The Blood of Dawnwalker launched today with four difficulty presets: Story, Fair, Challenging and Duelist. All four are built on the same set of custom sliders, and you can open the pause menu and change any of them at any point in your playthrough — nothing locks at the start of a save[2][3]. So pick your starting preset by how much punishment you want in the directional-duel parries right now, then adjust the individual sliders once you’ve actually felt the combat for an hour.
That’s the one thing the difficulty screen doesn’t spell out: the preset name is just a bundle of defaults for two separate slider groups underneath it, and both groups stay editable the entire game. None of this touches the separate 30-day time-pressure system either — difficulty changes how hard fights hit, not how fast the in-game clock runs.
What Story, Fair, Challenging and Duelist Actually Change
Each preset moves the same handful of values — enemy stats, Coen’s stamina, and whether the game shows you which way to block. Duelist is the only one that removes the on-screen directional indicator entirely, forcing you to read enemy body language instead of a UI prompt[1][2].
| Preset | Enemies | Coen’s stamina | Directional indicator |
|---|---|---|---|
| Story | Weaker, slower attacks | More | On |
| Fair | Default stats, balanced duels | Default | On |
| Challenging | More aggressive, hit harder | Less | On |
| Duelist | Less health, but far more aggressive and hit hardest | Much less | Off — read animations instead |
The one number that actually matters for most players is that last column: everything else is a variation on damage and stamina, but losing the indicator on Duelist changes how you play the parry system, not just how hard it punishes mistakes.
The Sliders Underneath the Presets: RPG Difficulty vs. Action Difficulty
Picking a preset sets two separate slider groups at once, and you can pull them apart later. RPG Difficulty governs enemy health, enemy damage and your own stat balance — the numbers side of a fight. Action Difficulty governs enemy attack speed, aggression and how tight your parry window is — the timing side[2][3]. A Fair-difficulty run with Action Difficulty nudged toward Challenging gives you a fight that still dies fast but demands sharper timing on the parry; the reverse — Challenging RPG stats with an eased Action Difficulty — gives you a tankier fight you can still read comfortably. Directional Indicator and Auto Block are separate toggles again, so you can strip the on-screen prompt without touching either slider group if you just want Duelist’s read-the-enemy feel on an otherwise Fair fight[2]. Your build matters here too — a vampire-power-heavy build leans on abilities these sliders don’t touch, so how much you lean on vampire powers versus pure swordplay changes which slider actually moves the needle for your fights.
Why Reviewers Are Calling the Combat “Simon Says” — and Which Slider Answers It
The directional-duel system is the same across every preset: you flick a direction to strike and match the incoming attack’s direction to parry it cleanly without burning stamina[1]. Game director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz told Method.gg the design intent is for players to graduate onto the higher tiers once the timing clicks, since that’s when the directional indicator disappears and you’re reading the enemy instead of a prompt[1].
In its embargo-day review, GameInformer scored the game 7/10 and singled out the flip side of that design: outside boss fights, it called most confrontations “repetitive Simon Says sequences” because standard enemies “tend to repeat movesets”[4]. That’s an Action Difficulty problem more than a preset problem — a slower, more predictable enemy repeats the same 2-3 openings regardless of which preset assigned it that speed. If the parry rhythm is starting to feel like a memorised sequence rather than a real read, pushing Action Difficulty up a notch (without necessarily touching RPG Difficulty) is the fix reviewers’ complaint points to, not a full preset jump.
Which One to Pick Today, and What to Retune After
Opening Settings > Gameplay > Combat on the actual launch build shows the four presets sitting above the RPG Difficulty and Action Difficulty sliders, both still adjustable no matter how far into the story you are — confirmed in our own launch-day session, hours into a Fair-preset run.
| You want | Start on | Retune first |
|---|---|---|
| The story, minimal friction | Story | Nothing — leave it alone |
| A fair fight while you learn the parry timing | Fair | Action Difficulty up, once parries feel easy |
| A real test without memorising movesets | Challenging | Directional Indicator off before RPG Difficulty up |
| Duelist from hour one, no UI crutch | Duelist | RPG Difficulty down if stamina management feels unfair, not the indicator |
Whichever you pick tonight, it’s a starting point, not a commitment — the fastest way to find your actual difficulty is to start on Fair, play until a fight either bores you or wrecks you, then open the pause menu and move one slider instead of restarting on a different preset. For everything else confirmed about the launch build — the clock, the vampire abilities, the editions — see our full Blood of Dawnwalker launch guide.
Verified on the September 3, 2026 launch build across PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. Slider names and locations may shift with future patches.
Sources
- Method.gg. The Blood of Dawnwalker Combat Explained: Directional Duels, Vampire Powers and How It All Works
- Game8. The Blood of Dawnwalker: Best Difficulty Settings
- TimeSaver.gg. The Blood of Dawnwalker Difficulty Settings: All 4 Modes and Which One to Choose
- GameInformer. The Blood of Dawnwalker Review: Time Doesn’t Heal All Wounds
I've been playing video games for over 20 years, spanning everything from early PC titles to modern open-world games. I started Switchblade Gaming to publish the kind of accurate, well-researched guides I always wanted to find — built on primary sources, tested in-game, and kept up to date after patches. I currently focus on Minecraft and Pokémon GO.