Beginner's Guide & Tips

The Blood of Dawnwalker throws a lot at you in its opening hours: a time mechanic tied to almost every action, three skill trees, a two-form hero, and an open valley where nothing waits for you. This guide condenses everything worth knowing in your first days in Vale Sangora — how time really works, which skills to pick first, how combat clicks, and how to keep your gear, money and vampiric hunger under control.

Already finished the prologue? Our walkthrough covers every Laslea Glen quest and the rewards worth your limited time there.

Time Is a Currency, Not a Countdown

After the prologue, Coen has 30 days and nights to save his family from Knyaz Brencis. That sounds oppressive, and the prologue deliberately makes it feel that way — but the full game is far more generous.

• A full day is 16 time segments: 8 during daytime and 8 at night. Most activities consume only one or two segments, and simply running across the map costs nothing.
• Time only advances when you act — completing quests, learning perks at shrines, or choosing dialogue options that move the clock. There is no ticking timer while you explore, loot or fight.
• The entire campaign offers roughly 470+ segments, and the developers have said you can complete around 80% of all content in a single run. You do not need to optimize your first few days — spend your first 5–10 days exploring freely, picking up side quests and learning how the game works.
• Check your journal before main quests: an orange or red skull next to a task means you are under-leveled for it. Do side content first instead of pushing forward.
• Never time-skip at a shrine just to reach a night (or day) activity. There is always something to do in your current form — skipping deletes hours you could spend on quests, XP and loot.

The one real rule: the story ends at day 30, so finish what matters to you before the final quest.

Your First Priorities in the Open World

The moment the open world unlocks, do these four things before anything else.

1. Spend your first skill point on Mercurial Fervour (Witchcraft, bottom right of the tree). It is a supernatural sprint for Coen's human form — the world has no mounts, and this is the fastest way to travel by day.
2. Spend your second point on Shapeshift (Vampirism, bottom right). It turns night-time Coen into a wolf that outruns everything and can leap up and down mountains.
3. Climb the scouting tower directly south of Laslea Glen — at night, in vampire form, using Shadowstep and Planeshift. Scouting reveals every question mark, side quest and activity in the surrounding area. Zoom the map in fully; some icons do not show when zoomed out.
4. Activate every Wayside Shrine you pass. Shrines are discovered in person, and fast travel only works from shrine to shrine — and it costs no time. They also serve as free storage for offloading loot.

A sensible region order for a fresh Coen: start in Briar Sloughs and the swamp to the southeast, unlock the towns of the Maragir Wealds, then do the Svartrau Outskirts, St. Tyna's Grove and Svartrau City (the main hub for vendors and quests) together, and only then swing northwest to Boar's Back before finishing with Rockfalls, The Slits and Tantari Woods. The further south you go, the higher the enemy levels — the map color-codes difficulty, and you can be one- or two-shot in red-skull areas.

How Character Progression Works

Coen has three skill trees, and the time of day decides which ones you can use:

The manual system. Many perks and abilities are locked until you find and read the corresponding manual — these perks show a small book icon on their tree node. Read the manual from your inventory, and the next time you open the skill tree an alert marks the newly unlocked perk. You then invest a skill point at a shrine. Duplicates are safe to sell (read items show a check mark), and manuals are plentiful — missing one is never a dead end.

Learning perks costs time. Investing points at a shrine advances the clock by a segment or two. It adds up across three trees, so unlock what your build actually needs instead of everything you can see.

There is no respec. If you are unsure about your build, pick perks marked with the sun-and-moon "anytime" icon first — they benefit both of Coen's forms, whatever you specialize in later.

Recommended Early Perks

Consistently the highest-value unlocks, whatever your play style:

Two traps to avoid: do not spend points on encumbrance perks (the base 200 limit is generous — just sell junk more often), and do not dump points into claw-only perks early if you also want to fight well by day.

Combat Fundamentals

• Directional attacks. Enemies telegraph swings from four directions — block in the matching direction. A block at the last moment is a perfect block: no stamina cost, and it fuels your ripostes.
• Omni Block is your safety net. Holding block without a direction auto-blocks everything at a heavy stamina cost — the Omni Block perk halves that cost. Use it while learning, then wean yourself off it.
• Alternate your swing directions. Repeating the same direction lets enemies dodge and block; mixing left, right, up and down keeps them open and shortens your attack animations.
• Perfect Riposte is the core loop. Perfect block → red chevron appears on the enemy → attack in that direction for a guaranteed critical. You have a few seconds before the chevron fades, and a wrong first swing can be corrected with the next one. With Counterattack and Stinging Blade stacked, this carries you through content several levels above you.
• Weapon arts have invincibility frames. Swords and bracers from blue rarity upward carry a weapon art that deals burst damage, makes Coen untouchable during its animation, and interrupts unblockable attacks — even boss attacks. Active abilities share these i-frames: combo an ability the instant an enemy swings to cancel their attack.
• Sprint-attack to open fights. Sprinting into an attack from any direction lunges and almost always lands the first hit.
• Shadowstep in combat (night only) teleports you behind your locked-on target — an escape from corners and free backstabs, but it costs a chunk of stamina, so don't spam it.
• Night Coen is stronger than day Coen. Claws out-damage early swords and nighttime healing is potent. If a human-form fight keeps killing you, come back after sundown. Struggling during the day? Turn on the Auto Block setting while you learn.

Gear, Upgrades and Money

• Rarity tiers: gray → green → blue → purple → legendary. Weapon arts appear from blue onward, and epic/legendary gear supports higher upgrade levels — once you own purples, sell the rest.
• Loot scales to your level. Gear drops at Coen's level when found, and some legendaries roll better stats if acquired later. Early legendaries are still worth taking — anything you love can be kept current.
• Upgrades: blacksmiths, armorers and witches can raise an item's level (up to one above Coen's) for gold, scaling its stats and affixes. Keep a great-affix piece upgraded rather than chasing random drops. Max-level upgrades of epics and legendaries get expensive — don't bother for gray, green or blue gear.
• Two loadouts, not one. Day armor boosts swordmastery/witchcraft; night armor boosts vampirism and claws. Passive bonuses — weapon crit, cooldown reduction, claw damage — are usually worth more than a few points of armor. Take Second Skin to wear medium/heavy armor without penalties.
• Money matters early. Loot everything, then use the vendor's sell all junk button, sell the trade-goods category, and sell read manuals and notes. Stock up and make your big purchases in Svartrau before your Infamy tier raises prices — twice.
• The silver trader. Around Infamy level 3–4, the silver trader in Svartrau unlocks and buys your silver hoard — and sells legendary items.

Notable early legendary finds: the Durandal longsword on a corpse in the chasm beneath a broken bridge southwest of Laslea Glen (usable from around level 11 and strong into the endgame), the Polished Long Cleaver from the prologue's bandit treasure map, and Isbrand's Greaves in the Cobalt's Nest chest near Rockfalls — sneak around the camp rather than fighting for it.

Blood, Corruption and Staying in Control

At night, blood is your health bar.

• Feeding heals. Drain defeated enemies mid-combat with your bite, or drain animals — humans carry the most blood and the strongest healing.
• Stealth drains run long. Initiating a drain undetected lets you feed far longer, building more corruption. Draining a red-skull enemy this way can even kill them outright when a straight fight would be suicide.
• Corruption is progression. Every drop of blood raises Coen's corruption level, which gates the vampirism tree. Blood vials and leeches you collect work as instant healing and corruption on demand.
• Vrakhiri blood vials unlock specific vampirism abilities — several come from the Court activities tied to Brencis' vassals.
• Keep your health above its first segment. If you enter a conversation while your vampiric health bar sits in the lowest segment, Coen loses control and drains the NPC — sometimes immediately after combat, before you can heal. When in doubt, top up first.
• The choice is yours: animal blood keeps Coen gentler, human blood makes him stronger faster. The Corruption stat itself carries no combat penalty — but who you feed on is remembered by the story.

Exploration and Map Tips

• Towers are free and best done at night. There are 11 scouting towers in Vale Sangora; each reveals the surrounding region's points of interest and has a chest at the top (often a skill manual). Climbing them costs zero time — several can be cleared in one night, and the city's three towers sit close together.
• People in Danger. These rescue markers are quick, pay modest XP — and always include a free skill point. Never ride past one.
• Treasure maps. Activate a found map in your inventory, follow the marked trail (a shovel spawns near the dig spot) and fight whatever guards the chest. Rewards scale well and include gear and recipes.
• Skip the filler when time is short. Restoring broken shrines (2 segments) and clearing minor bandit camps pay little. The map already has plenty of active shrines — restore one only if a remote area has none.
• Focus Mode highlights herbs, loot, tracks and hidden objects. Use it constantly — crafting ingredients are everywhere.
• Infamy is a feature, not a punishment. Sabotaging Brencis' operations raises your Infamy tier, which spawns extra patrols and raises prices — but it also unlocks optional questlines (some from tier 3) and is the road to confronting each vampiric vassal. Raise it deliberately, not accidentally.

Crafting, Buffs and Consumables

• Craft your healing. Minor Mending Ointment restores 30% human health from water and ribwort plantain — herbs you pass constantly. Crafted heals are dramatically stronger than the food you start with, and remember: you cannot craft during combat.
• Elixirs last time segments, not minutes. A Potent Fortitude elixir grants +15% weapon damage for three whole segments — since time only moves when you act, that buff effectively persists through an entire quest. Only one elixir can be active at a time; stack it with other buff sources and witchcraft perks that extend them.
• Quick-slot your consumables. In combat you can only use items assigned to quick slots — both healing food and blood. Set up day and night presets (press S / Y on an item), and keep sword abilities on matching slots in both presets to protect your muscle memory.

Settings and Save Discipline

• Auto Block — automatically blocks attacks from the wrong direction for stamina. Turn it on while learning directional combat, then turn it off; a real directional block is cheaper and perfect blocks fuel your damage.
• Use Consumables from Inventory in Combat — off by default; enabling it removes the quick-slot-only restriction.
• Camera distance can be set separately for exploration and combat — a farther combat camera makes flanking enemies far easier to track.
• Save every morning. The game labels saves by day, so a manual save at each dawn gives you a chaptered history of your entire run. Quicksave after any fight you would hate to repeat — checkpointing can drop you further back than you expect.

Vale Sangora rewards preparation over haste. Take your first week to learn its rhythms, and the remaining days will spend themselves. For quest-by-quest help, see the walkthrough; for the decisions that shape your ending, see choices.