Prologue

1. All Good Things

The tutorial, and the one quest in the prologue with nothing at stake. It is not missable, has a time cost of zero, and Withering Away starts automatically the moment it ends: no dialogue choices, no timed segments, no missable content. Its only reward is the crafting recipe for Minor Mending Ointment. Everything it teaches, though, is what the next five quests assume you know.

• 1

  Find Lunka in the forest

  You take control of Coen in a gorge, looking for his sister. The route is a traversal tutorial: follow a bloodstain into a tunnel, continue through an icy crevasse, and you spot Lunka being attacked by a soldier. She survives; Coen does not get out of it so easily, and ends up surrounded.

• 2

  Defeat the soldiers — the half of combat you keep

  The human-form tutorial, and the more important of the two, because it is the one you use in daylight for the whole game. It covers attack directions, omniblocking, directional blocking and perfect blocks, with parrying taught as blocking while pushing the left stick toward the attacker. It also shows the difficulty split that a trophy later turns into a requirement — lower difficulties show an orange indicator before an attack, and the Duelist preset does not, so you read the animation instead.

• 3

  The vampire tutorial, and Shadowstep

  Lunka turns Coen, and the fight restarts as the vampire tutorial — active abilities, activation charges, dodging, perfect dodges and target locks, with the emphasis moved off swordplay and onto dodges, perfect dodges and Active Abilities. Following her afterwards teaches Shadowstep. Both halves matter later: Shadowstep, Clawride, Planeshift and the claws are night-only, while the sword and Witchcraft are what you have by day.

• 4

  Go inside the church

  The quest ends on a cinematic. Coen's family are killed by vrakhiri in front of him — and then his father wakes him. None of it happened; it was a nightmare. Withering Away begins immediately.

  • Reward: Crafting Recipe: Minor Mending Ointment. Time cost: 0 segments. Missable: no.

2. Withering Away, and Page-Turner

A chore list with one lethal step buried in it. Failure causes the death of Esme, Coen's mother, and the quest itself is missable, because once Sacred Covenant starts you cannot come back and brew the medicine properly. It costs 1 time segment, or 2 if you take the optional side quest Page-Turner, which is offered exactly once and cannot be unlocked later.

• 1

  The chores, and the sword

  Coen wakes to his father Pieter wanting jobs done. The order: split logs in the yard with the axe, optionally take clothes from the storage chest by the bed and equip them, then add firewood to the stove. The family sit down to breakfast and Esme will not eat, which is what sends you to the herbalist. Then pick up your sword from the next room — the storage room on the south side of the house — and equip it. One flat warning for the whole quest: attacking any non-hostile villager at any point gets Coen arrested.

• 2

  Find Anca, and what the herbs cost

  Anca's hut is south-west of the house, past the Laslea Centre shrine, by a stream. Knock and there is no answer. Use Focus Mode — it drains the colour out of the world and highlights what you can interact with — check the vegetable patch and the water barrel, work out that she has gone to the river, and find her at the riverbank. Three ways to pay: 50 denarii in full, 25 after haggling, which she accepts grudgingly, or nothing at all with a promise to settle up later. Nothing says the price changes anything beyond the money. One small dialogue fork has a long tail: choosing to keep looking at the scars on her arms lets Coen raise them in a later conversation, while cutting the moment short with "Anca...?" means he cannot.

• 3

  Hot water, three spoonfuls — the one step that kills someone

  Anca's instruction is to brew three scoops of the mixture with water that is hot but not quite boiling. Back at the house, after Pieter has finished talking to Vladimir outside, you hand over the herbs and make it: hot water, then three spoonfuls of herbs. The failure states are boiling water, cold water, one spoonful or two: each of them produces medicine that does not work and gets Esme killed at the Blood Mass. Nothing tells you at the time that you got it wrong.

  One source disagrees, and it disagrees with itself. Game8's "All Dialogue Choices and Their Consequences" page lists two spoonfuls as the correct answer and one or three as fatal; Game8's own Withering Away page, PowerPyx, GameRant, Vandal and Eurogamer.es all say three. This guide says three. It is worth knowing the contradiction exists, because it is the kind of thing that gets copied around.

  Afterwards you tell Esme a story to get her to drink it, she rests, and Pieter takes Coen into the woods for sword practice. Like Father, Like Son starts on its own.

  • The recipe: hot water, three spoonfuls of herbs.
  • If it is wrong: Esme dies during Sacred Covenant, and you cannot go back — the quest closes when that one opens.
• 4

  Page-Turner — one line of dialogue, or it never exists

  Rain keeps you at Anca's, and she offers to teach Latin while it passes. "Gladly — I've missed it too" starts Page-Turner and makes the parent quest cost 2 time segments instead of 1. "I really have to go" leaves, and the side quest cannot be unlocked afterwards. It is missable.

  Inside it: pick a book and answer the vocabulary questions from context. The Petronius answers are Fear, then Lightning; the Catullus answers are Kisses, then Grains of sand. By colour the pair are a black book and a red book, and the red one leads to more flirtatious dialogue and helps Anca's romance route. A tree then comes down on her shed: collect all 11 bundles of dried herbs before you go outside; three of them are behind the door. Anca has hurt her back; help her inside and treat her, which means the wet cloth first and then the balm from the blue jar.

  Is it worth the segment? There is a case for turning it down — 100 XP for a segment you could spend on a 250 XP side quest, with no consequence for refusing — and a case for the romance angle. Game8's Page-Turner page gives the time cost as "3 days"; PowerPyx, Vandal and Game8's own Withering Away page give one extra segment.

3. Like Father, Like Son

A sparring match you cannot lose in any way that matters, ending on the single most expensive dialogue choice in the prologue. Winning or losing against Pieter has no consequences and leads to the same outcome. What the quest is really for is the line you pick when it is over, because one of the two options spends every daylight segment you have left.

• 1

  Follow Pieter, and train

  He leads you up a mountain path to some ruins with an open cobblestone area, and starts the fight there. He is Pieter, Retired Sellsword, with slow and readable patterns: unblockable piercing attacks followed by overhead smashes, unblockable forward kicks with an overhead finisher, fast left-right-left combos after a taunt, and sidesteps into side slashes. Lean on perfect blocks and dodges — unusually for this game, you can normally land two slashes before he recovers. Afterwards, exhaust the dialogue to hear what he and Vladimir are planning.

• 2

  "See you then" or "I'll wait with you" — the whole afternoon rides on this

  "See you then" costs 1 time segment and hands you back the rest of the day for side quests. "I'll wait with you" goes straight to the Blood Mass, with significant time loss: avoid it. Game8's quest page says it consumes every remaining time segment, the point of no return for prologue content; Game8's dialogue-choices page prices it at 5 segments. The number differs, the effect does not: pick it and the ten side quests are over before they start.

  • Rewards: Charge Manual and 100 XP.
  • Time cost: 1 segment for "See you then".

4. Sacred Covenant

The door closing. This quest is the point at which prologue quests become inaccessible: Withering Away, Like Father, Like Son and Blasphemy close with it, and eight of the ten side quests must be completed before Sacred Covenant. Do everything you intend to do before you sit down in that pew. The quest also starts by itself if you run the day out, so it is not something you can simply decline. It pays 250 XP and lasts three night segments.

• 1

  Pass the time until sunset

  Either spend what is left of the day on other quests — the recommended choice — or return to Pieter to skip ahead. This is the last spending opportunity, and nothing on the other side of the Mass gives it back.

• 2

  Talk to the villagers (optional)

  Take a lap of the chapel before it starts, above all to talk to Anca, on a pew behind Coen's parents. Note what is overhead: either Gremla or her tapestry hanging above the altar, and which it is depends on the Blasphemy side quest.

• 3

  Sit in the pew, and the Blood Mass

  The required objective, and the moment the medicine is graded. Brencis tastes Esme's blood. With the medicine brewed correctly she is still visibly weak and he still remarks on it, but she lives through the Mass and goes home with the family; brewed wrongly, she is too far gone to hide it and he has her killed. It is a straight conditional on the earlier quest. Two decisions from earlier therefore land here at once: Esme's dose, and whether you settled Gremla's business.

  The Mass itself ends badly regardless. Brencis calls for another culling, Pieter and Vladimir move on the silver mine, it turns into chaos, and Coen loses consciousness. Bad Blood picks up from there. No choice changes any of it.

5. Bad Blood

The longest quest in the prologue and the first that is genuinely a dungeon: the silver mine, an escape upward, and a boss you are meant to lose to. The sources disagree about what it costs — PowerPyx says 5 time segments, reduced to 4 if you take the Vladimir detour; Game8 says 3–4, or 2–3 if you let the soldiers escort you; Vandal says 3 or 4. They also disagree about which route is the cheap one, which is covered below. XP comes in three lumps: 250 for getting out of the mine, 250 for saving Vladimir, and 500 for finishing.

• 1

  Into the mine: Ludwig, Kostel, and the pit

  The order: search deeper for your father, help Ludwig (optional but recommended), then help Kostel — putting pressure on his wound triggers a memory — and climb out of the pit using abilities you did not have an hour ago. The caverns after it are a tutorial for shadowstep and planeshift, then five kobolds as the training fight for the claws, then a cliff descent out.

• 2

  The soldiers, and Vladimir — the guides pull in opposite directions

  Two soldiers have Vladimir trapped in a burnt building. PowerPyx: beat both, talk him out, and he shows you a shortcut back to the village that cuts the return leg from 2 segments to 1 — so the detour pays for itself. Game8: you can fight them, or let them escort you, which saves a segment but skips the area and rules the rescue out entirely. Those are two different accounts of where the saving is. Vandal sits between them: the rescue is an optional objective that costs 1 segment and takes 1 off the return leg, so you spend 2 either way, and agreeing to follow the soldiers forfeits the rescue. Rescuing him is the only way to hear what he has to say: if Coen's vampiric health is low the game pushes him into the hunger options, he feeds on Vladimir instead, and that "locks you out of learning about the rebellion". "I do, yes" and "That's not true" are two routes to the same helpful outcome.

• 3

  Brencis, and the fight you are supposed to lose

  The quest advances whether you win or lose. Phase one is winnable in theory on lower difficulties; phase two can kill you outright. The scripted outcome — Brencis beats Coen, tries his blood, does not like it, and pins him to a tree with a pickaxe as dawn comes up — is the same, and you wake in Anca's house either way.

  One trophy note that needs care. Beating Brencis here unlocks the bronze Realmwalker early, and it is extremely difficult even on story mode. The trophy's requirement is visiting Anachora for the first time, guaranteed during the final fight, and earlier routes exist through specific questlines — one of which is the Ambrus chain. Beating Brencis here is one of the early routes to it, not the requirement itself.

6. Smoke and Ashes

The handover. Two bronze trophies, the first Witchcraft ability, both skill trees, and the moment the 30-day clock actually starts. The time cost is the other thing the sources do not agree on: PowerPyx totals 8 segments (1 to return to Anca, 7 to clear the rubble); Game8 reads it as 8 for the exploration plus 7 for the rubble, 15 in all; Vandal gives 8 whatever you choose, with 29 days and 7 segments left when you walk out. Either way the rubble alone is the single most expensive interaction in the prologue.

• 1

  Laslea, and the empty house

  Coen wakes at Anca's, having survived daylight; she explains what she pulled out of him and what she watched heal. Go to Laslea with her and search the family home: a door off its hinges, bloodstains, a doll left behind — and no bodies anywhere. Return to Anca, which costs 1 segment.

• 2

  Compel Soul, and the deadline you inherit

  Anca teaches Coen his first Witchcraft ability, Compel Soul. Cast it on the dead soldier and nothing happens until you find something of his to work from — Brencis's Banner — at which point the corpse talks. The villagers have been taken to the castle to be drained inside 30 days, for Brencis's coronation. That is where the number in every guide to this game comes from. Using the ability for the first time pops the bronze Dead Man Talkin'.

• 3

  The rubble at the gate, and the end of the prologue

  Seven time segments of clearing, which takes the day into night. Night falls, Coen turns, and Anca leaves for the library at St. Tyna's convent to read up on fighting vrakhiri, telling him to meet her at the inn near it. The handover is plain — you are now free to roam Vale Sangora — with a sting: the 30-day limit to save your family has now begun. Gaining that freedom is the bronze A Dawnwalker is Born.

  • Rewards: 150 XP, the Burning Blood and Astral Communion abilities, and the Witchcraft and Vampirism skill trees. Pre-order and special editions hand over the Sangoran Wayfarer's Armour here.
  • Trophies: Dead Man Talkin' (bronze) and A Dawnwalker is Born (bronze).
  • Next: the order for the three vassals is Ambrus first at level 1+, then Bakir at 20+, then Xanthe at 25+.

The ten prologue side quests

All ten open after All Good Things and live in the same window: the daylight between the chores and the Blood Mass. That window is eight time segments, and the ten quests below cost seven between them before you add Withering Away (1–2), Like Father, Like Son (1) and any backtracking — which is the whole reason a quest-order article exists for this game. Counted from a later point, with "See you then" said to Pieter, four daytime segments remain before you are sent to the Mass. Eight of the ten carry a fail state at Sacred Covenant. The exceptions are Enter Not, which is not missable, and Bandit's Treasure Map: Laslea Glen, which is not flagged missable and can belong to the post-Mass phase instead (see below). Three of them cost nothing at all — take those first.

• 1

  Dead Drop — 0 segments

  Starts by finding a Forgotten Grave with fresh flowers on it at the Outcast's Burial Ground. Focus Mode on the grave, follow the footprints into the woods, follow trees carved with symbols up a hill, and search a stash under a fallen tree. No choices. 100 XP, the Ring of Purging, a little money — Game8 says 17 denarius, Vandal 25 — and a letter that is the first you hear of organised resistance to Brencis. It goes top of the list, for the obvious reason that it is free.

• 2

  If a Tree Falls in a Forest… — 0 segments

  Examine the corpse under a downed tree in the Northern Foothills, near the shrine there. Track with Focus Mode past a dead soldier to a dead uriash by the river, loot it for the Witch's Pendant and the patrol orders, and report to Zdislav back in Laslea. 100 XP, day-only, and no choices.

• 3

  Enter Not — 0 segments, and worth ten times more later

  The boarded-up house on the path to the peat bogs, with a noise inside. Get in over the climbable roof on the right, Focus Mode the interior, loot the body on the bed for the Figurine of St. Jude and the Last Confession, and take the figurine to Father Florin at the Laslea church, where he destroys it.

  This is the one prologue side quest that survives. It is not missable, and it pays 100 XP during the prologue and 1,000 XP afterwards, when you place the figurine on the altar yourself instead. Doing it later is the better call. It costs nothing either way, so the only thing you lose by finishing it now is nine hundred XP.

• 4

  Deep Down — 1 segment, and the first real boss

  Gavril, at Gavril's Farm, is worried about his brother Lazar out in the bogs. Search the peat bogs, follow the tracks with Focus Mode, go underground, and find your way out through ancient ruins whose murals show how the vrakhiri were fought. The way out is guarded by the Forgotten Guardian, an undead swordsman with unblockable twin attacks: likely your first boss fight and considerably harder than anything before it. Dodge the unblockables and counter off perfect blocks. Pick up the Mireleaf Bracers from a tomb on the way — 33 armour, −7% block stamina cost, +2% critical hits — because you want them before the Guardian, not after. 250 XP and 25 denarius.

  Can Lazar be saved? Game8 says both things. Its Deep Down page says flatly that he has already perished underground; its prologue-priority page says you get more, including a 50-denarius reward instead of 25, if you reach him alive within 4 time segments. PowerPyx agrees with the first: he is found dead, killed by a blade rather than by wolves or the fall. Two of the three readings say he cannot be saved, so treat the four-segment deadline as unconfirmed — but it costs nothing to go early, and going early is good advice anyway.

• 5

  Blasphemy — 1 segment, and somebody lives or dies on it

  Gremla, at her house, has lost Brencis's banner. Focus Mode her shed, look for villagers with walking canes, then talk to Otokar, Dana and Premysl — only the third of those actually spends the segment. Confront Premysl about the theft and the choices fan out: "Angering Brencis will put my family at risk" leads to a sub-choice between making him return the banner (250 XP) and "Maybe you're right" (500 XP and the Daylight Amulet); "You haven't convinced me" is 250 XP. Reporting back, telling Gremla who did it or having talked him into returning it is 325 XP and 25 denarius, and refusing to help is 75 XP. The full range is 75–825 XP.

  The consequence is not in the XP. Game8's Sacred Covenant page says Gremla survives the Blood Mass only if you complete her quest by finding the thief, and that siding with the thief or leaving the quest alone means she does not. PowerPyx describes the same scene as either Gremla or her tapestry hanging above the altar but does not connect it to the choice. So the richest branch, the Daylight Amulet one, is the one Game8 says gets her killed — that is Game8's claim alone, and it is worth knowing before you pick. Vandal's route, though, takes that branch and then still names Premysl to Gremla for the 325 XP and the money, 825 in all — which by Game8's rule is finding the thief.

• 6

  Disturbed — 1 segment (2 if you help)

  Crina, at the church cemetery, has had a grave desecrated. Inspect it and the footprints, Focus Mode the yellow trail through the village and the mud patches, find and examine a broken shovel by a shed, then search Kostel's shed and confront him. Afterwards Vladimir explains they took the crucifix for its silver — a vrakhiri weakness — to make arrows or to move on the silver mine, which is the same plan Sacred Covenant ends on. You can hand the crucifix back or lie to Crina. Helping rebury her son Kvet costs a second segment. 250 XP and 25 denarius.

• 7

  Live Bait — 1 segment (2 if you play)

  Yanna, on the road outside Coen's house, wants the children walked to the river. Playing catch with Mirto and Lunka is optional and adds a segment. Find the fishing rods with Focus Mode, set them at four spots along the bank, bait the hooks. A soldier turns up while you are baiting: the dialogue options marked with a sword icon start a fight and keeping your temper skips it, and either way an uriash arrives, ends it, and warns that Coen's father is in danger. 250 XP.

• 8

  On the Run — 1 segment

  Iorgu has lost a pig. Find the tracks by the bridge with Focus Mode, get the pig back off Kuno, chase it to a ruined house, return it. The fork is with Kuno: "I do" starts a fight, "Knyaz Brencis does" gets the pig handed over without one. 250 XP, 50 denarius, and 4 sausages if you help with the slaughter. PowerPyx's own page says both that it becomes missable at Sacred Covenant and that it is not permanently missable; it is the only one of the ten where that page contradicts itself, so treat it as missable.

• 9

  Someone Needs a Lesson — 1 segment

  Vasil insults Coen on the road and runs. Catch him on the prompt, then talk. Any option with a fist icon goes straight to a bare-handed fight with Vasil; anything else brings his father Atanas over, and you can tell him the truth or not. Accept the punishment and Coen gives Vasil a beating and the quest ends; refuse or step in and Atanas fights you instead, with a sad conversation with Vasil afterwards. 250 XP.

• 10

  Bandit's Treasure Map: Laslea Glen — 1 segment, and not on the clock

  A bandit hideout at Outlaw's Gorge, held by three outlaws and a tamed wolf. Clear them, take the map from inside the house, go east to the marked spot, kill the bear guarding it — watch for an unblockable charge and a ground slam — and dig. 100 denarius, the recipe for Minor Fortitude Paste, the Polished Long Cleaver, a Golden Mug and 100 XP. PowerPyx prices it at 1 segment and does not flag it as missable; Game8 prices it at 2 and lists it under the phase after the Mass, which is the reading that makes it safe to leave. It is the one on this list you should skip if you are short.

Prologue Completion

✅ Before Moving On to Ambrus...