The Blood of Dawnwalker, the debut open-world RPG from a studio created by some senior devs who previously worked on The Witcher 3, is now out on consoles and PC. Dawnwalker is at times a difficult game, with a big focus on time management and limits on how much you can carry and level up. But for thousands of players on PC, these limits are apparently getting in the way, and many of them are downloading mods that greatly diminish, or outright remove, many of these points of friction.
Developed by Rebel Wolves, The Blood of Dawnwalker puts players in the muddy boots of a vampire warrior who has to split his time between day and night. That cycle, which moves the world’s calendar forward, is one of Dawnwalker’s biggest selling points, and something the devs spent a lot of time designing around. It also means that there’s an invisible timer hovering over everything you do in the game, from combat to quests to leveling up, and even exploration.
And if there’s one thing I know about a lot of gamers, it’s that they really hate timers. So I wasn’t surprised to see that over on Nexus Mods, the most popular Dawnwalker mod by far is a mod that gives players more time to do whatever they want and even allows you to remove some time restrictions entirely.
The “Better Story Timer” mod for Blood of Dawnwalker has been downloaded over 36,000 times on Nexus Mods since it was uploaded on Wednesday. It added over 5,000 downloads just earlier today. So it seems clear a bunch of people don’t want to put up with the game’s timer. Though it should also be noted that on SteamDB there are over 50,000 people playing the game at the time I write this. And that’s just a fraction of the broader audience that bought it. So it’s not like 80 percent of all PC players downloaded this mod. Still, a lot of people are putting in the extra effort to remove this aspect of Dawnwalker.
Beyond the more generous story timer, some of the other popular Dawnwalker mods on Nexus include ones that let people carry many more things, give players extra loot, make it faster to level up, and provide more talent points. These mods aren’t nearly as popular as “Better Story Timer,” but they do show that there’s a chunk of people who play PC games and use mods who just have no patience for these kinds of limits or mechanics. And if the players can tinker with them from inside the settings menu, they’ll find other ways of altering the experience.
Personally, I don’t get the appeal. But I also don’t mind players using modding tools, a great perk of PC gaming, to change their games and have fun. Dawnwalker is a single-player RPG, so none of these mods removing friction ruin the experience for anyone else. Perhaps you think these kinds of mods make the game less interesting, but that’s the beauty of mods: You can ignore them and play Blood of Dawnwalker however you want. Unless you are on console. Then you are far more limited. Sorry about that.