The Blood of Dawnwalker’s 6 Real Endings, Decoded: The Exact Choice That Locks Each One — and the One Save You Can’t Overwrite

Coen’s fate in The Blood of Dawnwalker comes down to six real endings, and five of them are all decided in a single quest near the very end of the game — not by anything you did on day 3 or day 12. The sixth, plus one true failure state and one near-impossible secret ending, sit outside that window entirely. Miss the moment to save before that final quest, and you’ll need a second full playthrough (there’s no New Game Plus) just to see what you missed [1][5].

This guide breaks down all 6 endings that Rebel Wolves’ own trophy list counts as distinct story outcomes — 4 main endings locked in the finale, 2 early endings you can trigger long before that — plus the 30-day fail state that isn’t really an ending at all, and the one secret ending almost nobody has actually pulled off. It also covers the single manual save that lets you watch all 6 without replaying 20+ hours of story, verified against the current build after Hotfix 1.0.4 fixed a save-blocking bug that would have made this whole strategy useless [8]. See our full Blood of Dawnwalker guide for everything else confirmed about Vale Sangora and the 30-day clock.

Quick Start: Protect Your Save Before You Touch the Endgame

• Do not start the final quest, “A Deal with the Devil,” until you’ve read this. Once you commit to a choice inside it, that choice is final for that save [1].
• Create a fresh manual save the moment the final quest becomes available — not after you’ve already picked a side. Name it something you won’t overwrite by accident [5].
• Finish Lacra’s and Crake’s questlines first if you want access to all 4 main endings from the same save point, not just 2 of them [1][3].
• Update to at least Hotfix 1.0.4 before relying on multiple manual saves — the pre-patch build had a bug that blocked saving outright [8].
• Decide now whether you even want all 6 — most players only need one ending for their first, real playthrough; the reload strategy below is for completionists and reviewers.
• Know that early endings end the game outright. Neither of the 2 early endings can be undone from inside that same save — you’ll be back at the title screen.

How the Ending System Actually Works

Almost none of Coen’s story choices lock an ending on their own. The Blood of Dawnwalker is built around a 30-day budget where only major quests and key actions cost time, not exploration [7] — and the ending system follows the same design logic: it waits until the very end to ask the one question that matters. The 4 main endings are all resolved inside a single quest, “A Deal with the Devil,” which becomes available once you’ve defeated all three members of Brencis’s Vrakhiri Court and pushed your infamy high enough to force a confrontation [1][3]. Everything before that — which side quests you finished, who you helped, whether you bothered with Lacra or Crake at all — only matters because it determines which of the 4 main endings are actually available to you when you get there.

That’s a deliberate design choice, and it’s also the reason a completionist run doesn’t require replaying the campaign. Rebel Wolves put the branching at the very end specifically so a single manual save before that quest could substitute for a full second playthrough [1][5]. The 2 early endings work differently — they’re escape hatches available from roughly the midgame onward, and taking either one skips “A Deal with the Devil” and the finale entirely.

The Vrakhiri Court itself is worth understanding before you get there, because clearing it is what raises your infamy high enough for Brencis to notice you and force the endgame. It’s a three-member ruling body under Brencis, and you have to defeat all three — not just enough of them — before “A Deal with the Devil” appears in your journal at all [1][3]. That’s a harder gate than most previews implied before launch: you can’t rush the finale by beelining Brencis and skipping his lieutenants, which is part of why a completionist run genuinely needs the 20-day buffer this guide’s save strategy assumes.

We cross-checked PowerPyx’s endings guide against Fextralife’s own wiki page while writing this, and the two only disagree on one detail — exactly how many loops “Together Forever” takes to trigger — not on anything that changes which ending you actually land on. That’s a useful signal on its own: when two independently maintained guides agree on every requirement except a single repeat count, the requirement itself is solid; only the exact number is in question.

The 4 Main Endings and the Exact Choice That Locks Each One

All four of these are resolved inside “A Deal with the Devil.” Your build matters here too — the Folk Hero fight in particular is a solo Brencis boss fight with no help, so whether you leaned into vampire powers or straight swordplay changes how that specific fight plays out far more than it does the earlier main-quest bosses.

The Turncoat is worth calling out specifically: PowerPyx’s own trophy roadmap and Fextralife’s wiki both list it as one of the four “main” endings [1][2][3], but it’s also the only one of the four that gets your family back without a fight — at the direct cost of the Manumit allies who helped you get this far. Whether that reads as a happy ending or the darkest one in the game depends entirely on how much you value the people you’re betraying to get there, and neither fetched guide takes a side on it — which is arguably the point.

The 2 Early Endings You Can Trigger Long Before the Finale

Both of these are available well before “A Deal with the Devil” unlocks, and both end the game outright the moment you commit — there’s no finale, no Vrakhiri Court fight, and no epilogue for either [1].

• A Hero They Deserve. Travel to Briar Sloughs at night, use a vampire traversal ability (Shadowstep or Planeshift) to cross the broken bridge gate, and choose the dialogue option to leave the valley forever. Coen simply walks away, and the story ends there without him ever confronting Brencis [1][3].
• Together Forever. Start the “Home Sweet Home” quest at Silts Tower, and instead of taking the well escape route, let the nightmare loop repeat. Sources differ slightly on the exact count — PowerPyx describes finishing the loop, while Fextralife’s wiki specifies four repeats followed by a fifth action (splitting logs, then talking to Esme in the kitchen) [1][3] — but the outcome is the same either way: Coen chooses to stay trapped in the loop with his family rather than face what’s real.

Neither of these is a “bad” ending in the sense of a game-over screen. They’re both legitimate, trophy-backed conclusions — they’re just the two endings that resolve the story by having Coen opt out of the fight entirely, one by literally leaving, one by refusing to leave a fantasy.

The One Save That Lets You See All 6 Endings

You don’t need six separate playthroughs. The entire branch structure funnels through “A Deal with the Devil,” so one save at the right moment covers the 4 main endings, and a second save can cover the 2 early ones on a completely separate branch [1][5]. The exact process:

1. Reach the point where the final quest becomes available — typically with roughly 20 of your 30 days still banked if you’ve been reasonably efficient about which actions actually cost a day [5].
2. If you want all 4 main endings from one save, finish Lacra’s and Crake’s full questlines first — both are required to even unlock their respective endings, and you can’t add them retroactively from a save taken after the finale starts [1][3].
3. Create a manual save here and do not overwrite it. Give it a name you’ll recognize — this is your only anchor point.
4. Play through “A Deal with the Devil” once, pick one ending, let it play out, and let the game return you to the title screen.
5. Reload the anchor save, make a different choice in the finale, and repeat for each of the 4 main endings.
6. Separately, load an earlier save from before you committed to the endgame path to try either of the 2 early endings — they branch off a different point in the story entirely, not from the “A Deal with the Devil” save.

Two things make this strategy actually reliable right now rather than theoretical. First, the game ships with 54 manual save slots, so there’s no practical reason to reuse or risk your anchor save [5]. Second, and more important: the original September 3 launch build had a bug that could block saving outright, which would have made a save-and-reload strategy actively dangerous. That was fixed in Hotfix 1.0.4 on September 9 [8] — if you’re playing on anything earlier, update before you commit to this plan.

Which Ending Should You Lock In First?

If you’re only doing one real playthrough and treating the rest as optional reloads, which ending you commit to first depends on what you actually want out of the game — the four main endings aren’t ranked “best to worst,” they’re built for different priorities.

What Happens If You Run Out of Time (the 30-Day Fail State)

This isn’t one of the 6 real endings — it’s what happens if you simply let the clock expire without ever reaching “A Deal with the Devil.” At the end of day 30, Brencis sacrifices Coen’s family during his ceremony. There’s no game-over screen: play continues, the map stays open, and you keep control of Coen [6]. What changes is the story itself — the objective shifts from rescuing your family to avenging them, you permanently lose access to the “In the Nick of Time” trophy and its epilogue, and Brencis himself becomes measurably tougher, since the sacrifice completes his coronation and hands him a fresh feed of power [6].

The distinction matters more than it might sound like. A true ending closes the story and returns you to the title screen; the 30-day fail state does neither — it just permanently locks a door and keeps the game running. Treat it as a failure state to avoid, not a seventh ending to add to your collection.

Is There a Secret 7th Ending?

Yes, and it’s real — Bandai Namco has confirmed it as an intended ending, not a glitch [4]. If you defeat Brencis’s true form, the Grotesque Ascendant, during the Prologue itself, before Coen ever properly becomes a Dawnwalker or reaches Vale Sangora, the game ends there. It’s an extraordinarily hard fight: the Grotesque Ascendant phase can kill you in one hit regardless of difficulty, your starting sword barely scratches its health pool, and the developer has said only a couple of people internally at Rebel Wolves ever managed it, describing it as “extremely hard to actually do” [4].

We’re not counting it among the 6 “real” endings in this guide for the same reason PowerPyx’s trophy roadmap doesn’t: beating it resolves as a variant of the Folk Hero outcome rather than a genuinely distinct story branch, and it skips essentially the entire campaign — you never meet Lacra or Crake, never make a single one of the choices this guide covers [2][4]. Treat it as a bonus for players who want the single hardest optional fight in the game, not as a replacement for actually playing through to one of the 6.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you get all 6 endings without buying a second copy or starting over?

Yes. One manual save before “A Deal with the Devil” covers all 4 main endings through reloading, and an earlier save covers the 2 early endings — there’s no need for New Game Plus, which the game doesn’t have at launch anyway [1][5].

Does killing the Vrakhiri Court in a different order change which endings are available?

No — what determines which of the 4 main endings you can reach is whether you finished Lacra’s and Crake’s own questlines, not the order you cleared the Court in. Skip both companion arcs and you’re still locked into The Turncoat or The Folk Hero as your only two options in the finale [1][3].

Is The Turncoat actually a bad ending?

It depends what you’re optimizing for. It’s the only main ending that gets your family back without a fight, but it does so by handing Brencis the Manumit Hideout — the people who helped you survive the last 30 days. Guides that label it flatly “bad” are judging it purely on the betrayal; guides that call it a genuine win are judging it purely on the rescue. Both readings are defensible, which is why we’ve laid out the actual trade-off above instead of picking a side for you.

Do the 2 early endings count toward the “Uphill Battle” Duelist trophy?

No. That trophy is tied specifically to completing the game via one of the 4 main endings on Duelist difficulty, not the 2 early endings [2] — if you’re trophy-hunting on the hardest setting, The Folk Hero, Patricide, Knyazmaker, or Turncoat are your only qualifying paths.

Can you keep playing after you get an ending?

Only after the 2 early endings or the 30-day fail state — both leave the world open. Reaching any of the 4 main endings through “A Deal with the Devil” closes the story outright and drops you back to the title screen with no free-roam, which is exactly why the pre-finale manual save matters more than a post-ending one [5][6].

Verified against The Blood of Dawnwalker’s build as of Hotfix 1.0.4 (September 9, 2026). Ending requirements have not changed in patches released since launch on September 3, 2026; re-check if a future major update specifically touches “A Deal with the Devil” or the Vrakhiri Court questline.

Sources

1. PowerPyx. The Blood of Dawnwalker All Endings Guide. PowerPyx
2. PowerPyx. The Blood of Dawnwalker Trophy Guide & Roadmap. PowerPyx
3. Fextralife. Endings Guide — Blood of Dawnwalker Wiki. Fextralife
4. All Things How. The Blood of Dawnwalker: What Happens if You Beat Brencis in the Prologue. All Things How
5. All Things How. The Blood of Dawnwalker: The Save File Trick Every Beginner Needs. All Things How
6. Video Games Chronicle. Blood of Dawnwalker: What Happens After the 30-Day Time Limit?. Video Games Chronicle
7. Wikipedia contributors. The Blood of Dawnwalker. Wikipedia
8. Fextralife. Patch Notes — Blood of Dawnwalker Wiki. Fextralife

Michael R.

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.