Blood of Dawnwalker Lets You Skip Everything and Beat the Game After the Prologue

Lead quest designer Rafał Jankowski has confirmed that skilled players can bypass nearly every quest in The Blood of Dawnwalker and head straight for the final boss after the Prologue. Also, recently the studio announced a release date and system requirements for its dark fantasy role-playing game, locking in 3rd September on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S/X.

The game doesn't have a main quest in the conventional sense. Players take on Coen, a half-vampire, half-human protagonist who has 30 days and 30 nights to rescue his family from vampires. When and whether that rescue happens is left to the player. After the Prologue ends, the valley setting opens up, and the lead vampire, Brencis, sits in his castle, available as a target from that moment on.

Jankowski told Eurogamer that nothing in the design blocks a direct attack on Brencis once the Prologue is complete.

"It is possible to miss a lot of content. After the Prologue, there is nothing stopping you from going straight to Brencis' castle and trying to defeat the big bad vampire and his vampire officers. It is difficult, of course, but it is physically possible — the content is there waiting for the players. The enemies are there waiting for the players. It is absolutely possible to skip everything, like all these quests."

— Rafał Jankowski

Jankowski has not attempted the run himself and said he is not sure how difficult the assault is. The team built the castle to be hard enough that the design does not encourage the route on a first playthrough. He expects players to manage it shortly after launch.

I see the appeal in a roughly 50-hour role-playing game collapsing into a much shorter critical path for a confident runner, even if the trade is leaving most of what Rebel Wolves built unseen.

For players who engage with the world before the final assault, the structure (or impression about it) will be similar to Crimson Desert and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, with the lieutenant hunt also drawing a direct comparison to Crackdown. Brencis surrounds himself with vampire officers, each based in their own themed fiefdom across the valley. Clearing those lieutenants thins the support around the lead vampire before the castle assault.

Each kill or disruption raises Coen's infamy. The system tracks how much pressure the player applies to Brencis' rule and triggers a wanted-style response, including public edicts intended to slow the player down. Creative director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz described two of the available retaliations.

"He can send out bounty hunters, or in the extreme version, he can just put the city on the lockdown."

— Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz

Infamy cuts both ways. Rebellious residents in the valley grow more sympathetic toward Coen as his actions loosen Brencis's grip, opening allies and side paths that a speedrun closes off entirely. The early castle attack also forces Coen to face the full vampire entourage rather than a thinned roster.

The studio has estimated a full playthrough at around 50 hours and has said one run will not cover all the branching content, with alternative quest lines and outcomes designed across multiple playthroughs. A speedrun cuts straight through that and leaves the side material on the table.

I think the experiment is more interesting than whatever final clock time emerges, since every minute cut from the run represents a quest, ally, or fiefdom the player decided not to visit. Jankowski himself said he wants to see the runs once players work them out.

Read also, Rebel Wolves revealed the main theme for The Blood of Dawnwalker earlier this year. Composer Nikola Kołodziejczyk wrote the piece for chamber orchestra, with vocals from Polish folk singer Karolina Matuszkiewicz and violin from Kacper Malisz. None of the contributors overlap with The Witcher 3's score team of Marcin Przybyłowicz and Percival, but the structure — restrained folk vocals layered over scraped violin lines, building through percussion to a louder climax — mirrors the approach used on Wild Hunt.