Ambrus’s Transports: Roadside Surprise is one of the Blood Transports Court Activities tied to Boyar Ambrus, and it looks like a routine ambush until you pry open the barrels. Kill the escort, check the cargo, and you’ll find a man crouched inside one of them who is very much not a blood shipment.
Quick answer: Travel to the guard camp east of Prior Slough, kill every soldier, interact with the highlighted barrels, then pick “You’re insane.” followed by “You better drop this act while you still can.” to send Klaus the Brave home and finish the activity.
Roadside Surprise location and requirements
The camp sits east of Prior Slough, on a foggy stretch of road. Like every Court Activity, it isn’t pinned on your map from the start — it shows up as an “Unknown Activity” marker until you physically stumble onto it, so you’ll need to ride through the area before the quest name appears in your journal.
It unlocks after the Prologue and belongs to Ambrus’s court, which is the Level 1+ region, so it’s approachable early. Completing it costs three time segments and pushes the clock forward, which matters when you only have 30 in-game days to reach Brencis.
| Detail | Value |
|---|---|
| Court | Ambrus (Blood Transports) |
| Location | East of Prior Slough |
| Recommended region level | Level 1+ |
| Time cost | 3 time segments |
| Objectives | Defeat the guards → Check the barrels |
Defeat the guards at the blood barrel camp
The opening objective is blunt: “I’ve got to kill the soldiers guarding Ambrus’s blood barrels.” There’s no talking your way past this one and no partial credit for sneaking to the cargo — the barrels stay locked until the escort is dead.
Note: killing the escort raises your Infamy. That’s expected for Court Activities and is part of how you anger Ambrus, but it does change how patrols react to you elsewhere.
Check the barrels and meet Klaus the Brave
With the camp cleared, the objective flips to “Check the barrels” and the journal updates to “Time to make sure these barrels never get into Ambrus’s hands.” The barrels are highlighted in yellow at the centre of the camp.
Interacting with them starts a cutscene. Instead of blood, Coen finds a man folded up inside one of the containers — Klaus the Brave, who immediately blames you for wrecking his scheme.
His plan was to ride the shipment into Ambrus’s blood cellars, cause enough damage from the inside to prove himself, and use that as a résumé for joining Crake’s rebels. It is a bad plan, and the conversation is your chance to say so.
Dialogue choices that send Klaus home
Other options are on the wheel, including “Klaus the Brave. Really.”, the “Keep on fighting, then. Crake will notice, eventually.” reply that eggs him on, and a “[give in to the hunger]” prompt that ends the conversation the vampiric way. The two-line combination above is the one that talks him out of it and leaves him alive.
Rewards, loot, and how to confirm the quest is done
When the conversation ends, the game shows a “Time Has Passed” prompt and autosaves as the clock rolls forward to Midnight. That transition is your confirmation — the reward summary appears alongside it, and the activity disappears from your active objectives.
| Reward | Amount |
|---|---|
| XP | +250 |
| Skill Points | 1 |
| Kobold’s Blood | 1 |
Sweep the camp afterwards before you fast travel out. The tents, crates, and bodies hold a Weathered Longsword, a Broken Sword, Strong Spirits, Linseed Oil, Uriashi Smoked Cheese, Denarius, and the Pendant of Vokhr’s Swiftness, which is the only accessory here and easy to miss if you leave straight after the cutscene.
If the quest doesn’t close out, the cause is almost always one of two things: a surviving guard somewhere on the edge of the camp keeping the first objective active, or the barrels never being interacted with. The barrel prompt only appears once every soldier is dead, so re-sweep the perimeter and look for the yellow highlight.
Where this fits in Ambrus’s court progression
Roadside Surprise is one of 14 Ambrus Court Activities, and those activities are what raise his anger toward the level that unlocks his boss quest. You don’t have to clear all of them — working through roughly three quarters of a court’s activities is enough to draw the vampire out — but each one you skip is anger you’ll need to make up elsewhere.
Because every activity burns time segments, it’s worth keeping a manual save before you commit to a run of them. Roadside Surprise is cheap in combat terms and hands over a Skill Point for a single fight and one conversation, which makes it one of the more efficient entries on Ambrus’s board.
