Trolls


Trolls are enormous beasts, primitive yet clearly sapient. Trolls are enormously, unthinkably strong, but fortunately they are also slow, clumsy, and got out of the habit of eating humans centuries ago. Now trolls only attack humans who are trying to attack them, a rare but still regrettable sight. You can easily reason or bargain with a troll, in fact, if you can figure out what it’s saying in its slurred speech. Male trolls often put themselves to useful work building and maintaining bridges over rivers, in exchange for tolls from those who pass by. These tolls are spent mostly on vodka, as trolls are notorious drunks. She-trolls take care of their lairs, fight off predators, and prepare food. A troll deprived of his wife is a truly piteous sight, for a troll’s heart is far more sensitive than its thick hide.

You have several chances to interact with trolls in the game. In Chapter 1, you can slay or befriend a troll in Flotsam in the quest Troll Trouble . In Chapter 2, you inevitably cross paths with a pair of trolls that live outside Vergen. There’s another troll that can only be encountered on Roche’s path, rampaging near the edge of the cursed battlefield to the southeast. You can avoid this troll, but you cannot befriend it.

Trolls hurl enormous rocks at their opponents or throw their tremendous weight into a forceful charge. Fortunately, trolls are quite stupid, and may not notice you’re there at all if you get behind them. Strong attacks slowly but surely hack away at a troll’s robust store of vitality. Roll to evade the troll’s attacks, then do great damage by hitting it from behind. Bombs and daggers can damage a troll from a safe distance, provided the troll doesn’t figure out where you are. Trolls have few vulnerabilities, but they are one of the few monstrous species in the game that are vulnerable to poison. An application of arachnid oil to your silver sword can help put a troll down quickly.

You can harvest two unique materials from a troll’s carcass. Troll tongue is required to complete the quest Melitele’s Heart and in Dark mode to craft the Kinslayer’s trousers. While you can often buy troll tongues if you need to, their rarity means any troll tongue you obtain should be placed into storage for future use. Be careful not to accidentally use it in alchemy. Troll skin is a pure crafting material required to create the armor of Ys and magic wraps, so these diagrams become useless when you receive them in Chapter 3 if you’ve been exclusively befriending trolls.