Best Quests to Do Before the Mass (Prologue Time Guide)
Updated 2026-09-04
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Sourced 2026-09-04, build 1.003
The prologue gives you one time budget before the Blood Mass — and more tasks than it fits. This page curates every prologue task documented in public guides, with its reported rewards, branch points and skip risks — and a ? wherever no reliable source exists. Sources disagree on exact segment costs; we show the disagreement, dated.
The Blood of Dawnwalker opens with a hard choice disguised as a tutorial: the clock to the Blood Mass is already running, and every task you take burns segments you may want later. Public walkthroughs disagree on the exact numbers — GameSpot lists per-task costs, GameRant reports 8 in total for the whole prologue, others say more. This page lays every documented claim side by side, with sources and dates, instead of picking one.
How the Prologue Clock Works
The short answer: before the Mass in The Blood of Dawnwalker's prologue, prioritize tasks that unlock permanent options, and drop pure-loot errands when the clock runs tight — that's the consensus across public guides. Exact segment costs are disputed between sources (GameSpot lists 2-3 for Withering Away's core flow; GameRant: 8 total); every figure stays attributed, none presented as first-party. Each claim is dated and re-checked against its source.
Three facts hold across every source we checked:
- The prologue is one bounded budget — the countdown to the Mass starts before you control the character, and every marked task settles against it.
- The Mass itself is the end point, not a fail state. What happens when the wider 30-day calendar runs out is covered in our time-system guide; inside the prologue, the practical question is just which tasks earn their cost.
- Reported costs differ between sources because they count differently — some count only the core flow, some include optional detours. That is exactly why this page attributes every number instead of averaging them.
The Quest Table
Every prologue task public guides document, with its reported cost and the facts that make it worth — or not worth — your segments.
| Quest | Reported cost | Key facts (as reported) |
|---|---|---|
| Withering Away | GameSpot: 2-3 · allthings.how: 1 + 1 | The brew for your mother Esme: hot water plus three scoops of herbs, per four agreeing sources. A wrong temperature, a wrong dose, or reaching the Sacred Covenant unfinished kills her. Anca's house is free to loot — taking things there is not theft. |
| Like Father, Like Son | method.gg: 1 | Your father Pieter's sword lesson — the game's first boss-style duel. Choose "see him later", not "Skip to Mass". Unlocks the Charge manual. |
| On the Run | method.gg: 2 | Tracking Iorgu's lost pig. |
| Deep Down | ? (guides hint 1-2) | A cave bear hunt. Reports say Dirty Trick makes a strong opener, and the fight gets easier after If A Tree Falls. |
| If A Tree Falls in the Forest | ? | Shares its delivery point with Enter Not — pair them in one trip. |
| Into the Den | ? (guides hint 1) | A cave retrieval. method.gg's walkthrough records a treasure-map bug here (a skipped night, fixed by a reload). |
| Enter Not | 0 | Fetch a doll from a sealed house — enter through the white-painted wood pile on the right. |
| Dead Drop | 0 | Graveyard → tree sigil → the fallen-log sigil → collect the reward. |
| Bandit's Treasure Map: Laslea Glen | method.gg: 1 | Three bandits and a dog; rewards the Rebel's Falchion. |
Cells marked ? have no reliable public source yet; they stay empty rather than filled. (Source notes: GameSpot, method.gg and allthings.how via the Sources block at the end of this page.)
Zero-Cost Tasks: Always Worth It
Two prologue tasks are documented as free everywhere we checked, which makes them the two best deals on the board:
- Enter Not — the sealed house keeps its front door shut, but the white-painted wood pile on its right side is climbable. The doll inside goes back to the church.
- Dead Drop — a pure fetch chain: graveyard, tree sigil, the sigil on the fallen log, then the reward.
Pair both with If A Tree Falls, which shares Enter Not's delivery point, and one walking route settles three tasks.
The Withering Away Brew
The prologue's highest-stakes task is also its best-documented. The recipe — hot water plus three scoops of herbs — is the single most cross-checked fact in the prologue: four independent sources agree on it. Get it wrong, or fail to finish before the Sacred Covenant scene, and Esme dies there.
- One guide reports a reward around five hundred XP for the quest; the figure comes from a single source and conflicts with another's count, so the database treats it as unconfirmed — treat it the same way.
- The Latin lesson (Page-Turner) later pays out a haul of eleven herb bundles — three of them behind a collapsed shed door and easy to miss. Advance that scene carefully or the bundles lock.
Sister tasks: Herbal Remedies I stretches consumable buffs like the ones this quest introduces, and Forager doubles herb gathers — both matter once the main game's alchemy loop opens.
Spending or Saving: the Priority Order
The consensus across every priority guide we checked:
- Take the tasks that unlock permanent options first — the tutorial duel's Charge manual (see Charge), the free tasks, anything tied to Esme's survival.
- Drop pure-loot errands when the clock runs tight. Nothing in the prologue's optional loot compares to what the main game's Vale Sangora offers.
- Mind the Latin lesson trade-off. Skipping it saves a segment; attending it opens Page-Turner and, with it, the eleven-bundle herb haul. Both choices are defensible — decide by whether your route needs the segment more.
- Fight smart, not long. The tutorial duel teaches attacks you cannot block — Perfect Block becomes the discipline from the second fight onward, and Dirty Trick's sand blind opens the bear fight for free damage.
After the Mass
- Where the prologue ends is itself a documented conflict. Game8 names "Smoke and Ashes" as the prologue's final task and the unlock point for the Witchcraft and Vampirism trees; other sources describe the Mass as the ending beat. Both claims stand in our database as a registered conflict until someone can check them in-game.
- The two trees unlock at the prologue's end — Witchcraft works by day, Vampirism by night. See Compel Soul and Mercurial Fervour for the daytime picks the community rates first.
- The prologue is deliberately tight; the main game is not. allthings.how puts it directly: don't panic-rush — Vale Sangora's 30 days are roomier than Laslea Glen's single day.
Sources
Sources
- GameSpot — The best prologue quests to prioritize (Sep 2026)
- GameSpot — How to save Coen's mother (Sep 2026)
- Polygon — What quests to do before mass in The Blood of Dawnwalker (Sep 2026)
- PC Gamer — Dawnwalker prologue walkthrough and best quest order (Sep 2026)
- allthings.how — The Blood of Dawnwalker guides (Sep 2026)
- Our time-system guide — how the calendar works after the prologue