Rebel Wolves is preparing the first major post-launch patch for The Blood of Dawnwalker, and game director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz laid out much of what's coming in a chat with Eurogamer. The update is expected in early October, though there's no confirmed date yet.
The headline change is a new, easier difficulty tier. The current Story mode is getting renamed, likely to something like "Demanding," and a brand new Story setting will take its place as the easiest option in the game. That leaves five tiers total once it ships: Story, Demanding, Fair, Challenging, and Duelist. Tomaszkiewicz said the team heard from a lot of players who wanted an option focused purely on the narrative without the combat getting in the way.
Speaking of combat, that's getting tweaked too. Right now, stunning an enemy causes the camera to snap to a different target immediately, which players haven't been fond of. After the patch, that switch will only kick in after three consecutive hits. Escape mechanics are also being reworked, with a nav-mesh fix meant to make fleeing feel less clunky, and aggressive wildlife will be toned down so animals won't relentlessly chase players down.
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PC performance remains the trickier problem. Tomaszkiewicz pushed back a bit on complaints about frame rates, noting the sheer number of hardware configurations makes broad optimization difficult, but he said the studio is still collecting data and working on it. No specific FPS targets have been shared, though interestingly, Tomaszkiewicz said that chasing a target like 120 FPS in a game like Dawnwalker doesn't particularly make sense.
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Rebel Wolves is also said to be exploring New Game Plus and possibly new enemies for future updates, though neither has a timeline attached. The Blood of Dawnwalker, which released on September 3, has apparently sold over a million copies since launch.
