Vampyr has a community system aptly titled the citizen menu. This game mechanic requires the player to maintain four communities (Whitechapel, The Docks, West End, and Pembroke Hospital) by ensuring that all members are healthy. Members can fall ill with a total of nine medical problems – all of which can be cured with a simple tincture. Players must craft these tinctures at the workbench in a hideout and bring them to the appropriate citizen.
Since Vampyr is rather good at seducing the player into a high chaos run, it is important to understand exactly why it is so important to maintain the health of each citizen and in turn, their community. Sure, the game will be significantly easier if you kill everyone, but it will also be a lot more annoying to walk around in a London armed to the teeth with enemies.
Which brings us to the differences between each district’s status and how it relates to the overall gameplay. Keep in mind that the moment you kill a citizen, the entire district will be affected, usually falling an entire tier. However, you can build the community back up by maintaining everyone’s health consistently. That said, the more citizens you kill, the more impossible it will be to keep a community stable – since you’ve killed the people that need to stay healthy.
Vampyr District Status: Sanitized
Congratulations! This is the highest and healthiest tier a community can be. Achieving this requires tenacity and a willingness to know the map by heart. You’ll have to make sure every community member is healthy and not dead before you turn in for the day.
Every time you upgrade a skill, regardless of whether you’ve leveled up or not, you will return to the game on the next day. If you haven’t cured someone, their illness will accumulate to a higher tier. Headaches, for example, turn into migraines, which turn into neuralgia.
Keeping a community at this level, or at least stable, is important because it reduces the number of enemies in an area. A district that is sanitized will have no enemies at all – not even Priwen Guards.
Vampyr District Status: Healthy
Healthy is a good place to be if you aren’t set on keeping every area sanitized. It will keep Skals, werewolves, Ekons, and Vulkods out of the district but you will still find the occasional Priwen Guard (save for Pembroke Hospital). Healthy also means that only one or two people are sick and none of them are in advanced stages, like migraines or sepsis.
Vampyr District Status: Stable
Stable is a good middle ground if you don’t mind a few more combat encounters on your way to a quest. Priwen Guards will be more prolific, as well as all other enemies. You will occasionally find Priwen Guards fighting a Skal or two, an event that would be best avoided. Unless you’re doing a high chaos playthrough, it is easy to get overwhelmed by enemies in Vampyr, especially if there is more than one tank in the group.
A stable district also means that at least three people are critically sick (in the third tier of whatever illness they have). This is an easy enough fix if you have all the recipes, which you should by the second chapter of the game.
Vampyr District Status: Serious
If you’re around level 17 or 20, serious should not present a major problem for you. All enemies will populate the area, at least one group of three every in-game mile or so. This will seem like they’re around every corner if you are working in that area a lot. Luckily they don’t respawn until you leave or sleep. A district status of serious in Vampyr means more than three people are sick and at least one of them is critically ill. Again, by critically ill I mean they are in the third tier of whatever illness they have, like sepsis or neuralgia.
Vampyr District Status: Critical
Everything just got a little more difficult. If you haven’t been paying much attention to the status of a district, you will now. A critical district means a fair amount of enemies that are a good 5 or more levels higher than you. Traveling through a critical district requires a bit of planning and preparedness on the part of the player. If done correctly, getting through will be easy enough.
A critical status also means that every member of the community is sick and at least three people are critical. Fixing this will require a bit more running around and crafting, but it should be easy enough if you have been collecting as much loot as possible.
Vampyr District Status: Hostile
This is where the game starts to really turn on you. Hostile means you’ve killed one too many citizens and the few left alive are critically ill. In addition to this, citizens will start to go missing, their quests will be lost forever (unless you play the game over again), and extremely dangerous creatures will haunt the area.
The increase in enemies and their difficulty level will make it nearly impossible to get through the area without dying at least once or twice. If the main quest happens to be in a hostile area, you must come armed to the teeth and ready to wax nostalgic about the first time playing Dark Souls.
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