The Blood of Dawnwalker: The Save File Trick Every Beginner Needs

Time in The Blood of Dawnwalker is not a clock you race against. It is a currency you spend. Wandering Vale Sangora, listening in on conversations and scouting an area costs you nothing, but completing quests, finishing activities and learning new abilities all push the day forward. You get 30 days and 30 nights to pull Coen’s family out of Brencis’s hands, and that budget is deliberately too small to cover everything the region has to offer.

Quick answer: Do the main story first, make a manual save immediately before the final mission, spend your leftover days on side content, then reload that save to both finish the rescue and — on a separate reload — let the timer lapse so you can mop up everything you missed and see all seven endings.

How the 30-day time budget works

Each day is split into eight segments, and the game tells you up front how many segments an action will consume before you commit to it. Nothing ticks while you explore, so the only thing draining the budget is the work you actually choose to do. Missing the 30-day deadline does not end the run with a failure screen — it simply sends Coen’s story down a different path.

Element	What it costs or means
Total budget	30 days and 30 nights after the prologue
Main story path	Roughly 10 days at most, including the three officer bosses
All side content	Close to 30 days on its own
Exploring, talking, travelling	Free — no time is spent
Missing the deadline	Not a game over; the ending changes instead

The maths is the whole problem. Ten days of story plus thirty days of side content does not fit inside a thirty-day window, so a single straight run cannot both save the family and clear the map. Save files are how you get around that.

The save file routine for 100% completion

After the prologue, go straight at the main story and ignore optional threads for now. The three main bosses can be drawn out and dealt with in any order you like, so route them however suits your build.

When the final mission becomes available, stop and create a manual save. Do not overwrite this file at any point — it is the anchor the entire plan hangs on, and everything after this step depends on being able to return to it.

Coen pushes open a heavy wooden gate with the Withering Away objective tracked on screen — Quest objectives stay tracked on screen as you move between locations. Image: Rebel Wolves

With roughly 20 days left in the bank, spend them on side content. Take on as much as you can until the timer runs down to nothing.

Make a second manual save once the days are gone. Then go and finish the final mission from that point so the family is rescued and that outcome is locked into a file you can keep.

Load the first save — the one made before the final mission — and this time ignore the deadline entirely. Let the family die and keep playing so you can finish every quest, location and activity left on the board.

Tip: keep the two files clearly separated in your list. The whole routine collapses if you accidentally overwrite the pre-finale save with a later one.

Unlocking all seven endings from one save

Seven endings exist, and they are decided by the choices you make during the final quest rather than by anything spread across the earlier 30 days. That is exactly why the pre-finale save matters so much. Load it, play the last mission through with one set of decisions, then reload and take a different set.

Repeat until you have seen all seven. There is no need to replay the campaign from scratch for each variation, provided that save stays intact.

Prologue requirement: Saving Esme with the correct medicine

Before any of the above applies, the prologue asks you to keep Coen’s mother, Esme, alive. During the quest Withering Away, you collect medicinal herbs from Anca and then brew them at home under Pieter’s supervision. Prepare the mixture wrong, or take too long getting there, and Esme is lost.

Head to Anca’s Hut and knock on the door. When she raises the subject of payment, pick whichever response you can afford — the options are priced at 50 and 25, with a third choice that turns her down outright.

Dialogue options with Anca, with the 25-cost reply about money being tight highlighted — Anca’s payment prompt, with the cheaper reply about money being tight selected. Image: Rebel Wolves

When Anca suggests waiting out the storm and practising Latin, check the numbers next to each reply before answering. Staying costs more than leaving, and the prologue is on a deadline, so decline if you want breathing room.

Bring the new blend back to the house and start the brew. Choose [use boiling water] — hot and cold water are both wrong.

On the second prompt, choose [add two spoonfuls of herbs]. One spoonful and three spoonfuls are the failure options, so do not let the highlighted default carry you past it.

Cauldron prompt showing the one, two and three spoonfuls of herbs options — The herb quantity prompt at the cauldron — two spoonfuls is the correct pick. Image: Rebel Wolves

Deliver the finished medicine to Esme. If the brew was made correctly and you still had time on the clock, she survives the prologue and Pieter moves on to testing your swordwork.

Why the plan fails

There are only a few ways this goes wrong, and all of them are avoidable.

Chasing side quests before the main story is done, which eats the days you need for the rescue.
Overwriting or deleting the manual save made before the final mission, which removes your only route back to the other endings.
Brewing the prologue medicine with the wrong water temperature or herb quantity.
Burning prologue time on optional activities before reaching Esme.

Treat the day counter as a wallet rather than a countdown and the rest follows. Read the cost prompt before every action, keep the pre-finale save untouched, and Vale Sangora stops being a race you are guaranteed to lose.