The Heart Wants What It Wants is the payoff to Ocha’s story arc in The Blood of Dawnwalker, and it is one of the few side quests where a single grab-the-item prompt decides whether a character lives or dies. Ocha, heir of Clan Bakr, wants a personal object belonging to the Svartrau crime boss Andrei so she can hex him. Get the wrong object and her friend Nora is in real danger.
Quick answer: Enter Andrei’s hideout behind the butcher’s shop, steal the ring (not the cleaver or the pendant), return to Ocha, then free the pigs to distract the guard so the hex lands. Answer all three riverside questions with the “home” options if you want Ocha to return to her village.
How to start The Heart Wants What It Wants
The quest chain runs through A Study In Crimson, A Friend Like This and Song of the Mountain, which takes you to the hidden Uriash village. Speaking to the matriarch Bakr-Erga there begins A Mother’s Plea, and she asks you to track down her missing daughter, Ocha.
Ocha is in a tavern in Svartrau City. Fast travel to the Altenmarkt Shrine, head to the tavern marked with a cup icon, and either ask the bartender or use Focus Mode to spot her in the corner. Talking to her ends in a shove and then a fistfight regardless of which reply you pick, so beat her in the duel to move on. Nora shows up afterwards, and the conversation leaves you with three objectives: acquire Andrei’s memento, find a way into Andrei’s hideout, and the optional task of asking around about Andrei.
Three ways into Andrei’s hideout
The hideout sits behind a butcher’s shop, and the front doors are locked. You have three routes in, and they carry very different levels of risk.
| Route | Cost and conditions | Risk |
|---|---|---|
| Climb the balcony | Night only, uses vrakhiri power | Safest. Skips the dialogue entirely and Nora is never taken hostage. Do not attempt this during the day, as the NPC scripting inside breaks and the quest can no longer progress. |
| Bribe the beggar | 50 denarii, plus a silver item in your inventory | Moderate. Gets you through the butcher’s door, but Nora ends up held hostage afterwards. |
| Pay Katja | 400 denarii | Expensive. Bring up Nora, ask about Andrei, then offer the coin. Also leads to the butcher’s door route. |
Katja stands near the butcher’s stall and is also the optional “ask around” objective, where she mentions Andrei’s short temper. The beggar sits on the street in front of the shop and tells you the butcher will let silver sellers through.
Dialogue choices that avoid a fight with Andrei
If you take the front door, you need a piece of silver in your inventory and the line “I have some silver to sell” when Dragan the Butcher stops you. Inside, Andrei is in the middle of cutting off a debtor’s hand. Staying quiet and playing along is what keeps the hex plan intact. If a brawl starts and you kill Andrei yourself, Ocha will be furious that you ignored her plan.
| Moment | Safe reply | Reply that starts a fight |
|---|---|---|
| Butcher asks for the silver | “Here it is.” / “Alright, here.” | “Just move.” |
| Seeing the man’s hand cut off | [stay silent] | “Leave that man alone” is risky, and “I said let him go” leads to combat. |
| Selling the silver to Andrei | “Here’s what I’ve got.” | “I’m here to talk about Ocha.” Every option after this ends in a fight. |
| Andrei says you look nervous | “Who wouldn’t be? What we’re doing here is illegal.” / “I don’t trust you, is all.” | “You don’t impress me.” |
| Andrei threatens you with his cleaver | “No wonder people don’t want to work with you.” / “You know how to handle it, that’s for sure.” | “Your threats bore me.” |
Note: if the fight does break out, Andrei’s henchmen come at you on the ground floor first, and Andrei, the Svartrau Slaughterer waits upstairs as a proper boss encounter with his own health bar. You can loot the ground floor for gear such as the Quick Fighter’s Ring on the way through, and you can refuse his bribe and execute him.
Andrei’s memento: Cleaver, pendant or ring
Once Andrei is calm and looking away, you get a short window to steal one of three objects. Pick the ring. Andrei mentions that his father once hit him hard enough with it to nearly crack his skull, and that memory is what binds him to the object, which is exactly what the hex needs.
The cleaver means almost nothing to him. The pendant belongs to Katja, and while you can return it to her by paying her 400 denarii, hearing out her problem, killing Andrei and then speaking to her again, the hex fails and the story does not change. If you climbed in via the balcony instead, make sure the item you hand Ocha is still the ring.
How to save Nora and land the hex
Climbing the balcony at night avoids this whole sequence. Nora is never taken, so there is nothing to rescue.
The riverside conversation and Ocha’s three endings
With Andrei dealt with, tell Ocha you would like to eat and agree to meet her outside the city. Head west out of Svartrau City toward the river. The Svartrau West shrine sits along the path if you want a fast travel point for later.
At the riverbank, collect three crayfish from the water trap and bring them back, then sit down next to Ocha to trigger the final conversation. Three questions follow, and each answer scores a point toward one of three outcomes. Whichever total is highest decides what she does next.
| Choice | Option | Point |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | “Do you miss home?” | Home |
| 1 | “Do you like the city?” | City |
| 1 | “Why do you want to travel?” | Explore |
| 2 | “New things can be exciting, sure.” | City or Explore |
| 2 | “Meh. Nothing better than homemade food!” | Home |
| 3 | “Our neighbours helped a bit.” | City or Explore |
| 3 | “Other villagers just cared about themselves.” | Home |
Two “home” answers out of three are enough to send her back to her village. Staying in the city is only available if Andrei died to the hex, in which case she and Nora take over his syndicate. Exploring the world is only available if you killed Andrei yourself.
Rewards and how to confirm the quest is done
The conversation by the river ends the quest. You will see the completion notification along with the rewards, which confirms it registered.
| Quest | Rewards |
|---|---|
| The Heart Wants What It Wants | 250 XP, 150 denarii, Broad Swing Manual (weapon area attack) |
| A Mother’s Plea (report back to Bakr-Erga) | 250 XP, 150 denarii, Soul Stigma Manual |
Bakr-Erga hands over her rewards no matter which future Ocha picks, so there is no wrong answer for the matriarch. If Ocha stayed in Svartrau City to run the syndicate, you can visit her and ask for training. That means one sparring match with weapons, which only happens once, and beating her unlocks her as a vendor who mostly stocks training manuals and buys silver items off you.
