The Manumit caches are one of the quietest secrets in The Blood of Dawnwalker. Nothing pops up in your journal when you loot the first one, no marker appears, and the notes inside read like ordinary flavor text. They are actually two linked puzzles, and finishing both hands Coen a legendary amulet, epic armor, a pile of silver valuables, and a recipe.
Quick answer: Loot the eight “From Life of St.” notes hidden in caches around Svartrau City, pull the numbered word from each one to spell “North of Svartrau Into Waterfall by Great Bridge,” then loot the cave behind that waterfall. Separately, place the notes in the marked tree at St. Rudel’s Cemetery and return the following day for a second reward.
What you need before hunting Manumit caches
The hunt starts with a green book called Searching for Manumit Caches. It is a random drop from soldiers, and city guards are the most reliable place to pick it up. The book confirms that the rebels have stashed material across Svartrau City and gives you the list of notes to collect.
There is also a Map of the Manumits’s Caches, a quest-tier writing that sits inside the Manumit Hideout in Vale Sangora. Getting into the hideout means clearing the side quest chain The Firebrand, then Shadows in the Woods, then Where Loyalty Lies, and the hideout entrance can only be marked at night by interacting with the wall outside it.
Once you are actually in the streets, Focus Mode does most of the work. The caches read as yellow containers tucked under rocks, behind barrels, inside wall tiles, and in carts, and the rebel symbol is often painted nearby.

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Eleven Manumit caches are scattered around the city, but only eight of them hold the writings you need. The rest carry loot such as silver plates and chalices, coin, consumables, spare clothing, and the occasional accessory like the Bloodsucker’s Amulet. You can collect the notes in any order.
| Note | Where to find it |
|---|---|
| From Life of St. Benezet | Southwest of Silberstein, inside a crate ringed by potted plants. |
| From Life of St. Cuthbert | By the Cathedral Complex entrance, beside a staircase. The cache sits under a rock below a rebel symbol painted on the wall. |
| From Life of St. Tobias | Altenmarkt, heading south toward the Medic shop. Hidden inside one of the wall tiles. |
| From Life of St. Mihai | Just north of Altenmarkt near the blacksmith, tucked into a small alcove. |
| From Life of St. Gregory | Southwest of the North West Gate. Climb the short staircase and check under the rock. |
| From Life of St. Teotim | Continue southwest from the St. Gregory cache. It sits near a group of thugs. |
| From Life of St. Tyna | West of Neustadt, at the very end of an alley. |
| From Life of St. Anthony | North of Svartrau West Shrine, stashed in a hay cart. |
Marking each spot with a custom map pin before you set off saves a lot of backtracking, since several of these sit in narrow alleys that are hard to line up from the street.

A handful of caches are wedged against timber-framed houses rather than in the open, so check the bushes and barrels pressed up against exterior walls.

Where the Mysterious Instruction and Initial Instructions turn up
Two extra papers drive the puzzle. Initial Instructions appears randomly in one of the city caches and tells Coen to gather every message and hide it in the hollow tree at St. Rudel’s Cemetery near the North Gate.
The Mysterious Instruction is the cipher key, and it can show up in more than one place, so the exact spot varies between playthroughs. You might pull it from one of the caches, from the northern side of Svartrau City at a point flagged with the Curious House symbol, or from a stash east of Neustadt. For that last one, start at the Silberstein Shrine, head west until a ledge opens up to the southwest, drop down, and search the container below.

Decoding the Mysterious Instruction word by word
The cipher points to one specific word in each saint text. Count carefully, because two of the entries count backward from the end of the note rather than forward from the start.
| Note | Which word | Result |
|---|---|---|
| St. Cuthbert | 13th | North |
| St. Tyna | 9th | Of |
| St. Mihai | 2nd from the end | Svartrau |
| St. Tobias | 12th | Into |
| St. Teotim | 22nd from the end | Waterfall |
| St. Anthony | 31st | By |
| St. Gregory | 7th | Great |
| St. Benezet | 15th | Bridge |
Strung together, the words read North of Svartrau Into Waterfall by Great Bridge. You do not have to solve it manually if you would rather not count, but you do need the notes themselves to reach the reward.
Finding the waterfall stash north of Svartrau
Handing in the notes at St. Rudel’s Cemetery
Final Instructions also delivers a small joke at your expense. It tells Coen he never needed to decode the Mysterious Instruction at all, since the Manumits were going to pay him anyway. The waterfall cave is a separate stash, though, so solving the cipher is still worth doing.

How to confirm it worked, and what commonly goes wrong
Two moments confirm progress. The tree interaction is the first, since it only fires when you have the papers on you and it immediately places Final Instructions in your inventory. The second is the chest inside the waterfall cave, which drops the Arbiter’s Medallion.
If the chain stalls, it is almost always one of these:
- You are missing one of the eight saint notes and have not covered every district, including Altenmarkt, Neustadt, and the Cathedral Complex approach.
- You are searching the cemetery without Focus Mode, so the marked tree looks identical to the rest.
- You returned to the tree the same day. The second reward only appears after the day rolls over.
- You are looking for the waterfall from above. The entrance sits behind the falling water and requires a drop onto the ledge.
Nothing in this chain is gated behind a main quest, so you can knock it out whenever you next pass through Svartrau City. The silver alone makes the round trip worthwhile early on, and the legendary amulet behind the waterfall is a genuine upgrade long before the game starts handing out endgame gear.






