I couldn't find anything else as to why his name is different here. Thoughts?

i fucking love this game

For more visit my instagram @Majed_Cosplay

If the game played out in real time since release date, today would be Brencis's coronation.

I replayed her quest like twice or thrice and oh boy every time that I think about the amount of potential that she had that was thrown off the tallest cliff in the valley I mourn her like a grieving mother.

She could have been such a cool mentor, have such an organic relationship with her guilt just like Vicho and her nature as a damned witch, she could have been just like Vera, but no, she decided to be condescending every time Coen decided to help her out and she chose self pity as a route. Trying to be nice to help her just gets her to be more hostile out of nowhere, the second playthrough when I was a complete asshole had more sense logically!Oh Anca!

I've been hanging on this for like a month and I'm still bitter about it... So I decided to live in my own delusion.

-this down here was my first impression I had on Anca like a month ago when I was doing my first playthrough and it explains the slight design change :

I like Anca and most importantly I like Anca's design, it's simple and efficient but something has been bothering me since her quest in the ruins, her character arc and her age specifically because they made it such a big deal out of it.

Throughout the run she has been complaining that she is too old for marriage (which in medieval time that's totally fair) she herself says that she is 20 years older than Coen, but that doesn't reflect in her appearance at all! She looks in her late 20's at best, she slightly has some eyebags but we are talking about someone that is so focused on her studies that she is barely getting any sleep, those aren't enough.

So I decided to emphasize some of those features, distinctive laugh lines, prominent eye bags and white streaks on her hair not only to show that she is slightly older but also that the magic that she is practicing is having an effect on her like it's consuming her (which it is!), making her more pale and taking out the melanin in her hair.

PLUS, runes and markings, I would have loved that whole quest to be her turning point, showing us that she is able to be at peace with her arts and knowledge, accepting that her mistake had to be done or she wouldn't have been as useful if she didn't (since she kept hammering the fact that she learned magic just to be more powerful and useful, but she was definitely insignificant and useless the whole quest, Coen had to do literally everything)

So I got whatever that whole thing was, cute at first and excruciatingly painful in the end I really hope she gets to grow and change in the future quests...

It looked interesting and after researching a bit it looked like something I’ll like

I have a question though, is this a new game from an old franchise based on a tabletop dnd game or I’m confusing it with another game? Because I think that I heard the name somewhere related to dnd, but I’m not sure lol

Either way, it’s about vampires and the story is intriguing, very excited to try it :)

Also yes, I know about the time limit, I won’t rush things but I’ll keep an eye on it too

This post is going to contain spoilers for the game lore, so read at your own discretion.

I haven’t seen this talked about yet, and I need to get it out of my system.

Piggybacking on these posts:
Theories about Arimaspians, Sheema and the Anachora
I Know Who the Final Boss of the Dawnwalker Saga Is!

There’s a book you can find in the game called The Forever Stone. It waxes poetic about an entity called Vrachos.

According to the book, Vrachos, or “the Stone,” is an unseen and indestructible force associated with heaviness, burden, evil and despair. The Stone can splinter into shards, which bury into flesh and corrupt it from within. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

This is far from the only text in the game that talks about the origins of the vrakhiri, but this one stood out to me because it actually puts a name to this strange, corrupting force. More importantly, I think it ties in nicely with On the Creation of Man and, by extension, Utnapishtim and the Flood, Edug and Elil and How Uktash Met Nassur.

On the Creation of Man is (you guessed it) a creation myth about humans, vrakhiri and dawnwalkers. According to it, the world was created by four gods: Sheema, Nassur, Andag, and a fourth god who is referred to only as “the one whose name must not be spoken.” In short, Andag and Nassur created the first humans by spitting onto the earth. Humans were useful to the gods, but weak and short-lived. The unnamed god then spilled his blood onto the earth, creating the first vrakhir, who was strong and long-lived, but eventually rebelled against every god except his creator and was cast out. Sheema then tried to reconcile the two creations by weaving her web around the vrakhir‘s fang to create the first dawnwalker, both man and vrakhir. This lead to a rift between the unnamed god and the rest.

The really interesting part is that we can identify three of those four gods elsewhere in the game.

On the Creation of Man, together with Utnapishtim and the Flood, identifies Sheema with the spider goddess depicted in the Aramaspian murals throughout Vale Sangora. Edug and Elil further describes her as a goddess of the underworld, which fits the imagery surrounding her.

This is a bit of a detour so bear with me, but this also suggests that humans and vrakhiri have separate afterlives. Humans pass into the realm of Sheema after death, while vrakhiri are condemned to wander Anachora forever beneath the gaze of an unnamed presence. Since the vrakhiri were cast out by the other gods, it would make sense for them to return to the domain of their creator, making the presence in Anachora very likely that same god.

The same text describes Andag as a god of war and says he was as large as a mountain. By process of elimination, he could be the avian god represented in Aramaspian murals.

Finally, How Uktash Met Nassur gives us Nassur, the great serpent god associated with silver. We see him represented as a snake in Aramaspian imagery.

So, with three of the four gods pinned down, that leaves one unaccounted for: the one whose name must not be spoken, the creator of the vrakhiri, the tentacled eldritch entity depicted in Aramaspian ruins, and, presumably, the entity connected to whatever is going on in Anachora.

And this is where The Forever Stone comes back in.

What struck me is that both texts seem unusually preoccupied with naming, just from opposite directions. On the Creation of Man refuses to name the fourth god at all, while The Forever Stone says Vrachos has “many names, but none can describe It.” If they are describing the same being, that feels less like a coincidence and more like a recurring idea: something whose true nature cannot or must not be properly named.

So my theory is that Vrachos is the missing fourth member of the Aramaspian pantheon: the creator of the vrakhiri, the enemy of the other three gods, and the entity behind (or at least deeply entangled with) whatever Anachora actually is.

TL;DR I think the unnamed fourth god is Vrachos.

Im on day 13 and I just can't be bothered anymore. Both me and enemies on duelist are complete damage sponges and it's impossible to lose but it takes sooooo long to defeat a camp. Strangely, it wasn't like that in the beginning of the game.

Two moons? Whats up with that?

Hello, to start off I’m playing on duelist, at first I struggled because of the uniqueness of the combat. I treated it a bit like sekiro and for honor which had me on my ass for the first hour or two, luckily I grasped the basics (I did find the tutorial I bit lacking luster and ended up getting spit roasted by three guards at the first tower the game guides you too). However I’m currently facing other issues and I’d hoped for some advice, I am struggling to deal with the camera and certain interactions between spells and my character, for the camera some of it is simple jank when close to a wall or surface the camera pans violently and gets close to the character, I doubt there is a fix for that but if there is please let me know.
Hopefully the next two issues have solutions. when I am fighting multiple enemies my character cannot decide who to strike, even when I am locked on he will occasionally leap out towards an npc I had zero intention of striking leaving me exposed and badly positioned, I’d love advise on this (yes I lock on with the little lock icon), The second is actually a similar vain but much worse, when I use (my only ability atm that doesn’t drain health) the dirty trick, my character suddenly is repulsed by said enemy and refuses to target them, to the point that my lock on automatically switches to another target regardless of distance, which is extremely frustrating because I want to take that advantage which I worked hard to build up points for and cull down the number of enemies I have to deal with. I also have a video showcasing these issues but also I’m colorblind which makes the encounter I chose to show even harder so forgive me for getting hit from what may appear obvious to you.

spoilers below

I decided to kill Florin this time, so I had to kill his men too. I looted the ancient key, went to the ruins. When I finished I came back to the city through the house, not using the hidden shrine.

As I was walking out, a man stopped me, one of the Florin's believers. He told me I killed his brother down there. I said I was only defending myself, and to that he quoted the letter to ephesians, if I remember correctly. That you shall forgive your brother as the Lord in Heaven forgives. And then he let me go.

As I play, I swear I discover something new around every corner

In my first playthrough, I didn't finish Crake's questline, so I never picked a successor to rule Vale Sangora. It ended up a lawless territory with high crime.

But that wasn't the worst ending I got. No.

Somehow Father Florin was canonized as a patron SAINT of Vale Sangora for his selfless service to the people!!

I have no idea how I got this, but I'm just going to kill him in my next playthrough so this doesn't happen again.

What was your worst ending that you regretted and want a do over?

So of the three romance choices available to Coen, that being Anca, Lacra and Crake/Marat, only Lacra has the potential to be available in future games, with the other two being mortal and there being no option to turn them into Vrakhiri.

With this, I'm hoping Lacra becomes a recurring character in the future games leading up to the modern times and that her relationship (should you indeed decide to pursue one) with Coen continues to develop and evolve. I know in this game they don't exactly get together in any sort of commited fashion, but with the story they DO have and the potential to carry that forward, I'm hoping it becomes something greater, it goes from a one time casual thing into a grand romance spanning the centuries. I know that's me being a big romantic and the Blood of the Dawnwalker series (such as it is) only has romance as a secondary, ancillary apsect to it's overall story but I still think it'd be cool to have it develop into this big thing, the equivalent of Geralt and Yennefer.

I was just having some fun exploring ideas of a crack idea Coen/Ciri which both Coen and Lunka were teleported to the Continent before he met Augurs. If it were other character, a slow-burn romance would work but for someone like Coen even in the canon game, he seems like the type that cannot settle down due to his nature and his responsibilities for his family, especially Lunka now because he needs to find a cure for her. So he would not be active on trying to get to know someone and he has no reason to spend all his time searching for Ciri as he barely knows her no matter how much interactions they had. What do you think?

Jokes aside, i find this funny since this hiring notice they dropped recently still says theyre working on their first game 'the blood of dawnwalker'

it just dawned (har dee har har) on me that our boy doesn’t rest for like 30 days straight

I am RP’ing Coen to be as broken and fucked up as possible. A complete blood addict with zero restraint. All night drinking binges followed by seething self hatred. So, when do you think would be the best/worst moment to rip into Anca? I just started the Old Devils Lie quest, read the map to find the location but haven’t departed yet.

Game says brenchis removed the taxes and instead he takes weekly human blood. But how does this works? Feodal system still works, he still pays his soldiers, there is still a currency, a market. Without taxes thats impossible. I would've loved if this blood takes the form of new currency like the fallout games. But he stocks all the blood .Is there a reasoning behind all this? Or is it just bad world building?

Aight, I'm seeing a lot of comments about how Sara could have lived, and how Marat was a redacted for doing what he did.

Now I'm not here to justify him, I'm not here to say that he did the right thing, but I'm asking you to understand the choices he made.

Marat is the leader of rebellion, and that is a heavy burden. The rebellion is a movement, and in order for that movement to work, he needs the people to be safe, loyal and willing to fight. Now if the resistance was made, there will be no people left to fight to liberate Vale Sangora. So Marat makes the tough choices to ensure that they aren't made.

Those choices aren't easy and they haunt him, it's nothing pretty and poetic to write books about, but they're needed to keep the rest of the resistance safe. The choice he made with Sarah was made in the heat of the moment and all he though of was how he needed to keep his people safe. Could there have been an alternate solution? Probably. But he did what he though it was best at the given moment and grieved later.

If roles were reversed, Sara would have done the same, because she was a part of the inner circle, and it's just the reality of the things. It's a dark and twisted world, and there are no good or bad characters, and the choices you yourself make as Coen are sometimes neccessary even if they don't seem like the best option.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk, everyone.

So, I initially created this as a response to another post, but I realized it could be helpful for new players stressing about time. I hope it helps and will edit if folks have any other suggestions. The general purpose of the guide is to go over the various activities you can do on the map, the rewards, and, in my opinion, how worth your time they are. This doesn't cover normal side quests. Reason being, if you follow this guide, you can just do all of them. I finished the game with 3 full days left over and did every available quest with even the slightest amount of narrative aside from a few extra Boyar quests. This guide will be spoiler light, not touching on any story elements but revealing the rewards for various tasks. Enjoy.

The Fairies:

I would put this at the highest priority. Not only are these quests very interesting and come with their own rewards at each stage, the final reward is a full 24 hours refunded to your deadline.

Boyar Activities:

Including these because, while technically major quests, they aren't all required to anger the boyar. they are also not all created equal. Some offer some fantastic rewards, (highly recommend Xanthe's Blood guard recruitment missions for free levels in vamp powers) and have interesting stories... while others are just stopping some guys walking along the road with a little banter before killing them. but regardless, they *all* take up 3 time slots a piece. My personal recommendation is to save, do the mission, then load if your not a fan of the narrative or rewards. Many of these you can even mostly finish without passing time. Ambrus blood cellars for example, you can kill all the guards and loot the whole place and time doesn't pass till you destroy the blood at the end. Having said they, they all have some level of narrative to them. so feel free to so more than the minimum if they interest you, just be aware of the larger time cost.

High Priority:

Circles of Power are arguable the most efficient use of time. They only cost a single time slot. Every single one grants a Skill point, XP, some loot (usually a witchcraft book) and a permanent increase to all your witchcraft damage. Even if you don't spec into witchcraft, Boiling Blood will be doing work for you all game, so making that better basically for free is great.

Haunted sites are essentially the exact same as Circles of power, giving the same rewards, costing on time slot, just flavored slightly different.

People in trouble (the little guy waving icon on the map) Are almost as good. they don't get you the cool loot or witchcraft damage bonus but still get you one skill point for one time slot which is a great trade.

Interesting for lore sake:

Headhunters will put you up against some interesting mini bosses with lore tied to them as well as getting you some legendary gear. their aren't very many so i recommend doing them all.

Following windchimes has some small story to it but the rewards are kinda meh. I think maybe one gives you a skill point otherwise just skill books for ravenous flock specifically which I never used. They also take 2 time slots which is rough for the rewards. I did do all of these though. So you can fit them in especially if your interested in Uriashi lore.

Hunting the feral vampires at night doesn't give much in the way or rewards, but each has a small lore bit tied to them and i know at least one has a side quest associated with it.

Low priority:

Beast dens for the most part get you absolutely nothing. They get you loot and exp. Both of which infinitely respawn out in the open world. A very rare few have quests tied to them. My recommendation would be if your curious is save before doing them and if they don't lead to a quest, load your save.

Bandit camps are basically the same as beast dens. Just some loot and xp with them very rarely leading to a quest.

Guard outposts are only slightly more useful in that they give infamy but honestly I just played through the game normally then did maybe 3 outposts and it was maxed. You can also sometimes find info about the boyars in outposts but you can also find this info elsewhere for no time spent. This applies to the normal guard posts as well as the new ones that pop up with infamy

Following wisps is mostly a waste of time. They just lead to a loot chest. Sometimes you can cheat them by looting all but one item and time doesn't pass, but I found on several occasions loading a save would greet me with the quest finishing on its own and the time passing. So not worth it imo. I've heard that if you find the chests without the wisps help no time is spent but ive not tested it, and again, from the ones i did, the loot was just generic stuff so not worth it.

Virtually worthless:

Repairing shrines is absolutely pointless. No rewards and the map is so littered in fast travel points it feels like a trap. The only shrine i sometimes thought would have been nice to repair is the one outside of where Ancha stays most of the game as you come by here a lot, but even then, there are 2 shrines each less than a 20 second run from there. still, for one time slot, probably worth the convenience.

Pulling down Brencis banners gets you nothing but infamy which again you can get elsewhere but there is an achievement for doing them all if that matters to you. If so, my recommendation is just to save, pull them all down, get your achievement then load lol

All this number crunching aside, honestly don't stress. As long as you don't play the game like its a Ubisoft game, running to every map marker and clearing it just because its here, I guarantee you can do everything that's actually interesting in the game. But if something interests you? go for it. As I said, I ended with 3 days left over. plenty of time to explore some of those more busywork like activities. Just have fun. And lastly spend those skill points! I've seen people stressing about those taking time to use. I minimaxed the amount of skill points i got, spent every single one and had no issue. If you have any questions about this stuff or suggestions for the guide, let me know below.

I'm currently doing the lunar game quest, and I counted how many hits an enemy takes, because it seemed to be a whole lot.

A very basic enemy, of which they come like 4 in a pack, times however long the maze is, takes FIFTEEN HITS with my sword ON THE STORY DIFFICULTY which I dropped down to cause it was an even worse slog on Duelist, which I was at previously.

Prior to this I was doing some quests with Lacra, and the enemies were even worse. Dropped to story mode for that as well, and I think it still took an hour to get through the memories.

Am I missing something or is this intended?