The Blood of Dawnwalker: How to Unlock Haste for Faster Sprinting

Standard sprinting in The Blood of Dawnwalker is slow for a map the size of Vale Sangora. Haste is the faster movement mode that sits on top of it, and it is not something Coen has from the start. You have to buy it as a passive ability, and there are two separate versions because the game splits Coen between his human form during the day and his vampire form at night.

Quick answer: Learn Mercurial Fervour in the Witchcraft tree for daytime Haste and Shapeshift in the Vampirism tree for nighttime Haste, then press the sprint key (LShift on PC) a second time while you are already sprinting.

Mercurial Fervour and Shapeshift: The two Haste abilities

Both abilities do the same job, and both are tagged as Haste in the ability menu. Which one you use is decided entirely by the time of day, so owning only one means you sprint at normal speed for half the cycle.

Ability	Mercurial Fervour	Shapeshift
Skill tree	Witchcraft	Vampirism
Usable when	Day only, human form	Night only, vampire form
In-game description	Gain Haste in exploration by briefly slowing down the world around you	Shapeshift into a Wolf and gain Haste in exploration
What you see	The world slows and a trail effect follows Coen	Coen turns into a wolf and runs on four legs
First tier cost	1 skill point	1 skill point
Higher tiers gated by	Finding the right Manual	Raising your Corruption level

The first rank is all you need for travel. Neither ability does anything in combat, so extra points are better spent elsewhere unless you are deliberately building into those trees.

Note: most perks and abilities in the game cost time segments as well as skill points, and you only have 30 days and 30 nights before the story ends. Read the cost shown on the node before you confirm the purchase.

How to learn Haste at a road shrine

Walk up to any road shrine and take the “Use the Shrine” prompt, or open the journal menu if you are already at one. Perks and abilities are only bought at these shrines, not from the pause menu out in the field.

The journal radial menu open with Character, Inventory, Crafting, Map, Court, Glossary and Active Abilities options — The journal wheel, where Character leads through to the perk and ability trees. Image: Rebel Wolves

Open the Perks menu and switch to the Witchcraft tab. Find the node marked Mercurial Fervour, which carries a “DAY ONLY” tag, and spend a single skill point on it.

Mercurial Fervour highlighted in the ability menu with its Haste description and unlock requirements — Mercurial Fervour, the Witchcraft ability that grants Haste while Coen is human. Image: Rebel Wolves

Switch to the Vampirism tab and look for Shapeshift, tagged “NIGHT ONLY”. If the node is locked, your Corruption level is too low, and you will need to raise it before the shrine will let you buy it.

Build Corruption by feeding. Subdue an enemy at night and use Voracious Bite to drink their blood, which pushes your Corruption meter up. Reaching Corruption level 1 is enough to open Shapeshift.

Return to a shrine and buy Shapeshift. With both abilities learned, Coen has Haste available around the clock rather than only during one half of the cycle.

How to activate Haste while running

Start moving and hold the sprint input to begin a normal sprint. On PC this is LShift, and the on-screen prompt appears while you are travelling.

Gameplay view in the wilderness with the LShift Sprint prompt shown on screen — The sprint prompt during exploration — pressing it a second time is what triggers Haste. Image: Rebel Wolves

Press the sprint key again while already sprinting. That second press is what shifts Coen into Haste, and it works the same way for both forms.

Coen running along a trail with the quest tracker showing The Hedgehog Herb objective — Haste speeds up ordinary objective runs like this one across open ground. Image: Rebel Wolves

Watch for the visual tell to confirm it triggered. During the day the world around Coen slows and he leaves a trail behind him; at night he drops into wolf form and covers ground on all fours.

Coen following a forest path with Rescue your family and Check on the plant listed in the quest tracker — Long overland routes between objectives are where Haste saves the most real time. Image: Rebel Wolves

The one cost is stamina. Ordinary sprinting does not touch the bar, but Haste drains it, so you will drop back to a normal sprint once it empties. Keep that in mind if you are sprinting into a fight rather than away from one.

If Haste does not trigger

There are only a few reasons the second sprint press does nothing. Work through them in order before assuming something is broken.

You are in the wrong form. Mercurial Fervour will not fire at night, and Shapeshift will not fire during the day.
You never learned the matching ability. Owning the daytime version does not grant the nighttime one.
Shapeshift is still locked behind Corruption. Feed on blood until your Corruption level rises, then buy it at a shrine.
Your stamina bar is empty, so Haste ends and you fall back to a standard sprint.

There is also a separate controller problem that looks like a Haste failure. Sprinting can cut out on a gamepad when you change direction or run at an angle, which Rebel Wolves has acknowledged as a known issue and is working on. Until a patch lands, lowering your controller sensitivity from 1 to 0.8 in the settings reduces how often it happens.

Because Haste replaces your default sprint outright once learned, it pays for itself the first time you cross Vale Sangora on foot. Picking up the version that matches whichever form you spend the most time in, ideally right after the prologue, costs a single skill point and permanently changes how long every trip between objectives takes.