The Blood of Dawnwalker Endings Guide: All Endings and How to Get Them

Every path through Coen’s 30-day rescue leads somewhere different. This page lays out every ending in The Blood of Dawnwalker — the castle-assault routes, the deal with Brencis, the secret early exits, and what happens when the 30-day clock beats you — with requirements sourced from the launch-week guides that documented them.

How Many Endings Does The Blood of Dawnwalker Have?

Seven to eight, depending on what each guide counts. PowerPyx counts seven endings, each mapped to a trophy. PC Gamer writes that “eight possible endings” exist: “Four of the game’s endings begin with assaulting Griefberg Castle, either with allies, or by yourself,” and “the final three endings are secret and accomplished before the others.” The difference sits at the edges: PowerPyx’s seventh slot is the 30-day timeout, which PC Gamer treats as a fail state rather than an ending, while PC Gamer’s total adds the prologue-kill secret and counts a deal-made-during-the-assault variant separately.

The two guides also label endings with different names — PC Gamer uses the in-story ending names, PowerPyx the trophy names. Here is the mapping:

PowerPyx’s bottom line on how the choice is made: “Endings in The Blood of Dawnwalker are determined by your dialogue choices in the final quest.” The hours before that point — which allies you recruit, which bosses you kill — decide which choices are on the table.

Which Endings Come From the Griefberg Castle Assault?

Four endings share one structure: you assault Griefberg Castle before the investiture, and who stands beside you decides the ending. The castle fight itself reacts to your save — PC Gamer notes Ambrus appears in the entrance hall and Bakir in the dungeon as bosses if still alive, and Xanthe waits in the throne room unless you already killed her, in which case you face her trap sequence instead.

• A Lone Wolf’s Hunt (solo). Enter without an army: PC Gamer describes Shadow Stepping over the castle wall at night, or completing Father Florin’s quest in Svartrau cathedral to enter via a password door by day — and PowerPyx adds a side gate key looted from the miniboss Georghe, “The Rabid Duke,” at Racovitza’s Bandit Camp. You fight the Unblinking Blasphemy boss, free the prisoners, and rescue your family just in time. Vale Sangora ends up independent, guarded by the Manumits.
• Rise At Dawn, Fall Before Dusk (with Crake’s Manumits). Join the Manumit chain — The Firebrand, Shadows in the Woods, Where Loyalty Lies — then follow it to its conclusion. You take Eastridge Outpost to let Catalin Dragosti’s army in and assault through the tunnels. PC Gamer notes no deal with Brencis is possible on this route, and the throne-room moment decides Crake’s fate: let Brencis attack Catalin and Crake dies saving him; save Catalin and both of them live.
• Midnight Reckoning (with Lacra). Meet Lacra in A Friend Like This — PC Gamer places the invite on a note on Ambrus’s body in The Gilded Gauntlet — and finish her questline. Her ritual disruption devastates the castle; PC Gamer describes the family as “overgrown in the red roots (but still alive).” Betray her at the end and, per PC Gamer, she fights Brencis alone and loses, sliding you into the Deal With The Devil outcome.

Each assault route still ends in the throne room — the dialogue you pick there is what actually locks the ending.

How Do You Unlock A Deal With The Devil?

Reach maximum infamy and bargain. Both guides agree on the setup: defeat the three court bosses — Ambrus, Bakir, and Xanthe — which, per PowerPyx, should put you at maximum infamy. PC Gamer then sends you to meet Brencis at Shrike’s Crag, where it quotes his offer: “He’ll return your family and the villagers, and you can live in Laslea, exempt from the blood tax, if you find and mark the Manumit hideout.”

Accepting means marking the hideout door at night — PowerPyx lists the same three Manumit quests (The Firebrand → Shadows in the Woods → Where Loyalty Lies) as the way to find it, this time to betray them. Brencis slaughters the Manumits; the plague stays away, but per PC Gamer the valley keeps bleeding under him. Refuse and fight instead, and ghosts swarm the encounter — PC Gamer reports Coen’s father Pieter dies if you go down swinging.

What Are the Secret Endings?

Three endings — two documented by both guides, one by PC Gamer alone — can happen long before the castle. The two early exits are escapes rather than rescues; the prologue duel resolves the whole conflict inside the opening act.

Leaving Vale Sangora

The valley-exit ending. PC Gamer’s requirements: “Reach Corruption Level 11 and unlock the second level of Shadow Dweller in the vampirism tree,” then use a max-range Shadow Step at the Cursed Chasm in the northwest Briar Sloughs, cross the broken bridge, and choose to leave forever. PowerPyx places the same climb west of Coward’s Path Shrine, at night. Coen abandons the valley — PC Gamer notes it is the only ending with no epilogue sequence at all.

The Home Sweet Home dream (Together Forever)

Inside the quest Home Sweet Home, reachable through Aurelius’s study atop The Silts Tower, Coen enters a looping dream of his family. PowerPyx’s route: ignore the escape well, clear enemies through four full cycles, and at the fifth cycle choose to stay. PC Gamer agrees on the four-cycle count and adds the grim detail — this is the one ending without the post-credit cutscene, “since Coen is most definitely dead.”

Killing Brencis in the prologue

PC Gamer documents a final secret: “Defeat Brencis when you fight him at the end of the prologue and then defeat Brencis, Grotesque Ascendent.” It is brutally hard — the author calls it not worth it even on the lowest difficulty — and produces a very short epilogue close to A Lone Wolf’s Hunt. PowerPyx does not list it among its seven, one edge of the 8-versus-7 count difference.

What Happens If the 30-Day Timer Runs Out?

Your family dies, and the game keeps going. PC Gamer’s phrasing is blunt: “If your 30 day timer has run out, your family is dead.” After that cutscene, “you can keep playing the game without a timer,” with a changed epilogue — consistent with what the site’s time-system guide covers on the clock’s rules. PowerPyx files this as ending seven, “Time Runs Out,” with no trophy attached.

If you are racing the clock on a first run: PowerPyx measures a main-quest-only pace at under 10 in-game days, well inside the limit. The how-long-to-beat guide explains why a completionist save struggles instead — the calendar holds more quests than days, so learn early which actions advance time.

Can You Get Every Ending in One Playthrough?

Yes — with disciplined manual saves. PowerPyx’s strategy: save right before the final quest and once more after finishing the Lacra and Crake questlines, then reload and pick each ending in turn. Because the ending is sealed by final-quest dialogue rather than your whole history, one save set covers the assault variants, and the two early secrets can be re-entered from their own mid-game saves.

A practical wrinkle: the deal route needs all three court bosses dead first, so it pays to finish that infamy legwork before you burn your pre-final-quest saves. For the combat side of those three fights, the skill trees guide covers the build system you will be leaning on.

What Stays the Same in Every Ending?

A few load-bearing story beats do not branch. “The post-credit cutscene plays in every ending” — with the dream ending as the sole exception — and “Lunka’s fate is the same in every ending,” both per PC Gamer. Most endings also run an epilogue sequence over the Vale Sangora; PC Gamer’s tip for it: keep about 800 Denarius unspent going into the endgame, because the epilogue asks for a church donation and a dowry for Yanna.

The bigger picture does not branch either: Bandai Namco has teased a larger Dawnwalker Saga, but the publisher says the first game was built as a self-contained story — no “cliffhangers, unresolved plot threads, or time travel ideas.” Everything on this page reflects build 1.0.3; if a future patch touches ending logic, the patch history page will carry the notes.