8 must-know The Blood of Dawnwalker tips to avoid wasting time segments

The Blood of Dawnwalker is the talk of the town, with Rebel Wolves’ debut title having shifted a whopping 1,000,000 copies in just two days.

It’s no real surprise that the title has impressed; this open-world action RPG has been crafted by many former CD Projekt RED developers, including the director of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

The Blood of Dawnwalker centres around dawnwalker Coen, who has 30 days and 30 nights to save his family from vrakhiri leader Brencis, ahead of the vampire’s coronation.

Each day and night within the game is split into eight segments, meaning you have around 16 segments in a day and 480 overall; the prologue is not included within this.

Completing quests, levelling up, picking up side content, and more all cost time with each activity displaying precisely how many segments it’ll take up.

You do not have enough time to complete every activity on The Blood of Dawnwalker’s map, prompting players to think about what’s important in their fight against Brencis and what isn’t.

That being said, you don’t need to worry about time too intensely. You have more than enough to save your family and see plenty of what Vale Sangora has to offer, if you think sensibly about things.

To help ease your concerns, here are eight must-know tips to take heed of if you don’t want to sacrifice time to pointless activities.

Don’t waste time repairing broken shrines

Like most of you, I began my The Blood of Dawnwalker playthrough with the same mindset I approach any open-world game with, so I started working through menial nearby activities, but you most definitely shouldn’t do that - especially when it comes to broken shrines.

You can find many working shrines around The Blood of Dawnwalker’s map. Once you’ve located a shrine, you can use it to level up, store items, and fast travel. Activating working shrines and fast travelling between them does not consume time.

However, the map is also home to broken shrines. To repair these, a short quest is usually triggered where you may have to fend off several enemies or follow a trail to locate the shrine’s missing talisman.

Repairing a shrine nets you some XP and perhaps a bit of loot too, but it costs you one time segment. There are more than enough ordinary working shrines around the map to allow you to travel with ease. Do not make the same mistake as me and restore those which are broken.

You don’t need to complete every Boyar activity to trigger their questline

Bandai Namco

Within The Blood of Dawnwalker, Brencis is the leader of the vrakhiri, referred to as Knyaz Brencis. He’s supported by three vampire lords, known as Boyars, and those are Ambrus, Xanthe, and Bakir. While you can ignore the Boyars, your best bet for saving your family is to take them out one by one ahead of coronation day.

To eliminate a Boyar, you need to trigger their quest by angering them enough within the regions of the map over which they reside. All relevant activities are viewable in the game’s Infamy menu. Ambrus is the Boyar you’re most likely to eliminate first. You may anger him by destroying his leech camps or intercepting prisoner transports.

What’s important to note here is that each Boyar has more quests than you need to trigger their main questline, so you don’t need to complete every activity on the Infamy menu. It’s well worth visiting the Infamy menu to see how close you are to maxing out a particular Boyar’s anger level.

Once you’ve triggered their quest where you have the chance to eliminate them, I wouldn’t recommend further scuppering their operations. It’ll eat up time segments and raise your infamy level with no real gain; it’ll just make your life more difficult with Brencis imposing stricter edicts.

Don’t needlessly spend skill points as that eats up time too

While I adore The Blood of Dawnwalker’s time mechanic and how it ramps up the intensity of the gameplay, there is one facet to it which is just downright annoying. As you gain XP and level up, you’ll unlock skill points which you can spend at shrines. Here, you’ll be able to unlock new witchcraft, swordmastery, and vampirism skills for Coen.

It can be tempting to just spend however many skill points you have at the earliest possible convenience. I can’t say I’ve ever played a game before where I’ve just ignored unspent skill points, but you might want to do that here.

Acquiring a new skill typically chews up one segment of time, so don’t just randomly click on new skills needlessly as you may end up consuming time for something that doesn’t really suit your combat style.

This isn’t to say ‘don’t skill up’. You’re going to need to effectively face Brencis - and the 30 days and 30 nights limitation does account for you losing many segments to skilling up. This is more to say that you should choose your skills carefully and if all that’s left are perks you don’t think would be of much use, just leave those skill points to one side.

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Will-o-the-Wisp side quests should be pursued as players can dodge time consumption

One of The Blood of Dawnwalker’s more menial map activities is Will-o-the-Wisp treasure hunts where you’ll follow glowing wisps that’ll lead you to a pile of loot. You may have to kill an enemy or two along the way but they’re generally pretty easy to complete.

What’s interesting about Will-o-the-Wisp treasure hunts is that when you reach the end and discover whatever item or body it is that holds the relevant loot, you can ‘open’ it up and view said loot without actually consuming any time. You only lose a time segment - and this is made clear in the game - if you actually withdraw the loot. And it appears that you need to withdraw all lootable items for the quest to complete and a time segment to be consumed.

This means that if the loot isn’t worth nabbing, you can just leave it where it is and you won’t have any time deducted for the parts of the treasure hunt completed so far. It also means that if there’s just one item you want, you can leave the others there and that also shouldn’t mark the quest as complete, thus not consuming time.

Pay careful attention to dialogue and avoid losing time to waiting

There are many quests that you can choose to complete at night or in the day. However, others require it to be one or the other - and you must pay attention to dialogue to identify where this is the case.

I had a main quest with Anca that needed to take place during the day. At the end of our conversation, the game asked whether I wanted to proceed with the quest, consuming nine time segments, or whether I wanted to return later. The reason this would have consumed nine time segments is that it had only just turned to night and during the conversation, Anca had made clear that we should embark on this quest in the morning.

Therefore, the game was offering me the chance to completely skip the eight night segments and embark on the quest immediately, which made up the final segment. Of course, I didn’t do that. I left Anca, used my night hours for other activities, and returned first thing in the morning.

If you’re skipping dialogue, however, you might miss this important context and just assume that a quest is nine time segments long, or whatever the number is in your case, when it most definitely isn’t. So don’t skip dialogue! Listen to what a character is saying and if the quest needs to wait until daybreak or nightfall, leave and come back when the time is right.

Fight randomly spawning foes for bonus XP that won’t consume any time at all

Simply travelling around The Blood of Dawnwalker’s map doesn’t consume any time, so it’s well worth taking stock of your surroundings. While travelling, you may stumble across supernatural enemies, unfriendly animals, and other vicious creatures who wish you harm. If enemies simply spawn up in the open world and aren’t tied to any quest, fighting them doesn’t consume time.

It can become a bit tiresome facing the same beasts - or at least similar ones - over and over again, and you may be tempted to just run away. As these fights don’t consume any time though, it’s an excellent way to gain XP and level up.

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Unlocking Scouting Towers should be a priority

Bandai Namco

There are 11 Scouting Towers within The Blood of Dawnwalker and visiting a tower will display all relevant map activities in the nearby area. Again, general exploration in The Blood of Dawnwalker doesn’t consume time and, conveniently, neither does completing Scouting Towers.

This is an activity you can freely complete with no time deduction and it’s actually a great aid in your race against time. Once you’ve got a comprehensive view of just how many activities are present on the map, you’ll be able to better plan your remaining days and nights, hunting down and focusing on the quest markers over side activities.

It’s actually not the end of the world if you do run out of time

This is the only tip that may be considered a spoiler, so proceed with caution.

If you do consume all 30 days and all 30 nights and you still haven’t ventured to Greifberg Castle to fight Brencis, it actually doesn’t matter all that much.

Well, it sort of does for Coen. His family will be dead by that point. But for the player, it doesn’t mean that credits will roll. Once the 30 days are completed, the main aim of the game transitions from “save your family” to “avenge your family” - and with the coronation over and your family dead, you can take as long as you like before you turn up at Brencis’ front door.