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While playing the PC version of The Blood of Dawnwalker, I encountered a bug that caused repeated crashes during the Blood Mass—the climax of the Prologue—and the event sequence immediately afterward.
In my environment, the issue appeared to be highly reproducible. The game crashed eight times in this section alone, preventing me from progressing any further.
This article shares the workaround that ultimately allowed me to get past the bug, along with a complete record of my troubleshooting process.
How to Work Around the Bug
The following five measures were important:
- Do not skip dialogue during the cutscene. The game crashed particularly often when I skipped a line immediately after selecting a dialogue option. This suggests that some extremely demanding processing may occur immediately after a choice is selected.
- Close any memory-intensive background processes. In my case, I closed Edge, Teams, and Xbox-related processes.
- After loading your save, wait for about three minutes before taking your seat for the Blood Mass. When I sat down too soon after loading, the cutscene stuttered noticeably.
- Lower every video setting as far as possible.
- The final change that got me past the crash was lowering the resolution to 1920 × 1080.
Video Settings Used to Work Around the Bug
These were the settings I was using when I successfully got past the crash.
| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Quality Preset | Low |
| Shadow Quality | Low |
| Light Quality | Low |
| Reflections Quality | Low |
| Post-Processing Quality | Low |
| Texture Quality | Low |
| Effects Quality | Low |
| Shading Quality | Low |
| Foliage Quality | Low |
| Detail Quality | Low |
| Volumetric Quality | Low |
| Upscaling Technology | FSR |
| Upscaling Mode | Quality |
| Frame Generation | Off |
| Motion Blur | Off |
| Bloom | On |
| Chromatic Aberration | Off |
| Depth of Field | Off |
| Display Mode | Fullscreen |
| Resolution | 1920 × 1080 |
| Frame Rate Limit | On |
| Maximum FPS | 30 |
| VSync | Off |
Details of the Bug and My Troubleshooting History
First Crash
The game crashed during the scene immediately after the Blood Mass, as Pieter was about to enter the silver mine.
The dialogue options I selected during the Blood Mass were:
“Remain silent” → “Remain silent”
Second Crash
I restarted my PC and resumed from a save made immediately before the Blood Mass. I used this same save for all subsequent attempts.
The game crashed immediately after I skipped a line of dialogue during the Blood Mass.
Third Crash
The game crashed at exactly the same point as it did the first time. I had also selected the same dialogue options.
Fourth Crash
With no other ideas, I changed my dialogue choices during the Blood Mass to:
“This is sick.” → “Remain silent”
The game crashed as the screen faded to black immediately after I selected “Remain silent.”
Fifth Crash
By this point, it was starting to become a little funny.
As a test, I changed the dialogue choices back to:
“Remain silent” → “Remain silent”
The game crashed immediately after I selected a dialogue option.
Sixth Crash
I became increasingly suspicious that the dialogue choices themselves might be involved, so I tried:
“Remain silent” → “May it forever endure.”
The game crashed during the loading sequence immediately afterward.
Seventh Crash
I shut down my PC again, waited five minutes, restarted it, and began changing the settings.
Using Task Manager, I closed the following background processes before launching Dawnwalker:
- Edge
- Teams
- Xbox-related processes
I also switched from Windowed mode to Fullscreen, enabled the Frame Rate Limit, and set the Maximum FPS to 30.
The game crashed during loading after the second dialogue choice.
The thought crossed my mind:
“Am I never going to be able to play the rest of Dawnwalker…?”
Eighth Crash
I tried turning VSync off because disabling it had improved stability in another game.
After changing the setting, I restarted my PC again and returned to the Blood Mass.
The result was the same: the game crashed after the second dialogue choice.
Success on the Ninth Attempt
As a last-ditch attempt, I lowered the resolution to 1920 × 1080 and started the Blood Mass again.
For the first time, it worked.
I successfully made it through the scene and was able to continue into the silver mine in Laslea.
Did the Game Remain Stable After Restoring the Settings?
In my case, once I had reached the silver mine in Laslea after the Blood Mass, I was able to restore my previous Frame Rate Limit, VSync, and Depth of Field settings without encountering any further problems.
I cannot guarantee that the same solution will work in every environment, but I hope this serves as one documented example for anyone experiencing the same issue.
Author’s PC Specifications
CPU: Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti with Max-Q Design (6GB VRAM)
Memory: 16GB RAM
OS: Windows 11 (OS Build 26200)
Steam Build ID: 25014996
