Dawnwalkers in Vale Sangora are about to have an easier time, and the studio behind them has finally given players a way to skip the fighting altogether. In an interview with Eurogamer, The Blood of Dawnwalker’s director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz detailed the contents of the game’s first major patch, which lands in early October. Among the headline changes is a brand-new, even easier Story mode that removes combat entirely, alongside overhauls to targeting, disengagement, and escape mechanics that have long frustrated the game’s player base.
The Blood of Dawnwalker is a blood-drinking time-management sim that has quietly become one of the year’s most talked-about releases. Built on a modest budget, the vampire-themed RPG has emerged as a dark-horse Game of the Year contender, drawing praise for its ambitious open world and its signature time-based gameplay loop. Yet even as the game has found commercial and critical success, its combat system has drawn criticism. The current “Story” difficulty, for instance, is widely regarded as a misnomer, since players still have to fight their way through the world.
A Story Mode Without the Blood
However, he also flagged a wrinkle in the design. A central conceit of Dawnwalker is that the more a player annoys the High Vampire Inquisitor (HVIC), the more aggressively the game deploys its forces, posting guard checkpoints throughout the map to block progress. Tomaszkiewicz noted it would be interesting to see whether those obstacles would disappear in the new mode or instead become skippable, leaving the exact implementation open to interpretation.
“We will add a new Story mode which will be even easier for people who don’t want to experience the combat.”
Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, Director of The Blood of Dawnwalker
Overhauling Combat and Escape Mechanics
Beyond the new difficulty, the patch will fundamentally change how targeting works. Currently, when Coen stuns an enemy, the game automatically switches the player’s target — a behavior the developers originally intended to help players juggle encounters with overwhelming numbers of mobs. But that same system can be maddening when a player simply wants to focus on whittling down a single enemy.
Going forward, Tomaszkiewicz said the game will keep players locked onto a stunned target and make it significantly harder for incoming damage to break the stun. “There will be three hits you need to take off this stun,” he explained. “We will see how people will react to that…if they want to just stun, it will be fine, and if they want to stun and hit a few times, it will be also fine. We will see.”
Perhaps the most eagerly anticipated change concerns the ability to flee. Tomaszkiewicz said the team is “working on escaping from combat and running in combat,” calling it “a big change for people.” For many players, this is a genuinely welcome fix: during the current campaign, countless encounters have left them wedged on geometry while trying to create distance from the game’s infamous hordes of enemies.
Looking Ahead
The first big patch is scheduled to arrive sometime in early October, marking the first substantial update since the game’s launch. Tomaszkiewicz also hinted at the possibility of a game plus mode in the future, though he declined to elaborate. “There is a chance but I don’t want to speak about it yet,” he said. “We will have the proper beats with our publishing team and if I tell you more, they will kill me.”
For players who have been waiting for a more forgiving experience, the patch represents a meaningful step forward. With a true no-combat Story mode, refined targeting, and the ability to run from fights, The Blood of Dawnwalker appears poised to broaden its appeal while preserving the time-management identity that has made it such a standout title. As Tomaszkiewicz teased, the studio is clearly listening to its community — and the next update may well be the one that finally lets players enjoy the story without ever raising a blade.
For those interested in the broader context of the game’s development, related coverage includes how the title became a GOTY contender on a $40 million budget, concerns about preserving the time mechanic in any future sequels, and the developers’ workarounds for the four main issues on PC.
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