The Blood of Dawnwalker update 1.1 is planned for next week (the week of October 19), and Rebel Wolves says it brings a respec potion, a new easier Story difficulty, pettable dogs and cats and “over 1100 other improvements & fixes”. The studio revealed the headline changes in an infographic on the game’s official X account on October 16, but hasn’t named an exact day yet.
It’s the first big patch since the vampire RPG launched on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S in early September, after a run of smaller hotfixes. Here’s everything the developer has officially listed so far.
The official update 1.1 infographic posted on October 16 lists the headline features and 'over 1100 other improvements & fixes'. Image: Rebel Wolves
Table of Contents
The Blood of Dawnwalker update 1.1: new features
- Draught of Mind Rebirth (respec): a new item that makes Coen forget all of his Swordmastery, Witchcraft and Vampirism abilities, so you can put that learning time into a different set of skills. In other words, you can try a new build without restarting the story.
- Petting animals: you’ll be able to pet dogs and cats. Rebel Wolves only teases how it works by asking what happens when you merge directional combat with petting: “Directional. Animal. Petting.”
- A new Story difficulty: the current lowest setting, Story, is renamed Forgiving, and a new Story mode sits below it with additional combat assist.
- More subtitle settings: a larger font size option, plus the choice to show subtitles for all dialogue lines.
Combat, camera, traversal and FrameGen changes
| Area | What the infographic says |
|---|---|
| FrameGen | Updated frame generation technology, with dedicated settings |
| Camera | Adjusted animations and camera movements in combat |
| Combat | Better targeting, locking onto and disengaging from enemies |
| Traversal | More responsive targeting and surface attaching with Shadowstep and Planeshift |
| Japanese version | Blood and gore will no longer be censored in the Japanese version on Steam |
Disengaging is the change many players were waiting for. In a September interview with Eurogamer, game director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz said the team was working on escaping and running during fights, so that fleeing would feel “fluid” rather than clunky. He also said then that the easier difficulty was coming because “many people are asking” for it. The infographic confirms both directions, though Rebel Wolves hasn’t published full patch notes yet, so the details of each fix are still to come.
Update 1.1 adjusts combat targeting, lock-on and disengaging, plus camera movement during fights. Image: Rebel Wolves / Bandai Namco Entertainment
When does update 1.1 come out, and on which platforms?
Officially, all we have is “planned for next week” from the October 16 post, which points to the week of October 19-25. There’s no confirmed date or time yet. The post doesn’t split the update by platform, but The Blood of Dawnwalker is on PC (Steam), PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, and the uncensoring change applies only to the Japanese Steam version. Expect full patch notes when it goes live.
How The Blood of Dawnwalker has done since launch
Rebel Wolves, whose team includes members of the core team behind The Witcher 3, published the game with Bandai Namco. Reception has been strong:
- Steam reviews: “Very Positive”, with 26,559 of 30,312 user reviews positive (about 88%), checked October 17, 06:45 UTC on the Steam store page, where it sells for $69.99.
- Metacritic: 83 on PS5 (79 critic reviews), 84 on PC (52) and 84 on Xbox Series X (10).
- Sales: the studio announced 1 million copies sold on September 9, about a week after launch.
- Awards: it’s nominated in three Golden Joystick categories: Best Storytelling, PC Game of the Year and Best Lead Performer (Will de Renzy-Martin as Coen).
The main complaints have been combat feel (Push Square’s review called it “toothless”) and PC performance. Hotfix 1.0.5 in September targeted shader compilation stutter, and update 1.1’s targeting, camera and FrameGen changes go after the same complaints. If you’re still deciding whether to pick it up, or you stopped partway through, next week’s patch is a sensible moment to return. For Witcher-style RPG fans, our recent reports on CD Projekt’s Cyberpunk movie and Project Hadar and Geralt’s role in The Witcher 4 cover the studio behind The Witcher 3.
What’s next
Watch the official X account and the game’s Steam news page for the release date and full 1.1 patch notes. If you’re planning a busy week, our roundup of new games out October 19-23 lists everything else landing alongside it, and Steam players can also try the new Steam Achievement Sets beta.
Sources: Rebel Wolves on X (update 1.1 infographic), Steam, Metacritic, Eurogamer, Push Square, Rock Paper Shotgun.
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Featured image: Rebel Wolves / Bandai Namco Entertainment
