The Blood of Dawnwalker: How to Find a Way Back Up in Bad Blood

Coen’s fall down the shaft during Bad Blood, the fifth main mission in The Blood of Dawnwalker, leaves you at the bottom of a kobold-infested cavern with no ladder and no way to climb out the way you came. The “Find a way back up” objective is where the game finally hands over the vampire traversal kit, and the route out is built entirely around it. Get the ability prompts right and the climb takes a few minutes.

Quick answer: Squeeze through the narrow gap out of the pit, Shadowstep across every chasm on the way up, tear through the five-kobold ambush with your claws, then Shadowstep onto the marked wall beside the waterfall to Planeshift up it, and finally Shadowstep onto the flat ceiling strip to cross the last gap and reach the exit crevice.

Vrakhiri abilities unlocked during the escape

Three abilities come online during this stretch, each introduced by its own tutorial prompt at the exact spot you need it. All of them draw from stamina, so the climb is really a stamina management problem more than a platforming one.

Ability	Input	What it does
Shadowstep	Hold `E` (or R2 / RT), aim with the camera, release	Turns you to mist and carries you across gaps that are too wide to jump. Costs stamina.
Planeshift	Automatic after Shadowstepping onto a flat wall or ceiling	Reorients you so you can walk on the surface. Walking while in Planeshift drains stamina.
Voracious Bite	Hold `F` to enter Focus Mode, target, hold `F`	Drinks blood to refill health outside combat. Rats scattered through the mine work as targets.

Escape route from the pit to the mine exit

Leave the pit floor through the narrow gap to the southwest. The kobolds that dragged Kostel’s body away will circle and jeer at you here, but they will not attack yet, so ignore them and keep moving.

Follow the cavern, crouching through the low passage strung with bone mobiles, then hug the ledge to the northeast. The route is a single corridor with no branches, so just track the light ahead of you.

Coen moving through a pitch-dark mine tunnel with the Bad Blood objective active on screen — The linear cave passage out of the pit during the “Find a way back up” objective. Image: Bandai Namco Entertainment

Continue until the path stops at a chasm you clearly cannot jump. The Shadowstep tutorial fires here. Hold the button, point the camera at the ledge opposite, and let go to drift across as mist.

Shadowstep tutorial prompt telling the player to hold E, aim, and release to cross the chasm — The Shadowstep prompt at the first uncrossable gap. Image: Bandai Namco Entertainment

Work upward through the next cavern, using Shadowstep to skip the broken sections of the ramps and hop platform to platform. The objective updates to “Use vrakhiri skills to cross the precipice” while you do this.

Quest tracker updated to find a way back up and use vrakhiri skills to cross the precipice — The quest tracker updating as you climb the shaft. Image: Bandai Namco Entertainment

Drop into the base of the large shaft, where there are no obvious platforms and no visible exit. A pack of five kobolds ambushes you the moment you land.

With the pack dead, climb the platforms to the northwest and Shadowstep across the chasm onto the ledge holding a kobold nest. Keep going up past the crude cave painting of kobolds feeding on the miners.

The path switches back, runs up a short ramp, and dead-ends at a vertical wall next to the waterfall. This triggers the Planeshift tutorial. Shadowstep onto the pale marked track on the wall, aiming as high up it as you can before releasing.

Planeshift tutorial explaining that shadowstepping onto a flat wall or ceiling lets you walk on it — The Planeshift prompt at the wall beside the waterfall. Image: Bandai Namco Entertainment

Walk up the wall to the lip of the cliff. A prompt to “Turn the Corner” appears there, and pressing it Shadowsteps you straight onto the top.

Head down the tunnel to a gap that is too wide even for Shadowstep. Look up. There is a flat strip of ceiling directly overhead, so Shadowstep onto it and Planeshift carries you across upside down.

Drop back to the floor on the far side, follow the path to the right, and squeeze through the narrow crevice. That ends the climb and starts the “Leave the mine” objective.

Kobold ambush: use claws instead of your sword

The five kobolds at the bottom of the shaft are the only real fight in the section, and the temptation is to draw steel. Don’t. Sheathe your sword and Coen’s unarmed stance switches to extended claws, which hit for roughly double the damage of the best sword available around Laslea Glen at this point in the game.

The kobolds have no new tricks beyond swarming you, so keep moving, break up the group, and clear them one at a time. Smaller kobolds also appear near the nest platform higher up, and they die the same way.

Refilling health with Voracious Bite

Rats are scattered along the climb and act as free healing. Hold F to enter Focus Mode, put the reticle on a rat, then hold F again to feed. That takes health back to full without using any consumables, which matters because you enter this stretch already wounded.

Tip: Voracious Bite doubles as a movement tool. Targeting something across a chasm and biting produces a lunge similar to Shadowstep, which can cover a gap if your stamina is awkward.

Equipping active abilities before the wall climb

An Active Abilities Equipment tutorial appears partway through the ascent. Press Tab to open the panel and slot your unlocked abilities so they are actually bound and usable, rather than sitting unassigned in the menu.

Active Abilities Equipment tutorial pointing to the Tab key to open the panel and equip an ability — The Active Abilities panel, opened with Tab, where you slot unlocked abilities. Image: Bandai Namco Entertainment

How to confirm the objective is complete

Squeezing through the final crevice is the trigger. The tracker swaps from “Find a way back up” to “Leave the mine” and then to “Return to Laslea and save your family” once you are outside, and escaping the mine pays out 250XP. Around this point Coen typically hits Level 5, so a level-up banner is a reliable confirmation that the sequence registered.

Why the climb fails and how to avoid restarting it

Almost every failed attempt comes down to stamina, not aim. Planeshift burns stamina continuously while you walk on a wall, so if you Shadowstep onto the waterfall wall low down, you can run dry halfway up and fall all the way back to the platforms below, forcing a long re-climb. Place the Shadowstep marker as high on the wall as it will go before you release the button.

The other sticking point is the final tunnel. If a gap refuses to let you Shadowstep across, the game is not bugged, it wants you to look up and target the flat ceiling instead. Shadowstep needs a surface it can land on, so aim at solid ledges, marked wall tracks, or level ceiling strips rather than empty space.

Once you are through the crevice and back in daylight, the mine section is done and Bad Blood opens up into the countryside above Laslea, where the clawride prompt at the cliff edge takes over as your way down.