The Cycle of Love is a main quest in The Blood of Dawnwalker. This walkthrough will guide you through all objectives of The Cycle of Love main quest.
- Starting Location: Howling Keep
- Requirement: Reach maximum anger with Xanthe by completing Court Activities
- Fail State: None
- Reward: 500 XP, Blood Surge Vampirism Ability (if you drink Xanthe’s blood)
- Time Required: 4 segments
- Quest Description: Young women are going missing in the valley and according to a group of soldiers, Xanthe is behind it. I can use their bizarre lantern to get inside the boyaress’s keep and investigate the matter.
Objectives:
- Wait for an opportunity
- Get to the mansion
- Give the lantern to the statue
- Find Xanthe
- Find a way to enter the locked room
- Enter the locked room
- Kill Xanthe
Wait for an opportunity
Once you reach maximum anger with Xanthe from completing Court activities, you will eventually be approached by two soldiers who want you to investigate Xanthe’s mansion. Agree to help them and they will give you Xanthe’s Lantern, which will allow you to pass through the entrance.
Get to the mansion
Make your way to Howling Keep, which is in the southern part of the map.
Give the lantern to the statue
At the entrance, deal with the couple of enemies that appear, then interact with the statue on the left to place the lantern. While progressing through the mansion this is the main mechanic you need to deal with. Placing the blue lanterns at the statues will cause the red vines nearby to disappear, allowing passage.
Find Xanthe
Head inside the mansion and you will be attacked by more enemies. The basic supernatural enemies will appear as you move back and forth through the mansion, so you will need to deal with them as they appear. Remember to quicksave if you are on Duelist so avoid needing to redo areas.
To progress, first go up the stairs to the south where there is an open doorway with a statue nearby.
In the next room is a statue with a lanter, leave this for now and go into the other open doorway to the northwest. You can talk to the girl inside if you want, then grab the lantern in this room.
Find a way to enter the locked room
Speaking to the girl implies that you need to enter the locked room nearby, but you will move around with the lanterns a bit first. Go back out onto the balcony in the main area and place a lantern on that statue to keep the door open. Then go back inside the second room and grab that lantern. You can now leave this room with that lantern because you placed one at the statue on the balcony.
First, go into the room that is now accessible halfway down the stairs and place a lantern on the statue in that room. In these two rooms you can loot a bunch of items, including Cycle of Ruin and Dirty Trick Manuals. There is also a note in the room that will point toward the quest A Friend Like This if you haven’t obtained it already.
Now pick up both lanterns and exit back into the main area. On ground level place a lantern to open the door on the west wall and enter the area. You will need to deal with a bunch more supernatural enemies before you can continue.
Once they are all dealt with, enter the room at the back where there is another lantern. Pick it up, then interact with the trapdoor in the floor to move to the lower area to exit the room.
Progress through the underground area and defeat more enemies, then in the room with the dogs you can find a glowing body where you can pick up the Key to the Kennels, which will allow you to go through the nearby wooden door and return to the main area of the mansion.
Grab the lantern off of the statue and some more enemies will appear for you to deal with.
Enter the locked room
Now you have enough lanterns to progress, but there is one more room to check first. Go up the set of stairs on the west side of the room and place a lantern, which will open up the two doors on the balcony. You can look through both rooms, but the more important item is in the left room on a table. You can pick up the Legendary Amulet The Relic of St. Dasius, which is one that can be used when making the Arbiter’s Armor set.
Exit and pick up the lantern, then go back through to the very first room you entered. You will need to place a lantern back on the statue in this room, and retrieve the one from the balcony. You can then progress through the far door, and place a lantern in each of the two statues on either side of the stairway.
Enter the room to automatically interact with the girl Chariklea. Your responses to her here don’t specifically matter, as she doesn’t respond directly back to you.
Kill Xanthe
After going through the dialogue with Chariklea, you will be attacked by Xanthe and thrown back into the Kennels area for the boss fight against her.
Xanthe works similar to the supernatural “witch” enemies you’ve fought previously, floating around using magic attacks. The two main things she does is either ground-based area attacks that you need to dodge out of the way of, or attacking with red tentacles that can be blocked. She only ever attacks with this from left, right, or up, so those are the only directions you need to worry about blocking. You can perfect block these attacks to stop her.
Xanthe is sort of a three phase boss, as you need to deplete the yellow health bar, which will then allow you to damage her white health bar. When you cross the red markers in the white health bar she will teleport away and summon a bunch of red blood orbs in the arena. You need to quickly run around and attack these to destroy them, or she will use them to regain her health. She only does this twice when you pass the red markers in her health bar, so she has a finite amount of health even though she can heal herself in this way.
For the rest of the fight she will continue this pattern, without doing significantly different attacks. Completely deplete the white health bar to defeat her.
After being defeated unlike the other Boyars, Xanthe offers to work with you if you let her live. This still counts towards earning 
The Dark Mistress as the trophy/achievement does not require that you kill her.
If you decide to work with her then she will make the part of the ending sequence where you fight through Greifberg Castle slightly easier, as she removes the supernatural enemies from the castle. Doing this means that you miss out on being able to drain her blood here, but you can obtain it elsewhere as a consumable.
If you decide to kill her, then supernatural enemies will be present in the castle during the ending sequence.
Whichever you choose, after you complete the dialogue you will finish the quest.
This finishes The Cycle of Love in The Blood of Dawnwalker.
For all other Quests refer to The Blood of Dawnwalker Walkthrough.
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