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Prologue route planner

The prologue is the one part of the game you cannot finish. It runs on its own small budget that ends at sundown, and every side quest in it disappears for good the moment it does.

A young man indoors in warm light, a hand on his shoulder
Everything the prologue asks you to protect is here, and there is not enough time for all of it. Press screenshot, Bandai Namco Entertainment.
2–3/ 8 segments3 selected
5 segments spare in the worst case.

This is the budget that really is tight. There is not enough room for every prologue quest, and the ones you skip are gone for good — so the question is not whether you drop something, it is what.

Main quests, routed inside your 8 segments (locked on)

Side quests (gone when the prologue ends)

What makes the prologue different

  • The 30-day clock has not started. It begins at the end of the prologue, when the dying soldier tells you where your family was taken during Smoke and Ashes. Nothing you spend here comes out of the 480.
  • Anything unfinished at sundown fails. Not pauses — fails. And all 10 prologue side quests are gone once the prologue ends, with one exception: Bandits’ Treasure Map: Laslea Glen can be finished afterwards.
  • Running out triggers the point of no return. If your segments run out, Sacred Covenant starts on its own and takes the decision away from you.
  • Esme’s life is decided here. During Withering Away you have to brew Anca’s medicine correctly — hot water, three spoonfuls of herbs — before the prologue ends, or she dies at the Blood Mass and her absence shows up in the epilogue.
  • Attacking a friendly NPC is catastrophic. Coen gets arrested, and it consumes every remaining segment.

One published route

PC Gamer’s writer replayed the prologue for about fifteen hours to work out an order, and published this one. It is one person’s solution, not an official answer, and it deliberately drops two quests:

  1. Live Bait
  2. Dead Drop, then start Withering Away
  3. Page-Turner (optional)
  4. Withering Away, part two
  5. Enter Not, If a Tree Falls in a Forest… and Deep Down
  6. Blasphemy
  7. Disturbed
  8. Like Father, Like Son

It skips Someone Needs a Lesson and On the Run, and saves Into the Den for after the prologue, since that one is not time-sensitive.

Keep going

The prologue explained

What each of the six main quests does, and where the point of no return sits.

What you can lose forever

Esme, the prologue side quests, and the rule about not starting quests early.

The 30-day planner

For everything after the prologue, where the budget is far more generous.

Sources: PC Gamer — prologue quest order · Game8 — prologue walkthrough · PowerPyx — walkthrough and missables