Dark Sets


The dark sets are the main reason to play through Dark mode. The monsters may have increased stats and deadliness, but the dark sets level the playing field and sometimes can even put you on top. This much power doesn’t come cheap, though. You’ll have to work hard to make the money necessary to complete a set, and even then it has some drawbacks to balance out its immense power.

The items are cursed. If you so choose, you can craft individual pieces of the armor (armor, gauntlets, boots, or trousers) and equip them as you obtain them. You cannot say the same about the steel and silver swords that are part of each set. If you equip a sword from a set without having the rest of the entire set, the sword begins to drain Geralt’s life. Once you have a full set, however, the swords drain vitality from your foes with every blow. This is represented by red orbs that fly out from your foes with every strike.

Unsheathing either of a dark set’s swords turns Geralt’s vision into “dark vision.” Everything turns gray, similar to the sequence where you’re reliving Auckes’s memories in Chapter 2. Only the color red can be seen clearly. Shadows begin to crawl in from the sides of the screen, and an ominous growling is always audible. As befits a curse, these impressive visual effects make it pretty difficult to see your enemies clearly, especially if Geralt is in a cave or adventuring at night. You can drink Cat potions to offset the “dark vision” effect, just keep in mind that Cat reduces your damage output by 10 percent. You can take measures to counteract this, like oiling your blades with Falka’s blood.

You obtain the Dark mode sets by purchasing diagrams from merchants, then forging them with the aid of a craftsman. The good news is that you can find many of the components you need for this as random loot or easily obtained monster drops. The bad news is that the dark sets are so expensive that, one way or another, you’re going to end up having to grind for orens.

As you gather the items you need, be sure to put items that you know you will need in future chapters into storage first thing. This frees you up to sell everything else in your inventory without fear of accidentally selling something important.

The complete stat bonuses offered by each set are listed, along with the crafting costs involved and materials required. Note that since weapon stats are only applied when the weapon is drawn, the total statistics do not include any bonuses or abilities gained from weapons. If you want to look at the statistics of each individual piece of a given set, you can look it up in the "Items Compendium".

Chapter 1: The Blasphemer’s Set

Total Passive Bonuses When Wearing Complete Set

Grinding for Orens

One of the best ways to make money for the Blasphemer’s set is to loot everything you can find during the Prologue. If you save Aryan La Valette, you can get the Strong Back attribute and raise your maximum load to 300 units. If you don’t get Strong Back, then you’re definitely going to be over your encumbrance limit by the time you begin Chapter 1. During the ambush sequence at the beginning of this chapter, simply drop your heaviest items so you can fight off your attackers. Once you get to the docks, return and pick up what you dropped along with the items the elves drop. If you didn’t miss anything, this should give you a good head start toward acquiring all the orens you need.

Loot everything you can, especially when doing side quests. It’s not necessarily worthwhile to do every side quest on Dark mode, since many side quests just don’t offer enough payoff to be worth the aggravation involved in beating them. Recommended side quests are listed here, based on how much cash they award you or how well they synergize with the needs of crafting your current set.

blasphemer's set details

If you get unlucky with random loot and have to craft yellow meteorite ore, it can raise the cost of obtaining the silver sword Anathema substantially. The diagram for yellow meteorite ore is relatively costly and also requires costly materials, like a sun rune and moon rune, that cannot be easily crafted at this point in the game. Note that you probably can’t get the cost reduction effect of Haggling while you prepare the Blasphemer’s set. Ideally you should have this set assembled before you battle the kayran, but Haggling isn’t unlocked until after you collect your reward from the merchants.

Chapter 2: The Oathbreaker's Set

Total Passive Bonuses When Wearing Complete Set

Grinding for Orens

If you chose to side with Roche, making money in and around the Kaedweni Camp is fairly easy. If you continue with the arm-wrestling quests, the final contender, Adam Pangratt, can be a great way to make money. It may be slightly boring and tedious, but you can win 200 orens per win while arm-wrestling him. That said, be wary of that campfire he always sits around. On Dark mode, its tendency to set you on fire during dialogue sequences can be deadly.

In Vergen, you can't grind orens through arm-wrestling, but you can find lots of valuable loot stuffed into the city's nooks and crannies. You can net 260 orens at a time by entering the fistfighting circuit over and over again. While this can be tedious, it’s one of the safest ways to make money in this particular chapter.

A somewhat more entertaining way to earn money on either route is to kill large numbers of harpies. On Roche’s route, you can take advantage of the harpy spawn next to the Visionary’s house . Once you kill them, enter the circle of candles outside the Visionary’s house. Wait for a moment and then move back out of the circle. The harpies should respawn immediately. Harpy feathers sell for an awesome 9 orens apiece, and every other harpy piece sells for 4 orens. They also drop lots of other things, including mutagens, so it is very worthwhile.

On Iorveth’s route, you can use a similar technique to farm harpies. Head out to the Old Quarry, before you’ve completed The Harpy Contract . As you follow the winding path down to the bottom of the quarry, you encounter a large number of harpies. Once you reach the bottom, find a safe place (by the entrance to the harpy lair is a good spot) and meditate for 12 hours. The harpies should have respawned by then, so you can fight them all the way back up the path again. Simply repeat until you have all of the orens you need.

oathbreaker's set details

The big crafting material challenge in Chapter 2 is obtaining a draugir armor fragment. On Iorveth’s route, you can only obtain them during the quests Where Is Triss Merigold? and Prelude to War: Aedirn . On Roche’s route, you can only obtain them during Prelude to War: Kaedwen and during a curious sequence in Hatred Symbolized where, in the Tunnel of the Founders beneath Vergen, you can kill an unusual bullvore that yields draugir drops (and a bullvore brain) upon death. Try to pick up an armor fragment during one of the Prologue quests if you can, since that means you can create the set much earlier in the chapter. After you’ve defeated one of the draugirs, let the NPCs distract the other while you pick up the first draugir’s drops. You may need to sheathe your sword to get the prompt to pick up the draugir’s loot to appear.

While you can purchase essences of death in this chapter (from Felicia Cori on Iorveth’s route or Myron on Roche’s route), it is much cheaper to slay a handful of wraiths and get them instead. You have ample opportunities to slay wraiths during the quest Death Symbolized on both routes. On Roche’s route you can get infinite wraiths to spawn in the hidden basement of Malget’s house by lighting the candles in the incorrect order. On Iorveth’s route, you can just go into the burned village at night and wait for wraiths to spawn, or go fight knight wraiths with the Scoia’tael unit that camps out at the edge of the cursed battlefield.

Blue meteorite ore can also be a problem material for crafting both the Oathbreaker’s set in this chapter and the Kinslayer’s set in the next chapter. You can purchase blue meteorite ore on Roche’s route from Lasota. On Iorveth’s route you can purchase it from Thorak (while he’s alive) or Haggard. You also have the option of picking up the diagram for blue meteorite ore on that route from Earso. That said, crafting blue meteorite ore can actually be much more expensive than just buying it, as the recipe requires an earth rune and a moon rune. This is a material that you definitely want to send into storage for future use whenever you obtain it.

Chapter 3: The Kinslayer's Set

Total Passive Bonuses When Wearing Complete Set

Grinding for Orens

Making the Kinslayer’s set in Chapter 3 is extremely challenging, since it’s very difficult to amass money in this chapter. There aren’t any especially lucrative mini-games to play. You need to either enter Chapter 3 with all the money you need farmed earlier in Chapter 2, or you have to use the harpy spawn near the dice players’ building. This harpy spawn is a pale shadow of how lucrative the spawns in Chapter 2 are. You can try farming the gargoyle spawns in Loc Muinne instead of the harpies, but the gargoyles are more dangerous and tend to drop fewer items upon death.

Gargoyle drops are more valuable than harpy drops, though, and you need some gargoyle drops to make the Kinslayer’s set anyway. It all really comes down to how easy it is for your build to kill gargoyles repeatedly. If you do decide to farm gargoyles, then the best place to repeatedly kill them is near the amphitheater. This space is open with lots of room to maneuver, at least compared to the other two gargoyle courtyards. You usually encounter three to five gargoyles here. Be careful not to finish The Gargoyle Contract or solve the rune puzzle beneath a courtyard you wish to farm, as this removes the gargoyles.

Both of these techniques require you to meditate for 12 hours to trigger the respawn, though the harpies can sometimes be reset with only six hours of meditation. Kill a group, wait in a safe place for 12 hours, and then they should come back.

kinslayer's set details

There are two main challenges to overcome when crafting the Kinslayer’s set. One of the most significant is the need to carry certain crafting materials forward from prior chapters in order to save orens. It is easy to obtain the troll tongue and essence of death required in earlier chapters, but in this chapter they can only be purchased.

The other main challenge is obtaining the dragon scales. On Roche’s route, you simply need to remember to visit the Temerian camp. On Iorveth’s route, you must choose to pursue the main quest The Spellbreaker instead of Where Is Triss Merigold? at the beginning of the chapter. If you do not pursue The Spellbreaker , then you can never enter Philippa Eilhart’s house and never obtain the dragon scales. It’s worth noting that you can also get dragon scales by defeating the Operator, but it’s very unlikely you’ll pull this off in Dark mode without a complete Kinslayer’s set.