than a complete launch-effect list.
Healing
Healing comes from a limited consumable that refills only when you rest at a lantern. Hands-on accounts of the 2026 builds put the carried charges at three, which matches what the storefront screenshots show: a flask icon at the bottom left with a charge count beside it. The studio has not published a name for the item, and coverage has variously called it a potion, a vial and a flask.
Because charges do not regenerate in the field, the flask count is the real timer on any push away from a lantern. It is also the resource the tradeoff upgrade above asks you to give up entirely.
Upgrading Weapons and Powers
Catalysts are not only spent on William directly. Some of the budget covers improvements to the Weapons he carries and the Transmutations he can call on, so that the right-hand-melee plus off-hand-tool framework keeps pace with the difficulty of later regions. Treat Catalysts as a shared budget across all three of William's progression tracks rather than dedicating them to any one side.
Tips for New Players
A few rules of thumb help with the loop in the opening hours. Spend small stockpiles before pushing into a new area rather than carrying large balances into unfamiliar territory. Treat each lantern as a goal in its own right, not just a waypoint to the next boss. When you are recovering a stack after death, take the safest route back even if it means avoiding fights you would normally take on. The Getting Started page covers the wider early-game advice these tips slot into.
What Is Still Open
As of September 13, 2026, across the official store listing, the official site, the studio’s Steam development posts, the published trailers and every hands-on account of a playable build, the studio has published no Catalyst drop values, no upgrade costs, no stat-per-point figures, and no name for the healing item. The full skill tree has never been shown beyond the first branches exposed in the October 2025 playtest, the ten-level cap in that build was a test limit rather than the game's, and nothing has been said about respeccing, new-game-plus carryover, or whether accessories can be upgraded. Most importantly, no source describes what happens to a dropped stack if you die again before recovering it.
Late preview progression
The September preview build uses connected skill-tree nodes rather than a conventional list of attributes. Spending enough points opens further nodes. Observed choices include more maximum health or stamina, stronger posture damage from parries and a node that lets melee attacks extract Nephtoglobin. Without that node, the preview instead uses shooting enemy nodules to obtain the supernatural resource.
Healing-flask potency and charge count can also be raised using upgrade materials in that build. These are observed progression options, not published cost tables. The launch overview separately confirms that weapons and magic can be levelled up.