The Blood of Dawnwalker Update 1.1 Patch Notes: What's New

The Blood of Dawnwalker's Update 1.1 is live. Rebel Wolves pushed the patch to PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S on October 22, 2026, confirming the rollout with a post on the game's official Steam news hub headlined "Update 1.1 is now live on Steam!" That lines up with the "week of October 19" window the studio had pointed to beforehand, after the patch had already slipped past an earlier "early October" target. If you own the game on any of its three supported platforms, the update should already be waiting for you.

Is The Blood of Dawnwalker Update 1.1 out yet?

Yes. Rebel Wolves' own Steam announcement is unambiguous about the timing: the post is titled "Update 1.1 is now live on Steam!" and was published on October 22, 2026. That is the clearest primary confirmation available, since the developer's official site and the game's Steam store page both point back to the same news feed for patch announcements. Coverage in the days before launch had described the update as coming "next week" without a firm date, so the October 22 post is the first hard confirmation that it actually shipped rather than slipping again.

The Blood of Dawnwalker, developed by Rebel Wolves (a studio founded by former CD Projekt Red veterans, including The Witcher 3's former game director) and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment, originally launched on September 3, 2026, per Bandai Namco's own release announcement. Update 1.1 is the game's first major post-launch patch, arriving roughly seven weeks after release.

What's actually new in this patch

Rebel Wolves groups the patch into "New features" and "Highlights," followed by a long tail of miscellaneous, general, gameplay and quest fixes that the studio says adds up to more than 1,100 items. The headline additions are a free skill respec, a new lower difficulty tier, animal petting, and expanded subtitle options. Beyond those, the "Highlights" section covers FrameGen changes, combat and camera adjustments, targeting fixes for the game's Shadowstep and Planeshift traversal abilities, and the removal of mandatory blood/gore censorship in the Japanese Steam release. The rest of the patch is bug fixing: dozens of quest-specific fixes (stuck points, broken triggers, pathing issues), UI and controller fixes, and combat balance tweaks that reduce boar and wolf health at higher character levels.

The Draught of Mind Rebirth: a free skill respec

The patch's biggest system change is the Draught of Mind Rebirth. According to Rebel Wolves' own description, the item lets players "forget all your Swordmastery, Witchcraft, and Vampirism abilities, and use the time you spent learning them to master a different set of abilities." In other words, it is a full respec: every point sunk into Coen's three ability trees can be reclaimed and reassigned without starting a new save.

That matters specifically because of how The Blood of Dawnwalker is structured. The game runs on an in-world clock that pressures players to act within a limited number of days, and training abilities costs in-game time as well as resources. Before this patch, a build decision made early could lock in hours of "wasted" time that couldn't be recovered within a single playthrough. The Rebirth item does not eliminate that pressure, but it gives players currently partway through a run a way to correct course — pivoting from, say, a Witchcraft-heavy build to a Swordmastery one — without replaying from scratch.

Forgiving difficulty and the new, easier Story mode

Difficulty naming gets reshuffled in Update 1.1. Per the official patch notes, players can now "pick between the Forgiving game difficulty (previously called Story) and a new Story mode with additional combat assist." Concretely: the tier that used to be called Story is renamed Forgiving, and a brand-new, even more accessible Story preset sits beneath it with extra combat assistance. If you remember the game's easiest setting as "Story" at launch, that name now refers to a new, gentler tier — the old Story-difficulty balance lives on under the Forgiving label.

This is aimed squarely at players who bounced off the combat's lock-on and targeting issues, which the patch also addresses directly (see below). Combined with the targeting and camera fixes, it's a clear signal that Rebel Wolves is prioritizing accessibility complaints from the game's first seven weeks on the market.

Combat, camera and traversal tweaks

Several of the patch's "Highlights" bullet points target combat feel directly: "Adjusted animations and camera movements in combat," "Improved targeting, locking onto, and disengaging from enemies," and "Better responsiveness of targeting and attaching to surfaces when using Shadowstep and Planeshift" (the game's two core traversal/dash abilities). The miscellaneous fix list backs this up with specific items, including a fix for soldiers attacking mid-draw-animation, bosses' health bars lingering on screen after combat ends, and multiple fixes to Shadowstep clipping through walls or dropping Coen through the map in specific areas.

Enemy balance also shifts: boar and wolf health is reduced at higher character levels, and a specific fix stops boar patrols from becoming effectively unkillable after Coen uses the Voracious Bite ability on other animals nearby.

Animal petting and bigger subtitles

Two of the more talked-about additions are smaller in scope but easy to notice. Players can now pet dogs and cats using the game's directional combat inputs — Rebel Wolves lists it simply as "Animal petting" under New features, without further detail on where or how often it's available. On the accessibility side, the patch adds "Additional subtitle settings": a larger font size option, and the ability to enable subtitles for every line of dialogue in the game, not just a default subset.

FrameGen and other technical settings

The patch also updates the game's FrameGen (frame generation) implementation and adds dedicated settings for it, per the official notes, though Rebel Wolves hasn't published a technical breakdown of what changed under the hood. Players on recent GPUs who rely on frame generation for higher frame rates at high resolutions should see the option resurface in the settings menu with new controls attached. The patch separately adds controller deadzone settings to the Options menu, a common ask for players using analog-stick aiming and camera controls. If you're weighing whether your current graphics card is still up to the job for a demanding open-world RPG like this one, our GPU buying guide walks through what to consider before upgrading.

Uncensored blood and gore restored in Japan

One specific regional fix stands out: "Blood and gore are no longer censored in the Japanese version of the game on Steam," per the official patch notes. The Blood of Dawnwalker had shipped with a toned-down gore presentation for the Japanese release on Steam, a common practice for games distributed in that market; Update 1.1 removes that restriction specifically for the Steam version, bringing the Japanese build's violence in line with other regions' releases on that storefront.

Beyond the headline features: 1,100+ fixes

The bulk of Update 1.1, by volume, is bug fixing rather than new systems. Rebel Wolves' own notes break the fix list into "Miscellaneous," "General," "Gameplay" and "Quests" sections, and the breadth is wide even in the examples the studio chose to call out. On the quality-of-life side: equipped items are now hidden when selling, a "Buyback" option has been added at merchants, and gear can now be equipped in both the game's day and night loadout presets simultaneously instead of requiring separate setup for each. Item upgrade costs have been rebalanced, especially at higher levels, and stacked-item tooltips now refresh their weight and value correctly after an item is consumed.

The quest-specific list is long and granular — the kind of thing that matters enormously if you happened to hit one of these bugs, and not at all if you didn't. Examples from the official notes include fixes for Coen getting stuck during the "Rise at Dawn" and "Home Sweet Home" quests, a fix for an NPC that could block progress in "Stronger Than Achilles," a fix for objectives disappearing or failing to clear on the map during "The Gilded Gauntlet," and a fix for players being blocked from completing the final "Leech Collector" event. There are also several fixes for players falling through the map in specific locations while using Shadowstep or Planeshift, and a fix for the pause menu becoming unresponsive if opened right after the character tab. None of this is the kind of change that shows up in a trailer, but for players who were stuck on a specific quest, it's the difference between finishing the game and not.

Why this matters if you're playing right now

For anyone currently mid-playthrough, the practical headline is the respec item: it's the first official way to fix a build you've regretted without abandoning your save. The difficulty and combat changes matter most to players who found the base game's targeting finicky or its default difficulty punishing — complaints that showed up consistently in player feedback after the September launch. And because the patch is framed around "1,100 other improvements and fixes" on top of the headline features, players who hit quest-blocking bugs in the game's first seven weeks have a real chance those specific issues are among the ones addressed, even if Rebel Wolves hasn't published an itemized list against every individual bug report.

It's also a signal about the studio's post-launch cadence. Rebel Wolves is a new studio with one shipped game, and Update 1.1 — its first major patch — is focused on fixes, accessibility and quality-of-life changes rather than new story or world content. Players hoping for a New Game Plus mode, which some outlets reported was in separate development ahead of this patch, will not find it here; Rebel Wolves has not confirmed that report or given it a release window in its own channels.

There's a timing angle too. The patch was originally expected in "early October" and slipped roughly three weeks to the week of October 19, which is a reasonable turnaround for a studio's first live-service-style patch on its debut title, but worth knowing if you were holding off starting (or restarting) a save in anticipation of it. With the update now confirmed live, there's no longer a reason to wait — any new or in-progress save should already have access to the Rebirth item, the new difficulty tier and the rest of the changes without any extra steps beyond updating the game through your platform's client.

What's next

Rebel Wolves has not published a roadmap with specific dates beyond Update 1.1, and the studio has not confirmed a New Game Plus mode in its own announcements, despite pre-patch speculation from other outlets. The most reliable way to track what comes after Update 1.1 is the same place this patch was confirmed: the game's Steam news hub, where Rebel Wolves has consistently posted both update announcements and the full patch notes themselves. Console owners can also check the game's PlayStation store listing for platform-specific download details. If you're also tracking what else is landing on Steam this month, our Steam Next Fest October 2026 guide covers the broader slate of demos and updates arriving alongside it.

Written byJonah Reyes

Jonah Reyes leads Pandromeda's gaming coverage: console and handheld hardware, release dates, pricing changes, patch notes and the business moves behind the biggest franchises. He sources every date and price from the platform holders and publishers themselves, and says plainly when something is still only a rumour.

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