The Evil Eye Manual is one of the Witchcraft skill books in The Blood of Dawnwalker, and it is easy to walk past because it sits high above the ground rather than on a marked path. Reading it adds the Evil Eye perk to the Witchcraft tree, which rolls for a critical cast every time you use a Witchcraft ability.
Quick answer: Climb Briar Slough Tower during the “From Above” objective and loot the container on the wooden platform near the top. The Evil Eye Manual is inside, along with three other items.
Evil Eye Manual location: Briar Slough Tower
Briar Slough Tower is a ruined stone tower wrapped in scaffolding and broken wooden platforms. The manual is not on the ground floor and there is no door route to it. Everything worth taking is stored in a single container on one of the upper platforms, so the entire task is a vertical climb.
The tower doubles as a quest location. During the “Rescue your family” storyline, the objective “Climb to the top of the tower” points you at the same structure, so you can pick up the manual on the way through without a detour.
How to reach the manual during “From Above”
Note: the loot is not tied to finishing the scout action, so grabbing the chest first costs you nothing.
What the tower chest contains
| Item | Quantity |
|---|---|
| Evil Eye Manual | 1 |
| Animal Blood Infusion | 1 |
| Bloodsucker’s Amulet | 1 |
| Golden Cross | 1 |
The Bloodsucker’s Amulet and the Golden Cross are worth checking in your inventory before you move on, since both are equipment rather than plain vendor trash.
What the Evil Eye perk does
Evil Eye sits in the Witchcraft branch of the character tree. It gives a chance for a Critical Witchcraft Ability cast, and the manual you loot at the tower is labelled “The Evil Eye, Part 1,” which corresponds to the first rank.
| Perk level | Critical Witchcraft cast chance |
|---|---|
| Level 1 | 10% |
| Level 2 | 20% |
Manuals raise the level of Witchcraft and Swordmastery perks and abilities. Vampirism skills work differently and have no manuals at all, since those ranks come from raising your Corruption Level by drinking blood.
How to confirm the manual unlocked the perk
Open your inventory and find the Evil Eye Manual, then read it. The item leaves your inventory once it has been consumed, which is the first sign it worked.
Then switch to the character menu and look at the Witchcraft tree. Evil Eye should now be available with its critical cast chance listed on the node. If the node still looks locked, you picked up the manual but never read it — reading is a separate action from looting.
Other places Evil Eye Manuals turn up
You need more than one copy to push the perk to its second rank, and the tower chest is not the only supply. Copies also appear in a chest at the Kobolds’ Nest north of the Maragir Wealds Watchtower Shrine, and two vendors stock them.
| Source | Where |
|---|---|
| Chest | Briar Slough Tower, upper wooden platform |
| Chest | Kobolds’ Nest north of Maragir Wealds Watchtower Shrine |
| Vendor | Vera, the Witchcraft vendor in Maragir Wealds |
| Vendor | Matriarch Witchcraft vendor |
Manuals in general are scattered across soldier camps, bandit camps, monster lairs and Ancient Circles, handed out as quest rewards, and dropped at random by defeated enemies. There is no hard cap on how many you can collect, and the game hands out more than you strictly need to max every upgrade.
If you are building around Witchcraft, the Briar Slough Tower chest is the cheapest early stop, because you are already climbing the tower for the story objective. Take the manual on the way up, read it before you move on, and the perk is waiting in the tree the next time you open the character menu.
