8 The Blood of Dawnwalker open-world secrets you've likely missed

The Blood of Dawnwalker remains gaming’s most popular title at the present moment with Marvel’s Wolverine’s disappointing reviews making it unlikely to dethrone it following that latter title’s launch tomorrow, on September 15.

With a runtime of 20 to 50 hours, it’s very likely that many of The Blood of Dawnwalker’s players will be nearing the end of their playthrough, taking the fight straight to Brencis.

Open-world exploration ends when you finally journey to Greifberg Castle; the only way to explore the world without limitation is to let your family die after 30 days and avenge them when you’re ready.

Even if you’ve rolled credits though, The Blood of Dawnwalker is well worth a second playthrough given how many choices there are within it that can dictate how the story plays out.

Whichever playthrough you’re on, it’s unlikely that you’ve seen all of the secrets contained within Vale Sangora, especially those away from the main quests and activities.

Here are eight open-world secrets you may have missed that show just how special Rebel Wolves’ debut title is.

Every good open-world game should have treasure hidden behind a waterfall

If ever you encounter a waterfall in a game, it’s always well worth testing to see if there’s anything behind it.

Nine times out of 10, there won’t be, but you’ll be rewarded when you do find a delicious pile of loot placed there by developers as a prize for your curiosity.

That’s no different in The Blood of Dawnwalker. Below Laslea, you’ll find some marsh land positioned in the middle of the map between Briar Sloughs and Maragir Wealds.

At the southern point of this marsh land, two rivers form. You’re going to want to follow the left-hand river which skirts around Boar’s Back.

When it nears the Svartrau Outskirts, you should find a waterfall. I’ll let you work out the rest.

Overcome max infamy limitations with this hidden shrine in Svartrau

In preparing to take down Brencis, you’re probably going to want to eliminate his back-up cronies, Ambrus, Bakir, and Xanthe.

The problem is that doing so will increase your infamy which equates to Brencis putting out new orders that make travelling around Vale Sangora more difficult.

If you max out your infamy, Brencis will shut down the city of Svartrau, preventing you from accessing this key location - and therefore the quests, merchants, and activities within it.

At night, you can scale the walls of Svartrau using your vampiric shadowstep ability, but there is a way to access the city during the day too.

While I recommend not fixing broken shrines in our top tips to avoid wasting time, there is one exception.

There’s a broken shrine hidden within a house near the south-eastern entrance of Svartrau.

This one’s actually disguised as a ‘Curious House’ quest, so you’ll need to attempt it at night and shadowstep into the house via an upstairs balcony.

The quest to fix this shrine is aptly titled ‘Destroyed Shrines: A Hidden Shrine’. Work your way through and you’ll unlock the only shrine that permits fast travel if Brencis shuts the walls to the city, offering you an easy route in and out.

Pity this poor resident of Svartrau that died from heartbreak

Not all of The Blood of Dawnwalker’s secrets have a direct impact on your playthrough. Some just build upon the game’s storytelling.

Within Svartrau you can apparently find a poor fellow who’s died of heartbreak having spotted his wife having an affair from the rooftops.

I can’t say I’ve stumbled across this one myself, with the recommendation coming from Reddit user ZoranLightning, but I’ll certainly keep an eye out when I’m shadowstepping through the location.

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Werewolf remains could point to what’s in store in the franchise’s future

A sequel is already in development with Rebel Wolves’ hoping to follow Coen’s journey through the ages.

What we don’t know is what time period or culture we’ll explore next, but it’s perhaps likely that we’ll run into werewolves at some point.

You can find the remains of a werewolf within The Blood of Dawnwalker.

There’s a soldier camp on the outskirts of a large area of forest near Rockfalls that directly borders a main road.

Near the camp, you’ll find prints that lead to a cave and it’s here that you’ll discover the remains and a note revealing that the remainder of the pack left the valley.

It’s a cool little discovery and hopefully a hint at what’s to come in the franchise’s future.

Ambrus actually has a tragic past involving a lost lover

Bandai Namco

Ambrus is an intriguing character, despite the fact that you arguably learn less about him than Bakir and Xanthe.

There is, however, a letter to a former lover of his, Rozalia, that reveals his tragic backstory.

You can find a couple of letters between the duo at the Murohn’s Lair not far from Laslea.

They detail how Ambrus wanted to turn Rozalia into a vrakhiri. It’s since been theorised that the Murohn you fight may actually be Rozalia.

It’s not outright confirmed, but it’s weird that these letters would otherwise be here. As a reminder, a Murohn is born when a vrakhiri transformation goes wrong.

Humanity is stripped away leaving only the bloodthirst, potentially signalling that Ambrus doomed Rozalia to a tragic fate.

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Coen is mistaken for Kingdom Come: Deliverance’s Henry

You can interact with all NPCs within The Blood of Dawnwalker, although most will only give you a single line of dialogue if you attempt to interact with them.

On the streets of Svartrau, there’s one female NPC you can speak to that will ask, “Are you a blacksmith’s son?”

It’s widely assumed that this is a nod to Henry in the Kingdom Come: Deliverance franchise.

It was only last year, in 2025, that Kingdom Come: Deliverance II launched and it shares a similar setting and combat style to The Blood of Dawnwalker.

You can reunite with Vasil back in Laslea if you save him from Bakir

Bandai Namco

You may encounter Vasil in the game’s prologue in the optional quest ‘Someone Needs a Lesson’.

He’s spouting off mean things about Coen’s mother, so you can either beat him, leave him be, or attack his father for encouraging you to beat Vasil.

Later on in the game, you can find Vasil in Parlita. It turns out that when Brencis destroyed Laslea, Vasil was taken prisoner by Bakir.

He’s being held in a pillory which you can shutdown by completing the activity ‘Bakir’s Pillories: Familiar Face’. Your infamy level will rise.

Once you’ve saved Vasil, he’ll return back to Laslea where you can actually go to catch up with him.

It looks as if you’ll only encounter him during the day, but this isn’t certain at this point in time.

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If you choose to lift the nuns’ curse, they’ll surface across the game’s world

This secret does link back to the ‘Echoes of Silenced Bells’ quests so spoilers lie ahead, although most players complete this quest pretty soon after the prologue.

In the quest, you’ll travel to Anca’s old haunt, St. Tyna’s Convent only to find that all of the nuns have been transformed into undead monstrosities; every time you kill them, they rise again.

Towards the end of the quest, you’ll find Leonica, one of the nuns who was dabbling in dark magic.

After killing her, Anca is keen to complete the spell that Leonica was attempting. The hope is that it sets the nuns free of this undead curse, but there’s no guarantee that will happen.

Thankfully, it does work, but it doesn’t exactly lay the nuns to rest. It simply stops them from being doomed to perpetually come back to life.

You won’t see it happen, but what’s implied is that the still undead nuns are now free to roam the game’s open world but within the world, they’ll come up against plenty of deadly threats.

You know this because if you follow this line of events, you’ll find their now dead corpses scattered around.

Well, I certainly found a dead group near a bear. They’ve been sighted by players at several points around the map, so I wouldn’t be surprised if some are still ‘alive’ and need putting out of their misery.