The time has finally arrived for The Blood of Dawnwalker to release, and you can finally get your hands on this vampire mayhem and let slip the dogs of war, but where do you start in doing that?
Because of this challenging question, we have amassed a few different tips and tricks for you to help start your journey as well as what you can do after you begin your quest and gain your abilities.
Time is Not Your Friend Don’t Waste it
You may be aware of this already, but for those who don’t, the way The Blood of Dawnwalker works is that you have 30 days and 30 nights to complete the story of the game in any way you see fit, and as strange as this might sound, there are numerous factors that play into this time frame.
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Throughout the game you will come across all kinds of actions that will waste your time within the game, causing you to limit yourself rather than finding everything in your first run. These actions can consist of things as simple as learning new skills, which costs 1 of the 8 segments of time you have in each cycle; forwarding a side quest; resting to change to a different form, whether that be human or vampire; and so many more.
Because of this, you will want to be incredibly careful and plan your time accordingly, as these actions will rapidly bring your time to a close, leading to you failing your main objective.
Combat Isn’t Easy, Try to Talk Your Way Out
A massive part of The Blood of Dawnwalker is the combat, as you will find yourself fighting all sorts of humans, animals, and monsters throughout your journey, so in some cases avoiding a fight might be your best option, especially when you get a little bit overzealous and fight enemies that are much stronger than you are or have greater odds.
However, there is a small trade-off to talking your way out of situations, as sometimes this could lead you to a negative outcome rather than a positive one or even waste some of your precious time, leading you to rush the game later on, leading into more complicated combat that you aren’t prepared for.
Dont Learn Every Skill Right Away
In most games it is highly encouraged to power yourself up as you go and learn skills constantly to keep an edge on your enemies, but in The Blood of Dawnwalker, learning new skills doesn’t just take levelling up or completing quests and using your skill points; it uses up your valuable time as well.
This means that once you get the option to upgrade your skills, you might just choose to burn all your saved-up skill points to rank yourself up as quick as you can, but we would recommend that you wait some time and see what you want and what you can unlock, as you may unlock a skill that you may not like, and you cannot undo this decision, so you will lose time and a skill point for nothing.
At Least Learn How to Run Fast
Now I am going to contradict myself here, as the above tip suggests that you do not jump straight into the skill tree once you gain the ability to do so, but there is one ability that you will 100% want to look towards, and that is the two haste abilities, as there is one for your vampire form and another for your magic form.
Both of these abilities do the exact same thing, which is that when you are sprinting, you are able to press the sprint button a second time to activate haste, which makes you run faster, but through two different methods. The vampire version is arguably cooler, as you turn into a wolf and can sprint across the map. The magic version slows down time, allowing you to run faster in time, which does look cool as everything around you slows down, but sadly just isn’t as cool as being a wolf.
There is a second benefit to this ability, and that is the fact it doesn’t use time to learn it, meaning that you can unlock it simply by using skill points, so straight away once you get past the prologue, you can be sprinting around the map in no time.
Read Everything
While you are exploring the world of The Blood of Dawnwalker, one of the most common items you will find are the books and notes that are littered around the game world. Each of these is incredibly important, as the books allow you to learn more skills later on within the game and even get upgrades for those abilities if you get enough books for the same ability.
When it comes to notes, these are drastically important to the game’s story and its side quests, as these notes provide context and even clues to further your progress and ensure you learn what you need to in order to complete the various quests and even hunt down the main bosses throughout the game.
Day and Night Differ in Many Ways Including Armor
A large feature within The Blood of Dawnwalker is the ability to swap between day and night, which also swaps you between being a human and a vampire, but what makes this mechanic so interesting and complicated is that it doesn’t just swap you between fighting with a sword and fighting with your claws; it also swaps your abilities, making you use vampire abilities or magic abilities depending on what cycle you’re in.
This cycle also changes what kind of armour you are using at the time, meaning that you essentially have two loadouts that you need to fill and prepare, one for the night cycle and one for the day cycle, and this is quite easy to do, as the numerous armour sets, trinkets, and weapons all come with their own unique stats that you can use to increase your benefits during these cycles.
Because of this, we recommend that you keep an eye on what equipment you have equipped and ensure that you use what is good for each cycle. There is no point in wearing a ring that reduces your vampire cooldowns on your day cycle, and vice versa for a ring that reduces your magic cooldowns during the night.
Exploring Doesn’t Take as Much Time as You Think
Once you begin your 30-day and 30-night cycle within The Blood of Dawnwalker, you may immediately begin to panic and think that exploration is now out of the question. Well, there is no need to panic, as exploring isn’t as bad as you might think.
Although side quests often use time to progress them, there are some that are very simple and don’t actually cost you any time, and the same with some of the points of interest within the game, as quite a few are just about killing enemies, but there are numerous that task you with using your time to fight bosses, solve puzzles, and more.
From what I gathered during my time with the game, actually running around the game world itself doesn’t often lead you to losing time segments as well, as it is clear that time continues to move while you are running around, but it takes so long that you won’t even notice it is happening until you use a segment of time anyway to complete an objective.
Difficulty is Real if it’s Dangerous Run
Now I am guilty of this as well, but when a game provides you with a challenge, people will often shrug their shoulders and try to take on said challenge no matter how weak their character is, but in The Blood of Dawnwalker, this is a really bad idea, as the enemies have a clear indicator that they are stronger than you, and if an enemy has a red skull by their health bar, they will likely kill you in one shot.
That being said, there is a chance to survive fighting tough enemies, as the yellow-skulled enemies are still incredibly dangerous, with them being able to kill you in maybe 2-3 shots depending on your health situation, but they can still be killed if you persevere long enough.
Also there isn’t really a massive downside to fighting these enemies except for the fact that once you do, you simply cannot give up, especially if it is a point of interest where you summon the enemy as the game auto saves you as the fight starts, so unless you have a save close by, you might be forced into loading a save from 3 hours ago rather than your most recent save point.
Crafting Can Save Your Life
Throughout the game, you will often find notes that will allow you to craft new and improved recipes that will aid you along your journey. Do not ignore these and the crafting system, as these items could be integral to you surviving the harsh game world, as you will mostly come across healing items that are very limited, especially as a human.
The reason I say this is because as a human, there are quite a few ways to heal, but the most common you will find is to use food to heal over time. Now in exploration, this works rather well and can heal you very quickly, but when you are in combat, you will barely notice the change in your health bar, and since the enemies hit like a truck, especially late game, you will instead want to focus on the healing salves you can craft.
Although these salves don’t require a lot of resources to craft them, they can still be rather scarce unless you farm out the ingredients or constantly purchase all the stock a merchant has, meaning that you will constantly come across the challenge of struggling to heal as a human.
However, as a vampire, you don’t need to worry too much about healing items, as you will come across plenty of natural solutions like leeches, blood vials, and much more that will heal you quite quickly, or you can even drain blood from animals and people to get a small health boost during combat.
For a vampire the main crafting item will more be the upgrade potions that you can craft, as these can increase your damage, speed up your attacks, and have so many different outcomes that your inventory will be clanking with bottles of potions.
Being a Loot Goblin is the Best Thing For You
Although you might be a human and a vampire, there is nothing wrong with being a loot goblin at the same time, as there is so much to collect within The Blood of Dawnwalker; you would be silly not to. Whether it be junk items to sell for money, swords and armour that can improve your stats or sell for money, or books and notes that can help you learn new skills, or if you have read them, sell them for money.
No matter what, finding and taking all the items in the game is a very smart way to play, as the carry limit is already set incredibly high once you begin at a carry weight of 200, meaning that you can carry plenty of stuff in your inventory and sell them for loads of money, but sadly you won’t keep this money for long, as the items you can buy, especially books, come out extremely expensive, with some costing hundreds to thousands leaving you dirt poor even after all your loot goblining.
For your next read, why not check out our review of The Blood of Dawnwalker, or check out our article that talks about what we saw during the Warlock showcase at Gamescom?
Liam is a Senior Editor, Writer, and Critic for Thumb Wars and has been working with the team since day one. Liam is a big fan of all things gaming, as you will catch him playing all of the new releases from every genre you can imagine. Whether you find Liam gaming just for fun or spending his free time streaming, you will always find a smile on his face when it comes to all things gaming.
