The Blood of Dawnwalker: All Xanthe’s Excavations Quests and Rewards

Xanthe’s Excavations are three of the fifteen Court Activities tied to Xanthe, the third vampiric vassal in The Blood of Dawnwalker. All three send Coen into ancient ruins that her scholars have been digging into, and all three hand out gear that is worth the detour even if you already have enough Anger to summon her.

Quick answer: The Unsealed Secrets dig sits east of Vedera Spring, while Malevolent Presence and Bloodied Dagger are both tombs in Tantari Woods, the latter in the eastern part of the woods. Each one costs 3 time segments and ends when you kill the boss and pick up the quest note in the final chamber.

All three Xanthe’s Excavations activities and rewards

Activity	Where to go	What ends it	Reward
Unsealed Secrets	East of Vedera Spring	Barrow Lord, plus two research notes	Vardant Knight’s Sword
Malevolent Presence	Tantari Woods tomb	Frenzied Soul, plus the Excavation Log	Mindbrace Amulet
Bloodied Dagger	Eastern Tantari Woods tomb	Armaya, Scholar of the Occult	Swordman’s Amulet, plus Ancient Footwear from the locked chest

Every one of them costs 3 time segments, so clearing the full set burns a meaningful chunk of your 30 in-game days. That is still cheap for what comes out of them.

How to find the dig sites on the map

Court Activities are not pinned to your map by default. They show up in the Court menu as “Unknown Activity” until you physically stumble onto them in the world, which makes the excavations easy to walk past. Climbing the scouting towers marks nearby activities with white question mark icons, so a tower run through the Vedera Spring and Tantari Woods area is the fastest way to surface all three at once.

Documents found during other Xanthe activities can also reveal excavation locations directly on the map. Chests at the Blood Guard recruiter encounters in particular hold papers that expose more of her operations.

Unsealed Secrets: The camp, the notes, and the Barrow Lord

Track “Xanthe’s Excavations: Unsealed Secrets” in the journal and head for the forest dig camp east of Vedera Spring. The objective asks you to find and collect research notes, and there are two of them.

Clear the soldiers guarding the excavation camp. Once the fight is over, search the tents and take the Orders from Armaya, which is the first of the two notes.

Switch to Focus Mode and sweep the camp. The notes highlight yellow, which saves you from opening every crate by hand.

Squeeze through the gap in the hillside to get into the ruins. This is the only entrance, and the second note is inside rather than anywhere in the camp above.

Work through the tomb and kill the Barrow Lord at the end. It is a straight boss fight in the final chamber with no puzzle attached.

Pick up the Unsent Note, then loot the boss. The activity closes out here and the Vardant Knight’s Sword drops as the reward, alongside odds and ends such as a Requisition Letter and the Countershock Manual.

Pick Up Unsent Note prompt on screen inside the tomb chamber — The Pick Up Unsent Note prompt appears in the final chamber once the Barrow Lord is down. Image: Rebel Wolves

Malevolent Presence: Frenzied Soul and the Excavation Log

This one is in Tantari Woods and is the most linear of the three. There is no camp to clear first, just the ruins themselves.

Enter the tomb and push through the possessed enemies inside. They come in waves as you move deeper, so keep your health topped up before the last door.

Defeat the Frenzied Soul in the final chamber. It is a spectral boss, so expect the same rules as other supernatural enemies rather than a standard soldier fight.

HUD notification for the Counterattack perk upgrade with a SHOW prompt — Clearing the tomb feeds enough experience to trigger perk upgrades such as Counterattack mid-run. Image: Rebel Wolves

Before you leave, take the Excavation Log from the table in the middle of the room. This is the required note, and walking out without it leaves the activity open.

The Excavation Log document open on screen with its entries visible — Reading the Excavation Log completes the note objective for Malevolent Presence. Image: Rebel Wolves

Loot the chest in the same room to collect the Mindbrace Amulet, one of the legendary amulets in the game. A Golden Cross also turns up here.

Bloodied Dagger: Armaya and the sealed chest

The third excavation is in eastern Tantari Woods and pays out twice, once for the boss and once for a chest most players walk past. Armaya, Scholar of the Occult is the same name attached to the orders you find at the Vedera Spring camp.

Fight through the cultists filling the ruins until you reach the chamber at the end. Armaya is waiting there with her own escort.

Beat Armaya, then decide her fate. The choice is yours to make on the spot, and the activity completes either way.

Note: keep a manual save in a spare slot before you trigger the conversation. The game gives you 54 manual save slots, and dropping one here lets you see both outcomes without replaying the whole dungeon.

Coen standing in the ruins while the on-screen Saving indicator is active — The Saving indicator confirms your progress is written before a decision point. Image: Rebel Wolves

Loot her body. This is where the Swordman’s Amulet comes from, along with Armaya’s Notebook and the Forbidden Sigils Manual.

How to open the locked chest for the Ancient Footwear boots

The locked chest sitting in the boss room holds Ancient Footwear, a set of legendary heavy boots. There is no key and no lockpick involved.

Hold Focus Mode (L2 on PlayStation, LT on Xbox) and look along the left side of the boss room. The Ritual Dagger highlights there.

Pick up the Ritual Dagger. Carrying it is what makes the next step possible.

Use Compel Soul on the corpse lying directly in front of the chest. The soul opens the container for you, and the boots are inside.

Opened chest in the boss room holding the Ancient Footwear legendary heavy boots — Compelling the soul in front of the chest unlocks it and reveals the Ancient Footwear boots. Image: Rebel Wolves

How the excavations feed Xanthe’s Anger level

The three digs count toward the same Anger meter as her Blood Guard camps, artifact transports, and abduction convoys. You do not need to clear all fifteen of her activities. Roughly three quarters of a vassal’s Court Activities is enough to push the meter to maximum, at which point her main quest, The Cycle of Love, becomes available and two soldiers stop Coen to hand over Xanthe’s Lantern.

The excavations stay available after her Anger is capped, and they remain open even if you have already killed her. Nothing here is locked behind the boss fight, so you can come back for the gear later.

Why an excavation shows as incomplete

All three close out the moment the final objective ticks over in the journal and the Anger bar moves. If one is still sitting in your log after the boss is dead, it is almost always one of these:

You only picked up one of the two research notes in Unsealed Secrets. The second is inside the ruins, through the hillside gap, not in the camp.
You left the Malevolent Presence chamber without taking the Excavation Log off the central table.
You killed Armaya but never looted her body, which is where the Swordman’s Amulet and her notebook sit.

The Ancient Footwear chest is separate from all of that. It has no effect on completion, so an excavation can read as finished while the boots are still sealed behind you.

Between them, the three digs cover a sword, an amulet, and a pair of legendary boots for nine time segments of work, which makes them some of the better value stops in Xanthe’s region. If you are chasing a full legendary set, the Ancient Footwear from the Bloodied Dagger chest is the piece you cannot pick up anywhere else.