The first major The Blood of Dawnwalker update will introduce an easier difficulty option for “people who don’t want to experience combat” when it launches in October.
Developer Rebel Wolves’ game director, Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, teased the changes coming to the team’s breakout vampire RPG during a new interview with Eurogamer. Amongst a batch of combat tweaks and other gameplay changes, one of the highlights for the early October The Blood of Dawnwalker update includes reworked difficulty options for players who don’t want to spill too much blood during the story.
When the update launches, players will see the new easier difficulty option replace the current easiest mode, called Story Mode, and adopt its name. The version of the mode currently in the game will seemingly be bumped up a peg and given a new name. The Blood of Dawnwalker currently has four difficulty modes – Story, Fair, Challenging, and Duelist – with next month’s addition set to bring the total to five.
“We will introduce an additional difficulty level, but an easier one, because many people are asking for a more easy difficulty,” Tomaszkiewicz said. “The Story mode which we have right now will be a different difficulty — we will call it Demanding or something like this — and we will add a new Story mode which will be even easier for people who don’t want to experience the combat, they just want to learn the story and go through the game without this gameplay challenge.”
How exactly The Blood of Dawnwalker will tackle an easier difficulty mode is unclear. The game director’s comment suggests it will cater to those who want to skip combat altogether, though how this will be achieved is unclear. There’s no release date for the update just yet, but with its launch set for early October, we won’t have to wait too long.
Rebel Wolves is also looking into improving gameplay performance, especially for PC users, as well as a fluid option for players to escape fights if they bite off more than they can chew. Other items on the docket include targeting and the camera. Tomaszkiewicz referenced desires from players to tweak how targeting works for Coen and how the upcoming patch will address that.
“There will be three hits you need to take off this stun,” he said. “We will see how people will react to that because, as I said, it can create another bad feel, but we will see. Maybe people will switch between targets fluently and 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.”
Everything else set to come to The Blood of Dawnwalker in the October patch has yet to be revealed. Although other features, including new game plus, are confirmed to be in the cards, the team is still charging ahead following its successful launch.
It was released for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S September 3 and reached more than 1 million copies sold in just two days. For more on The Blood of Dawnwalker, you can read about how Bandai Namco and Rebel Wolves managed to bring their vision to life on a $40 million budget. You can also learn about how some players are using a mod to bypass one of the game’s core mechanics.
Michael Cripe
Freelance Writer
Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).