Using the Vale Sangora map
Vale Sangora is one hand-drawn map, and every pin on it is read straight from The Blood of Dawnwalker game files. There are 381 points of interest on it, and the map labels 19 named regions, from Svartrau City and Greifberg Castle down to the Briar Sloughs and The Silts. Each pin carries the same name, icon and category the game gives it.
The pin types break down as follows:
| Pin type | Count |
|---|---|
| Shrines | 114 |
| Monster lairs | 32 |
| Soldier pickets | 26 |
| Destroyed shrines | 20 |
| Bandit camps | 15 |
| Ancient circles | 13 |
Beyond those, a long tail of settlements, towers, medics, blacksmiths and general stores fills out the remaining pins. A quest layer shows where each of the 205 quests and activities begins.
Shrines are the most useful pin
Shrines are the single most valuable icon in The Blood of Dawnwalker, which is why there are 114 of them. Discovering a shrine unlocks it as a fast travel destination, and travelling between two discovered shrines is done by interacting with one and picking the other on the map. The same shrine is where Coen spends skill points to learn perks, and where he reaches his storage chest.
That last point matters more than it sounds. Going over the inventory weight limit makes Coen overencumbered, and an overencumbered Coen cannot run and cannot fast travel at all. Knowing where the nearest shrine is on the Vale Sangora map is the difference between walking a loaded inventory home and dumping it in storage on the spot.
Scouting towers and hidden activities
Not every activity in Vale Sangora starts as a visible pin. Scouting towers reveal the unknown activities around them, and they can only be climbed in the vampire form, because reaching the top needs Shadowstep and Planeshift. If a region of the map looks suspiciously empty, there is usually a tower nearby that has not been climbed yet.
Quest pins behave differently from world pins: only the starting location of each quest is shown rather than every objective marker, because objectives move as a quest progresses. Open any quest page to follow its objectives step by step.
Reading the map
Zoom in far enough and the name of every location appears under its icon, so a cluster of five shrine markers becomes five named shrines. Zoom back out and the map falls back to icons only, which keeps the whole of Vale Sangora readable on one screen.
Merchant pins open the merchant and their stock, monster lair pins open the creature that lives there — see the Bestiary — and quest pins open the full objective list, so the map works as an index to the rest of the codex.