Bad Blood: How to Escape the Mine in The Blood of Dawnwalker

Coen’s fall into the pit is the moment The Blood of Dawnwalker stops being a swordfighting tutorial and starts teaching you to move like a vampire. The objective reads “Find a way back up,” there is no ladder, and the kobolds watching from the ledges are not going to help. Everything you need is a set of vrakhiri abilities the game hands you one at a time on the climb out.

Quick answer: Squeeze through the gap southwest of the pit, Shadowstep across the chasms, feed on rats to heal, kill the kobold ambush with claws, then Planeshift up the marked wall and onto the flat ceiling strip. The exit is a narrow gap you squeeze through at the top.

The four inputs that get you out of the mine

The escape is gated on abilities, not on finding a hidden door. Each one unlocks with an on-screen prompt at the exact spot where you first need it, and all of them draw from the same stamina pool.

Ability	Input	What it does down here
Shadowstep	Hold L2, aim the camera with the right stick, release L2	Turns Coen to mist and throws him across gaps too wide to jump
Voracious Bite	Hold L2 for Focus mode, target a rat, hold R2	Drinking blood is the only way a yaksh restores Health
Planeshift	Shadowstep onto a flat wall or ceiling	Lets you walk vertically or upside down; moving drains stamina
Claw swap	Left on the D-pad	Switches between your weapon and claws mid-fight

Route out of the pit, step by step

Get up, let the kobolds finish taunting you, and look for the narrow crack in the wall to the southwest. Squeeze through it to leave the room where you landed.

Follow the cavern and crouch through the low section hung with bone mobiles. On the far side, hug the edge and head northeast along the ledge. There is a skeleton worth looting here for a Soggy Letter, a Torch, the Bandit’s Gutter and some Denarius.

Coen moves through a dark mine passage with the Bad Blood objective Find a way back up on screen — The quest tracker reads “Find a way back up” as Coen works through the caverns below the pit. Image: Rebel Wolves

Keep climbing northeast until the path ends at a chasm you cannot jump. A cutscene fires, Coen remembers the ability from his dream, and the Shadowstep tutorial appears. Hold L2, put the reticle on the ledge opposite, and release to cross.

The Shadowstep tutorial prompt explaining how to aim and release to teleport across the gap — The Shadowstep tutorial pops up at the first chasm and spells out the aim-and-release input. Image: Rebel Wolves

Continue northwest and chain shadowsteps up the broken ramps, hopping platform to platform up the shaft. Stamina recharges quickly, so there is no reason to ration it here.

When the blood drinking tutorial appears, use it. Hold L2 to enter Focus mode, lock onto one of the rats scurrying around the tunnels, and hold R2. This is your only healing until you leave the mine, and rats keep appearing all the way to the exit.

Coen explores a torchlit stretch of the mine while hunting rats to restore health — Torchlit stretches of the tunnel are where rats spawn, which is where you top your health back up. Image: Rebel Wolves

Drop into the base of the large shaft and five kobolds will ambush you. Details on that fight are below. Once the area is clear, loot the bodies for Kobold Bile and other crafting ingredients.

Climb the platforms to the northwest and Shadowstep across the chasm to the platform holding a kobold nest. Keep going up past a crude cave painting of kobolds feeding on the miners, then follow the switchback up a short ramp until the path simply stops.

Coen climbing through a glowing section of the cavern after clearing the kobold ambush — After the ambush, the route keeps rising northwest through the glowing upper cavern. Image: Rebel Wolves

That dead end is the Planeshift tutorial. Shadowstep onto the flat wall with the pale path marked on it and Coen reorients so the wall becomes the floor. Aim your target as high up the wall as it will go before releasing, because walking in Planeshift burns stamina.

Cave interior with the R1 toggle active abilities prompt visible on the HUD — The HUD’s active abilities toggle sits on R1, which is worth checking before the wall climb. Image: Rebel Wolves

Walk to the top of the cliff face. At the lip you get a prompt to press X to “Turn the Corner,” which shadowsteps you onto solid ground above.

Head down the tunnel to a gap that is too wide for a normal Shadowstep. Look straight up. There is a flat strip of ceiling above you, so Shadowstep to it, Planeshift, and walk across upside down while the kobolds jeer. Cave Fungus, an epic crafting ingredient, sits near this stretch.

Drop down on the far side, follow the path right, and squeeze through the last narrow gap. That is the exit.

The kobold ambush: use claws, not your sword

The group of five kobolds at the bottom of the shaft is the only real fight between you and daylight, and it is much shorter if you stop treating Coen like a swordsman. Press Left on the D-pad to sheathe your weapon and extend your claws. They hit roughly twice as hard as the best sword you could have bought or found back in Laslea Glen, and the kobolds bring nothing to the fight except numbers.

If your health dips, back off and bite a rat rather than trying to trade hits. Voracious Bite also has a niche traversal use, since biting a target across a chasm pulls Coen over in much the same way a Shadowstep does.

Loot worth stopping for on the climb

Item	Where it is
Soggy Letter, Torch, Bandit’s Gutter, Denarius	Skeleton in the first cavern after the pit
Wolf Pelt	Picked up along the lower tunnels
Kobold Bile and crafting ingredients	Bodies of the kobolds after the ambush
Cave Fungus (epic crafting ingredient)	Near the ceiling crossing, close to the exit

Why the climb stalls, and how to tell it worked

Nearly every failed attempt at this section comes down to stamina. Planeshift drains it while you walk, so if you place the Shadowstep target low on the wall you can run dry partway up and fall, which usually means re-climbing a long stretch of platforms to try again. Place the target as high as the aim allows every time.

The other sticking point is looking for a route that does not exist. At the wide gap near the top there is no platform to Shadowstep to, and no path around it. The surface you want is above your head, not in front of you.

Confirmation is unambiguous. Squeezing through the final gap awards 250 XP for escaping the mine, the objective ticks over from “Find a way back up” to “Leave the mine,” and once you are outside the tracker updates again to “Return to Laslea and save your family.” Most players hit Level 5 right around this point.

From the cliff edge outside, the game introduces clawride on the descent toward the burning village, and Bad Blood shifts from a traversal tutorial into the confrontation with Brencis. The mine, at least, is behind you.