Phantom Blade Zero Side Quests and Branching Story Paths

The quest system is where Phantom Blade Zero most obviously departs from a souls-like. There is a traditional quest list, coloured markers and a tracking function, and the writing assumes you want to follow a story rather than reconstruct it from item descriptions.

How do you find side quests?

Quests are picked up in the world and then tracked from the quest log. Every main and side quest has a tracking option that points you at the next step, so you never have to remember a conversation from ten hours earlier.

Any interactable you cannot use yet is marked on the map automatically, including quest-adjacent objects: a locked door or an unreachable anchor is often a side quest waiting for a tool, not a dead end.

How each quest is triggered has not been documented. Expect the usual mix of NPC conversations, notes and discoveries in the region, with the log doing the bookkeeping.

What do the three quest colours mean?

• Gold — the main story. Advancing it is what closes other windows.
• Purple — key side quests. These carry the important lore, hidden bosses and hidden weapons, and they can affect how the story ends.
• White — standard side quests. Lower stakes, but still content you would otherwise never see.

The colour is the priority signal. If you only do one category of optional content, do purple.

Are side quests missable?

Yes, and the purple ones are the reason this page exists. A purple quest left unfinished before a key main-story node can close permanently, changing the fate of Soul or the NPC involved.

The game does not let you stumble into this blindly. Before an irreversible point it asks you directly whether to proceed. Treat that prompt as your last call: finish every open purple quest before confirming.

Do quests run on a timer?

No real-time or in-game-day timer has been confirmed. The windows are tied to story progress, not to a countdown, so the safe rule is spatial and narrative rather than temporal: clear a region's optional content before you advance its main thread.

A quest that spans regions may stay open longer, but cross-region chains are Unconfirmed. Do not rely on one carrying over.

What do side quests reward?

Purple quests carry the biggest rewards: lore about the Wulin and Pangzhen's factions, access to hidden bosses, and hidden weapons off the main path. Because bosses are the source of main weapons, a hidden boss is also a hidden weapon.

Nobody has detailed the rewards for white quests. The plausible pattern is materials, accessories or currency, but that stays Unconfirmed until the retail quest log can be compared.

Does dialogue choice matter?

You can skip dialogue, and the game compensates: clues and prompts are recorded in the quest list, so a skipped conversation will not strand you. That much is confirmed.

Whether individual dialogue choices branch outcomes — or only quest completion does — is Unconfirmed. The confirmed branch point is quest completion before an irreversible node, not a specific line of dialogue.

Which choices open new story paths?

The confirmed mechanism is the purple quest. Completing one can open a hidden boss, a hidden weapon and additional story, and the outcome can differ if you miss it. The game does not label which quest affects which ending.

In practice, treat every purple quest as potentially ending-relevant and every irreversible prompt as a hard stop — the only reliable rule the pre-launch material supports.

Should you clear side quests before the final boss?

Yes, and earlier than that. The windows close at story nodes, not at the final boss, so "before the end" can be too late. Clear purple quests region by region as you explore, and use the irreversible prompt as a final audit rather than a plan.

Related guides

• World and regions
• Story, lore and characters
• Tips and secrets
• Bosses: the hidden fights