InBlasphemous 2, you’ll find no shortage of options for customising the Penitent One’s abilities and playstyle. You have Prayers to equip, Altarpieces to slot in, weapon skill trees to advance, and, of course, a selection of Beads to string onto your trusty Rosary. These can be found throughout the game, as rewards for exploration or clearing combat gauntlets, and they can make a very real difference to how you play.
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Many of the 27 Beads available have identical effects with different degrees of effectiveness, but for this list only the best of the best made the cut. If you’re heading into a new area or atough boss battle, these are the Rosary Beads you’ll want clutched tightly to your chest.
7Pewter Tears
The best of the three physical damage-reducing Beads available in Blasphemous 2, Pewter Tears is incredibly handy in pretty much every stage of the game. While elemental attacks certainly become more common as you venture deeper into the world, you still won’t be able to go two screens without finding an enemy who wants to get stuck into you with a good old-fashioned weapon.
When this situation arises, you’ll feel much better with the significant damage reduction that this Bead offers on your side. Being able to tank more hits lets you get much more aggressive during fights, which pairs particularly well with the ‘berserker rage’ playstyle encouraged by theRuego Al Alba sword. No matter where you are in the game, you can’t go wrong with this one.
6Votive Offering Claimed By Rust
A huge number of Blasphemous 2’s Rosary Beads are allotted to mitigating different kinds of elemental damage. You have specific Beads for Fire, Lightning, Mystical, and Miasma damage, all with three different variants each, giving you no shortage of options when it comes to shrugging off magical onslaughts. All of these Beads pale in comparison to the Votive Offering Claimed by Rust, however.
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This Bead covers every type of elemental damage in the game, offering you significant damage reduction from all of them. It’s an incredibly efficient use of a Bead slot, and one that you can always have on regardless of your specific situation. You can even pair it up with some of those more specific elemental resistance Beads when you’re in an area rich in a particular element.
5Obolus Of Próximo
In what is perhaps a cunning dig at real-world organised religion, Blasphemous 2 demands that you spend an awful lot of in-game currency throughout your journey with it. You’ll need to pay for Key Items, Statues, Prayers, and more, all with the Tears of Atonement that you find on golden altars or dropped by enemies.
If you want to avoid long stretches of late-game grinding to round out your collection, then the Obolus of Próximo is the Bead for you. With this equipped, you’ll receive significantly more Tears of Atonement for each enemy you slay, which adds up quickly into a lot of Tears earned and a lot of time saved. You’ll also get earlier access to some excellent high-value purchases, such as the two Marks of Martyrdom available in the City of the Blessed Name.
4Chisel-Engraved Wounds
One of the most unique Beads in the game, and one of the few with no variants available, Chisel-Engraved Wounds gives you an edge not in combat, but in exploration. With this Bead equipped, you’ll hear a spooky bell sound when you enter a room with a fake wall or hidden interaction, ensuring that you don’t miss any of the more obscure secrets the game has to offer.
This comes in handy whenhunting down the Cobijada Sisters, all of which hide behind fake walls, but it can help you uncover many more useful items too. Like the Peeping Eye soul from the Castlevania series, you should equip this as soon as you’re able to if you have any interest in reaching 100 percent completion in Blasphemous 2.
3Embossed Rat Skull
Marks of Martyrdom may be a secondary currency in the game, but they’re still incredibly important. You’ll need a huge number of them to max out your Altarpiece capacity and advance the skill trees of your weapons, meaning you’ll want to take every possible chance to get your hands on one.
Luckily for you, there are 40 Marks available just for killing enemies in combat and collecting Martyrdom Points. Less luckily, this process can take a long, long time to complete.
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Unless you make use of the Embossed Rat Skull, of course. This Bead significantly increases the Martyrdom Points you earn from each victory, turning a process that could’ve required a late-game grind into something that will occur naturally during the course of a normal playthrough. Equip this one ASAP to save yourself a tonne of time in the long run.
2Miniature Pincushion
One of the most warmly-received changes Blasphemous 2 made to the original game’s mechanics is the removal of instant death as a penalty for landing in spikes or falling in pits. Without this constant fear hanging over your head, small mistakes in platforming sections no longer cost you minutes of playtime, and are consequently no longer met with exasperated sighs and thrown controllers.
You do still take big chunks of damage from them, however, which is where the Miniature Pincushion comes in. This Bead significantly reduces the damage you take from these stage hazards, making them more of a minor speed bump than anything else. If you’re struggling with atricky platforming puzzle, make sure you use this Pincushion to soften the blows.
1Concentrated Sphere Of Guilt
Blasphemous 2’s Guilt system is an intriguing risk-reward mechanic, letting you trade lower defences and reduced maximum Fervour for increased currency rewards from enemies. When you weigh up the pros and cons, though, it’s very rarely worth running a high-Guilt playstyle in the game, and therefore almost always worth running the Concentrated Sphere of Guilt.
This Bead significantly reduces the amount of Guilt you accumulate after each death, meaning your penalties to defence and Fervour won’t be as significant right away. It’s a great Bead to use as you’re getting to grips with the game and dying a lot, as it lets you circumvent the frustrating lose-more gameplay loop that the Guilt system can create in those situations.
