Day of the Assault: Afternoon

Day of the Assault: Afternoon

To The Temple

This quest lets you explore a large portion of the town around the castle. You can loot an astonishing number of crafting materials and loose orens here just by stepping inside abandoned houses and scanning with your medallion. There’s also a fairly lucrative side quest you can trigger. When you’re done with looting the town and ready to trigger the side quest, proceed down the left path at the fork at the bottom of the initial winding path that leads into town. A peasant woman flees from a house, just to be cut down by a crossbow bolt to the back. Head into the house to challenge the soldiers who killed her.

Woe To The Vanquished

After you enter the house, speak to the soldiers who are threatening the remaining peasants. This triggers a conversation. As you can see, the dialogue options are all special decisions, so there is a chance of failure no matter what you pick. Since this is the first time you use any of these options (Persuasion, Axii, or Intimidation), none of them will be leveled up. That means the chance of failure you face with each option is basically random. It can be very difficult to progress the quest from this point without a lot of saving and reloading. In fact, you can try an option, fail, reload, then try the exact same option and succeed due to the strong influence randomization has at this point in the game.

Note that if you use Axii successfully here, you can unlock the Conjuror attribute at a usefully early point in the game. Using any of the special decisions successfully levels up the attribute, which levels up further (up to three levels) as you continue to be successful with it. With the attribute at higher levels, it’s more likely to work on NPCs, so you should try to succeed in this quest with a special decision type you plan to specialize in later in the game. Usually you can level up Persuasion in addition to Intimidation or Axii, but it’s relatively difficult to max out your levels in all three.

If the special decision option you pick succeeds, the soldiers leave peaceably under your influence. From here you can successfully complete the quest. If your special decision option fails, Geralt is forced to look on helplessly as the soldiers mow down the surviving peasants with crossbow bolts. If you attempt to complete the quest after this, the game still considers the quest failed no matter what you do. You can earn a small reward by continuing, but it’s not as worthwhile as the reward you get for completing the quest successfully.

If you successfully save the peasants, you get a dialogue option. If you choose “Help comes at a price,” you take 10 orens from the peasant and gain 30 experience points. If you say “Take care of yourselves,” you gain 50 experience points. In situations like this, experience points are always more valuable than orens. Refusing also opens the door to gaining greater rewards down the line. You can have Geralt play the mercenary if you like, but there’s no story payoff for that. You just end up depriving yourself of easy early-game experience points for no reason.

After the cutscene with the peasant, seek out the commander of the Temerian forces in the camp. He’s close by; just continue circling down the left-hand path fork you took to reach this particular house. Say “Leave them alone” when you get a dialogue option. At the second dialogue option, say “I won’t let you hurt these people.” If you take the other dialogue option at either opportunity, the quest abruptly ends.

Defying the commander initiates a brief one-on-one fight with him. He’s a heavily armored opponent but easy to defeat, by either blocking his strikes or lunging at him with a heavy attack after he whiffs a blow. When you’ve reduced him to around a quarter of his HP, the commander surrenders and agrees to leave. Go to the nearby door where the Temerian soldiers were piling wood and rubbish. Open it to free the peasants trapped inside.

Once you’re inside, a dialogue begins with them. If you say “I need to be paid,” you receive 75 experience points and 20 orens. If you say “Be careful,” you receive 100 experience points. At this point, the game tells you the quest is complete, but there will be a lucrative coda to it later on (if you weren’t selfish, that is).

To The Temple

Resume heading down the left fork in the road you’ve been following. Be sure to pick every herb and gather every bit of loot you can from the accessible houses. You can earn a lot of orens and find some very valuable drops if you get lucky on the loot spawns, while the herbs come in handy in a later chapter. As you loot your way down the path, you eventually come to a Temerian soldier fighting off a handful of La Valette soldiers. Help defeat the La Valette soldiers and the Temerian comments that he thought the area was secured.

Go down a little bit farther and suddenly a narrow alley is blocked by a cart. Finish looting the left fork, then circle back around to begin exploring and looting the right fork of town. Toward the end of the right fork, you come to a dead soldier propped up in a short passage. The end of the passage is boarded up, but you can destroy the obstacle with Aard. Pass through to find a new area of town.

Three La Valette soldiers attack you immediately after you emerge from the passage. They’re lightly armored, so defeating them should be trivial. Once they’re down, loot the area of herbs and items. Most of the doors are locked and you won’t be able to open them. When you’re through looting this area, walk toward the well that lights up whenever you scan with your medallion. To progress the main plot, climb down into the well. Do not climb down the well before your business in this area is completely finished, because you can never return to it.

Once down in the dungeons, you have your first battles with drowners. These enemies aren’t especially difficult and can easily be dispatched without using any potions or sword buffs. If you duck into a room just to the right of where you enter, you can step into a circle of life. When you run across a stone wall that glows orange when scanned, use Aard on it to blast it apart. In the rubble, you find a Temerian sword that’s much better than the long sword Geralt is probably using now.

Proceed down the only real path open to you through the sewers. Eventually you come to a narrow passage blocked in by boards. Use Aard to blast a way clear. Be ready to be ambushed by a drowner on the other side. Eventually you reach a room full of torches you can light if you wish. Check all the other iron grates in this area; you can open the one that leads out of this area and toward the quest marker. Climb up the ladder at the end of this area to emerge into the outer temple. Note that you can’t come back to this area once you leave.

Once you climb up the ladder, there is a brief cutscene where Geralt spots some Scoia’tael on the distant river bank. You can’t do anything about them now, so instead start climbing up the stairs of the tower where you’ve emerged. When you pass into the next room, three La Valette soldiers ambush you in a very confined space. Even worse, one of them is in full plate. You can meditate and make sure you have potion buffs up before you enter here, or just make sure you’ve got Quen activated. As long as the ambush doesn’t catch you flat-footed, your survival chances are good. After you win the battle, loot the area as you work your way toward a crumbling, vine-covered wall. Climb up the vines to emerge into the monastery’s courtyard.

Once in the courtyard, you need to clear out a trio of La Valette soldiers, one carrying a shield. Be careful not to let them surround you on the winding path that leads up from the area entrance, as it can be hard to escape from them here. Try to get past them and into the wide open area at the top of the path. With room to move, you can easily take these three out with little more than Quen or Yrden. Once they’re defeated, scour the area for herbs. Before you enter the monastery, meditate, level up, craft some bombs if you need them, and drink some potions. You’re about to enter a pair of back-to-back fights that can be dangerous. If you apply potion buffs now, they should last through both battles.

Defeat the two soldiers waiting inside the small room. Your buffs should help you do this quickly, despite the confined area. Apply hanged man’s venom to your sword, then pass through the next area. Here you find a group of La Valette soldiers waiting for you. This encounter serves as the final battle of this part of the Prologue and can be very dangerous. The courtyard is long and narrow, making it easy for the soldiers to gang up on you. Two of them are lightly armored and should be taken out first. After that, you have to deal with a shield-bearing soldier who tends to attack in tandem with the toughest of the soldiers, a knight in full plate and a huge horned helmet.

Use traps and bombs for crowd control. Keep Quen up to make sure you don’t take too much damage early on, when the fight is at its most dangerous. Once you’ve whittled the soldiers down to the one in the horned helmet, you can duel him using blocks and counterattacks. When you take out the knight in the horned helmet, he drops the gate guard’s key. Snag that, then head back into the monastery. You can use the key to open the iron gate. Loot the room beyond, then turn the wheel to lift the portcullis out in the courtyard. Return to the courtyard to greet Foltest and finish the quest.