All Skill Manual Merchants and Trainer Locations

At a glance, the skill trees in The Blood of Dawnwalker may look like your standard RPG fare - lines of connected perks and abilities, with prerequisite perks at the top of the list and dependent perks below them. In addition to the trivial task of working your way down the skill tree, however, you’ll need to level up and/or complete quests to unlock skill points, then be willing to spend time most perks and abilities require. On top of all of that, however, most skills in the Swordmastery and Witchcraft trees also require you to acquire specific skill manuals to unlock the various ranks of the desired skill. This page will cover how to find skill manuals generally, and where to find merchants and trainers who will sell you manuals in case looting isn’t yielding what you want in The Blood of Dawnwalker!

Page Breakdown¶

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Many skills in the Swordmastery and Witchcraft trees cannot be purchased without first reading a skill manual.

How to Find Skill Manuals¶

This might sound obvious, but one of the most common ways to find skill manuals is… as loot. An absolute revelation, we know. Still, you will need a LOT of skill manuals if you want to unlock everything - which you really shouldn’t need to do, but there are over 130 skills that require manuals to unlock and what drops where can be a manner of RNG. To get exactly what you want, it could take a lot of effort and time - as a personal anecdote, we reached Lv42, completed almost every quest in the game (excluding a few court quests) and never obtained the rank 4 Vigour manual until the final dungeon! Anyways, simply put, yes, you’ll get manuals at a regular pace, but on the other hand, there are a lot of manuals to find.

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You will often find Witchcraft skill manuals at Haunted Sites and Ancient Circles,

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while Bandit Camps and Soldier Camps will regularly yield Swordmastery skill books.

Map Events¶

The enemies you’ll fight during quests and the chests and containers you’ll loot along the way will get you plenty, but it’s worth noting that clearing Bandit Camps and Soldier Camps are almost guaranteed to yield a Swordmastery skill manual or two, while Haunted Sites and Ancient Circles will reliably forfeit Witchcraft skills manuals. The manuals you get from any encounter, site, quest or quest seems to be randomized - the actual drop isn’t, but the specific manual you’ll get is, and the game seems to rotate between them based on what you’ve already acquired, although this does not mean you won’t find duplicates.

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Blacksmiths and Armorers will sell a small stock of Swordmastery skill books, but there are better merchants out there…

Trainers and Merchants¶

If waiting for RNG to smile upon you isn’t your thing you can… check in with merchants and hope that RNG blesses you with a skill manual there. Yeah, no matter what you do, skill manuals are going to be a matter of RNG. That said, many merchants in the game can carry them, so if you’re looking for something specific you can (and should) check with merchants regularly, as doing so will vastly improve your odds of maxing out every skill you want without having to spend time clearing map markers for loot.

Your run-of-the-mill blacksmith and armorer will both sell a sprinkling of tomes from the Swordmastery tree, and while this can be useful considering how many armorers and blacksmiths there are in the game (some of which will only do business with you during the day), their tome selection leaves much to be desired. What you really want to look out for are Witchcraft and Swordmastery “trainers”, which are just merchants who sell a whole lot of skill manuals for their respective tree. You’ll still have to endure the ravages of RNG to get what you want, but their more abundant selection of skill manuals makes them especially worth visiting every day or so to see if they have what you want.

The locations of every skill manual trainer we’ve found will be listed below:

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(1 of 8) Anca can be found at the Crossroads Inn east of St. Tyna’s monastery,

All Skill Manual Vendor Locations¶

Trainer	Type	Location
Anca	Witchcraft	After the prologue, she’ll take up residence at the abandoned Crossroads Inn east of St. Tyna‘s.
Constantin	Swordmastery	Complete the Bandit Camp along the southwestern edge of the Rockfalls region and spare Constantin when he surrenders. He’ll serve as a trainer after this.
Drogos	Swordmastery	Found in the Manumit Hideout in Svartrau. Talk to him and beat him in a fight after completing What Hunts the Night to unlock him as a trainer. Will become unavailable after completing Who Pulls the Strings.
Matriarch	Witchcraft	In the Uriash Village. You’ll travel here during the quest Song of the Mountain, after which you can peruse her wares.
Mevasser	Witchcraft	In a house near the center of Neustadt, in Svartrau. You’ll encounter him during the quest What Moves the Dead, but you can visit him before this quest.
Ocha	Swordmastery	Complete The Heart Wants What It Wants. Her location may vary depending on your choices.
Ursul	Swordmastery	Complete Ambrus’s Prisoners: Lucky Crossing and Ursul will (provided you don’t eat him) head to a camp in the woods. This is located along the northeastern edge of the forest north of Svartrau (Svartrau Outskirts). Defeat him in a sparring match and he’ll become a trainer.
Vera	Witchcraft	Found at her hut along the eastern edge of the swamp in the north-center of the map, between the Briar Sloughs and the Maragir Wealds. Only available during the day. You will lose access to her if you complete the quest The Bittersweet Toast.

Note that the list above excludes some merchants who are marked as “Witchcraft Vendors” on the in-game map, namely the Peddler of Wonders and Vicho - they sell alchemy recipes and other items of interest, but not skill manuals. Also keep in mind that you can kill many - if not all - of the vendors on this list, especially if you complete their quests at night and end up at low health .Be a shame if you lost access to a valuable merchant because you got a case of the munchies. Many of these merchants aren’t available until you do some quest involving them, either, so it’s a fair bit of work getting a wide roster of merchants you can shop at, but knowing where they are and how to unlock them is half the battle!