Generally, if you want to fight a given group of enemies over and over again in this game, you need to meditate awhile so the group has time to respawn. The harpies outside the Visionary’s hut are a unique exception you can take advantage of if you need to make orens on the quick. This harpy group is designed to spawn again every time you leave the Visionary’s house. If you want to amass a big pile of valuable harpy feathers to sell, then kill the harpies, run into the Visionary’s house, and then run back out. The harpies should be back and ready to be killed all over again. If you don’t encounter harpies for some reason, then just run in and out of the Visionary’s house a few times to trigger the spawn. You can repeat this process until you have all of the harpy drops you want.
There are a few different ways to resolve this one. First, you can either give the Visionary the orens the soldiers gave you or keep them. The main thing this affects is how much money the Visionary asks for if you attempt to bribe him to get through the quest. If you keep the money the soldiers gave you, his max bid on a bribe is 381 orens. If you give him the money, his max bid is 592 orens. In short, it is to your advantage to keep the money.
Once you’re done discussing the money, you ask the Visionary about Sabrina. He says he won’t answer your questions unless you convert to his faith or give his church a “sizable donation.” The sizable donation option is basically just bribing him for the information. You can do this, but it’s not really recommended. Instead, say you’ll join the Visionary’s religion. This unlocks something that is pretty fun.
The Visionary gives you a Visionary’s potion and says you have to pass an initiation ritual. You need to go to a shrine to Sabrina he’s constructed in the woods, drink the potion, and perform a ritual. The ritual should give you a vision, which you should describe to the Visionary upon your return. Loot the Visionary’s hut for the Visionary’s notes (II and III), then set off toward the shrine area, as marked on the guide map. Be ready to encounter some endregas and an arachasae along the way. This arachasae won’t be as difficult to beat as the first one, but it can easily kill you if you’re not ready for it.
Once you reach the shrine, meditate and drink the potion. The vision that unfolds before you is…
…huh.
You awaken after your trippy freakout atop a cliff over the shrine. Here you can pick up the last of the Visionary’s notes (I) to complete your set. Climb down, then make a point of scanning the pool of water to the right of the shrine. You should find a unique steel sword called Arbitrator there that’s probably not as good as what you’re carrying now, but it’s still interesting to have.
Head back to the Visionary’s hut. When you talk to him, you should see a new dialogue option. This lets you tell the Visionary what you saw in your vision. You have some options to lie if you’re too embarrassed to say what you really saw, but don’t bother with them. The Visionary will know you’re lying and the lies won’t advance the quest. Just tell him the truth about the giant chicken and the mushrooms. It turns out this is exactly what he wanted to hear. After that, you can ask him questions about Sabrina. Just keep asking questions until you get the chance to ask him about what happened to the spear. The Visionary gives you an answer that points you back at the Relic Seller in the Kaedweni Camp.
Now it’s time to go back to camp and turn in The Rotfiend Contract . Once you’re at the camp, go speak to Proximo and report that you’ve finished by picking the dialogue option that references rotfiends. As payment for completing the quest you get a dwarven enhancement, a fire rune, 200 orens, and 100 XP. Resolving this also counts toward unlocking the Pest Control achievement. Next, go speak with the Relic Seller at the canteen. You should have a new question you can ask him as part of your dialogue options with him. His response resolves The Path to Vision . You get no XP for resolving The Path to Vision , but now you can advance The Blood Curse a bit more. Instead of getting right to work on that quest, though, we’re going to tie off some loose ends and prepare for the chapter’s endgame.
Conspiracy Theory
Courage Symbolized
First, let's go pay Vinson Traut a visit. Before you go see Madame Carole to offer a square coin, prepare yourself to take on a very tough human opponent and his five lackeys all at once. The area where you fight Traut is basically a single small room, with tables and pillars acting to further restrict movement. The pillars can make using bombs and throwing daggers annoying, but the tables create narrow areas that are ideal for luring enemies onto traps. Generally, you don’t have enough time to set out a ton of snares or biters, so make traps that cause disabling effects and act as crowd control. Furies, conflagrations, Talgar winters, and clawers all have a place in this fight. Furies can be especially effective if you can lure the bulk of Traut’s men onto one all at once.
Once you’re geared up, go speak with Madame Carole. Initially the dialogue is fairly standard, but after you ask for a whore you have a chance to present Madame Carole with “square money.” Take that option to initiate the sequence of events that’s necessary for this quest. After that, ask for Whistling Wendy. None of the other women at the brothel are interested in your square coins.
Go into the brothel tent and speak with Wendy. Say “I want you to open the gates of paradise with your smile.” She opens a trap door that leads into the old tower. Drop into it to find a small room with a single door leading out of it. Take advantage of this room to drink some potions before entering this battle and oil your blade with hanged man’s venom.
Once you open the door, a dialogue sequence begins with Traut. No matter what you say, he attacks you immediately when the sequence is over, so be ready to dodge-roll away from him. If you try to immediately put up Quen or draw your sword, Traut successfully attacks you. He hits like a freight train and on higher difficulties this is a very lethal situation. If you’re going to pursue the trap strategy, then continue dodge-rolling into one of the choke points and quickly lay a trap, then wait for Traut’s men to stumble into it. Keep rolling and laying traps until you’re out of your trap stack or you’ve whittled away Traut’s five helpers.
Mages can also make good use of Yrden in the choke points and Axii as a distraction if the trap method doesn’t work out. You need some way of managing the crowd of enemies, though, as having six guys in a space this small makes it very difficult to put up any traditional offense without getting surrounded. Swordsmen really need Whirl (or even better, Combat Acumen) to do well here, even with Quen and the liberal use of traps. While battling things out with Traut once his men are all defeated, stick to Quen or use Aard heavily to stun him. Riposte can come in handy for swordsmen. Once you isolate Traut, he’s much less dangerous and you can whittle his vitality down given time and patience.
Traut drops some amazing loot once you defeat him. The most useful for your game is Seltkirk’s armor, which you can choose to equip. This is not recommended as you lose the armor later in the game as part of a quest, but it’s nice to have options. Getting Seltkirk’s armor automatically resolves the quest Courage Symbolized . You also get the conspirator’s key you need to get out of the old tower, the otherwise unobtainable superior Kaedweni jackboots, the first-rate Temerian sword, and an anti-Henselt satirical pamphlet called A Hog Named Henselt. Geralt immediately recognizes the writing style as that of none other than his pal Dandelion. If you examine the rest of the old tower for loot, you’re unlikely to find anything. You’re done with this location for this chapter, so head out. The stairwell behind the door you unlock emerges from the old tower near the Mysterious Merchant.
Return to the Kaedweni Camp. Dandelion is hanging out near the camp’s west gate, near the guards who were picking on Mavrick earlier. Talk to him about the pamphlet. Nothing you say here makes a difference, but it’s necessary to advance the quest. Next, go speak with Dethmold to advance things a little bit farther. If you say the right things, you can get a 300-oren reward for defeating Traut and his men. Yeah, Dethmold’s a jerk and nobody likes Henselt, but his pay is as good as anyone’s. To get the reward, you must say exactly the following things in your dialogue with Dethmold:
- I found the conspirators and Traut.
- Any reward on the conspirators’ heads?
- One can never have too much coin…
The Assassins Of Kings
Here’s something else you want to get out of the way before you move on to messing with The Blood Curse . You know that captured Scoia’tael? If you asked to speak with him immediately after you arrived at the Kaedweni Camp, the guards probably refused you. Try again now that you’ve finished so many side quests. Now the guards think you’re an okay guy and agree.
The Scoia’tael also agrees to speak with you about the witchers you’re looking for, though he insists on doing so in Elder. You get to ask a series of questions here, in whichever order you like. Ask them all to finish the sequence and progress this quest. You come back to it later in this chapter.
The Blood Curse
Two conversations are required to advance this quest. The first is with the Relic Seller, who now has a dialogue option that directly references Yahon’s spear. When you ask about it, the Relic Seller refuses to give you any information unless you pay him. This opens up a series of dialogue branches that don’t quite work the way you might expect. All of the special options put in an appearance, so you can use Axii sign hex, persuasion, or intimidation successfully to get the information you want for free. If you agree to simply pay the Relic Seller, though, no money changes hands. This also leads to you effectively getting the information for free. If you try to get the Relic Seller to lower his price using the “too much” dialogue option, this opens a bribery interface that is the only way to actually spend orens on this case. His maximum bribe is usually a randomized number that’s a little over 100 orens, but with so many free options you really shouldn’t use this one. Once you get the Relic Seller to tell you his story, it becomes apparent that the spear you need is currently on the other side of the mist, in Vergen.
Go talk to Dethmold again. This time, you want to pick two of the three options highlighted in orange. The top one is the option that lets you sell Malget’s notes to him, if you want to do that. Remember that doing so prevents you from finishing From a Bygone Era’s activities in Chapter 3 and is not recommended.
Instead, say the second and third options in orange: “I could use some magic dust” and “I need to cross to the other side for the spear.” These two sets of dialogue advance this quest and net you quest items, including Dethmold’s grimoire, the magical powder, an emissary’s flag, and Síle de Tansarville’s protective amulet. You also get a new and very useful piece of equipment, Zireael’s armor, which is probably the best overall armor in the chapter for mages or any other build that makes regular use of signs. Remember that bonuses to sign intensity also strengthen Quen, effectively giving you more defense. Finally, advancing this quest to the point where you can actually cross the cursed battlefield is worth about 2,000 XP.
After the dialogue with Dethmold, exit his tent and return to the lower part of the camp. Along the way you run into an extremely depressed Zoltan, who wants to cross the mist with you and enlist with the dwarven forces at Vergen. One way or another, you end up agreeing to let him go with you. Follow Zoltan to the entrance to the cursed battlefield, but first conclude your business at the Kaedweni Camp. You won’t have access to storage in Vergen, so drop off anything heavy you don’t want to lug around. Anything you want crafted to use on the other side you should make now, since you won’t be able to access craftsmen on that side. Given that, you should also leave any crafting materials with significant weight behind in storage. Basically, take with you only your equipment and enough alchemical ingredients to make potions.
Crossing the cursed battlefield is a simple matter of finding your way from your starting point at the Kaedweni Camp side of the map to the exit that leads to Vergen. As you can see on the map, the correct exit to Vergen isn’t quite where you think it is. If you go directly across the map to what looks like the city’s gates, you reach a dead end. The area you want to be at, if you do this, is just to your left if you are facing the dead end. You should make the crossing with no trouble provided you don’t get lost and you don’t try to fight the wraiths. The wraiths spawn infinitely, and if you take a swing at one, suddenly droves of them are spawning to attack you. Instead, just run past all the wraiths and get to the exit as quickly as possible.
When you emerge on the Vergen side of the map, head forward and take a left at the campfire. You run into Scoia’tael, but instead of an attack a cutscene triggers when you meet them. Move onward past them to the Mahakam Gate into Vergen. Once you arrive, a cutscene begins with Yarpen Zigren. Zoltan enlists and promises to meet you in the tunnels beneath Vergen to hand you Vandergrift’s sword, which would resolve Hatred Symbolized. You get the Vergen key, which you can use to enter the tunnels. You can also head out into the woods to finish Death Symbolized, but first take a moment to get your bearings.