This post is also available in:
- This article presents a walkthrough chart and strategies for completing the Prologue.
- Prologue Walkthrough Chart
- General Early-Game Progression Guide
- Step 1: Follow Lunka
- Step 2: “Withering Away” Begins Automatically
- Step 3: Eight Time Segments of Free Time
- Step 4: The Blood Mass Event
- Step 5: Escape from the Laslea Silver Mine
- Features Unlocked After Completing the Prologue
- Guides Based on Hands-On Play and Testing
- The Blood of Dawnwalker Guides
This article presents a walkthrough chart and strategies for completing the Prologue.
I will avoid spoilers as much as possible. However, explaining the walkthrough inevitably requires discussing some of the events in the Prologue, so please continue reading at your own risk.
Several quests progress in parallel during the Prologue. This article organizes them individually according to the in-game quest log.
Prologue Walkthrough Chart
The Prologue progresses through the following five steps:
- Follow Lunka and fight the soldiers in the quest “All Good Things”
- The quest “Withering Away” begins automatically
- Eight Time Segments of free time
- The Blood Mass event
- Escape from the Laslea Silver Mine
After completing Step 5 and watching the following cutscene, the main part of the game begins.
General Early-Game Progression Guide
I have explained how to use food and medicine, how Time Costs work, and other useful basics in the article “Best Early-Game Progression Guide｜What Beginners Should Do First.” Refer to it whenever necessary.
Step 1: Follow Lunka
Immediately after the opening cinematic, the quest “All Good Things” begins automatically.
This is a tutorial in which Coen follows his younger sister Lunka, who has disappeared from right in front of him.
During this sequence, you will learn how to move, use Shadowstep, and fight through the combat tutorial.
That said, all you really need to do is follow the instructions, keep moving forward, and fight the enemies waiting at the end.
The enemies have also been considerably weakened for the tutorial, so use this opportunity to familiarize yourself with the game’s directional combat system.
Once you have finished the battle and watched the following cutscene, the quest will be complete.
You will receive XP as a reward and unlock the crafting recipe for the Minor Mending Ointment, a healing item.
Step 2: “Withering Away” Begins Automatically
This part is a little confusing.
Although the quest “Withering Away” begins as soon as “All Good Things” is completed, you are not actually required to complete the entire quest.
The general sequence of events is as follows:
- Do as your father Pieter tells you and play the log-splitting minigame. It is a rather strange minigame with no timing involved—you simply move the directional stick and press the buttons as instructed.
- A cutscene explains that Coen’s mother, Esme, is in a dangerously unstable state of mind and will not be able to face the Blood Mass that evening. Since Brencis despises weakness, she may be killed. In short, Mom’s life is in serious danger.
- And so, Coen sets out to visit the herbalist Anca and obtain some medicine that might calm his mother down!
Once Coen leaves the house, Step 3 begins.
Step 3: Eight Time Segments of Free Time
Now, this is where the game suddenly lets you loose.
You can head straight to Anca, complete the related quests, and return home as instructed. Alternatively, you can complete side quests to earn XP and learn new skills.
The important point is that you have eight units on the gauge—or eight Time Segments, as the game calls them—available to you.
Step 4 will not begin until eight Time Segments of in-game time have passed.
There is one more important thing to understand.
Completing all of the content available during the Prologue would require more than eight Time Segments. In other words, no matter what you do, it is impossible to complete every event in a single playthrough.
Depending on which quests you complete during the Prologue, characters may live or die, and you may have opportunities to form deeper relationships with certain NPCs.
In other words, obtaining something requires sacrificing something else.
This free-roaming period also serves as a tutorial for that fundamental part of the game.
I personally confirmed that the following five quests were available during this period:
I also saw several other quest markers. However, the route I followed did not leave me with enough Time Segments to investigate those quests.
The article below provides a more detailed explanation of how the passage of time works. If you are interested, be sure to give it a read.
The Blood of Dawnwalker: How the 30-Day Time Limit Works – Kaburanai Games
Step 4: The Blood Mass Event
Once eight Time Segments have passed, night falls and the quest “Sacred Covenant” begins automatically.
After a cutscene, the Blood Mass is held inside the church.
For this quest, all you need to do is speak with the villagers, take your seat for the Mass, and respond to the QTE prompts while listening to Father Florin’s sermon.
After that, you can simply sit back and watch the cutscene until the quest ends.
…Or at least, that is how it is supposed to go.
During this event sequence, however, I experienced eight crashes in a row, which nearly forced me to abandon the walkthrough altogether.
I explained the possible workaround while avoiding spoilers as much as possible, so anyone encountering the same bug may find the article helpful.
Step 5: Escape from the Laslea Silver Mine
Once the event sequence in “Sacred Covenant” ends, the quest “Bad Blood” begins automatically.
Coen starts this quest trapped inside the Laslea Silver Mine and sets out to find his father, Pieter.
After following the path through the mine, Coen finds his fellow villager Kostel instead of Pieter.
When Coen approaches and attempts to treat his wounds, he awakens as a malformed vrakhir.
The two grapple with each other, and Coen eventually falls into a pit below.
From this point onward, you must climb upward and escape from the mine using Coen’s vampiric abilities. These include biting rats to recover health, using Shadowstep to cross precipices, and clinging to ceilings.
After escaping the mine and speaking with Brencis’s soldiers, you will encounter an event battle against Brencis in Laslea.
After losing this battle—although early review coverage suggests that it is possible to defeat Brencis here if you are determined to do so—Coen awakens in Anca’s cottage, bringing the Prologue to an end.
(It may be possible for the Prologue to end differently if you deliberately avoid completing Anca’s quests.)
Features Unlocked After Completing the Prologue
The quest “Smoke and Ashes” begins automatically. At last, Coen’s full-scale adventure under the game’s 30-day time limit begins.
Guides Based on Hands-On Play and Testing
At Kaburanai Games, I write guides based on information I personally verify while actually playing the game and taking notes along the way.
When needed, I repeat tests under different conditions, dig into why something is actually “strong” beyond what the raw stats suggest, and sometimes even use statistical analysis. (I do happen to have a Level 2 Statistics Certification, which is a pretty niche qualification…)
For another game, Dungeon Antiqua 2, I tested every class and skill, then used real-world sample data to examine things like the relationship between individual skills and activation rates, as well as whether a skill could statistically be said to have a genuine effect.
So if you’re ever wondering, “Just how far does this site go when researching its guides?”—well, here’s one example of the kind of stuff I do.
