Spare or Kill Volk? Buried Past Choice & Rewards

Volk is the rare Blood of Dawnwalker choice where the game prices mercy for you: his sword and 200 Denarii sit on his corpse, and the only way to spare him and profit is to have helped him first. Here is how the Buried Past finale works, what each option pays, and why most guides quietly recommend the blade.

Who Is Volk?

Volk is a bandit leader tied to the Buried Past side quest — a man with an ugly history and a buried secret. During the quest he approaches Coen with a request that humanizes him more than his reputation suggests: help him recover a knife at a grave site, a personal artifact from a past he cannot openly mourn. What you find at the grave, and what Volk does with it, colors the confrontation that follows. By the finale the choice is binary: let him walk, or put him down.

The Two Outcomes

Kill Volk and you loot his body for:

• Volk’s Sword — a solid mid-game blade that outclasses most craftable options at the point you meet him
• 200 Denarii — a meaningful purse in the early economy

The fight itself is a straight duel; nothing about it gates other content. And the reward case for killing is stronger than it first looks: 200 Denarii funds a round of alchemy materials or an armor upgrade at precisely the stage where the economy pinches hardest, and Volk’s Sword arrives with stats that carry comfortably into the mid-game. If you are running a silver-weapon build, check whether the sword’s damage type fits before banking on it — but even as a sell-or-stash drop, the kill path pays immediately while the spare path pays only in story.

Spare Volk and he walks. The catch, per Game8’s guidance: sparing only makes sense if you helped him during Buried Past — doing the legwork he asks for, including the knife recovery. The spared outcome is primarily narrative: a man who wronged the valley gets to keep breathing, and the quest’s closure reflects that. Community documentation on exact spared-branch rewards is thin, and no unique item is confirmed — the sword and coin are kill-exclusive.

Which Should You Choose?

The pragmatic answer, echoed by Polygon and GameRant: kill him, unless your conscience objects. The sword alone justifies it for most builds, and Volk’s history does not argue for clemency. If you are running a merciful-Coen playthrough, help him fully during the quest first, then spare him — the game acknowledges the difference between ignorance and mercy.

One role-playing note: Buried Past is exactly the kind of small story Blood of Dawnwalker’s epilogue remembers. Neither outcome moves the eight endings, but both end up in the world’s texture.

Fight Tips

The duel with Volk is standard bandit-leader tier, but a few habits keep it clean: bring at least one healing item, perfect-block his opener to seize initiative, and do not let the enclosed arena push you into a corner — his damage comes in bursts, and spacing denies most of it. If you have a rechargeable Weapon Art from an early bandit camp clear, this is a fine place to spend it; the fight ends noticeably faster when you open with burst damage rather than trading blows.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you get Volk’s Sword without killing him? No confirmed path exists; the sword is loot from his corpse. If your build needs it, the choice is made for you.

What if I ignored his requests during Buried Past? Game8’s flat recommendation applies: kill him. Sparing without having helped him pays the mercy price with none of the narrative justification.

Where does Buried Past sit in the early game? It opens in the Laslea Glen stretch, competing for time segments with the prologue’s aftermath quests. Run it when your build needs the economy injection — the sword and coin land exactly when the first gear wall arrives.

Does killing Volk affect any faction or Infamy? No. This is a self-contained side-quest resolution with no Court or ending consequences.

Is the duel hard? Standard bandit-leader tier — bring a healing item and it should not tax a character on the main quest path.

Does Volk have any connection to the region’s camps? He operates in the same bandit ecology as the open-world camps — which is part of why his fate reads as a verdict on that whole world. Sparing the man while clearing his camps is a coherent character statement; so is the reverse.

Related Guides

• Camp encounters & choices — bandit camps and the region’s other power players
• Kill the soldiers at the mill — another fate-call with a counterintuitive answer
• Free Branko or keep him locked up — evidence-based justice, dungeon edition
• Best quest order — where Buried Past fits your month