The Blood of Dawnwalker: How to Get the Broad Swing Manual Early

Broad Swing is one of the few Swordmastery abilities you can put on your bar before the prologue of The Blood of Dawnwalker is over. It is a weapon area attack that hits everything around Coen, and its manual sits on a group of bandits you can reach while you are still running errands for the village.

Quick answer: During the prologue, travel to the Bandit Camp in Outlaw’s Gorge, east of Tashkentyan, kill every bandit and the dog guarding the cabin, then loot the bodies for the Broad Swing Manual. Take it to the nearest shrine and spend one skill point in the Swordmastery tree to learn Broad Swing.

What the Broad Swing ability does

Broad Swing belongs to the Swordmastery tree, so it works during the day and at night, and it spends Activation Charges rather than health. The manual itself is an Epic Character Development item described as a soldier’s tale, and reading it makes the ability available for learning in the development tree.

Property	Detail
Ability type	Swordmastery, weapon area attack
Cost	2 Activation Charges
Base damage	300% weapon damage
Upgrade ranks	375%, then 450%, then 525% weapon damage
Manual rarity	Epic
Manual value	177 Denarius

Each rank is bought with a further skill point, so the 525% version is a long-term goal rather than something you set up in the prologue.

Reaching the Bandit Camp in Outlaw’s Gorge

Open the map while the prologue is still running. The Bandit Camp icon sits inside Outlaw’s Gorge, east of Tashkentyan, and it is reachable long before the game pushes you anywhere near it.

Run the gorge road toward the marker. Your tracker will still be showing the prologue chores, including the herbs you owe Anca, and none of that blocks the detour.

Prologue quest tracker listing chores and medicinal herbs while running through the mountain pass — The prologue chore list stays active while you cut through the pass toward Outlaw’s Gorge.

Draw your sword before you reach the wooden cabin. The bandits notice you early and a dog joins them, so entering combat stance on approach avoids being surrounded from a standing start.

Combat against armed bandits outside the cabin with enemy health bars on screen — The camp fight starts as soon as the bandits outside the cabin spot you.

Fight them one at a time. The objective updates to Defeat the Bandits, and the encounter only ends once every hostile at the camp, animals included, is down.

Prologue objective to defeat the bandits with a single enemy locked on during the fight — Locking onto one bandit at a time keeps the camp fight manageable at prologue gear levels.

Looting the Broad Swing Manual

The manual is a body drop, not a chest reward, so search every corpse rather than only the last one you killed. Walk over each fallen bandit until the Loot prompt appears and take everything.

Loot prompt appearing over a defeated bandit's body after the camp fight — The Loot prompt over each body — the manual is carried by one of the bandits, so check them all.

Alongside the manual, the camp hands over a useful bundle for this stage of the game.

Item	Use
Broad Swing Manual	Unlocks the Broad Swing ability for learning
Ring of Astral Defence	Superior ring, equippable straight away
Hunter’s Trousers	Early leg armour
Balm of Fortitude	Consumable
Golden Brooch, Wooden Cross, Inkwell	Sell for Denarius
Dog Hide, Animal Hide	Crafting materials

Open the inventory afterwards and equip the ring and trousers before you leave. The manual stays in your bag until you use it at a development screen.

Inventory screen showing the Ring of Astral Defence and its equipment stats — The Ring of Astral Defence in the inventory, one of the camp’s better prologue drops.

Unlocking Broad Swing at a shrine

Travel to the nearest shrine. Spending skill points happens there, so holding the manual on its own changes nothing in combat.

Open the Swordmastery tree and select Broad Swing. With the manual in your inventory the node stops showing a locked requirement and becomes available for learning.

Spend one skill point to learn it. A green arrow next to your health bar tells you when you have a point banked.

Assign it to a quick slot in the Active Abilities tab. You get four slots for daytime and four for night, and Swordmastery abilities can go in either set.

You know it worked when Broad Swing shows as learned in the tree and appears on the quick slot bar rather than greyed out in the ability list.

If Broad Swing will not fire yet

Learning the ability this early comes with a catch. Broad Swing costs 2 Activation Charges, and prologue Coen may still be capped below that, which produces a HIGH ACTIVATION CHARGE COST warning on the ability card reading, “This Active Ability costs more Activation Charges than your current maximum. You won’t be able to use it at the moment.”

Nothing is broken and nothing is wasted. The point stays spent and the ability becomes usable the moment your maximum Activation Charges reach two, so the early trip simply front-loads the unlock.

Other Broad Swing Manual sources later in the game

If you skipped the camp or want spare copies for the upgrade ranks, the manual turns up in several places once the world opens.

Source	Where
Renegade Bruiser	Enemy drop
Bandit miniboss	Enemy drop
Soldier Camp chest	Southwest of Lower Maragir Wealds Shrine
Soldier Camp chest	West of Burner’s Clearing Shrine
Uriashi bodies and camps	Random loot
Constantin, the robber baron	Rockfalls, vendor
Ocha	Svartrau tavern, vendor
Swordmastery Teacher	Vendor

Grabbing it in the prologue is mostly about tempo. The Outlaw’s Gorge detour costs a few minutes, hands you a ring and a pair of trousers you would otherwise be waiting on, and puts an area attack in the Swordmastery tree that keeps scaling with every skill point you feed it.