Drowners

Bestiary

As a witcher, Geralt of Rivia’s main task in life is to hunt down and slay monsters, with a sideline in lifting curses. All monsters take full damage from silver swords and only partial damage from steel swords. The reverse is true, incidentally, when you use a silver sword against humans. Beyond that, different species of monsters have wildly varying strengths and weaknesses. Some are intuitive to a monster’s nature, while others are a bit surprising. All should be exploited as ruthlessly as possible, using whatever skills and specialties your Geralt build has developed.

Monsters are grouped by species for this bestiary’s purposes, since all creatures of a single species usually share similar drops, attack patterns, and vulnerabilities. Some monster species occur in several variations. Most variant monsters are just a more powerful version of a basic monster type, but there are exceptions to this, too. Certain variant versions of a monster may have special drops unique to that variant. Read each section carefully if you’re having a hard time deciding how to fight a particular monster, or if you just want to learn a bit more about what rewards you can expect to loot from a dead monster’s body.

Note that the drops for each creature species are separated into the categories “alchemy drops” and “other drops.” This division is extremely important to how the alchemist tree skill Harvester works. Taking the Harvester skill increases the drop rate of a monster’s alchemy items but does not affect the drop rate of other items you can obtain by defeating that monster. An alchemy item is defined by the game as any item that has value as an alchemical substance. That is, an item is an alchemical substance if it contains vitriol, rebis, aether, quebrith, hydragenum, vermilion, sol, caelum, or fulgur, and therefore can be used to brew potions, oils, and bombs.

Which items are dropped when a monster dies is determined basically at random. Some monsters may drop multiples of a given item, especially if slain by a Geralt that has the Harvester skill. Usually a monster yields some drops upon its defeat, but not always. If you’re not sure if you’ve grabbed a monster’s drops or not, scan the area with your medallion after you finish a battle. Monster drops always highlight in bright orange if they’re present, like other types of loot. Monster carcasses can sometimes be hard to see if you’ve been fighting in tall grass or shallow water.

The first time you see a monster in The Witcher 2 , it is a drowner eating a fallen soldier. It attacks you, but you defeat it easily with a basic silver sword. This experience sums up the drowner. Although frightful and grotesque on the surface, these fishlike humanoids are among the weakest creatures in the game. You can occasionally find them active during the day, but drowners only come out in force at night, when they swarm in packs led by elite drowners called drowned dead. When drowners led by a drowned dead attack in packs, they can be extremely dangerous, especially since you’re inclined to underestimate them.

They favor watery areas like sewers, swamps, coasts, and riverbanks. So, as you might expect, you encounter them through most of the game when you’re near watery areas. In the Prologue, you can find them prowling the sewers beneath La Valette Castle. In Chapter 1, they come out at night near the waterfall and in the swampy areas around the bandit’s hideout. In Chapter 2, you encounter them in the quest Lost Lambs (on Roche’s route) and along the beaches near Malget’s hut at night.

Drowners are relatively speedy opponents, so light attacks are best used to quickly home in on their locations and eliminate them. Drowners are immune to poison and bleeding but are surprisingly vulnerable to fire. Dancing stars and conflagrations can come in handy for whittling down a pack’s numbers rapidly. They are also vulnerable to most traps and easy to lure over them. Finally, drowners are vulnerable to knockdown, so you can use Aard to easily incapacitate and slaughter them one by one. Read the book Drowners: A Textbook for Initiates of the Order of the Flaming Rose to gain knowledge of drowners.

Killing a drowner yields two unique, relatively useful drops. One is the drowner brain, which is used primarily in crafting amethyst dust. It can be wise to hold on to drowner brains through the end of Chapter 2, just in case you run out of amethyst dust and need to make more. Once you get into Chapter 3, you should have a good idea of how much amethyst dust you’ll need through the end of the game. At that point, you can safely sell off the brains if you’re pretty sure you won’t be using them.

The other noteworthy drowner drop is essence of water, which is always used when crafting runes. It’s much cheaper to craft runes than to buy them, so it’s worth your while to farm drowners for essences of water when you’re in a chapter where they occur. Drowners don’t occur in Chapter 3, so grind out some extras ahead of time for use in Chapter 3. Although you can craft essences of water from a diagram, the process consumes some relatively expensive ingredients.

Drowners are believed to be the spirits of evil men and criminals who have drowned or otherwise died in water. Drowners are either the body or the hateful spirit of the dead, returned to drag other living creatures down into a watery grave. Drowners tear their dead prey to bits with their claws and consume the soggy remains.

Drowned Dead

An elite form of drowner that acts as pack leader, a drowned dead has more vitality than the average drowner and can hit much harder. They only occur as part of a drowner pack after nightfall. You encounter them in Chapter 1 in the swamps around the bandit hideout and in Chapter 2 along the northern stretch of beach near the site of Sabrina Glevissig’s execution. When you realize a drowner pack you’re fighting contains a drowned dead, approach the battle more cautiously than usual. Keep Quen up in case the drowned dead jumps you from behind. The overall best strategy for dealing with drowned deads is to pick off the rest of the drowner pack with light attacks, then hammer away at the drowned dead with strong attacks.