How does Bleed damage work?

[Blind]

It makes sense when I have only 1 bleeder, but if I have more than 1 I don't know what is going on

[Conan The Librarian]

https://monster-sanctuary.fandom.com/wiki/Bleed

Deals damage at the start of the turn (based on the applying attack), then half of the bleeding stacks are removed (rounded up).

Basically this:

You apply bleed through a variety of effects. The amount of damage that a bleed does is based on the effect which caused it (see individual skills / passives / etc for the numbers).

This bleed ticks its damage on its victim as a part of the "beginning of turn" phase for whoever's turn it is (yours or the opponent's).

After its tick it would diminish the number of bleed on its victim by 50% (rounded up).

Since bleed's damage isn't a constant like the Debuff DoTs are (Poison / Congeal / Burn), each individual Bleed Stack is individually tracked by the game's system and knows how much damage each bleed stack should do.

So, if bleed stacks aren't necessarily equal, how does the game determine which bleed stacks to "fall off" each turn? Just RNG. So, if there's 10 bleed stacks, and say that 8 of them are smaller amounts and 2 are larger amounts, it's completely RNG as to whether the bleed will be "more or less powerful as it could be" (on a theoretical basis) after 5 of them fall off.

Does this mean you should try to "game the system" by being precise with your bleeds to try to "outsmart the RNG" somehow?

No, not really, because no matter how you look at it, more bleed = more damage, whether it's lots of smaller bleeds or fewer larger bleeds -- more bleed = good :)

Anyway, the Dark Shift power of [Bleed Out], as found on a few monsters, prevents this 50% diminishment each turn, allowing you to stack bleeds pretty high quite easily. If you're contemplating a bleed strategy, this just might be an integral part of it.

Hopefully this helps illuminate some of the situation, and I wholly recommend looking at monsters in-game and the wiki to find more info.