Hotfix 1.0.4: Quest Progression Blockers Fixed, Save Bloc...

Rebel Wolves shipped Hotfix 1.0.4 on September 9, 2026, six days after launch and roughly 36 hours after the 1.0.3 DualSense-on-Steam patch. This is the most quest-focused patch of the launch window so far. The headline summary lists five items — improved stability, fixed several quest progression issues, fixed a save blocker, fixed the Steam-only GameInput FPS drop, and the famous red-pipe asset is finally gone — but the full changelog is larger and more interesting than those five bullets suggest, because the quest fixes hit exactly the kind of soft-locks and infinite-loading states that were keeping players from finishing the campaign in their first playthrough.

The change list below is reproduced from the official Rebel Wolves patch notes (linked via PSU’s mirror of dawnwalkergame.com) and cross-checked against The Daily Game News’s coverage of the same patch.

Highlights

Improved the game’s stability.
Fixed several issues that blocked quest progression.
Fixed an issue that blocked players from saving the game.
[STEAM ONLY] Connecting controllers with the outdated GameInput software should no longer cause FPS drops.
Torches can no longer grow uncontrollably.

Full changelog

Stability

Multiple improvements to the game’s stability.

Gameplay

Fixed an issue that blocked the tutorial progress if Voracious Bite was used a bit too fast.
Fixed issues that caused Coen to get stuck inside certain houses with no way of getting out.
Crake can now talk to Coen even during his training sequence.
Dead NPCs can no longer start dialogues.
Fixed an issue that disabled blocking under certain circumstances.
Fixed an issue that blocked players from saving the game.
Adjustments to controller dead zone and input issues while sprinting.

Quests

Ocha will no longer attack Coen when attacked by guards.
Fixed an issue that caused Coen to get stuck in a cave in the “Deep Down” quest.
Fixed an issue that caused Murohn to not spawn under certain circumstances.
Fixed an issue that caused one of the possible solutions for the “Hive and Seek” quest to end prematurely.
Progressing the “On the Run” quest no longer causes infinite loading.
“A Lone Wolf’s Hunt” now appropriately shows the difficulty level.
Fixed an issue that caused a soft-lock after following Sara.
Investigating the rag is now optional in the “Smoke and Ashes” quest.
Fixed an issue that caused a blocker in the “The Heart Wants What It Wants” quest.

Art

Coen and Iorgu will now drink from their cups even on low graphical settings.
We are no longer using that one red pipe asset we weren’t supposed to use.

Audio

Fixed issues that caused music to stop playing in the prologue.

Miscellaneous

[STEAM ONLY] Connecting controllers with the outdated GameInput software should no longer cause FPS drops.
Torches can no longer grow uncontrollably.
Fixed an issue that prevented Quality preset mods from applying properly.

Plugin

[PC ONLY] Fixed issues with VSync when using FSR Frame Generation.

What this patch actually changes for players

The five-bullet highlight understates the patch. The real story is in the Quests section, where nine specific quest-related issues were addressed. Several of these were items the community had been flagging in the Launch Week Known Issues & Workarounds and Player Tips & Community Case Studies discussions:

“Hive and Seek” is a side quest that was reported on Steam Discussions as one of the quests where the “wrong” solution path could terminate the quest prematurely without giving credit. With 1.0.4, all solution paths now resolve correctly.
“On the Run” is a main story quest that, if you did not have the right save state, could loop on infinite loading between two areas. The patch removes that loop.
“The Heart Wants What It Wants” is a romance-adjacent side quest with a blocker that prevented turn-in. The patch resolves the blocker.
“Smoke and Ashes” is one of the Manumits faction quests; previously, investigating the rag was required, which could block players who did not realize the clue was needed. The investigation step is now optional.
“Deep Down” cave soft-lock and the Sara follow-up soft-lock are both progression hard-stops. These were the kind of bugs that could force a player to reload an old save.
Murohn not spawning was an NPC-related blocker in a specific quest scenario — fixed.
A Lone Wolf’s Hunt difficulty display fix is a minor quality-of-life item, but the fact that it is in the same patch tells you Rebel Wolves is sweeping the whole quest list, not just the headline bugs.

The save blocker fix is the single most important item in the patch from a campaign-finishing standpoint. A blocker that prevented saving at all could end a playthrough silently if the player was not running frequent manual saves. With this patch, the standard save system works as expected again.

The “Dead NPCs can no longer start dialogues” and “We are no longer using that one red pipe asset we weren’t supposed to use” lines are not gameplay-critical but they are unusually transparent patch-note writing — Rebel Wolves is owning the bug and the placeholder asset in the same document. The Daily Game News’s coverage (linked in sources) leaned hard into the red pipe line as a community-moment, but for this wiki the line is worth a footnote because it is the kind of “we shipped a known placeholder by mistake” admission that affects how readers interpret future patch-note phrasing.

The PC-only FSR Frame Generation VSync fix and the [STEAM ONLY] GameInput FPS drop fix are platform-specific and worth calling out for players running AMD FSR or older GameInput builds — those are independent of the quest fixes and were previously unmentioned in the launch-week workarounds.

What is still open after 1.0.4

Compared to the launch-week known-issues table, the patches have closed the following items:

The controller dead zone and sprinting input issue (originally flagged in 1.0.2 as “fixed with workarounds”) has received an additional adjustment in 1.0.4. The 0.8 sensitivity workaround from the launch-week table is now likely unnecessary for most players.
The “bulwark against darkness” turn-in option missing bug — reported in Player Tips & Community Case Studies — does not appear in the 1.0.4 changelog, so this community-flagged quest is still open as of this patch.

Items that remain open (no fix yet):

Stuttering in Windowed or Borderless mode (Full Screen workaround still applies).
Shader-compile crash on startup (BIOS update workaround still applies).
PS5 gamepad button mapping (Steam Input remap) — separate from the DualSense plugin added in 1.0.3, still open.
Full-screen flickering on reflective surfaces (NVIDIA day-1 build) — still open.
Gamepad cursor hijack / K/M input leakage — still open.
Linux / Steam Deck Proton audio crackling in cutscenes — still open (PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=120 %command% workaround still applies).

Where this fits in the launch-window cadence

The Blood of Dawnwalker has now shipped four patches in the first six days after launch: day-one 1.003.000 (Sept 2), 1.0.2 (Sept 3), 1.0.3 (Sept 4), and 1.0.4 (Sept 9). The cadence is faster than the pre-launch coverage predicted, and the patches are landing with specific bug names attached — Farkas conversation in 1.0.2, DualSense plugin in 1.0.3, and nine named quest fixes plus a save blocker in 1.0.4. For a launch this dependent on completion (every quest turn-in matters on a 30-day clock), this is the right shape of post-launch support.

The implication for the rest of this wiki: pages that referenced unresolved quest issues (the All Endings and Secret Epilogue sequence, the 100% Completion Checklist, the First 30 Days Survival Guide) can now drop their “potential blocker” caveats for the quests explicitly named in 1.0.4. Endings that depend on completing Deep Down, Hive and Seek, On the Run, Smoke and Ashes, or The Heart Wants What It Wants are reachable in a normal playthrough again.