How to equip Vampiric Powers in Diablo 4 and use them

Working out how to equip Vampiric Powers in Diablo 4's new Season of Blood can be a little tricky. During an early seasonal quest, you'll be tasked with equipping your first blood-sucking ability, but the game doesn't really give precise directions on where to find your new powers or how to equip them.

You can have five powers active at once inside the Sanguine Circle—provided you have the necessary armour—which is a lot more than the Season of the Malignant's three heart-based abilities on your jewellery. So, here's how to equip Vampiric Powers in Diablo 4, plus where to find Potent Blood and how to use it to unlock and upgrade new abilities. 

How to equip Vampiric Powers

You'll first unlock your Vampiric Powers during The Hunter's Chase quest, where you and Hunter Erys investigate the Magistrate's secret blood shrine in Ken Bardu. To equip a Vampiric Power, simply open your character sheet by pressing C, and click the tab next to Equipment that's labelled Vampiric Powers. Click on your first power at the bottom and drag it into the Sanguine Circle to activate it.

While you can switch out powers at any time, to activate a Vampiric Power in the circle, you'll need to have its relevant Pact cost available on your armour. Every armour piece in the Season of Blood drops with certain Pacts—think of these like your Vampiric Power cap. You can view your current Pacts above the Sanguine Circle where it lists how much capacity you have with each of the three Pacts, and how much of that is being used by your equipped powers in the circle. 

If you equip a Vampiric Power but don't have the necessary Pact capacity for its cost, it'll be listed as inactive in the centre of the circle and won't work, so plan your ability and Pact loadout accordingly.

How to get Potent Blood

To unlock new Vampiric Powers, you first need to spend Potent Blood. There are a few different ways to get this:

• Defeat Seekers in the Blood Harvest event by summoning them with Blood Lures, or if they ambush you in dungeons.
• Open a Seeker's Cache in Blood Harvest using a Seeker Key—get these by defeating Seekers or Vampiric elites.
• Defeat Vampiric monsters during the Blood Harvest event.

Once you have 25 Potent Blood, you can hit that button at the bottom of the Vampiric Powers tab. This will present you with three powers that you can choose to either unlock, or upgrade if you've already unlocked them. I recommend unlocking as many powers as you can first off, so you have the maximum number to work with.

Upgrading Vampiric Powers is very similar to levelling Glyphs by playing Nightmare Dungeons. Each time you spend Potent Blood, you'll get a little bit of XP to allot to one of those unlocked powers. When you fill the bar, its ability stats will get stronger. It's unclear whether there's an upper limit for how far you can level Vampiric Powers, but that means the real incentive for playing the Blood Harvest event is gathering Potent Blood to make your new abilities ever stronger.