The Blood of Dawnwalker: Ambrus’s Cellars Trouble Brewing Full Quest

Ambrus’s Cellars: Trouble Brewing is one of three Blood Cellar court activities tied to the vampire lord Ambrus in The Blood of Dawnwalker, and it is the only one that hides its final objective behind a second fight. Players routinely smash every barrel of blood in the cellar, watch nothing happen, and assume the activity has bugged out. It has not. The cellar is only half of it.

Quick answer: Kill the guards in the courtyard, destroy the blood stock in the cellar, then clear the second guard wave outside the house, go inside and head upstairs to the alchemist. Talking him through the interrogation and sparing him ends the activity for 500 XP and 1 Skill Point.

Trouble Brewing location in Svartrau City

The activity sits inside Svartrau City, in a walled courtyard near the Silver Trader. The cellar itself is under a house, so there is no obvious hatch out in the open — you break into the courtyard first, and the entrance is inside.

Court activities are not pinned on your map by default. Every one of them reads as “Unknown Activity” until Coen physically finds it in the world. Synchronising the 11 Towers first is the fastest fix, since it marks nearby activities with white question marks and saves you circling the city on foot.

Trouble Brewing costs a single time segment, which makes it one of the cheapest ways to push Ambrus’s Anger meter. That matters when you are working against the 30 in-game day limit before the confrontation with Brencis.

Time Has Passed notice on the HUD after completing a short court activity — The “Time Has Passed” prompt confirms a time segment was spent. Image: Rebel Wolves

Objective order and what each step needs

The journal only shows one objective at a time, which is why the third step catches people out. Here is the full chain.

Objective	What actually completes it
Defeat the guards	Clear the group patrolling the courtyard outside the cellar entrance
Destroy the blood stock	Enter the cellar and interact with the barrels of blood stored there
Investigate the house	Beat a second guard wave, search the ground-floor rooms, then reach the alchemist upstairs

Clearing the courtyard and the cellar

Break into the courtyard through the wooden door. The quest tracker on the right stays visible the whole time, so you can confirm you are at the correct building before you commit to a fight in the middle of a city.

Coen walking up to the wooden courtyard door with the quest tracker on screen — The wooden door into the courtyard, with the Trouble Brewing objectives tracked on the right. Image: Rebel Wolves

Fight through the guards inside. This is a larger group than the other two Blood Cellars throw at you, and they arrive from more than one angle in the enclosed space. Coming at night is worth it — claws hit harder and Shadowstep gets you onto walls and rooftops if you want to reposition.

Sword strike landing on an armoured guard as his health bar drops — Cutting down the courtyard guards before the cellar entrance opens up. Image: Rebel Wolves

Loot the bodies once the courtyard is quiet, then head down into the cellar and interact with the barrels to destroy the blood stock. The objective ticks over as soon as the stored blood is gone.

Note: Ambrus’s Blood Cellars generally let you take blood vials for yourself instead of wrecking every barrel. Collecting still destroys most of the stock, but leaves you with vials that heal Coen in combat while in vampire form. No branching consequence has surfaced for either choice, so treat it as a resource decision rather than a story one.

Investigate the house: the second guard wave

Destroying the barrels does not end the activity. Open the journal and the tracker swaps to “Investigate the house”, which is the step most players miss because there is no cutscene or prompt pointing them back up out of the cellar.

Head back outside. Another group of guards has arrived in the street, and they will engage on sight. Fight them in the open cobblestone stretch rather than backing into the doorway, where a second attacker can flank you while you are locked into an animation.

Duelling an armoured guard in a cobblestone street as a second guard closes in — The second wave spawns outside the house after the blood stock is destroyed. Image: Rebel Wolves

Enter the house and sweep the ground-floor rooms. There is loot scattered through them, and the search is what registers the investigation objective as underway.

Climb the stairs to the upper floor. The alchemist is waiting in a room up there, and reaching him is the last thing standing between you and the completion screen.

The alchemist encounter and how to end the activity

Interact with the alchemist to start the interrogation. Push through the dialogue and he gives up what he knows about the Vrakhiri’s plans, which is the payload of the whole activity — the barrels were only the bait that led Coen to him.

Sparing him closes the activity out. The conversation ends, the journal marks Trouble Brewing as complete, and the reward screen appears immediately afterwards.

Interior of the Svartrau City house during the Trouble Brewing investigation — The house interior you search before reaching the alchemist on the upper floor. Image: Rebel Wolves

Trouble Brewing rewards

Reward	Amount
XP	500
Skill Points	1
Potent Razor Claw Vial	1
Lasting Malediction Manual	1

If the completion screen has not appeared, the cause is almost always one of two things. Either the second guard wave outside the house is still alive, or you destroyed the blood stock and left the area without going upstairs. Neither state fails the activity — return to the same house in Svartrau City and pick up where the tracker left off.

Trouble Brewing is one of 14 court activities in Ambrus’s region, and you only need roughly three quarters of them to max his Anger and unlock The Gilded Gauntlet. Because the Blood Cellars each cost a single time segment while most other activities cost three, they are the efficient choice when you are a small amount of Anger short and do not want to burn a chunk of the clock to get there.