The Blood of Dawnwalker: How to complete Home Sweet Home
Overview & Key Takeaways
One of the best quests in The Blood of Dawnwalker is Home Sweet Home, which sees Coen trapped in an illusory, looping dream where he's finally reunited with his family. This quest not only provides good loot upon completion, but it also leads into one of the game's endings, and serves up moving details behind Coen's relationship with his loved ones, particularly his dearly departed little brother, Alin.
Home Sweet Home, incidentally, is also one of the tougher quests of the game, as it isn't immediately clear how to leave the loop. Coen's also stripped of his gear and forced to fight a tough selection of enemies during the day, which can be frustrating especially if you've focused more on giving him vampire skills.
In this guide, we'll help you out by explaining how to complete the Home Sweet Home quest in The Blood of Dawnwalker, making sure that you know exactly what to do to escape this sinister dream realm.
One of the best quests in The Blood of Dawnwalker is Home Sweet Home, which sees Coen trapped in an illusory, looping dream where he's finally reunited with his family. This quest not only provides good loot upon completion, but it also leads into one of the game's endings, and serves up moving details behind Coen's relationship with his loved ones, particularly his dearly departed little brother, Alin.
Home Sweet Home, incidentally, is also one of the tougher quests of the game, as it isn't immediately clear how to leave the loop. Coen's also stripped of his gear and forced to fight a tough selection of enemies during the day, which can be frustrating especially if you've focused more on giving him vampire skills.
In this guide, we'll help you out by explaining how to complete the Home Sweet Home quest in The Blood of Dawnwalker, making sure that you know exactly what to do to escape this sinister dream realm.
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How to complete Home Sweet Home
To complete Home Sweet Home, you'll need to complete the following steps:
- Head to Silts Tower.
- Enter the tower's top door.
- Talk to your family.
- Rescue your family and defeat the enemies.
- Break the loop by inspecting the well.
- Help the priest recall his sermon.
- Investigate the meadow and meet Alin.
- Wake up from the dream.
If you're after the secret early ending that this quest offers, refer to the start of step 5!
1. Head to Silts Tower.
Silts Tower is located in The Stilts, in the south-west of The Blood of Dawnwalker's map. | Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Rebel Wolves
To start the quest, first head to Silts Tower, which is also known as Aurelius's Tower. If you're working alongside the Manumits or intending to romance Crake, you'll have to go here to complete the quest Who Pulls The Strings. But there's nothing to stop you from going to Silts Tower on your own, though you should note that the enemies inside the place are tough. If you want to be safe, level 20 or so is enough to tackle the tower's challenges.
Mark step as finished.
2. Enter the tower's top door.
Head to the very top of this tower. Arriving in the evening so you can use your vampire abilities makes the ascent much easier, but you can also fight your way to the summit. | Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Rebel Wolves
Scale the tower, which is something that you should do anyway since it serves as a viewpoint to highlight features of the surrounding area. Approach the door closest to the top, and you'll have the option to either open it, which will consume four units of time, or peer through its opening first. Looking through reveals what appears to be a workshop and a mysterious man, who later turns out to be Aurelius himself. When you're ready, enter.
Note that you do not need to tackle the other enemies inside the tower's lower levels, which include guardsmen and a tough witch mini-boss named Svetlana, the Dark Prodigy. The tower contains lots of good loot and manuals, though, so if you're up for some fights, feel free to clear it out first.
Svetlana is a tricky opponent with many hexes at her disposal, but there's a bunch of good Witchcraft manuals hidden in her room. | Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Rebel Wolves
Mark step as finished.
3. Talk to your family.
Coen knows that this dream is too good to be true, alas. | Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Rebel Wolves
Surprise! You're back at the start of the game, with Coen's father Pieter asking him to chop firewood. Once you've recovered from your confusion, you can chop if you wish, but it's optional.
Enter the family's dining room and speak with them, particularly Coen's mother Esme, who is alive and well. It doesn't really matter which dialogue options you choose here, and once you've exhausted all dialogue, a terrifying monster will crash through the roof of the house.
Mark step as finished.
4. Rescue your family and defeat the enemies.
Everyone's been kidnapped, and it's up to Coen to save them. Leave your house and go north until you encounter a host of glowing red skeletons. You'll need to beat them up with nothing but Coen's starting clothes, sword, and a few sausages to use for healing. This isn't hard if you've invested in Coen's Witchcraft skills and can heal on the battlefield, but if you've focused on the Vampire skill tree, you're bound to have a tough time.
The onslaught of enemies that you've got to kill while unequipped and vulnerable during this quest has drawn several complaints. | Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Rebel Wolves
After the skeletons are gone, you can speak with Esme. Tell her to go to the church. Follow the path and you'll go past more red spirits. Ignore the creepy voices in your head and enter the town square, where your siblings are cowering. Approach them and several wraiths appear. Once these foes are dispatched, tell your sisters and brother to head to the church as well.
The wraiths are a little more annoying than the skeletons, due to their ability to drain your health. | Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Rebel Wolves
With everyone going to church, you might as well follow suit, right? Keep moving forward and you'll finally see Pieter. Upon approaching him, the winged mechanical monstrosity that broke your house appears, and this foe is called the Keeper of Nightmares. Technically classified as a gargoyle, it hits with powerful strikes on the ground and will occasionally flap its wings and circle you from the sky. Parry attacks when it's airborne to force it back to the earth.
At least the Keeper of Nightmares is only a single opponent, instead of four or five surrounding you! | Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Rebel Wolves
When the Keeper of Nightmares is destroyed, Pieter rants and raves a little bit. Shut your dad up by telling him there's no time for this, and then progress to the church. Watch the cutscene and...you'll be back at the start of the loop, with your dad asking you to chop firewood!
Mark step as finished.
5. Break the loop by inspecting the well.
So, you're clearly stuck in a trap here, and Coen knows it. If you want to unlock one of the game's early endings, you can repeat the loop three more times. This will get you the morbid Together Forever ending, which sees Coen giving up and living in this dream for eternity.
If the thought of a fake existence bothers you, then you can break the loop by examining the well in the courtyard where Coen's siblings are cowering.
Investigating the well shows Coen's vampire self looking back at him. Talk a bit to learn about the nature of this illusion. Your dialogue choices don't really matter here, as they eventually all lead to "Alin", the name of Coen's deceased brother.
Coen's bloodsucking side has some words of tough love for our protagonist. | Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Rebel Wolves
When you're done talking with your dark self, Coen will have unlocked his vampiric powers. In a rare twist of fate, he can use all of his Vampire and Witchcraft skills at the same time, at least for the remainder of this nightmare.
Mark step as finished.
6. Help the priest recall his sermon.
Use Shadowstep to teleport up the wall in front of Coen, then enter the cave behind the red figures. Keep on Shadowstepping across the platforms until you reach a church where a priest is giving a funeral service for Alin. He comes to a pause at various points in his sermon, and you'll need to help him out.
At the first pause, interact with Alin (the coffin). At the next pause, interact with your mother Esme, who stands grieving beside the coffin. Finally, interact with the young version of Coen sitting on the pew opposite Esme.
Interact with Alin first, then Esme, and then Coen's younger self. | Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Rebel Wolves
Coen will remember all of these tragic memories and witness his younger self run out of the church. Time to track your inner child down.
Mark step as finished.
7. Investigate the meadow and meet Alin.
Follow your younger self to the portal, which spits you out into a pathway that leads to a meadow. Examine the toy on the ground, the swing, and the nearby stump using Focus mode.
Turns out that poor Alin died after the boys went ice skating on a frozen lake that wasn't so frozen. Coen destroyed the ice skates in a fit of grief when he was a child, and he recreates that moment again here. | Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Rebel Wolves
Coen will reflect on the memories that he shared with Alin, and then you'll be prompted to move forwards to the river where Alin died. You get to Clawride all the way down a long cliff, which is fun.
At the end of it all is a frozen river, and Coen finally gets to confront the ghost of his baby brother. You can choose any dialogue option that feels appropriate here. Ultimately, they all lead to a touching scene where Alin encourages Coen to leave the shadows of the past behind.
Alin's a good little kid. If only the two brothers could have grown up together! | Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Rebel Wolves
Mark step as finished.
8. Wake up from the dream.
With that, the dream is finished and Coen awakens. Aurelius the astrologer attempts to kill our hero with a hammer, but Coen automatically retaliates. This marks the end of the quest, but you should most definitely loot the astrologer's corpse, as well as everything else that exists in his room of creepy dream experiments.
The Astrologer's Ring is the main reward to get here. A Legendary ring, it provides tonnes of bonuses for certain builds, including a whopping +11.2% Witchcraft ability damage. As this quest takes place in Xanthe's territory, completing it will also increase your infamy with her.
If you're a hex user, the Astrologer's Ring is absolutely worth the trouble it took to get. | Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Rebel Wolves
Mark step as finished.
That finishes our guide on Home Sweet Home in The Blood of Dawnwalker. For more help on the quests in this expansive RPG, see our guides on A Pilgrimage for Power, Forge It Anew, and A Bulwark Against Darkness. And if you'd rather have some advice for dispatching Brencis' boyars, refer to our guides on how to defeat Ambrus and how to defeat Bakir.
