One family. A valley of bids on the same month.
The Blood of Dawnwalker Quests
Quests in The Blood of Dawnwalker do not split into a sacred Main list and a Side list you can vacuum later. Rebel Wolves built a narrative sandbox: the only spine is “get Coen’s family off Brencis’s coronation slab before the month is spent.” Everything else is a bid. Some bids wear an hourglass. Some do not. Some exist only at noon. Some exist only on a roof after vespers. If you treat the map like a Witcher notice board, the calendar will finish the story without you.
Lead quest designer Rafał Jankowski has said it out loud: after the prologue, nothing stops you from walking to Greifberg and swinging at the lord. It is allowed. It is not kind. The rest of this page is how to spend the month if you would rather arrive with allies, a build, and a conscience that still has names on it.
Every quest is optional. Time is not.
The public claim is blunt: every quest is optional. The family rescue is a goal, not a gated chapter list. You can skip a village, skip a rebellion, skip a monster, even skip the “important” herb run in Laslea and go look for a pig instead. IGN’s short on that exact fork is the tutorial the UI will not print: mom asked for medicine, a farmer asked for a pig, Coen helped the pig, the Blood Mass arrived anyway. Doing nothing is also a choice. The time system only charges you when you confirm a job, a ritual, or a conversation the designers marked as plot-weight. Walking is free. Finishing is not.
- Hourglass quests spend segments. Read the cost twice. Two “small” jobs can be a lost morning.
- Jobs without an hourglass are the safe extra: rumours, inspection, shrine discovery, most roaming.
- Secret quests exist — hidden caches, monster hunts, eavesdropped names — and the studio will not tooltip them like a tour. No minigames. No Gwent table to farm while you think.
- You cannot complete every hourglass before the coronation. That is not a skill issue. That is the design.
The video below is a pre-launch tour of that claim. Watch it as a warning, not as a 100% checklist. Then open the time planner and mark the jobs you are actually willing to buy.
The same job at noon and after dusk
Many objectives have two honest solutions. Day Coen talks, hexes, and fences. Night Coen climbs, blinks, and feeds. The Gamescom cathedral in Silberkreis is the public example: at night, Coen infiltrates and meets the ancient officer Xanthe moving through the building with Shadowstep. By day the same stone is a conversation, a favour, or a sword problem. Neither version is the “real” quest. Both spend different resources — social capital versus hunger versus Infamy — and both can close a door the other would have left open.
Pearly and Precious, the IGN First errand with a sanzhana, is the other public lesson: a short daytime job can hide a large reward if you inspect corpses and listen to a creature that is not cute. It still has to pass the hourglass test. The day and night page is the kit. This page is the calendar sitting on top of the kit.
Laslea jobs that teach the month
| Job shown at launch | What it costs | What it teaches |
|---|---|---|
| Healing herbs for Coen’s sick mother | Hourglass if accepted | The “main” ask can lose to a pig and still be the point |
| Lost pig / neighbour errands | Hourglass | Small people spend the same currency as the family |
| Stolen vrakhiri tapestry / the weaver | Hourglass; can save a life | A side favour can be a person, not loot |
| Siblings’ fishing trip | Hourglass on accept | Family flavour is not free just because it is family |
| Anca’s Latin lesson | Hourglass; longer than it looks | Allies and tutors are paid in mornings, not in menus |
Anca is Laslea’s healer, a Witchcraft tutor, and a person with a secret the game will not dump on a loading screen. Trust is a questline. It is not a romance toggle in the pause menu. If you skip her because the family clock is loud, you skipped a character who can change how Coen reads the valley. If you stay for Latin and miss the herbs, you made the other half of the same sentence. There is no hidden third sentence that does both.
Secrets, skips, and what not to farm
Community Q&A: secret quests are in the open world; the studio would rather you trip over them. Treasure, monster contracts, and odd rumours are the flavour. Mini-games are out on purpose — this is not a card table with a vampire skin. Fast travel lives on wayside shrines, not on a stuffed map filter. The cathedral crypt with a hidden weapon in the pre-beta footage is the shape of a secret: you overheard it in a crowd, then you spent a night proving it.
Skipping is content. Jankowski: it is absolutely possible to skip everything after the prologue and try Brencis immediately if you are skilled enough. The studio does not recommend it for a first month. Speedrunners will try on 3 September anyway. For everyone else: pick one officer to pressure, pick one village to love, leave the rest for a second save. Achievements will punish the fantasy that one file can be a museum.
If a marker has no hourglass, walk it while you wait for night. If it has an hourglass, it is competing with Coen’s family. That is the whole quest system.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a main quest tracker?
The family deadline is the tracker. Other jobs appear when you talk, overhear, or trespass. There is no sacred Main tab that outranks a pig.
Do secret quests spend time?
If the prompt grows an hourglass, yes. Hidden does not mean free. Untimed inspection and travel stay free.
Can I finish every quest in one playthrough?
No. There are more hourglasses than segments. Replay is how you see the other cathedral.