How to complete The Heart Wants What It Wants in The Blood of Dawnwalker

When you stumble on The Heart Wants What It Wants in a random tavern in Blood of Dawnwalker, you might be surprised by how complex this quest can be in terms of its outcomes. The actual meat of the quest, helping an Uriashi, Ocha, and her friend, Nora, escape the clutches of Svartrau’s crime lord, is pretty simple, but it can end in many different ways. Here’s how to complete the quest, plus its different outcomes based on your choices.

How to complete The Heart Wants What It Wants in Blood of Dawnwalker

Once you acquire the quest from Ocha and Nora at the Altenmarkt inn, follow the map marker to Andrei’s butcher shop, and enter via the balcony on the upper floor using your vampire powers. In the upper room you’ll find three different mementos for Ocha’s amnesia spell: a ring, a pendant, and a cleaver. The memento required for Ocha’s spell is the ring.

If you’d prefer to kill Andrei instead of following Ocha’s plan, go down the stairs and through the door, which will begin combat. Even though you speak to Andrei after you defeat him, no matter what you say, he’ll pull sly one on you, resulting in his death. There’s basically no advantage whatsoever to killing Andrei—it just impacts the options Ocha will have at the end of the quest, but more on that in the final section.

Once you have the ring, go back out onto the balcony to start a dialogue with Ocha, who’s waiting below. Make sure to give her the ring. If you give her the wrong memento, the spell will fail, and you and Ocha will have to kill Andrei, which results in the same outcome as mentioned above.

Now simply distract the guard by opening the pig pen and then draw the hex on the outside of the butcher’s shop. Andrei will smash his brains out against a wall, and Ocha will explain this is what she meant by “empty his head.” Human words are hard, apparently. She’ll ask you to meet her outside the city, starting the final section.

Deciding Ocha’s fate in Blood of Dawnwalker

You’ll meet Ocha outside by the river, where she’ll ask you to catch some crayfish so you two can eat. Ocha has two choices she can make based upon your advice and whether you killed Andrei or he killed himself. If you killed Andrei:

1. Ocha goes travelling with Nora, but will stick around a while to teach you Swordmastery.
2. Ocha goes back to the Uriashi settlement in the mountains.

If Andrei killed himself via the spell:

1. Ocha stays in the city and becomes a crime boss with Nora. She sets up shop in Andrei’s hideout, teaches Swordmastery, and gives you a line to Vacho, beginning the Study in Crimson quest. This outcome is also useful in certain future dialogue challenges in Svartrau.
2. Ocha goes back to the Uriashi settlement in the mountains.

Ocha will choose these based upon what dialogue options you pick. For either of the first options listed above, choose:

1. “Do you miss home?”
2. “New things can be exciting, sure.”
3. “Our neighbours helped a bit.”

For either of the second options listed above, choose:

1. “Do you miss home”
2. “Meh. Nothing better than homemade food!”
3. “Our neighbours helped a bit”

Either way, you’ll receive the Broad Swing Swordmastery manual as quest reward. Ocha’s name will also be useful later in getting you access to the Uriashi settlement you visit in Lacra’s quest, Song of the Mountain, even if she doesn’t go back there.

Presumably, if Ocha goes home, she can also teach you Swordmastery skills at the settlement, but I haven’t been able to confirm that.