Mea Culpa is the peculiar Sword wielded by our protagonist (the Penitent One) in Blasphemous, and it can gain different upgrades that let us both unlock new skills and improve existing ones through its tier-based skill tree.
But before we can start unlocking these upgrades, we’ll first have to find a Mea Culpa Shrine.
Table of Contents
Mea Culpa Shrine
Mea Culpa Shrines let us unlock new skills for our Sword and keep upgrading them.
Every time we find a new Shrine, Mea Culpa goes up a level, and the higher its level, the more skills we can unlock. These skills are of course really useful, and you’ll definitely want them to help your character progress.
The first shrine isn’t hard to find, but you’ll need to beat the Warden of the Silent Sorrow first, since it shows up a little after that encounter. You’ll find it (the shrine) in Albero, an area you’ll reach after getting through “The Holy Line”. This is where the “Kissers of Wounds” are, beings who try to purify the wounds of the injured in a rather peculiar way.
Alright, so from Albero you need to head to the lower part (the stairs going down) and go through the door on the left, where you’ll find the Shrine. By the way, if you head right and hit the wall with Mea Culpa, you’ll find a secret area, but we’ll talk about that later.
Mea Culpa Upgrades and Skills
As I mentioned, everything depends on Mea Culpa’s level, which goes up every time we find a shrine. To buy the upgrades we’ll need to spend the game’s currency (Tears of Atonement), which works a lot like souls and the like in the Souls games.
Level 1 Skills
- Last Words: 2,000 Tears of Atonement. Your combos now have 4 hits.
- Sinful Wrath: 500 Tears of Atonement. You can perform a powerful charged attack by holding down the attack button with Mea Culpa.
- Weight of Sin: 500 Tears of Atonement. An attack you can perform in the air while aiming downward. It’s like Link’s in Smash Bros or the one Shovel Knight does: you drop down with your sword pointed at the ground.
- Sacred Thrust: 1,500 Tears of Atonement. An attack after the dash to quickly hit distant enemies.
Level 2 Skills
- Fervorous Blood: 2,000 Tears of Atonement. An upgrade to our suicide attack (the one that costs you health when you use it and gives you Fervour). Now it becomes a ranged attack if you don’t hold the button down. This consumes Fervour (Blasphemous’s magic bar).
- Ascending Edge: 7,000 Tears of Atonement. Upgrade to “Last Words”: you can perform a finishing blow at the end of a combo, which will be an upward slash if you press up while attacking.
- Sacred Lunge: 2,300 Tears of Atonement. Upgrade to “Sacred Thrust”: your post-dash attack reaches even farther.
Level 3 Skills
- Holy Wrath: Upgrade to “Sinful Wrath”: you charge the attack faster.
- Weight of Justice: Upgrade to “Weight of Sin”: when you hit the ground with the downward aerial strike, you create a small explosion that damages nearby enemies and knocks them back.
Level 4 Skills
- Azure Cyclone: Upgrade to “Ascending Edge”: you can perform a finishing blow at the end of a combo where the Penitent One spins quickly if you press down.
- Sacred Onslaught: Upgrade to “Sacred Lunge”: when you perform the attack, you create a wave that hits enemies both above and below Mea Culpa, increasing its range.
Level 5 Skills
- Sacred Blood: Upgrade to “Fervorous Blood”: the projectile comes back to you, working more like a boomerang.
Level 6 Skills
- Wrath of the Twisted One: Upgrade to “Holy Wrath”: the charged attack becomes much more devastating and lets you fire a beam at a moderate distance.
- Consecration: Upgrade to “Weight of Justice”: when you hit the ground, you create a huge column of divine light that wipes everything out. This only happens if you do it from a decent height.
Level 7 Skills
And this is Mea Culpa’s maximum level, so it’s the last and most expensive skill you can get in Blasphemous:
- Bleeding Miracle: Upgrade to “Sacred Blood”: now the projectile creates a sacred explosion when it reaches its farthest point, dealing extra damage on top of what it already did.
And that’s it! I haven’t unlocked them all yet, but I wonder whether, once you’ve unlocked pretty much the entire Mea Culpa skill tree, the game ends up breaking. Overall they all sound really good, and it definitely feels like the Penitent One is going to end up pretty overpowered as we get more and more of them, right?
Anyway, we’ll see. For now, back to playing, and once I have them all I’ll let you know whether the difference is really noticeable. It’s too early to say anything yet.
How many Mea Culpa skills have you unlocked and upgraded in Blasphemous? Which one’s your favorite? Which ones do you think matter most? Leave a comment!
