The Night of Horrors Quest: How to Get the Mandrake Ward Perk in The Blood of Dawnwalker

The Mandrake Ward perk in The Blood of Dawnwalker is one of the most powerful passive upgrades in the entire game — it brings Coen back from the brink of death once per night. Getting it requires completing The Night of Horrors, the final quest in Lacra’s companion storyline. Miss it, and you head into the toughest fights in the game without one of your best safety nets. This guide covers every step of the quest, what the perk actually does, and why doing this before Midnight Reckoning is critical.

• TL;DR
• The Night of Horrors unlocks after completing Our Rotten Roots with Lacra — wait two in-game days then return to her.
• The quest is night-only. Do not start it if your night time segments are running low.
• Follow the will-o-the-wisps through the bog, fight enemies, and share honest dialogue with Lacra to power the wisps.
• The wisps lead you to a sarcophagus and a hidden cave — Kallias’s lair — where you find the Mandrake.
• Eat the Mandrake when given the option. This is not optional if you want the perk.
• Rewards: Mandrake Ward perk (restore 3 health segments once per night when near death) and the Mesmerize vampiric ability.
• Complete this before starting Midnight Reckoning — that quest is the point of no return for Lacra’s story and if you skip Night of Horrors, Lacra will die during the Brencis encounter.

What Is the Mandrake Ward Perk?

The Mandrake Ward is a passive perk in Coen’s Vampirism skill tree. When Coen is about to take lethal damage — when his health drops to a near-death threshold — the perk activates and restores 3 health segments automatically, once per night. Think of it as a one-time death prevention per nighttime session.

This makes it one of the strongest passive abilities in the game. During boss fights, especially the fight against Brencis at the end, having an automatic second chance at full health can be the difference between finishing the fight and reloading a save. It applies in vampire form during the night, so any difficult nighttime encounter — boss or otherwise — benefits from having it active.

The perk is only available through The Night of Horrors. There is no alternative source for it, no item to buy, and no other questline that grants it. If you skip the quest or miss the window to do it, Mandrake Ward is gone for that playthrough.

The Night of Horrors Quest How to Get the Mandrake Ward Perk in The Blood of Dawnwalker

How to Unlock The Night of Horrors — Lacra Questline Order

The Night of Horrors is the fifth and final companion quest in Lacra’s questline. You cannot skip to it — every quest before it must be completed in order. The full sequence is:

• A Friend Like This — first meeting with Lacra in a Svartrau City alley.
• Song of the Mountain — night quest at Crown Rock, feeding and Uriashi village.
• Hive and Seek — cave dungeon, kobold fights, and retrieving Isbrand.
• Our Rotten Roots — Anachora region, witnessing Lacra’s memory, absorbing Isbrand’s essence.
• The Night of Horrors — unlocks after Our Rotten Roots.

After completing Our Rotten Roots, Lacra tells Coen she is ready to face Brencis but wants to try something first. She needs time to research an idea. Wait two in-game days and then return to her. She will have worked out her plan and will share it with you — this triggers The Night of Horrors.

You first meet Lacra through the A Study in Crimson quest involving Vicho, the Vrakhiri shopkeeper in Svartrau City. If you have not yet reached her, our A Study in Crimson quest walkthrough covers how to find Vicho and how A Friend Like This is triggered through his questline.

Important Warning — Do This Before Midnight Reckoning

This cannot be said clearly enough: complete The Night of Horrors before you start Midnight Reckoning.

Midnight Reckoning is the quest where Coen infiltrates Greifberg Castle. During that quest, Lacra faces Brencis in a cutscene. If you have not completed The Night of Horrors first, Lacra will die during that encounter. The Mandrake Ward perk she receives from Night of Horrors is what keeps her alive when Brencis defeats her — without it, the wound is fatal.

Once Midnight Reckoning begins, Night of Horrors is locked out permanently. You cannot go back. The game does not warn you loudly enough about this, so treat Night of Horrors as the final quest to complete on Lacra’s list before you ever approach the castle. If you want Lacra alive for the Patricide ending and want the Misery Loves Company achievement, this is the quest that makes it possible.

The Night of Horrors — Full Walkthrough

Step 1 — Return to Lacra After Two Days

After Our Rotten Roots ends, give it two in-game days before going back to Lacra. She will be where she usually waits between quests. Ask her about the project she was researching. She explains her idea — she has found a lead on something that could give both her and Coen a real edge against Brencis, but it will require going somewhere dark and following something unpredictable.

The quest is set entirely at night. Check your remaining night time segments before starting it. All of Lacra’s quests are nighttime only, and some have follow-up moments that will fail if dawn arrives mid-quest. Do not begin The Night of Horrors if your night is nearly over. Start it fresh at the beginning of a new night with plenty of time ahead of you.

Step 2 — Follow the Will-o-the-Wisps

Once the quest begins, will-o-the-wisps appear in the swamp or bog area — glowing lights floating through the dark, similar to the wisps in other parts of the game. Follow them. They will lead you on a winding path through difficult terrain and enemies toward Kallias’s hidden lair.

The wisps are not just navigation markers here. They are being powered by strong emotion. Coen and Lacra need to feed the wisps with genuine feeling to keep them active and guiding. This means the two of them talk as they walk — really talk, in a way they have not before. Throughout the trek, you will be given dialogue choices.

Step 3 — Share Honest Dialogue With Lacra

As you follow the wisps, Coen and Lacra share their grief, frustrations, regrets, and fears. The will-o-the-wisps respond to emotional honesty — when Coen opens up, they grow brighter and move forward. When he deflects or postures, the energy dies.

Throughout these conversations, pick the conciliatory, emotionally open responses. Match Lacra’s honesty with your own. Do not try to be funny, do not deflect, and do not match her aggression when she pushes back. Share what is real. The dialogue here is some of the best writing in Lacra’s arc — it reveals what she is actually carrying under all her violence and cynicism, and gives Coen a chance to show the same depth.

This section also matters for the romance path if you are pursuing it. The emotional openness here is what makes the later moment in the cave possible.

Step 4 — Fight the Enemies Along the Way

The path through the swamp is not clear. Enemies guard the route and will attack as you follow the wisps. Clear them as you go. The fights here are not the hardest in the game but they come in waves, so stay sharp and keep your health up between encounters. Use Focus Mode to spot threats before they spot you where possible.

There is also decent loot to find during this section — check the area around enemy camps and near the sarcophagus entrance for items worth grabbing. One notable find during this quest is a legendary relic with a severed arm, relevant to the A Bulwark Against Darkness armour quest. Do not rush past everything.

Managing your combat abilities going into this quest matters. Our guide on the best skills to level up in Blood of Dawnwalker covers the most useful vampiric combat perks to have active for nighttime encounters like these.

Step 5 — Find the Sarcophagus and Enter Kallias’s Lair

Eventually the wisps lead Coen and Lacra to a sarcophagus in the dark. This marks the entrance to Kallias’s lair. Lacra gets frustrated when it seems like a dead end — there is no obvious way forward. But then Coen recalls a painful memory and the wisps respond. They reveal a hidden path through the rock or underground that was not visible before.

Go through the hidden passage and enter the cave on the other side. This is Kallias’s lair — an ancient Vrakhiri who lived long before the events of the game and whose story is connected to both Mihai and Lacra’s bloodline history.

Step 6 — The Cave Cutscene and Kallias’s Story

Inside the cave, a series of cutscenes plays out. Coen and Lacra discover the petrified body of Kallias — the ancient Vrakhiri who has been here for centuries. The story of what happened to him is told through these scenes. It is dark and genuinely affecting. Kallias did not leave this place by choice.

Next to the petrified remains is a Mandrake. Lacra explains what it is: the essence of an ancient and powerful Vrakhiri, stored over centuries inside a plant root. For a vampire, consuming it is a profound and disorienting experience — not from blood, but from something older and stranger.

Step 7 — Eat the Mandrake

Lacra tells you to eat the Mandrake. Do it. This is not optional if you want the Mandrake Ward perk. Refusing ends the scene quickly and the quest closes without the perk being granted and without any further development with Lacra that night.

When you eat the Mandrake, Lacra eats it too. There is no choice for only one of you to consume it — you both absorb its power. This is important: because Lacra also takes the Mandrake Ward effect, she gets the same ability to survive lethal damage once per night. This is exactly why she survives Brencis’s attack during Midnight Reckoning when it would otherwise kill her — she has the same protection Coen now has.

Mandrake Ward Perk — What It Does

After eating the Mandrake, the Mandrake Ward perk is added to Coen’s Vampirism skill tree automatically. Here is exactly what it provides:

• When Coen takes damage that would kill him, the perk activates instead.
• It restores 3 health segments automatically at the moment of near-death.
• This can only happen once per night — it resets at the start of each new nighttime session.
• It only applies during nighttime in vampire form.

The practical effect is enormous. In any difficult nighttime boss fight, you now have one guaranteed extra life per encounter night. Against Brencis, whose attacks hit extremely hard, this perk alone can save a run that would otherwise end in a failed attempt.

Mesmerize — The Second Reward

In addition to Mandrake Ward, eating the Mandrake also unlocks the Mesmerize vampiric ability. Mesmerize is a Vampirism skill that gives Coen a crowd control option during combat — useful for managing multiple enemies or creating openings against faster opponents.

Both rewards are granted simultaneously when you eat the Mandrake. You do not need to do anything extra to unlock Mesmerize — it arrives at the same time as the perk.

For context on where these fit in the broader skill progression, our guide on how to get ability slots in Blood of Dawnwalker explains how to unlock additional Vampirism slots to make the most of both new abilities once you have them.

The Night of Horrors and Lacra’s Romance

If you have been pursuing Lacra’s romance throughout her questline, The Night of Horrors is where it reaches its conclusion. After eating the Mandrake and sharing the experience together in the cave, Lacra offers Coen her blood. Choose the [Drink] action. She will then offer something more — choose to kiss her. This leads to an intimate scene between the two.

Lacra leaves before dawn — as a Vrakhiri, daylight is her enemy and she does not stay through the night. But the moment was real, and it matters for her arc. She tells Coen, if asked about the future, that thinking ahead leads only to heartbreak. She lives night to night. That honesty is part of who she is.

All three romance outcomes — the Mandrake Ward perk, the Mesmerize skill, and the romance scene — are available in the same playthrough if you make the right choices throughout. Our guide to romancing Lacra in Blood of Dawnwalker covers every dialogue choice across her full questline from A Friend Like This through to this moment.

Why The Night of Horrors Also Saves Lacra’s Life

The most urgent gameplay reason to complete The Night of Horrors is not just the perk — it is keeping Lacra alive. During Midnight Reckoning, Lacra confronts Brencis and is defeated. The cutscene shows her taking a blow that should be fatal. If she has the Mandrake Ward effect from Night of Horrors, she survives the wound and recovers. If she does not have it, she dies there and the Patricide ending — where you fight Brencis alongside her — becomes unavailable.

This makes The Night of Horrors one of the most consequential optional quests in the game. It is listed as optional, but skipping it has a permanent story consequence that most players will not want. If Lacra’s survival matters to you — for the ending or for the character — do not skip this quest.

Tips for The Night of Horrors

• Start the quest at the beginning of a fresh night. All of Lacra’s quests are nighttime only and this one has several stages. Running out of night mid-quest can cause problems.
• Be emotionally open in the dialogue. The wisps respond to genuine feeling. Pick the honest, conciliatory options and do not deflect. The wisps dim when Coen dodges the emotional content.
• Check the area for loot as you follow the wisps. There are useful items along the path including a legendary relic relevant to the A Bulwark Against Darkness armour quest.
• Eat the Mandrake when prompted. Refusing means no Mandrake Ward, no Mesmerize, and no romance scene. There is no good reason to refuse it.
• Do this before Midnight Reckoning, always. There is no recovering from skipping it once the castle infiltration begins. Night of Horrors must come first.
• You can pursue both Lacra and Anca in the same playthrough. Their romance paths do not conflict. Completing Night of Horrors with Lacra does not close off anything with Anca.

If you have been working through companion quests alongside the main story, our guide on the Where Old Devils Lie and Stronger Than Achilles quests covers the equivalent perk-granting questline for Anca — the Font of Life passive health regen — which pairs well with Mandrake Ward for a tough late-game build.

You can also look at our how long to beat The Blood of Dawnwalker guide to understand how much of the 30-day time limit completing the full Lacra questline typically consumes, so you can plan the rest of your run around it.

Where to Get The Blood of Dawnwalker

The Blood of Dawnwalker is available now on PC via Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S. It is developed by Rebel Wolves and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment.

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