THE FIELD GUIDE
Smoke and Ashes Walkthrough
Follow Anca to Laslea, search your family home, then return to her for the Compel Soul lesson. Take Brencis’s Banner back to the dead soldier and use it in the conversation before clearing the village gate. Investigating the rag is optional on PC versions with the 1.0.4 fix.
Follow Anca back to Laslea after Bad Blood
Smoke and Ashes begins after Bad Blood. Leave Anca’s hut and follow her toward the ruined village of Laslea. When you stop by the dead soldier and the objective sends you to your family home, take the road north toward the house.
Prepare for hostile animals on the approach to the house. Check that your weapon and clothes are equipped before moving into the yard. Your immediate task is to find out what happened to the family; the investigation at home comes before the lesson with the soldier.
Search the family home with Focus
Use Focus to pick out the yellow investigation highlights. Work through the house and the courtyard instead of stopping after the first object. Examining a clue is a separate action from simply seeing its highlight.
Start at the broken entrance, inspect the main room and the room across from it, then go through the yard to Coen’s bedroom. The places below give you a route to check if the journal still says “Search your family home”.
| Where to look | What to inspect or collect |
|---|---|
| At the entrance | Examine the broken door. |
| Main living area | Pick up Lunka’s Toy from the floor; inspect the overturned table and windows. |
| Storage room across from the main room | Inspect the blood on the floor. |
| Backyard beyond the eastern door | Inspect the footprints. |
| Coen’s bedroom across the yard | Examine the bed. |
The window rag is optional with the 1.0.4 fix
The rag is the piece of cloth caught at a kitchen window. The PC 1.0.4 hotfix made investigating it optional. If your game includes that fix, you do not need to treat the rag as a mandatory clue before you can continue.
If the house objective remains active, check the other highlighted clues in the rooms and yard, then leave the house and meet Anca when prompted. The rag change applies to the house investigation; it does not replace the later step of using a catalyst with the dead soldier.
Return to Anca and cast Compel Soul on the soldier
After searching the home, meet Anca outside and follow her back to the soldier’s body. She teaches Coen Compel Soul during this investigation. You do not need to leave Laslea to find a skill manual for this first lesson.
Use Focus on the dead soldier and follow the displayed Compel Soul interaction. These are Witchcraft interactions in Coen’s human form; follow your own keyboard or controller prompt for the cast.
The soldier’s first response is incomplete. Anca explains that an object connected to the deceased can draw out more information. When the objective asks for items of importance to the dead soldier, search for the catalyst, then return to this same body.
Bring Brencis’s Banner back to the same corpse
Look northwest from the soldier toward the nearby burned house. Brencis’s Banner hangs from a pole there. Interact with the yellow banner to collect it, then return to the soldier.
Cast Compel Soul again and use the banner as the catalyst in the conversation. Picking it up alone does not complete that conversation: you must bring what you found back to the soul. This exchange explains what happened to the family and introduces the deadline for rescuing them.
Lunka’s Toy inventory icon. Lunka’s Toy
A personal clue in the family home. Find it during the house search.
House search
Brencis’s Banner inventory icon. Brencis’s Banner
The catalyst for the dead soldier. Take it back and use it in his conversation.
Banner in Items
- Collect Brencis’s Banner near the burned house.
- Return to the dead soldier beside Anca and cast Compel Soul again.
- Use the banner in the conversation, then follow the updated quest objective.
Clear the gate and finish the prologue
Once the investigation has advanced, follow Anca toward the village gate. Interact with the rubble blocking the exit and complete the clearing action. Reaching the gate without removing the obstruction does not finish this step.
Clearing the rubble advances the clock into the night and leads into Coen’s change of form. Read the time marker on the current action before confirming it, and account for that advance when planning the time you have left to rescue the family.
Continue through the closing scenes to finish Smoke and Ashes and the prologue. Vale Sangora then opens up for exploration, with the family-rescue deadline active. Check the time shown in your own journal as you plan your first route.
Check the current objective if progress seems stuck
Use the journal wording to decide what to check next. The house clues, the first soul conversation, the catalyst conversation and the gate are separate steps.
| Current problem | Next check |
|---|---|
| The house still needs searching | Revisit the highlighted door, rooms, yard and bed. On PC with the 1.0.4 fix, the rag itself is optional. |
| The soldier only says a little | Complete Anca’s explanation, collect Brencis’s Banner, then cast Compel Soul on the same body again. |
| The banner is already in the inventory | Use it as the catalyst during the soldier’s conversation; collecting it is not the final interaction. |
| The exit is still blocked | Follow the gate objective and interact with the rubble to clear it. |