The Blood of Dawnwalker Walkthrough & Guide

This is a verified campaign route, not a claim that every retail quest has been solved and indexed. The Blood of Dawnwalker opens after the prologue: you raise the separate Anger meters for Ambrus, Bakir, and Xanthe through Court Activities, complete each vassal's confrontation, then enter the final branch at A Deal with the Devil.

The route below prioritises permanent rewards, cheap Court progress, and real quest timing. It names only quests and costs supported by launch walkthroughs or the site's verified research. For a broader but explicitly incomplete list of optional chains, use side quests.

Before You Start: Read the Journal Icons

Time does not move while you walk, loot, fight incidental enemies, or stand still. It advances when a marked quest step, decision, wait, or day/night transition charges segments. Check the objective before confirming it:

• Hourglass / clock: the objective is timed and can expire.
• Sun: daytime-only.
• Moon: night-only.
• Numbered time cost: the segments you are about to spend.

A quest can be missable without every step costing time. The prologue is the clearest example: its optional quests disappear when the prologue ends, but one launch guide reports several of them at zero notches. See time segments for the underlying rules.

Phase 1: Finish the Prologue Without Wasting Its Window

Do Withering Away first. The clock icon means it can expire. At Anca's hut, use Hot Water + Three Spoonfuls of Herbs, then decline the optional Latin lesson if you want to avoid the reported extra notch. This medicine choice affects Esme's outcome and is not something to rush through blindly.

Continue into Like Father, Like Son. At the end, choose to see Coen's father later rather than Skip to Mass; the quest awards the Charge manual even if you lose the duel.

One detailed community route reports three optional prologue quests at zero notches:

• If A Tree Falls In The Forest
• Enter Not
• Dead Drop

Clear those before buying more optional content with time. The same source reports Deep Down at one notch and a useful early sword, but reports inconsistent behaviour around Bandit's Treasure Map: Laslea Glen; treat the displayed in-game cost as authoritative for your save. The complete reported opening order and caveats are in the beginner guide.

Phase 2: Open the Map and Build a Permanent Core

After the prologue, do not immediately pay for every quest marker. First use free exploration to make later choices cheaper.

1. Buy Shapeshift after your first regular Corruption level and use Mercurial Fervour by day. There is no mount.
2. Climb the Laslea Glen Church Tower and Briar Sloughs Tower at night with Shadowstep and Planeshift.
3. At each tower, activate scouting and confirm every white point; reaching the roof alone does not complete the scan.
4. Run Pilgrimage of Power: Bear Trouble west of the Laslea Gate shrine to unlock Ravenous Flock. It needs two Activation Charges and costs 40% of current health when cast.
5. Near Mert's Mill, follow the Will-o'-the-Wisp west of the road for the Knightly Greatsword.

Tower climbs cost no quest segments and reveal nearby activities as white question marks. There are 11 towers; the exact route and rooftop manuals are on collectibles. Fixed manuals should be folded into the same sweep rather than handled as a separate cleanup pass—see skill manuals.

Phase 3: Start With Ambrus

A practical launch route begins with Ambrus in the north. Open the Court menu and raise his Anger by disrupting his transports, collectors, cellars, dungeons, and prisoner operations. You do not need every documented activity; launch walkthroughs put the confrontation threshold at roughly three quarters of the meter, so watch the in-game portrait rather than chasing a presumed total.

Start at Mert's Mill with The Firebrand. Rescuing Mert overlaps the Court Activity Under Watchful Eyes, so one three-segment action advances a side chain and Ambrus's Anger together.

When you are close to the threshold, favour the documented one-segment Blood Cellars:

Activity	Reported cost	Objective
Seeing Red	1 segment	Clear the cellar and destroy crates
Uninvited	1 segment	Clear the lower room and destroy supplies
Trouble Brewing	1 segment	Destroy barrels in a Svartrau building; check upstairs

Most other documented Ambrus activities cost three segments. That makes cellars efficient finishers when only a little Anger remains. Lucky Crossing is also worth doing earlier because freeing and following up with its prisoner can lead to the Swordmastery teacher Ursul.

The Gilded Gauntlet and the Poison Window

At the Anger threshold, The Gilded Gauntlet appears in southern Maragir. The optional The Bittersweet Toast route prepares Iulian to poison Ambrus. A launch walkthrough reports the usable poison objective at 48 segments / three game days after that preparation finishes; missing the window does not remove the duel, only the poison advantage. The duel starts at night, and ringing the bell reportedly costs two segments.

If Iulian is present and Ambrus demands that Coen drink first, these two responses make Ambrus take the full poisoned blood:

• Letting a peasant drink first? What kind of boyar are you?
• I don't trust anything you offer.

In the duel, bait attacks, Perfect Block, and Perfect Riposte. Stop attacking whenever Scarlet Shield turns his health bar grey; damage heals him during that state. Detailed poison preparation, the Tatzelwurm Gland route, and the drain-or-kill consequence are in the Ambrus boss guide.

Phase 4: Use Bakir's Activities for Permanent Rewards

Raise Bakir's Anger through his Rebel Hunters, payoff transports, distilleries, and pillories. One launch guide says Farkas arrives after eight Bakir activities, while other guides describe the trigger as filling the Court meter; use the in-game meter as the authority and treat eight as a community-reported benchmark, not a universal rule.

Unlike Ambrus's cellars, the standard Bakir activities documented by the launch walkthrough each cost three segments. Prioritise the ones that pay something beyond Anger:

• Silent to the Grave: use Compel Soul on the nearby corpse, then follow the lead down the well for Secret Stash.
• Fool's Gold: spare the surviving soldiers to receive the Ill-Gotten Gains treasure map.
• Old Hand: at the pillory outside Lunar Manor choose I'm not letting anyone hurt this man, then complete Catalin's Tutor and win the duel to unlock a Swordmastery teacher.
• A Mother's Plea: this hidden chain is tied to A Friend Like This, Song of the Mountain, and The Heart Wants What It Wants; community walkthroughs flag parts of it as missable and timed, so clear it before grinding interchangeable distilleries if it is active.

The Lunar Game

The competition begins in the afternoon. If Farkas offers to wait because you arrived early, do nearby shopping or quest work instead of burning several segments. Once inside, you have a reported three segments before dusk for preparation.

Before the game:

1. Take leaves from the bush in the gathering area and poison the Cockroach's drink.
2. Talk to the Porcupine so he can stand aside later.
3. Keep the disguise during Bakir's speech; exposing Coen starts the harder group fight before you have rebuilt your equipment.

The maze removes your regular gear and forbids vampire powers. Loot every container, rely on Swordmastery, and choose the left hole at the trap box. After the maze, the easiest route is to manipulate Bakir into the treasury alone rather than fight him with his guards. The exact dialogue sequence and corpse-loot warning are in the Bakir boss guide.

After the fight, search Bakir's corpse before leaving the area. Then search the north side of the treasury for the purple-gem ring. Giving it to Anca instead of Farkas yields an Epic Quick Fighter's Ring according to the launch walkthroughs.

Phase 5: Resolve Xanthe, Then Prepare the Final Branch

Xanthe is the natural third vassal after Ambrus and Bakir. Her documented recruiter, excavation, transport, and Blood Guard activities generally cost three segments each, so prefer entries with an extra permanent pickup while raising her Anger:

• Taste of Power, Just a Bit More, and Come Home can each yield a named legendary blood phial if you take the blood after the fight.
• Bloodied Dagger has a locked boss-room chest containing legendary boots. Use Focus Mode to find the Ritual Dagger, then use Compel Soul on the body in front of the chest.
• Unquenchable Thirst has a Sword Shard in the tent for Forge It Anew, in addition to a prisoner you can release.

Continue until The Cycle of Love opens. The shipped route supports outcomes beyond simply killing Xanthe; do not assume every confrontation must end in a boss kill. Use the Xanthe boss guide for the current verified encounter and choice coverage.

Before resolving the third vassal, clean up any permanent-payoff chain you still want:

• Tutors, especially Constantin—spare him after defeating him or lose that teacher permanently.
• The Manumit chain once Infamy reaches Notorious / Level IV.
• Anca's chain for manuals and merchant access.
• Timed objectives carrying the hourglass icon.
• Svartrau errands before Infamy Level 9 closes the city gates; alternate entry remains possible, but it adds friction.

After all three vassals are resolved, make a separate manual save. This is the clean staging point for endings and unresolved optional content.

Phase 6: A Deal with the Devil

A Deal with the Devil is the confirmed point of no return. Do not start it until the journal is clean of anything you intend to finish and you have a dedicated save. The final route can branch around allies, Brencis, and mutually exclusive ending outcomes; it is not one mandatory castle fight with one result.

Use the endings guide for outcome requirements and the Brencis final boss guide for combat and non-combat routes. A save before the final quest is also the practical way to collect mutually exclusive ending trophies without replaying the whole campaign.

Compact Route Checklist

Stage	Do this before moving on
Prologue	Correct Esme medicine; Charge manual; reported zero-notch quests
Open world	Shapeshift + Mercurial Fervour; first two towers; Bear Trouble
Ambrus	The Firebrand overlap; cheap Blood Cellars near threshold; Gilded Gauntlet save
Bakir	Reward-bearing activities; Catalin choice; prepare inside Lunar Game
Xanthe	Clear desired tutors, timed chains, and Svartrau errands first
Endgame	Save after three vassals; save again before A Deal with the Devil

What This Walkthrough Does Not Claim

The launch sources used here still do not establish a complete retail quest count, a verified all-missables list, the maximum completion percentage in one run, or New Game Plus status. Community quest databases are still being corrected, and even otherwise useful launch guides disagree on some trigger counts and outcomes.

For that reason, this page is a route through the confirmed campaign structure, not an “all quests” checklist. When a displayed time cost in your game conflicts with a reported value here, trust the game UI and preserve a manual save. The missables guide tracks only irreversible choices that have been verified, while one playthrough turns the same evidence into a permanent-reward priority plan.