The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Guide (Steam) Walkthrough Flotsam 

How to Win at Arm-Wrestling 

Wrestling is not an especially difficult mini-game, but it can be very counterintuitive and difficult to learn. The goal of an arm-wrestling match is to keep the reticle with the arm-wrestling icon in the center of the brown bar. If Geralt has momentum, the bar moves toward the right-hand side of the screen. If he’s losing momentum, it moves toward the left.

The trick to arm-wrestling is that the pressure you must apply to the control stick is usually very gentle, similar to the very light taps you use for rolling dice. Only occasionally, when fighting more difficult opponents like Bargee, will you want to apply any sort of significant pressure. Most of the time, moving the control stick the way you would to make Geralt walk around is almost guaranteed to make the reticle fly out of the bar and make you lose momentum. Instead use very light taps and constantly judge the jitter that’s affecting the reticle. Sometimes the reticle is inclined to stay in the center of the bar once you have momentum, and applying any pressure would be to your detriment.

The bar gets narrower as it approaches either end of the screen, which makes screwing up your own momentum easier and trying to gain momentum from an opponent more difficult. Once you’ve done a lot of arm-wrestling, you’ll develop an intuitive sense for the bar’s size, the reticle’s momentum, and how much pressure to apply to the control stick to get desired results. In the meantime, just make sure you save before facing challenging opponents that require high bets, like Bartholomew Bargee. One thing to remember is that the longer a bout lasts, the harder it becomes for either side to reverse momentum.

Now that the mini-game quests are done, it’s time to attempt more dangerous quests like monster hunts. To get Geralt ready for that, we’re going to focus on the main plot for just a little while.

Indecent Proposal

Time to pay Loredo a visit. Meditate until midnight, then go to the entrance into his compound. Roche appears to enter the area with you. You can follow Roche or scan the area and look for opportunities to find loot (if you didn’t come here earlier as part of Fight Club ). Roche immediately notices that Loredo has a ballista in his compound, which triggers a sub-quest you need to resolve before you can proceed any further.

The Ballista

Roche wants Geralt to find a way to disable Loredo’s ballista. It’s being guarded, so you can’t just walk up to it. Instead, look around the courtyard for a potential distraction, like perhaps Margarita the prostitute. Once you spot her, go have a chat. She’s willing to go distract the guard, but only for the right price. The amount she charges is random, but should be trifling (less than 100 orens). You can always just buy her off by offering her maximum bid.

Of course, there’s also a cheapskate way to get Margarita’s services. Ask her if there’s any other way you can convince her and she says that she’ll distract the guard if you sufficiently humiliate a couple of big lugs named Myron and Alphonse she doesn’t especially like. Humiliating them means beating them in arm-wrestling, which should be a snap if you’ve already beaten Bartholomew Bargee. You don’t have to wager anything in these bouts and you get 50 additional XP for beating them both.

Go talk to Margarita once you’ve won. Follow her and wait until she’s led the guard all the way off of the ballista’s platform, then head up and sabotage it by pressing the interaction button. This finishes off the quest and gives you 100 XP.

Indecent Proposal

Now go talk to Roche, who is at the top of the stairway that leads into Loredo’s headquarters. You’re told that Loredo is meeting with Síle, so he won’t see you right now. Follow Roche down the stairway and speak to him at the bottom. Ask him “What now?” and Roche says that all the guards around make him suspicious, so he wants Geralt to sneak around a bit after he’s distracted them.

A merchant then heads over and says that he has an offer for Geralt. Hear him out. The merchant confirms that the guards are watching something that would be very useful to Geralt, a part that’s necessary for making the kayran trap. This is the only way to obtain the part, so you might as well do it. Get ready for a stealth mission. Drinking a Cat potion right now can be very useful, as it lets you effectively see through walls to track the guards’ movements. The only downside to using Cat here is that it’s going to make a couple of cutscenes you trigger look rather disturbing.

Roche gives you an opening by ordering the arbalist guarding the path that leads behind Loredo’s headquarters away. At the big rock just beyond that, take the right fork. A guard patrols the left fork. Make sure you aren’t seen and you can simply slip around him. Round the corner, being careful not to make noise by bumping into any of the buckets lying on the ground. There should be a guard taking a quick piss just beyond the corner, with his back to you. Move up to him quickly and stun him. If you try to just climb the rock while his back is turned, you’re going to get caught.

You can’t get through the locked door, but there’s a series of walls you can climb over just a few paces away. Use that to cross into the inner courtyard of Loredo’s compound. The game auto-saves once you’ve dropped into the inner courtyard and moved against the wall on the oppositeside. A cutscene shows you a glimpse of Síle in a window. It’s time to drop some eaves.

Wait for the guard on the other side of the wall you’re hugging to walk forward from it. Move up behind him and stun him, then head back to the other side of the wall and climb up the platforms beneath the window where you saw Síle earlier. Press yourself against the wall and press the interaction button to listen in on Loredo and Síle’s conversation. Doing this awards you 150 XP.

At this point you can backtrack and go talk to Roche, but that means you don’t get the part for the kayran trap. Instead, snoop around the courtyard a bit more. From the platforms you’re standing on, you should be able to see the walking patterns of the remaining guards. One is over by the entrance to the underground arena used in Fight Club , patrolling a series of low walls behind some piles of lumber. If you’ve done Fight Club already, you’ve already looted everything of interest in that area and can safely ignore it.

The other guard is patrolling an area near the compound’s far wall. This is the guy you need to take out to get the part for the kayran trap. Head over the wall near the guard’s path and wait for him to begin moving to the right. Quickly get behind him and stun him when he stops. The timing for this can be tricky, since this guard tends to turn his side to you. It’s easy for Geralt to accidentally end up in his field of vision. Just keep trying until you manage to get behind him and knock him over.

Leap over the low wall near the door this guard was watching. Inside is an area where a trunk shimmers orange. Loot that trunk to obtain the iron frame, the diagram for the robust witcher’s silver sword, Astrogarus’s armor, and a fibre enhancer. You should also unlock the Man of the Shadows achievement. Once you’ve got these treasures, climb up one of the ladders and to the end of one of the wooden planks. Interact to drop down into the courtyard where you left Roche waiting for you. Now you can casually walk up to him and tell him about what you saw through Loredo’s window. At this point in the quest you get another 150 XP.

Follow Roche up the stairs. When you ask to see Loredo this time, you’re allowed to go in (but Roche is forced to wait outside). Regardless of how you make choices in this conversation, eventually it becomes clear that in addition to wanting you to kill the kayran, Loredo would also like you to work with him to capture or kill Iorveth. Whether you agree to take Loredo’s deal or refuse has no effect on your game, but it does affect your journal text. After the conversation ends, loot Loredo’s room and then exit the compound. This completes the quest and gives you a 300 XP reward.

Hung Over

Wondering where Roche went? Head over to the Blue Stripes headquarters in the town square. You can talk to him there and also find his assistant, Ves, hanging out with a few of her Blue Stripes drinking buddies. Talk to her to initiate this quest. When she asks you if you care to try her in knife-throwing, say yes.

You enter a mini-game where you need to hit targets in the room as the soldiers call them out. Typically, Geralt is asked to hit first the map on the wall, then the cured ham dangling from the ceiling, and then the oar hanging in the corner. If you hit all three targets without missing or spending too long aiming, Geralt wins. Beating Ves lets you gain the Thrower attribute and win the diagram of the well-balanced dagger. Both are very worthwhile to have.

After the incident with Roche and the peasant, agree to have a drink to keep the quest going. A few beers later, Geralt gets a chance to arm-wrestle Fenn and Thirteen. If you beat them both, you get the sword of Creyden. This isn’t an especially good steel sword, but it’s the only chance you have to obtain it.

The next day, after copious amounts of alcohol, Geralt wakes up mostly naked on the beach with all his stuff gone and a crazy tattoo on his neck. A local offers to tell Geralt what happened in return for a bribe. You can either bribe the fisherman or attempt to get him to tell you what happened for free with a special intimidation decision. The fisherman’s maximum bribe is only a pittance, 33 orens, so pay up.

The fisherman tells you to go talk to Madame Margot at the brothel, so head for the Flotsam inn. She won’t tell you what happened to you last night unless you bribe her, and this time, there’s no alternative option. Her max is fortunately also a pittance, a mere 31 orens, so pay up again. After you hear Margot’s story about your ill-advised whore-based watercraft adventure, go talk to Ves at the Blue Stripes headquarters. She gives you a key, which lets you open the locked box by the window. It contains your gear and a deep sense of shame. You gain 50 XP.

Go talk to Triss at the Flotsam inn now. Ask her if she knows how to remove a tattoo. When she gets done laughing at you, she says she can remove the tattoo with green mold, white myrtle petals, and wolf’s aloe leaves. You’re probably swimming in white myrtle petals if you’ve been picking herbs diligently, but you’ll have to buy the wolf’s aloe leaves and green mould from Anezka. Of course, you can also opt to keep the tattoo if you like the way it looks.

A Sword For Monsters

Now sober and (hopefully) awash in orens from loot and winnings, it should be trivial to get Geralt a new silver sword so he can go kill some monsters. You can buy one or forge one, but as soon as some sort of silver sword is in Geralt’s inventory this quest is over. You’ve got four basic options that don’t involve setting foot in the forest or other monster-infested areas.

If you picked up the diagram of the witcher’s silver sword earlier, you can take it to Berthold or one of the other craftsmen to be forged. You’ll have to buy two silver ore and expend one diamond dust, one iron ore, one timber, and 35 orens on this task. That said, the silver sword this diagram produces is the second-weakest in the game.

You can just buy the silver-plated sword from Berthold for 304 orens. Of course, this is more expensive than forging the witcher’s silver sword and results in Geralt having to carry around the worst silver sword in the game.

To buy a better sword, you can go to the Mysterious Merchant and buy the robust witcher’s silver sword for 267 orens. This really isn’t a bad deal, but if you’ve done the guide’s quests in order, you already have the diagram for the witcher’s robust silver sword. That means you can just make one.