Welcome to Part 2 of my Rogue Lord’s Guide to Bloody Mary. My first guide was a general guide to the character Bloody Mary but this second guide will be advanced tips for making her from a mediocre damage dealer to a potent weapon.

Check out my other guides to Bloody Mary here:

Rogue Lords Guide to Bloody Mary Part 1

If you’d like to read a review of this game you can find that here: Rogue Lords Review

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Now I have to say that my opinion of Bloody Mary changed after I had written my first guide as I came across an article while looking for advanced tips that changed my view on how you should play with her that I will link to at the end; that was very helpful.

Bloody Mary is a potent damage dealer of a character, but to make her, the killer she wants to be, she requires a bit more planning than Baron Samedi, Headless Horseman or The Creature.

What should you prioritise?

Ok, so a few things. This character has a lot of cards that aren’t that powerful and some which are incredibly powerful. Now with most characters, I found that you can make them work differently, but Bloody Mary is not like that.

I found one strong build with her that can include SP damage but focuses on HP damage. So, one of her most potent skills is available at level 1, called Wicked Cast.

Now wicked cast seems like an average one-action point skill, but something is compelling about that if you get it at the gold tier. At the gold level, it becomes a 0-action point skill. Yes, you heard me right 0.

That means you can use it for free, and apart from having to recharge it, it costs nothing. You want to get as many copies of this skill as possible and focus on getting them to the gold tier.

Just in case you are unaware, skills go from tier 1 (white background) to tier 2 (purple background) to tier 3 (gold background). Having multiple of these at tier 3 opens up a lot of shenanigans that I wasn’t aware she could do.

She has a relic called Bloody Metronome that requires her to use four skills in a turn, which other characters can’t normally do but with the correct setup. She can quickly achieve it, so it seems the developers created her with this in mind.

What other skills are good?

So another skill that goes with this build is Twisted Reflection. As discussed in the previous guide, Twisted Reflection costs one action point and applies three bleeding statuses to an enemy, but it costs 0 action points at the gold tier.

Twisted reflection is the only other skill that Bloody Mary has that can cost 0 action points without a specific relic, so it’s a great skill to have at the gold tier. You should prioritise wicked cast over this one, but sometimes another 0-point skill can be good.

The following helpful skill is Bloody Waltz. This skill is expensive, but it works well with lots of 0 action point abilities.

It does one instance of between 7 to 9 damage, but it replays the effect for every depleted skill that Bloody Mary has, so if she has three depleted skills. Then you play this, and it will do four instances of 7 to 9 damages which will change to 8 if you have the mirror in play.

As you can see, this skill was meant to be played with lots of 0-cost abilities and works really with a relic that I will discuss in the relic section.

Deadly Gash is an ok level 2 skill that is useful because it applies three bleeding statuses and six with the mirror and works well if you can’t get Twisted Reflection to level 3.

I will talk about her SP-damaging skills later, but now we will move on to her level 3 skills.

The first is Sinister Dance, which removes a weakness status from all combatants (disciples and enemies) and heals Bloody Mary by 5 for each status removed and increases her damage by 3 for each status removed.

This skill is probably the only reason you would want a skill that applies bleeding to enemies.

The reason is that bleeding status is one of the worst weaknesses enemies can apply to your characters because it deals 10 to 16 per damage application.

This is especially nasty if played on Bloody Mary because she likes to do many instances of damage per turn. If she has bleeding applied to her and then attacks enemies, she can kill herself quickly in a single turn.

So the ability to get rid of weakness is potent, but the fact that this skill significantly buffs her damage per weakness removed and heals her all for one action point is worth it, even if you have no skills to apply bleeding to enemies.

The last level 3 skill to discuss is Killing Spree. Now I have to admit I didn’t think much about this skill until I played her again, and I have to say this skill has its utilities.

So as discussed in the previous guide, this is a one-action point skill that targets Bloody Mary that applies to two bleeding, six split spirit statuses and 3+ damage (for both SP and HP damage).

So why would you want to use this skill? There are a few things, but the main reason is the split spirit.

So split spirit is an exciting maneuver and what it does is that it causes HP losses suffered and inflicted to turn into SP, so this has a few uses.

The first is that in this game, more abilities heal SP than HP, especially if you are using Hecate or Lilith, and you are very likely to have Lilith as she is the best tank in the game and starts with an SP healing ability.

As a result, it’s often helpful to have a character attacked to have the split spirit manoeuvre so that the HP damage they suffer changes into SP damage which is quickly healed.

The other significant advantage is that it allows Bloody Mary to inflict SP damage with her wicked cast skills. It is helpful to have in those situations where you need to do SP damage but don’t have the skills to do it.

Also, if you play killing spree, you can then play sinister dance to get rid of the bleeding and heal yourself, but I would rather spend the five demonic essences to move the Bleeding to an enemy rather than wasting an action point unless I have one to spare.

As I said, this isn’t a skill you will often be using, but it’s handy to have it in certain instances as there are certain enemies in this game that you have to do both SP and HP damage to and having this skill can save runs.

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What SP damaging skills are good?

So now we will talk about her SP damaging skills that I feel should get their section as even though in this guide I mainly focus on her HP damaging skills, she has an outstanding selection of SP damaging skills.

Now you might ask why to bother with these since she does excellent HP damage, but in this game, there are relics that you can find that will buff your SP damage, and she has some strong SP damaging skills.

Also, as discussed above, there are times when you will need to do SP damage. Also, her SP damaging skills don’t have the bloodthirsty trait, so you are not restricted to which enemies to attack when using these skills.

The first skill I will discuss is the Shard of Psyche. Now, this is a level 2 skill that says it applies 1 to 2 instances of 15 SP damage and applies the control clumsiness.

Now two instances of 15 SP damage for two action points are outstanding. So not only have I seen this skill do a lot of damage, but it also applies clumsiness.

Now clumsiness is a control that reduces the amount of damage done by an enemy by ten which makes it useful in certain circumstances for reducing enemy damage and doing some severe SP damage.

One other thing to say about this skill is that if you get it to level 3, it only costs one action point to play, but you don’t need to get it to Level 3 and to get wicked cast to level 3 takes priority.

Now the next skill we will discuss is Seven years bad luck. This skill is available from level 1 and is Bloody Mary’s only skill that targets all enemies. It does 6 to 12 SP damage to all enemies and applies one instance of depression to all enemies.

Now this skill is an exciting one. After all, it applies depression, one of the better weakness statuses to inflict on enemies because it does 4 to 6 damage at the beginning and end of the enemy turn and reduces their max SP and is buffable by certain characters like Baron Samedi and relics.

Something to note, though, is you can’t apply both bleeding and depression to an enemy as they are both weaknesses so that one will replace the other.

This skill becomes very powerful when buffing Bloody Mary’s SP damage like all her SP damage skills. Still, because of her ability to use a lot of skills and inflict an insane amount of HP damage, I found that with certain relics, she can buff her SP damage to insane amounts.

These are her primary SP damaging skills that I would recommend, as she has others like one that inflicts zombie status to an enemy and others that steal SP for two action points. But really, those discussed are her primary SP damaging skills to prioritise.

What relics should I take?

This is an interesting question, but I found certain relics that Bloody Mary likes that I often wouldn’t bother with other characters, but they become compelling with Bloody Mary.

The first is one of her unique relics, the Pocket Mirror. This one is good because applying Bloody Mary’s mirror to enemies makes her powerful. However, spending two points at the beginning of every combat to use it against an enemy is frustrating.

The reason is that enemies start to do severe damage later on, and you need to take them out fast to survive. Wasting two action points to use a recharge, you don’t need to apply the mirror is costly.

The pocket mirror relic makes that no longer a problem, as the mirror effect will apply to one random enemy at the start of combat and each new wave of enemies. While it’s not perfect, as you don’t get to choose the enemy, it’s still much better than nothing.

It means she can start doing that damage from the beginning, which is what you what with Bloody Mary, which is a good start.

The next relic I found helpful for her was the Receptacle of Torments. Now, this relic does two things. First, when a disciple inflicts physical damage, it increases their spiritual damage by one, double the damage done by bleeding and decomposition statuses.

Now be aware that this relic does have a drawback. It also doubles the damage inflicted by bleeding and decomposition statuses on your disciples, so if you’re not careful, this relic can lose you a run.

Now there is another relic that does that same thing but with SP damage and depression and burn statuses, but the receptacle is more applicable to Bloody Mary because of her wicked cast skills.

I found that with a few wicked cast skills at level 3 and the bloody waltz skill, Bloody Mary can do lots of HP damage, which means this relic can buff her SP damage to insane amounts within a turn or two.

So you spend a turn or two doing HP damage with wicked cast and bloody waltz skills, and then suddenly you can one-shot enemies with seven years bad luck or shard of psyche because you buffed her SP damage to the wazoo.

Another relic I found she likes is the Pain Catcher. So this is a relic that I usually skip with other characters because most characters have one cost or fewer recharge abilities, so recharging skills for most characters is relatively easy.

But Bloody Mary, with her two-point recharge and 0 cost damage skills, takes this one to a whole new level.

Because Bloody Mary focuses on doing damage to one target or two depending on where the mirror was applied, she is very likely to make one target vulnerable, which means she gets a free recharge when that happens.

Now, this becomes insane when combined with 0 action point abilities. I have had turns where I have used the two wicked cast skills at level 3 and another skill to make an enemy vulnerable, which recharges my skills and allows me to use wicked cast again.

I have to say that it’s a little bit buggy and doesn’t work as expected, as I have had some instances where I used wicked cast to get an enemy to vulnerable status. However, it didn’t recharge both abilities, but the free recharge is still fantastic, especially with 0 cost skills.

The Staff of Storms relic is another interesting relic that works with her because she is likely to have lots of HP damage skills so that she can get a lot of free charges.

This relic combines with other relics to buff Lilith’s damage to insane amounts, even in a single turn, making Lilith an excellent companion to Bloody Mary.

Ritual Bracelets is also good and works well with the bloody waltz skill, as the two-plus damage for each of her depleted skills works excellently with lots of 0-action point skills.

Part 2 of my guide to Bloody Mary was advanced tips for making her a titan. I will probably do Part 3, exploring how she works with other characters.

Affiliate link to purchase the game from Green Man Games here: greenmangaming.sjv.io/eK4B5O

Rogue Lords Guide to Bloody Mary Part 2

What should you prioritise?

What other skills are good?

What SP damaging skills are good?

What relics should I take?

Links

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