Check your remaining time and unfinished time-sensitive quests before training or going to Mass. The main-story list is not an instruction to leave every side quest until after training. Decide whether to pursue Lazar and the grave investigation while planning your detours; this route does not promise every possible outcome in one run.

Prologue route: make the choice before taking the detour

  1. Check journal and timeIdentify your stage, time-sensitive objectives and the next interaction cost.
  2. Plan character questsReview Anca’s medicine and Lazar before spending the remaining time.
  3. Choose optional detoursFit the grave investigation into your plan; Into the Den can be deferred.
  4. Review before trainingCheck wanted unfinished objectives and save before advancing.
  5. After the prologueMove to Court activities and the next quest routes.

This is a decision diagram, not a geographic map or a mandatory sequence of every activity.

Choose which quests deserve your remaining time

PC Gamer’s suggested route schedules training after its chosen detours and postpones some optional tasks. Use that planning principle rather than treating the story index as the optimal order for every playstyle.

  • Medicine: follow Anca’s recipe and dialogue steps. Read Instructions from Anca before checking the preparation choices. Verify the remaining hand-in or dialogue objective; receiving herbs alone is not completion.
  • Saving Lazar: review Deep Down before spending the remaining segments. Sources disagree on the precise survival cutoff, which remains unconfirmed here; a route recommendation is not a last-minute rescue guarantee.
  • Grave investigation: follow Dead Drop from the grave clue through the footprints and tree carvings to the stash. Complete its letter-reading check, then return here to choose another objective.
  • Bear cave and treasure: read the postponement note in Into the Den. PC Gamer lists it as a quest that can continue after the prologue, so do not automatically prioritize it over the character outcomes you want.

Before training, Mass or another story commitment

  1. Open the journal and identify wanted time-sensitive quests that remain unfinished. Reaching a location or obtaining an ingredient is different from completing its objective.
  2. Read the cost of the next dialogue, training, skill purchase or quest interaction. Use the time-management guide to distinguish these actions; elapsed real-world travel time alone does not tell you the remaining quest budget.
  3. Keep a separate save before the commitment, then continue Like Father, Like Son and the subsequent story. Do not assume that revisiting an NPC reverses an outcome.

The story index is All Good Things → Withering Away → Like Father, Like Son → Sacred Covenant → Bad Blood → Smoke and Ashes. It does not list all the optional quests you may choose between those stages.

If combat or a manual interrupts your route

For the Deep Down fight, use Forgotten Guardian tactics, then return to the quest’s remaining objectives. After finding a book, use the manual-to-skill checklist; owning a manual does not prove the skill is learned.

Where to continue after the prologue

After Smoke and Ashes, use Court activity requirements. Read the activity objective, complete its requirements and check the Court state again. To resume deferred exploration, return to the current journal stage in Into the Den, without repeating investigations already completed.

Related route details

For individual objectives, see the opening tutorial, Pieter’s training, Mass, the mine escape and Smoke and Ashes.