Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines 2 Walkthrough Guide

Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines 2 is the sequel to the famous hit about the life of vampires in the modern world. Although the RPG elements have been greatly reduced in this new game, there are still plenty of controversial and non-obvious moments that can become problematic. In this guide, we've prepared a detailed walkthrough to help you deal with them.

Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines 2 has extremely poor tutorials for the basic mechanics and rules of this world. Therefore, to enjoy the game, it’s critically important to know a few features.

As we mentioned above, there are practically no RPG elements in the new game, nor is there any proper stealth. You will be taught about stealth, but most enemy arenas are designed in such a way that you cannot avoid direct confrontations. The only way to have a "stealthy playthrough" is to drink from as many enemies as possible before they turn around. The AI in the game is terrible, so sometimes you can actually manage this. There is also an ability from one of the clans that makes you invisible for a limited time right after draining an enemy. It's extremely useful, but we'll talk about clans later.

The dialogues are done in a similar style. You can and should ask about everything available, but even annoyed characters will still give you a new lead to progress. You won’t be able to radically change events, although some choices do appear from time to time. Don’t be afraid of them—you still won’t permanently fall out with any allies.

All your gameplay decisions should be based on the above information—it will make the playthrough much easier.

You won’t be able to avoid open fights. There are quite a few vampire classes or clans, and at first you might be confused, but the truth is that only the active abilities differ. You can preview all of them in advance to get a complete idea of the options each clan offers.

At this point, you should remember our words about fighting. The ancient vampire Faiir—your main character—fights exclusively with fists and magic, while his opponents aren’t shy about using steel pipes, pistols, and shotguns. There are always plenty of punching bags, and they all attack in groups. That’s why you should choose a class that’s good at open melee combat, for example, Brujah.

Don’t worry, as you progress you’ll get the chance to unlock skills from all the clans, but at first you must be able to fight well. The developers haven’t heard of balance, so some classes are much weaker than the melee ones. If you ignore our advice, you risk dying two or three times more often even on normal difficulty.

However, it is worth noting that the true playthrough intended by the developers involves a real mix of your skills. You will receive all your clan abilities during the introduction, so later on you will only be unlocking abilities from other clans. Here you can think and pick what suits you personally. Earlier, we mentioned the ability that makes you invisible after draining an enemy. This will help speed up the numerous repetitive battles a bit.

Most often, you'll find yourself on improvised arenas with opponents—floors, rooftops, courtyards, and so on. Vampire abilities require blood points, so even in combat, always try to drain enemies rather than kill them. In addition, a vampire drain restores your health.

The game tells you that there is only one attack and one dodge, but that's not really the case. If you go into the codex and read about combat, you’ll find out there are several simple combos.

When enemies can’t see you or are in a near-death state, you can drain them. Do this every time you can. Also, keep dodging or run to higher ground, otherwise you’ll just get shot in the back. An important detail—during the drain animation, other enemies don’t stop moving. This creates some unpleasant situations where you might start draining an enemy because you have little health left, but end up with even less, as someone enthusiastically hits you with a pipe from behind during the whole long mini-cutscene.

The main trick in any fight is telekinesis. You’ll be taught to use it right at the start, but they won’t tell you that it’s your basic offensive skill alongside your punch. For most of the game, you’ll be fighting anarchs—vampires without obvious powers, but with speed and weapons. Occasionally, you’ll encounter brutes, and they are Faiir’s bane. They have an obscene amount of health and may not die even after four vampire drains. Brutes use sledgehammers, machine guns, and shotguns, which is always a problem.

The only way to even the odds is telekinesis. When you press the ability button, time slows down a bit. A crosshair appears on objects you can pull. If you manage to pull a firearm, it will even fire several times, which always takes a lot of health from enemies.

The game suggests you can pull weapons out of enemies' hands, but in practice, this doesn’t work. We never managed to do it even once. But pulling enemies themselves—no problem. If you manage to do this quickly and unnoticed, you can pluck an enemy from the crowd and drain them immediately. However, most of the time, the pulled enemy attacks you at close range right away, or the button combo for draining doesn’t work as quickly as you need.

Overall, combat is the most boring part of the game. If you started with a combat class and then picked up abilities for stealthy quick drains, you will make your life much easier. At the same time, most encounters in the city can simply be run past without wasting precious time on them. Fights give you a negligible amount of experience. It’s much easier to get it along with mortal blood. Maybe patches will fix something, but for now, that’s the situation.

Your aiming circle indicates if there is a collectible item nearby. The closer you are, the wider the circle becomes. Unfortunately, this mechanic is not well-tuned. The reticle also expands near climbable objects, and sometimes it just glitches. There were times when the circle lit up in front of a flat wall that was completely inaccessible. You may waste a lot of time bumping into walls because of this locator, but it’s not necessary for immersing yourself in the story. As a helper, use your spider sense... oh, sorry, heightened senses. This is a special vampire vision that highlights important objects, including collectibles. Decide for yourself whether to bother with this, and remember that the game can be misleading.

The Masquerade is the most important mechanic in the game world. In public, you must behave normally and never display your vampire powers. There are three levels of Masquerade breach: green, yellow, and red.

The first two shouldn’t worry you, since you won’t receive any penalties, but the red level is dangerous. First, for some reason it will increase even if you just stand still after triggering it and do nothing at all. Second, once it fills up, you’ll be killed instantly and lose a lot of blood (more on that later).

The only effective and quick way to lower the Masquerade threat is to climb onto a rooftop. As soon as you do, the situation will start to stabilize.

The eye at the center of the screen shows whether people can see you or not. If it’s open, you can’t break the Masquerade. Unfortunately, the mechanic is extremely buggy, so the eye may be open even when you’re completely alone in an alley.

The fastest way to get around is by using the rooftops. However, you’ll often encounter anarchs there, who don’t give much experience but do waste a lot of your time. Strangely enough, it’s actually easier to run along the ground. The character is fast enough and doesn’t get tired, and the city is extremely small.

If you need to climb a building, look for pipes and air conditioners. Faiir can run up walls, but only to a limited height. Pipes and air conditioners help you increase this distance.

There are no additional quests in the city. You can pick up a few side quests in strictly defined locations, marked in advance. Usually, these are either to kill someone, deliver a package, or collect all the secret items without any hints. You can only do these for experience points.

If you look at ordinary people through the vampire’s heightened senses, you’ll notice that some glow white, others gold, red, purple, or pink.

White civilians give you nothing but health restoration, and gold ones—for some reason—are exclusively police officers. The rest of the colors are what we’re interested in. Open the map—you’ll probably notice several colored markers on it. In the lower left corner of the screen, there’s a hint: each color represents a specific blood type. It’s needed to unlock abilities from other clans. Since there are many clans, you’ll have to drink blood often. The markers on the map show people with full resonance—if you drink their blood, you’ll get experience and 100 points of the corresponding type. These are the victims you should look for first.

However, there’s another way to get the resource. If you notice a person who occasionally flashes the relevant color, approach them and start a conversation. Your task is to choose the line that stirs the right emotion in the mortal and triggers a resonance state. Then you can drain them and get the maximum experience and blood points. The mechanic is interesting, but, like much in this game, clumsily implemented. There will always be only three reply options: aggressive for cholerics (red), flirting for sanguines (pink), and disregard for melancholics (purple). People’s reactions will also always be the same. If you succeed, your actions are always the same—lead the victim into an alley and drain them completely so you don’t break the Masquerade.

You’ll unlock your clan’s skill tree in the prologue. After that, you need to find representatives of other clans and ask them to share their blood. All teachers will be marked on the map right after you finish the prologue and become the city’s sheriff. They will agree to train you no matter what, even if you haven’t completed their rare requests. You can unlock other clans’ skills in any order by spending blood points, but then you still need to activate them. This is where ability points come in. These are extremely hard to earn. This is when you’ll have to do trash side quests and fight endless enemies. But all of this takes a very long time. The only way to quickly get a lot of ability points is to progress through the story.

First, choose your character's gender. Then watch the cutscene. Right after, press the required buttons to drink blood from the guard. You are in an old house from which you need to escape. Go straight ahead. Notice that the aiming circle will start to expand. To the right, there is an envelope with cash.

The circle will expand every time there is an important item or note nearby, so pay attention to this. Go into the corridor on the left. A guard will appear, and you'll be taught melee combat. Go through the door the person came from.

Move forward to the crates with the blue tarp; you can climb up them. Next, jump over the hole in the floor and turn left. You will meet Fabian—your inner voice and a former vampire. You can ask him anything you want, but the outcome won't change.

You will start the first quest. This is a tutorial mission, and your goal is to escape the house. There’s no real danger, but enemies will still appear. A little further ahead, you’ll be taught the heightened senses mechanic. Several police officers are trying to get inside. Examine the door to progress the story and go right.

You will see two elevator shafts. The right one has no boards. Learn telekinesis and pull out the pipe to open the passage in the left shaft.

You need to climb higher up the wall, follow the prompts. Ahead, you need to crouch and walk along the boards.

Once in the room, you will find a bloodied package.

From there, go left and you’ll see a police officer. Distract him using telekinesis and a bottle.

Continue moving right until you see a white cloth hanging from the floor above. Climb up there and examine the framed painting ahead.

Go right and turn on the radio. Keep moving and you’ll climb even higher. You’ll be taught how to glide.

Move across the broken floor to the other side and turn right. After a long corridor, you’ll have to drop down through a hole in the floor. When you hear voices, crouch. Two police officers are walking down the corridor to the left. Wait until they reach the end, then slip forward behind the wall.

Go left. You’ll reach a staircase. Go down and pick up the note on the dusty package.

Go upstairs and climb up the wall of the shaft. You’ll hear a ghoul. He’s photographing a corpse—drink him. From the police officer’s corpse, turn left, jump, and glide. Beyond the next door is a hole in the floor, and below are ghouls—learn new moves. After winning, pay attention to the boards on the ceiling. Pull them out with telekinesis and climb higher.

You will find a healing elixir—it restores health. A little further ahead, there is a book with a dedication. After opening the door, you will enter a room with several enemies. Eliminate them as you wish. Go into the room and pick up the elixir of power. Climb higher up the wall and move through the shaft with pipes. Once you’re back at the staircase, go down. Pick up the note on the empty package, then go up the stairs to the door highlighted in green. Watch the cutscene.

When you wake up after sleeping, inspect the hideout. Talk to Fabian and choose your clan. You can then customize your outfit and appearance.

Look around the apartment, and then you need to find the bar where Fabian was. It’s better to go down the stairs, but first—go up and pick up the blood elixir on the upper floor. Eventually, you’ll end up downstairs. Go outside. You’ll see some people with blood type markers. Don’t pay attention to them for now. This mechanic will be explained later.

To find the bar, you need to follow Fabian’s scent. Use your special sense so you don’t lose the trail. Along the way, you may see marks on buildings, the same as on your hand. The marks are only visible with vampire vision. If you use telekinesis on them, you’ll get experience. The scent will lead you to a rooftop, where you’ll meet the sheriff of the vampire Court—Benny. It’s better to act independently with him, since Benny will be aggressive for no reason. After the dialogue, you’ll be able to get to the bar.

The entrance is chained shut, and there will be a group of anarchs in front of it. You probably won’t be able to avoid a fight, nor eliminate everyone stealthily, so just attack. There’s another group of enemies in the bar. Exit through the other door and keep following the scent. When you reach the right building, examine Fabian’s body and watch a short cutscene.

Talk to the vampire about what you saw.

Now you need to meet the former prince of the Court—Lou Graham. The vampire lives in the penthouse of the Glacier Hotel. Once in the lobby, go straight to the elevator and ride up. You’ll see Fabian’s memories. There’s not much to choose from, so we won’t describe them here.

Returning to Faiir, go through the penthouse. On the second floor, in the far corridor, you can examine a painting. Then inspect the corpse in the fireplace, after which you’ll finally reach Lou. Feel free to ask her all possible questions, but be polite.

After the dialogue, you need to meet Prince Ryon at Weaver Tower to get permission to stay in the city. In the lobby, you’ll meet Isabella Moore. The conversation with her won’t give you anything, so we won’t dwell on it.

On the first floor of the Court tower, there are several anarchs—deal with them. After you win, you'll find that the elevators to the upper floors aren't working, so you'll have to look for an alternate route. Stand with your back to the exit from the tower and turn right. At the end of the corridor, on the right wall near the ceiling, there will be a ventilation grate. Pull it out with telekinesis and climb inside.

As you move through the shaft, you’ll overhear a conversation between the Nosferatu Tolly and the anarchs. Tolly needs to be rescued. When you exit the shaft, there will be a floor below you and several anarchs banging on the Nosferatu's office door. You can easily take each of them out with a stealth bite, since the AI here leaves much to be desired—but beware of a backstab.

The last of the four enemies will be joined from behind by a brute with a hammer. In this game, such opponents are the biggest threat to you. They have a lot of health and can kill you in a couple of hits. However, brutes are not bosses, so the game will regularly throw crowds at you with two or even three of these enemies. The only effective way to deal with a brute is telekinesis.

The anarchs you just drained have weapons—pull one to you and throw it at the enemy. If it’s a pistol, it will even fire a few shots. After the fight, talk to Tolly. Move a bit forward into the green server room and pick up the note on the left—it’s the Wi-Fi password. At the end of the room, near the ceiling, there’s another ventilation grate—go there. In the next room, pick up the phone for shameful deeds on the left.

A little further ahead is a locked door and the first (maybe only) spatial puzzle. You need to use telekinesis through the window to press a button and open the door. Jump into the elevator shaft and climb up. When you reach another ventilation shaft, go into the red room and meet Sophia.

After the dialogue, pick up the note nearby and exit through the doors opposite. Go right, then left to the golden doors. Inside the sofa, you can pick up a selection of periodicals on finance. Talk to Prince Ryon.

After the conversation, return to the hideout to rest. Before entering the apartment, examine the yellow tape, then you can go to sleep. In your dream, you'll find yourself in a field of sunflowers. Just walk up to the tree ahead.