Five difficulty tiers are coming to The Blood of Dawnwalker in early October. Rebel Wolves’ game director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz confirmed the first major patch during an interview with Eurogamer, and the headline change is a new difficulty level that sits below the current easiest mode — designed for players who want the story without the combat challenge.
The vampire RPG launched on 3 September and crossed one million sales within 72 hours. Since then, a vocal portion of the player base has been asking for something more accessible than the current Story Mode. Rebel Wolves has listened.
What Changes With the New Difficulty?
Right now, Blood of Dawnwalker has four difficulty settings: Story, Fair, Challenging, and Duelist. The October patch adds a fifth tier at the bottom of the stack. The new mode takes the name “Story Mode,” while the current Story Mode gets bumped up and renamed — Tomaszkiewicz used “Demanding” as a placeholder, though the final name isn’t confirmed yet.
“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.”
The precise mechanics behind this new setting remain unclear. Tomaszkiewicz’s phrasing suggests it could potentially allow players to bypass combat encounters altogether, though Rebel Wolves hasn’t confirmed how this will work in practice. Whether it’s reduced enemy aggression, dramatically lowered damage, or something more radical, the intent is to make the narrative accessible to players who found even Story Mode too demanding.
Combat Targeting and Escape Get Reworked Too
The new difficulty is the most talked-about addition, but the October patch covers significantly more ground. Tomaszkiewicz acknowledged a targeting quirk that’s been frustrating players since launch: a stun-like crowd-control move that automatically switches focus to a different enemy mid-combat.
“That’s my fault,” the game director said plainly, explaining the mechanic was originally intended to let players stun one enemy then seamlessly pivot to another. The patch introduces a three-hit buffer — enemies will hold their stun for three hits before the targeting system can shift focus, giving players more deliberate control over who they’re actually attacking.
The update also addresses how Coen handles escape scenarios. Previously, the navmesh sometimes caught players trying to flee combat, making getaways feel clunky and punishing. The patch removes those restrictions when fleeing, smoothing out the experience. Enemy animal behaviour is getting adjusted too: creatures will still attempt to hit the player, but won’t “hard-catch” them once a successful evasion is executed.
Performance Improvements Are Also on the Way
PC players dealing with frame-rate instability will find some relief in the update. Rebel Wolves has already shipped a series of hotfixes targeting hardware-specific issues, and Tomaszkiewicz says the studio continues to gather data and roll out targeted performance improvements — with particular focus on the wide variety of PC configurations in the wild.
Full controller support is also listed on the docket, though specifics weren’t shared. A separate feature allowing players to escape fights more fluidly — presumably distinct from the navmesh fix — was mentioned but not detailed.
There’s no firm release date for the patch beyond “early October.” Given how quickly Rebel Wolves has moved since launch — multiple hotfixes in the first weeks post-release — the studio appears to be in active dialogue with its player base. Whether the new easy mode ends up being a gentle accessibility feature or something that effectively lets players watch an interactive film, it should tell us something interesting about where action RPGs are headed with difficulty design.
