Soul Hearts become charges
Bethany cannot hold Soul or Black Hearts as protective health. Each half heart adds one Soul Charge instead. The resource can cover missing active-item charge bars, so inspect the blue charge display before activation.
Bamboo Gaming · Updated
Repentance · Charges and wisps
Bethany:
Soul Charges and Book of Virtues
Turn Soul Hearts into active charges, protect your red health and understand how Book of Virtues works with another active.
Understand the system
Spend charges without confusing them with health.
The book stays beneath another active
Book of Virtues can create ordinary wisps when used alone. Picking up another active stacks it on the book rather than removing the book. Activating that item can create its associated wisps, whose behavior depends on the active.
Wisps can be lost
Ordinary wisps shoot and can block shots, but damage can destroy them. Losing one does not refund the Soul Charges used to create it. Keep protecting Bethany rather than assuming orbitals prevent every hit.
Book of Virtues is Bethany's starting item. Birthright is optional and can conserve Soul Charges. The Soul Heart icon identifies charge fuel, not health.
Practice the decision
What changes after this action?
These are fixed teaching examples with stated conditions. Choose an action and compare what you have before and after it.
Bethany
Collect a full Soul Heart
Before
3 full Red Hearts; 4 Soul Charges; ordinary pickup; below the charge cap
After
6 Soul Charges; red health unchanged
The full Soul Heart adds two charges. It does not create a blue-heart health buffer.
Check before acting: Check red healing needs separately from active-item fuel.
Book of Virtues is Bethany's starting item. Birthright is optional and can conserve Soul Charges. The Soul Heart icon identifies charge fuel, not health.
This reference does not read your save, calculate a crafting recipe or simulate an arbitrary inventory, health bar, queue or combat state.
Before the next action
- Check the red health bar separately from the Soul Charge counter. Choose healing for missing red health and charge pickups for extra uses.
- Before activating, read the current active and blue bars. Decide whether the effect and associated wisp are worth the resource being spent.
- After a wisp disappears, keep dodging and plan the next recharge. Build around the effects you actually have, not the number of wisps you once created.