The Blood of Dawnwalker: If a Tree Falls in a Forest (Full Walkthrough)

“If a Tree Falls in a Forest…” is one of the easiest prologue side quests in The Blood of Dawnwalker to walk straight past. Nothing hands it to you, no NPC asks for help, and there is no marker until you physically inspect the right object in the woods north of the Northern Foothills Shrine. Once it starts, it is a short tracking sequence that ends with a conversation in the village.

Quick answer: Head north from the Northern Foothills Shrine, use Focus Mode to highlight the fallen tree, inspect the tree and the body crushed underneath it, follow the tracks to the dead uriash in the stream bed, loot him, then report to Zdislav in the village. The quest costs 0 Time Segments.

Quest summary: region, time cost, and reward

Detail	Value
Quest type	Prologue side quest
Starting area	Northern Foothills, north of the Northern Foothills Shrine
Trigger	Inspecting the fallen tree and the body beneath it
Time cost	0 Time Segments (0 hours)
Turn-in	Zdislav, the village elder, near the Laslea Centre Shrine
Reward	+1000 XP on the quest-ended screen, plus a glossary entry for Zdislav

Because it burns no time segments, it is worth doing during the prologue rather than saving it for later. Nothing about the 30-day clock changes while you complete it.

How to start “If a Tree Falls in a Forest…” in the Northern Foothills

Fast travel to the Northern Foothills Shrine and head north on foot, past the peat bog near the Blackwater Hollow shrine area. The open map is useful here since there is no quest marker to follow yet, only the terrain.

Open world map with the Current Position marker highlighted in the Northern Foothills — The map screen with the Current Position marker, used to line up the route north of the shrine. Image: Rebel Wolves

Trigger Focus Mode to make the large broken tree glow gold. Focus Mode is right-click on PC, L2 on PlayStation, and LT on Xbox.

Inspect the fallen log first. Coen notes it was likely brought down by wind, which is the setup for what you find next.

Inspect the body pinned under the trunk. This is the actual trigger. The quest title appears on screen and the journal objective updates to “Follow the tracks.”

Follow the tracks: every clue on the trail

The trail is a straight line of yellow footprints that runs deeper into the forest by the peat bogs. Keep Focus Mode up between clues, because the prints fade quickly and the path bends around trees. A faint whispering starts once you reach the first item and grows louder the further you go.

Move to the empty scabbard on the ground and inspect it. This is where the whispering first becomes audible.

Inspect prompt on screen above highlighted footprints in the forest during the tracking objective — The Inspect prompt appearing over the highlighted footprints while the “Follow the tracks” objective is active. Image: Rebel Wolves

Deal with the wolves. A pack of three attacks along the trail, and Focus Mode marks them as red silhouettes before they close in, so you can pick your ground instead of getting surrounded.

Continue to the second corpse, a human soldier who tripped on a tree root and struck his head on a rock. From here only the large footprints remain to follow.

Coen examining scattered debris beside a broken cart with the Follow the tracks objective on screen — Coen checking the scattered debris further along the trail as the tracking objective continues. Image: Rebel Wolves

Watch the stride change from walking to running, then pick up the dropped shield and the Common Sword. The gear was thrown away mid-flight, and the whispering is much stronger at this point.

Follow the trail past the single lost shoe and drop down the ledge. The last body, a dead uriash, lies in the stream bed below, killed by the fall.

Loot from the uriash soldier

Search the body before you leave. Everything here is a one-time pickup, and the letter is what actually explains the patrol’s presence in the woods.

Item	What it is
Orders: Patrol	A letter instructing Sergeant Lubor to comb the woods outside Laslea after reports of strange activity, sounds, and lights
Witch’s Pendant	Level 5 Superior Amulet
Minor Balm of Fortitude	Two consumables

Once the body is looted, the objective switches to “Report your findings to Zdislav.”

Quest tracker updating to the report objective after Coen searches the dead uriash — The quest tracker updating once the uriash has been searched, pointing Coen back to the village. Image: Rebel Wolves

Report to Zdislav and complete the quest

Travel back to the Laslea Centre Shrine and find Zdislav in the village. He is the elder holding the community together, and he opens with a line about what brings Coen to him.

Dialogue with Zdislav in the village showing his greeting subtitle to Coen — The conversation with Zdislav that closes out the quest. Image: Rebel Wolves

Work through the dialogue and tell him about the dead soldier and the haunted ruins out in the bogs. The conversation runs for a couple of minutes and covers what the patrol was sent to investigate.

Confirm it worked. A “Quest Ended” banner appears with +1000 XP, and a glossary entry for Zdislav is added to your journal. If neither shows, you have not exhausted the dialogue branch about the bodies in the woods.

Why the quest may not trigger

You inspected the log but not the body underneath it. Both interactions are separate, and only the body starts the quest.
You never entered Focus Mode, so the tree was not highlighted and the interaction prompt did not appear.
You went the wrong way from the shrine. The site is north of the Northern Foothills Shrine, past the peat bog, not toward the village.
You reached the stream bed without looting the uriash, so the objective never advanced to the report stage.

Rebel Wolves buries a lot of the prologue’s smaller stories behind this kind of environmental prompt, and the whispers on this trail point toward the ruins in the bogs rather than wrapping things up neatly. Clear it early, keep the Witch’s Pendant equipped, and you have spent nothing from the 30-day clock to do it.