Three of the four vassals you can confront in The Blood of Dawnwalker — Ambrus, Bakir, and Xanthe — let you make a kill-time choice before the duel ends. The choice is not flagged in the UI as a branching moment, which is why most players miss it. Whether you drink their blood, kill them clean, or spare them, the choice changes which quests open, which gear rewards fall to you, and which ending route you can still reach before the day counter hits zero.
This page covers what each choice does, what unlocks behind it, and which endings the choice blocks or enables.
How the choice works in the duel
When you confront a Court vassal and reduce their health to zero, the duel pauses on a prompt that lets you select a follow-up action. Three outcomes are available depending on the vassal:
- Drink their blood — feed during the kill animation. This unlocks the vampire-court specific gear rewards for that vassal and counts the kill toward the Turncoat (Brencis’s Deal) route.
- Clean kill — finish the duel without feeding. This is the path most endings assume you are on, and it unlocks the named armor / weapon rewards that do not require vampirism completion.
- Spare — only available for Xanthe. Refuses the kill prompt and lets Xanthe live. This locks the Xanthe duel but keeps the Cycle of Love companion quest chain intact.
The choice is one-way for the rest of the save. You cannot re-fight the vassal to flip it.
Ambrus — drink blood, or clean kill
Recommended order: Confront Ambrus fairly early. As you raise your infamy through Court activities, Ambrus will eventually anger and challenge you, prompting the duel.
The choice:
- Don’t drink Ambrus’s blood — clean kill instead. The duel ends with Ambrus’s named armor piece in your lootable. Read the note Ambrus drops after the fight; it starts A Friend Like This, the side quest that pivots toward the Lacra route.
- Drink Ambrus’s blood — the kill animation feeds, but it locks A Friend Like This behind a quest-stage flag you will not be able to clear later. The Lacra ending path closes here. You keep the Turncoat route open.
Quests that pivot off Ambrus: Isbrand’s Plate requires the A Study in Crimson → A Friend Like This → Song of the Mountain → Hive and Seek chain in Svartrau City. Drinking the blood before the note fires skips Vicho’s quest and shortens the chain — which means you also miss the Isbrand armor reward. See Best Gear and Loadouts below for the full armor chain.
Bakir — the same prompt, the same trap
Recommended order: Continue raising infamy until Bakir duels you.
The choice:
- Don’t drink Bakir’s blood — clean kill. Loot the body for the named armor piece. Like Ambrus, the Bakir duel feeds into the cycle but does not start a new side quest.
- Drink Bakir’s blood — the Turncoat route stays open, but several side quests that depend on Bakir surviving or staying in play close off.
Bakir does not drop a note that opens a chain, so the cost of drinking his blood is purely on the quest/ending route rather than a specific gear reward.
Xanthe — spare or kill (with two sub-options)
Recommended order: As you move further south in Vale Sangora, tackle Xanthe’s operations until you anger her. Then pursue her quest to trigger the duel.
The choice:
- Spare Xanthe — refuses the kill animation and lets Xanthe live. The duel is closed out as a non-lethal victory; the Cycle of Love companion chain stays alive, and the Ancient Hero’s vambraces unlock through Xanthe’s questline. Most ending routes assume you spared her.
- Kill Xanthe (clean) — completes the kill but removes the Cycle of Love chain. The spare-Xanthe armor path closes.
- Drink Xanthe’s blood — closes both the spare path and most of the non-Turncoat endings; only The Turncoat route stays open.
If you are undecided, Eurogamer 2’s route preview leans toward Spare Xanthe because Cycle of Love opens more quest content without sacrificing any other route. Killing her cleanly is the second-best option; drinking her blood is the most expensive.
The note that unlocks A Friend Like This
The A Friend Like This quest, which feeds into the Isbrand’s Plate armor chain in Svartrau City, requires the note Ambrus drops after the duel. Reading the note requires that you did not drink Ambrus’s blood. The chain then proceeds through:
- A Study in Crimson — meet Vicho in Svartrau
- A Friend Like This — investigate the Svartrau Court’s corruption
- Song of the Mountain — clear the named encounter
- Hive and Seek — fight through the cave, loot the chest at the end before talking to Isbrand and Lacra to receive the armor
If you skipped Vicho by drinking the blood, the chain truncates at A Study in Crimson and Isbrand’s Plate stays in his inventory for the rest of the run. There is no post-hoc recovery.
How this threads into the seven endings** — each vassal decision blocks one
The seven endings catalog at All Endings Complete Guide names the three endings that turn on the vassal choices:
| Ending | Vassal path required |
|---|---|
| The Patricide | Fight with Lacra. Requires A Friend Like This chain to complete cleanly. Requires clean kill on Ambrus. |
| The Knyazmaker | Fight with Crake. Requires Crake’s Rise at Dawn questline. Clean kill on Ambrus / Bakir / Xanthe all assumed. |
| The Turncoat | Accept Brencis’s deal. Requires drinking at least one vassal’s blood to lock in the betray-the-resistance route. Otherwise Brencis’s deal is not offered. |
| The Folk Hero | Fight Brencis alone. Clean kills across all three vassals, no quest chain dependencies. |
Drinking the vassal’s blood is not “evil path” so much as “path-locking”. You can drink Ambrus’s blood and still pursue Folk Hero later by skipping Brencis’s parley — but you cannot get A Friend Like This back once the quest flag is set.
Best gear cross-references
Three armor pieces are gated by clean kills. The armor chain cross-links:
- Ambrus’s Cuirass — heavy chestpiece, best early armor. Best used in both sets during a long mid-game because the vampiric cooldown stat is still useful as a passive, but it shines most at night.
- Isbrand’s Plate — medium chestpiece, night set only. Drops at the end of the Hive and Seek quest after the A Friend Like This line. Use with claws, not sword.
- Ancient Hero’s armor — heavy chestpiece, day set. Drops from the In The Name of the Father quest chain in Svartrau City, which only opens after a clean Ambrus / Bakir run.
- Enhanced Armor of the Arbiter — Full set — completes via A Bulwark Against Darkness, an Anca side quest that opens after Infamy level 4. Independent of vassal choices.
For the loadout side of the question — which perks to bind, which abilities to anchor, which Cabitz stones (if any) to bind — see Best Builds Tier List and the Witchcraft, Swordmastery, Vampirism tree explainer.
Pairing with other guides
- Prologue Walkthrough sets the time budget before any vassal fights happen.
- All Endings Complete Guide names which endings are reachable inside the 30-day window given your vassal decisions.
- Best Builds Tier List reads the same vassal decisions through the lens of which abilities the named armor rewards complement.
- Svartrau City is the regional anchor for the A Friend Like This chain.
If you are reading this before confronting any of the three vassals, the simplest decision rule is: spare or clean-kill everyone except on the route you are committing to. Drinking the blood is the choice that closes doors; the other two preserve options.
Sources: Eurogamer The Blood of Dawnwalker best route walkthrough (Ambrus, Bakir, Xanthe section), Method.gg best armor walkthrough (Ambrus, Bakir, Ancient Hero’s Set, Armor of the Arbiter), bloodofdawnwalker.org endings guide (Patricide, Knyazmaker, Turncoat, Folk Hero routes).