What to Do First in The Blood of Dawnwalker

Most open-world RPGs open by telling you that you can go anywhere. The Blood of Dawnwalker opens by telling you that you have thirty days. Everything distinctive about this game comes out of that one constraint, and the mistakes new players make are almost all the same mistake: playing it like a game with no clock for the first few hours, then discovering that the clock was the game.

The clock is a currency, not a countdown

This is the single most important thing to understand, and it is the opposite of what the premise suggests. Time does not drain while you play. It moves when a marked action moves it — starting a quest, completing an objective, taking on an activity — and the game shows you the cost before you agree to it. Walking across the valley, looting a camp, reading a letter, haggling with a merchant: all free. Thirty days sounds tight because it is, but you are spending it, not losing it.

Coen has two halves, and so does your schedule

Every day splits into a day phase and a night phase, and the two are not interchangeable. Witchcraft works by day; Vampirism wakes at night; Swordmastery works at any hour. Quests take sides too — 25 are day-locked, 13 are night-locked and 159 will run in either. That last number is the one to hold on to: most of your schedule is flexible, which means the small locked minority is what actually constrains your plan. Place the locked work first and let the flexible majority fill in around it.

• Finish the prologue before you try to optimise anything — it is five main quests and roughly five time units.
• Push the main story until fast travel opens; the whole main line is only 90 of your 480 time units.
• Put your first skill points in Vampirism — it is the only tree that opens on points alone.
• Take free activities on your way past; 66 of them cost no clock at all.
• Check a long side quest's time cost before you accept it — one of them costs 20 units on its own.