Blood of Dawnwalker Patch Notes: Hotfix 1.0.5 & 1.0.4

Rebel Wolves has rolled out two rapid hotfixes for The Blood of Dawnwalker in quick succession. According to the official Steam announcements, Hotfix 1.0.4 arrived on September 10, 2026 with a wide sweep of stability work and blocker fixes, and Hotfix 1.0.5 is now live on Steam as the follow-up update.

If you set the game aside because a quest would not advance, a save would not go through, or a connected controller dragged your frame rate down, these hotfixes target exactly those problems. This guide covers the complete verified change list, grouped under the same categories the developers published, with short notes on what each fix means in practice.

Headline Fixes at a Glance

Issue	Category	Fix
Stuttering during play	General	Improved shader compilation pipeline (1.0.5)
Saving blocked entirely	Gameplay	Fixed the issue that blocked saving (1.0.4)
Quest progression blockers	Quests	Multiple fixes across named quests (1.0.4)
FPS drops when connecting controllers	Miscellaneous	Outdated GameInput software no longer causes drops (1.0.4)
Torches growing uncontrollably	Miscellaneous	Torch growth corrected (1.0.4)
Music stopping in the prologue	Audio	Playback issue fixed (1.0.4)
VSync issues with FSR Frame Generation	Plugin	VSync behavior corrected (1.0.4)

Hotfix 1.0.5: Shader Compilation and Stuttering

Hotfix 1.0.5 is a single-focus update. According to the official Steam announcement, it delivers improvements to the shader compilation pipeline, which can fix stuttering issues for some users. The developer’s wording is deliberately scoped: the work targets the compilation stage that prepares shaders before they run, and the announcement says the improvement helps “some users”, so the effect can vary depending on what was causing your stuttering.

Alongside the change list, Rebel Wolves stated that the team “will continue to make improvements so that you can enjoy The Blood of Dawnwalker more comfortably,” and thanked players for their support and patience. In practical terms, if you had postponed a playthrough because of hitching during combat or exploration, this is the patch to test first, since the pipeline improvements ship inside the update itself.

Hotfix 1.0.4: Stability and the Blocker Sweep

Hotfix 1.0.4 is the heavier of the two patches. Its published highlights are blunt about intent: improved game stability, several issues that blocked quest progression fixed, an issue that blocked players from saving the game fixed, controllers with outdated GameInput software no longer causing FPS drops, and torches that can no longer grow uncontrollably. The full list is broken out below under the same headings the developers used.

Stability

The update ships multiple improvements to the game’s stability. This is the umbrella entry of the patch: the individual gameplay and quest entries below cover specific reproduction cases, while this line covers general reliability work across the game, which is the foundation the rest of the fixes rest on.

Gameplay

The gameplay fixes center on progression and basic control. The tutorial no longer breaks if Voracious Bite was used a bit too fast, Coen can no longer get stuck inside certain houses with no way of getting out, and Crake can now talk to Coen even during his training sequence. Two behavior corrections also landed: dead NPCs can no longer start dialogues, and blocking is no longer disabled under certain circumstances. For many players the headline entry is the fix for the issue that blocked players from saving the game, which restores reliable saves mid-run.

Quests

The quest section is the longest part of Hotfix 1.0.4, and it touches both scripted moments and named quests. Ocha will no longer attack Coen when attacked by guards, Coen no longer gets stuck in a cave during “Deep Down”, and Murohn now spawns under circumstances where he previously did not. One of the possible solutions for “Hive and Seek” no longer ends prematurely, progressing “On the Run” no longer causes infinite loading, and “A Lone Wolf’s Hunt” now appropriately shows the difficulty level. A soft-lock that could occur after following Sara is fixed, investigating the rag is now optional in “Smoke and Ashes”, and a blocker in “The Heart Wants What It Wants” is resolved. If any of these names match the wall your save hit, the fix means the quest can now move forward again.

Art

Two art corrections shipped in this hotfix. Coen and Iorgu will now drink from their cups even on low graphical settings, closing a detail gap that only appeared when settings were turned down. The team also confirmed they are no longer using the one red pipe asset they were not supposed to use, an asset-level cleanup rather than a gameplay change.

Audio

Issues that caused music to stop playing in the prologue are fixed. This matters for the opening stretch of the game, where the score carries the introduction, and it means the prologue now keeps its soundtrack playing as intended.

Miscellaneous

The miscellaneous section holds three fixes. Connecting controllers with the outdated GameInput software should no longer cause FPS drops, which is the entry to know if you play on a pad and watched your frame rate sag on connection. Torches can no longer grow uncontrollably, ending one of the more visible oddities reported around the game. Finally, an issue that prevented Quality preset mods from applying properly is fixed, so those presets now apply as intended.

Plugin

For players using frame generation, the plugin fix addresses VSync issues that occurred when using FSR Frame Generation. If you run that combination, this hotfix removes the misbehavior from the pairing.

What the Two Hotfixes Mean Together

Read side by side, the updates split the recovery work cleanly. Hotfix 1.0.4 went for breadth: stability improvements, the save-blocking fix, controller FPS drops, and a long list of quest blockers spanning “Deep Down”, “Hive and Seek”, “On the Run”, “A Lone Wolf’s Hunt”, “Smoke and Ashes”, and “The Heart Wants What It Wants”. Hotfix 1.0.5 then went deep on one performance target, the shader compilation pipeline behind stuttering reports.

According to the official Steam announcements, Rebel Wolves is not treating either patch as the finish line, and the studio has committed to continued improvements. Every change listed above is already live on Steam, so verifying the fixes on an affected save requires nothing more than launching the updated game.