Bakir’s Distilleries: Ends and Means is one of the twelve Court activities tied to Bakir in The Blood of Dawnwalker, and it is one of the few that hands you a real decision instead of a simple clear-out. Bakir is pumping cheap liquor into Vale Sangora so the valley stays drunk and compliant, and shutting a distillery down raises his anger level toward the boss duel. Bakir’s region is tuned for level 20 and above, so expect a real fight in the yard.
Quick answer: Kill the guards in the distillery yard, then go inside the building and interact with the distilling equipment to sabotage it. The quest closes the moment Coen smashes the gear, paying out 250 XP and 1 Skill Point for 3 time segments.
How to unlock Bakir’s Distilleries: Ends and Means
There are two ways into this quest, and neither of them puts a marker on your map automatically. Court activities stay listed as unknown until you physically stumble onto them or read the right document.
The direct route is simply walking into the distillery in Vale Sangora, which starts the activity on the spot. The paperwork route comes out of one of Bakir’s Pillories activities. Beat the soldiers there, loot the body carrying the Letter of Reprimand, and reading it unlocks both this quest and Bakir’s Distilleries: Coercion and Duress at once.
There is a third trigger tied to the workshop area near Boar’s Back. Fighting through the trespassing zone marked as Bakir’s Workshops and looting the camp turns up a document called Instructions: Shipping. Reading it flips the tracked objective over to Bakir’s Distilleries: Ends and Means with a single instruction, Sabotage the distillery.
Clearing the yard and looting the camp
The Brencis dialogue choice inside the distillery
Inside the building you meet a Distillery Worker named Brencis, who is running his own sabotage plan. His idea is to poison the vats rather than destroy them, which would kill whoever drinks the next batch. Coen can go along with it or shut it down.
Refusing the poison plan with the line “I won’t let you do it.” makes Brencis attack. He goes down quickly, and the quest still resolves as a clean shutdown. Letting the booze be poisoned instead produces a different journal outcome, one the game deliberately leaves open on whether it was the right call.
| Choice | Result |
|---|---|
| Refuse the poison plan | Brencis attacks and dies; the distillery is destroyed and shut down for good |
| Allow the poisoning | The operation keeps running with poisoned stock instead of being closed |
| Walk away | The activity logs as unresolved because Coen leaves to face Brencis, the main boss |
Note: the Distillery Worker here shares a name with Brencis, the vampire who abducted Coen’s family and serves as the game’s final boss. They are separate encounters, and killing the worker has no bearing on that fight.
Sabotaging the equipment and confirming completion
Killing everyone in the building is not enough on its own. The objective text is explicit about it, since putting the distillery out of commission requires wrecking the equipment itself. Walk up to the still and use the interact prompt.
A short cutscene plays in which Coen tears the machinery apart, then time advances. You will know it worked when the quest completion banner appears with 250 XP and 1 Skill Point, and the journal entry closes with a line about the distillery being shut down for business. The activity costs 3 time segments out of your 30 in-game days.
If the quest refuses to close, the cause is almost always one of two things. Either the equipment interaction was never triggered, or you left the area before the cutscene resolved. Clearing guards, looting Strong Spirits, and reading the shipping document do not complete anything by themselves.
How this fits into Bakir’s Court activities
Three distilleries feed Bakir’s anger meter, and each one ends with the same sabotage objective but a different setup around it.
| Activity | What is different |
|---|---|
| Ends and Means | Yard fight, then a moral choice with the Distillery Worker inside the barn |
| Coercion and Duress | Yard fight, then a decision about what to do with the distiller before destroying the still |
| Offshoot | A forest camp run by corrupt soldiers; you can shut it down or return a day later for a cut of the profits |
You do not need all twelve of Bakir’s activities to draw him out. Roughly three quarters of a vassal’s Court activities is enough to max their anger and unlock the duel quest, and the rest stay available afterward if you want to circle back with time to spare.
