The Blood of Dawnwalker quest stuck? Check the objective and time before troubleshooting

If a character is missing or an entrance is locked, start with the journal instead of restarting the whole game. Confirm the current objective, time, location and previous step. If those all look right, investigate the game version and a possible bug.

Check in this order

1. Objective: track the quest again and read its current objective and map marker. Confirm the person, location or interactable and whether a previous step remains incomplete. Do not rely only on a later step in an old guide.
2. Day, night and limits: check the quest for a time window or deadline. Your form and some characters' availability change with the time of day. If another period is required, check what advancing time may affect before choosing an action that moves it forward.
3. Location and conditions: look around the marked area, including different floors and interactable objects, and reread the objective. A locked entrance does not necessarily mean a broken save; the quest might require another entrance or an earlier step.
4. Version: confirm the platform has finished updating. Official update 1.1 lists fixes for Coen getting stuck in “Rise at Dawn,” NPCs failing to spawn after certain time-of-day changes, and some infinite loading screens. That does not prove your similar symptom has the same cause or that all such issues are fixed.

Still unable to progress?

Preserve your current progress. If manual saving is available, create a separate save before considering an older one from before the quest; check how much progress you would lose. Do not delete saves or overwrite your only older copy. If the platform reports a local/cloud conflict, compare timestamps and avoid overwriting while uncertain.

If the problem persists, record the quest name, objective, day or night, location, platform, game version and exact symptom, along with a screenshot you can safely share, for official support. Fixes differ by quest; do not attack an NPC or spend remaining time at random just to force progress.

Sources: official update 1.1, time progression and limited quests, quest index.