Dawnwalker: Can You Respec? Is There New Game Plus?

There is no respec in The Blood of Dawnwalker, and there is no New Game Plus. Both answers are no as of September 9, 2026, six days after launch — and both questions get searched constantly because the top results disagree with each other.

Here is who claims what, which claims survive scrutiny, and what to do with a build you regret.

The short version

Question	Answer	Confidence
Can I reset skill points?	No	High — Game8’s dedicated page, updated Sept 5
Is respec coming later?	Possibly, via Medics	Low — a dev Discord comment, reported secondhand, no date
Do Blood Altars / Crimson Tears exist?	No evidence they do	Probably fabricated
Is there New Game Plus?	No	High — Game8, updated Sept 6, backed by PowerPyx
Does Fextralife’s NG+ page describe the real game?	No	It is wrong for the shipped build

Respec: no, and the “yes” answers trace to two different mistakes

Game8 maintains a dedicated respec page for the game, last updated September 5, 2026. It says plainly that “As of release, you cannot respec or reset Skill Points in The Blood of Dawnwalker.” Nothing else published post-launch contradicts that with any evidence behind it.

So why do you keep seeing “yes”? Two separate things are getting mixed into the answer.

The Medic claim is a plan, not a feature. Game8’s same page reports that the developers previously said on the official Discord that a respec option would eventually be available through Medics. That is worth knowing, but note exactly what it is: a secondhand report of a developer statement about a future addition. The feature is not implemented, and its arrival is unconfirmed — no patch, no window, no announcement. Anyone telling you to go find a Medic and reset your points today is describing something that does not exist yet.

The Blood Altar and Crimson Tears claim appears to be invented. A version of the respec answer circulating on aggregator sites says you reset your build at Blood Altars by spending a rare resource called Crimson Tears. There is no reputable outlet, wiki or first-party source documenting either item. There is no location guide for Crimson Tears anywhere, which is telling — for a genuinely rare respec currency in a game this popular, a farming guide would have existed within 48 hours. Game8’s respec page does not mention Blood Altars or Crimson Tears at all. Treat this as unconfirmed and probably false until someone produces an in-game screenshot.

What “no respec” actually costs you

This matters more here than in most RPGs, because skills in this game are expensive in two currencies at once.

Unlocking an ability costs a skill point and a time segment — roughly 1 segment per skill, out of the 480 segments in a full 30-day run, per GamingBible’s breakdown of the time economy. So a skill you regret is not just a wasted point; it is a wasted slice of the clock you cannot get back either. Buying skills you never use is one of the two documented easy ways to waste time in the game.

A few structural points worth knowing before you spend:

• There is one shared XP bar and one shared pool of skill points across all three trees — Swordmastery, Witchcraft and Vampirism — and you can assign points freely between them, per Rebel Wolves’ own Community Bulletin Board #11 (August 28, 2026).
• Beyond spending points, new abilities need manuals. Swordmastery manuals come from soldiers and bandits or from fencers; Witchcraft manuals come from ancient ruins and haunted places or from magic practitioners. Vampirism abilities are gated by Corruption, which you raise by feeding.
• Some things are more expensive than they look. Removing the heavy-armor penalty needs Second Skin I and Second Skin II from Swordmastery plus at least one point in Vigour, the parent skill — a minimum of three skill points, each Second Skin tier also requiring its own manual.

Practical advice with no respec available: decide early whether you are a day build or a night build, and don’t buy into the third tree “just in case.” Autosave does not run during free roam, so quicksave before anything experimental — PowerPyx recommends quicksaving before combat generally.

New Game Plus: this one is a live contradiction between two guide sites

Search for Dawnwalker New Game Plus and you will hit two pages that flatly disagree.

Source	Claim	Status
Game8, dedicated NG+ page, updated Sept 6, 2026	No NG+ mode exists	Post-launch, dated, corroborated
Fextralife wiki, NG+ page	You keep perk points, equipment and character level	Still live, and wrong for the shipped game

Game8’s page states: “The game does not currently feature a New Game Plus mode. Finishing the story and watching the credits will not unlock any option to carry over progress into a fresh playthrough.” A new game is a clean save — no character level, no stats, no Corruption carried over.

Fextralife’s page is a community wiki entry that dates from before release. It says you retain “all the points you used for leveling up Perks, your Equipment, and your character level.” That was an unverified claim before launch and it did not survive the shipped game: Game8’s post-launch page contradicts it directly, and PowerPyx’s post-game notes agree with Game8. If you read the Fextralife description and planned a second run around it, replan.

There is also no post-game free roam. Reaching an ending returns you to the title screen, and loading a post-epilogue save just replays the wrap-around and rolls the credits again. To keep playing a finished file you have to load a save from before the final quest’s point of no return. The one documented exception is the Time Runs Out ending: PowerPyx notes that exceeding the 30 days shifts the goal rather than closing the game, and you can still free-roam on that file.

Do this instead: the manual-save route

The game is built around saves, not NG+. It ships with 54 manual save slots and carries Steam’s “Save Anytime” category, which is the design telling you what it expects.

The specific save that matters, per Fextralife’s endings guide, is a manual save made immediately after you defeat all three members of the Vrakhiri Court — Ambrus, Bakir and Xanthe. From that one file you can branch into all seven of the endings that a post-prologue save can reach. PowerPyx’s version is slightly looser (“keep a manual save before the final quest and reload it after each ending”) and gets you to the same place.

Why it is worth the slot: PowerPyx lists seven endings, Fextralife lists the same seven under one different name, and Game8 lists eight — the extra one being a secret ending from defeating Brencis during the prologue quest “Bad Blood,” which no post-prologue save can reach. One playthrough is enough for the platinum if you reload before the final quest to collect the endings.

That save also protects the rest of your run, since your build is locked in for the file. If you want to try a genuinely different skill spread, that is a fresh start from zero.

What is still genuinely open

• Whether respec ships at all. The Medic comment came from the developers on Discord, but there is no patch note, no date and no confirmation that it survived into the roadmap. Do not plan a build around it.
• Whether Crimson Tears exists in the game in any form. Current evidence says no. If it turns up in a patch or a screenshot, this page gets updated.
• Whether NG+ gets added post-launch. Game8’s wording — “does not currently feature” — describes today, not forever. Rebel Wolves has talked about a roadmap of smaller free add-ons, but nothing announced names NG+.

If you are still early, the time system explainer covers what actually spends your 480 segments, and the beginner tips page collects the mistakes that are hardest to undo.