The Blood of Dawnwalker Trophy Guide

Trophy list at a glance

Save discipline comes first

The 54 manual slots are your safety net and the reason the missables list is not frightening. Use a different slot every in-game day, and take extra saves after the prologue, before and after each main boss, and before the final quest. Treated that way, the save list works like a chapter select for cleanup later.

Quicksave before combat and while free-roaming as well. The game does not autosave during free-roam, so dying without a recent save can cost a lot of progress.

The one behavioural rule that matters: do not kill non-hostile NPCs or quest givers. Killing enemies is fine, but removing a quest giver locks you out of their content. Managing vampire hunger before conversations is part of this — a starving Coen can feed on an NPC mid-dialogue.

Step 1: Start on Duelist and clear the prologue

Begin on Duelist. Uphill Battle requires completing a full ending on that difficulty from the start, and it is far easier to do the story run on Duelist and drop down for cleanup than the reverse.

During the prologue quest Withering Away, prepare the correct medicine for Coen's mother Esme using hot water and three spoonfuls of herbs. If the quest is not completed before time runs out, she dies.

The prologue is the only linear stretch. Once it ends, the whole open world and all main and side content becomes available immediately.

Step 2: Unfog the map and level up

Buy Shapeshift in the Vampirism tree and Mercurial Fervour in the Witchcraft tree first — both sit in the bottom right of their trees and give you the fast movement that replaces mounts.

Climb the 11 towers at night, when you have full access to vampirism and Shadowstep for scaling walls. Towers mark every point of interest with question-mark icons.

Then grind those points of interest for levels: monster lairs, persons in danger, soldier camps, bandit camps and ancient circles. Stay in the northern half of the map, because enemies get harder as you move south and red skull icons mark encounters above your level. Around level 20 you can survive anywhere on the map.

Keep this step under 15 in-game days. The safest approach is to skip side quests entirely here — do open-world activities for levels only, then commit to the story. Side quests can all be cleaned up later from your ending save.

Step 3: Court activities and the three bosses

The story goal is to save your family within 30 in-game days, which you do by working through the Court Activities belonging to Ambrus, Bakir and Xanthe. Defeating all three unlocks the ending quest.

You need to complete roughly 75% of a boyar's court activities to max their anger meter and trigger their boss quest. Each activity advances time a little, and the story portion takes around 7-10 in-game days. Track progress in the Court menu, available after the prologue.

Aim to reach the ending by around day 22, leaving a few free days for the ending-related side questlines. Decisions made inside the three boss questlines do not affect the ending trophies.

One missable to note here: Together Forever, during Xanthe's Home Sweet Home activity. It is very hard on Duelist, so skip it on this run and pick it up later on the lowest difficulty.

Step 4: The Duelist ending

After the three bosses fall you should be at maximum infamy. Skip time to the next day for the cutscene where the infamy edicts are read out, and Brencis will send word that he wants to parley — triggering the final quest, A Deal with the Devil.

Make a manual save before that final quest and do not overwrite it. This is the save you reload for every other ending.

For the Duelist run, take Brencis's deal and betray your allies for The Turncoat ending. It skips the final boss fight entirely, which makes it comfortably the easiest way to bank Uphill Battle.

Step 5: Reload for the other endings

With Duelist secured, reload the pre-final-quest save and drop the difficulty to Story. Everything from here is cleanup and there is no reason to make it harder.

Work through the remaining ending trophies from that same save. Note that Lacra's and Crake's side questlines have to be completed to set up their respective endings, so factor those in before you commit to the final quest.

There is no free roam or mission replay after an ending — reaching one returns you to the title screen and you must reload a previous save to keep playing. That is exactly why the pre-final-quest save matters.

Step 6: Level 50 and the Ultimate Perks

The last big trophy is reaching level 50. Reload your save from before the endings and clear all remaining side content. You are allowed to exceed the 30-day limit at this point, and side content stays available.

Master of Arms and Arch Warlock require Ultimate Perks, and a single Ultimate Perk costs 39 skill points in total — 35 spent in the tree plus 4 for the perk itself. A full clear plus level 50 yields roughly 160-170 skill points, which is not enough to max everything in one run.

The workaround is a save trick: bank enough points, make a manual save, buy out one tree for its Ultimate Perk, then reload and spend the same points on the other tree. You will also need the relevant manuals in hand before you can buy the perks.

Early and secret endings

Several endings can roll the credits far ahead of schedule. You can walk out of the prologue and go straight for Brencis's stronghold without rallying anyone, and pre-launch coverage also described beating a prologue boss around three hours in to trigger credits.

Coen can also simply walk away — abandoning his family and the valley is a supported ending rather than a failure state.

These are worth knowing about for the ending trophies, but avoid triggering one accidentally on your Duelist run before you have taken the pre-final-quest save.

Still to be confirmed

• One reviewer reported an achievement called No Compromises referencing a nightmare difficulty that does not exist in the game — the difficulty range tops out at Duelist. Whether this is a bug or a misread is to be confirmed.
• The complete named trophy list — full details beyond the roadmap trophies above are still being catalogued.
• Whether a secret ending exists beyond those documented; at least one reviewer reported an ending they could not locate a path to.
• There is no PS4 version, so no autopop, save transfer or cross-buy applies.