Points of Interest

Camp Followers’ Encampment

DANDELION AND ZOLTAN

Your bard pal Dandelion and your dwarf buddy Zoltan hang out at the Camp Followers’ Encampment for the first half or so of the chapter. Sometimes Zoltan wanders over to the Blue Stripes camp, too. Toward the end of Chapter 2, they both move on. In the meantime, you can speak with Dandelion to have some interesting optional discussions about what’s going on in the game’s plot and a hint or two about how to trigger a romantic scene with Ves. You can’t speak much to Zoltan until the midpoint of the chapter, when he participates in The Blood Curse and a few other associated quests.

THE BROTHEL

The camp followers are led by a woman named Madame Carole. Speak with her if you’d like to spend some orens on one of her girls. All the usual caveats to spending orens on whores in this game apply here: The whores are expensive and offer you no in-game benefit for the money you’ve lost. You can also play dice with Madame Carole as part of this chapter’s dice poker quest and visit the brothel to progress one of the chapter’s main quests.

Merchants

Raymond

To access storage in this chapter, you must visit this sad-eyed dwarf. You can also have an amusing conversation with him about religion, though this is completely optional. Raymond does sell goods, but they’re all trash. You mainly visit Raymond when you’re out adventuring and need to quickly sell off some stuff that’s not worth keeping or storing. This makes his location outside the Kaedweni Camp’s walls fairly convenient later on in the chapter.

It is possible to pick up the Haggling attribute from Raymond if you missed it in Chapter 1. To get Haggling from him, pick the conversation choices that relate to lowering his prices, and be sure to quote the Good Book at him. If you do this correctly, then you have Haggling after the conversation ends. It is recommended to pick it up in Chapter 1, but if for some reason you didn’t then go ahead and get it here. You can’t obtain rune diagrams in this version of Chapter 2 and may end up having to purchase any runes you want for socketing your swords. Getting Haggling knocks down the prices of runes substantially.

Sambor

Sambor is the chapter’s bookseller and speaks only in proverbs due to a bet. He sells all of the monster books you might want for this chapter and also sells The Dun Banner, a book that can be useful for resolving a particular quest. Aside from his books, he doesn’t sell a whole lot that’s interesting—mostly basic diagrams, herbs, and an assortment of miscellany. He’s also this chapter’s hairstylist.

Mysterious Merchant

At the rear of the encampment, leaning up against the old tower, you can find the Mysterious Merchant. In this chapter, he sells some fairly good (but not optimal) armor and swords, as well as some nicely discounted basic diagrams. The most important thing he carries this chapter, though, is runes. As you may notice from scanning the other shop lists, none of the other merchants in this chapter sell basic runes or rune-making diagrams. If you want to fully slot your swords with good runes, you are probably going to spend quite a bit of money on the Mysterious Merchant's inventory.

CONSPIRACY THEORY

After you’ve gotten your bearings in the Kaedweni Camp, go back and have that talk Dethmold requested from you earlier. This conversation advances several quests, but for your purposes right now, it’s mainly helpful because it advances this main quest, Conspiracy Theory . Make sure you say “What’s with the coins?” to Dethmold before you finish the conversation. Everything else relates to a different quest line. If you want a fuller understanding of the story, be sure to ask Dethmold all of the optional questions. Your responses don’t change anything.

Once you advance Conspiracy Theory , you can question many of the soldiers in the camp. You can speak to soldiers about the elements of this quest only once each. Most of these conversations are fairly pointless (if sometimes entertaining) and won’t give you anything useful, but you can use this ability to complete some side quests that actually do give you insight into the origins and purposes of the square coins. We’re going to do one right away.

IN CERVISIA VERITAS

You have probably noticed the three drunks staggering around the camp, shouting their pal Odrin’s name over and over again. While their concern is touching, listening to a screaming drunk gets old pretty quick. For your first good deed in the Kaedweni Camp, you’re going to find their pal for them, so they can stop worrying about him and you can enjoy some peace and quiet while you go about your business.

First, go talk to each of the three drunks. You get to ask each of them one question. Which one you ask doesn’t really matter, but it’s most useful if you directly ask about Odrin and what happened to him. One way or another, you should find out that he staggered off drunk last night and nobody knows where he is, which is an inconvenience since they want to get back to drinking. So, go find Odrin. You get no clues to his location, so you end up having to stumble over him. His location is marked on your map. He’s one of only two points of interest you can access through the camp’s west exit. It makes sense that a drunk wouldn’t get far.

After you find Odrin, help him up and then try to get him back into camp. There are two ways to get him past the guard successfully. You can bribe the guard at least 30 orens or simply say “He’s my prisoner. I need to question him.” The latter is completely free, which makes it a bit preferable. If you say the second dialogue option—“He’s an important witness. He has to get in”—then you put yourself in a position of either having to bribe the guard or fail the quest. If you say “Report it wherever you need to,” Odrin gets offended with you and stomps off in a huff, forcing you to fail the quest. Saying “How much to get him in?” lets you know exactly how much the guard accepts as a bribe, though.

Once Odrin is inside the camp, you need to reunite him with his friends. Odrin can’t walk on his own, so pick him up and slowly walk him toward his drunk friends stumbling around the center of camp. As you pass them, they recognize Odrin and fall in behind you, singing bawdy songs loudly. Shortly after you get all three, Odrin is probably going to start screaming about bats and fall from your grip. Just pick him back up and continue on from there. You want to get Odrin and his friends into the canteen.

Inside the canteen, a dialogue sequence begins. During this dialogue sequence, it is possible to fail the quest if you say the wrong thing. Absolutely do not say “I want to help you; or “Something’s awry” if they come up in conversation. This causes Odrin’s friends to believe you to be dangerous, so they won’t drink with you.

If you say anything else, Odrin unexpectedly sobers up a little and gives you a lot of information about the conspirators and the square coins they use. He even gives Geralt a square coin one of the conspirators passed to him. Odrin also tells Geralt that he should give the coin to Whistling Wendy at Madame Carole’s and ask her to open the gates to paradise if he wants to know more about the conspiracy. After that, the quest ends. You get no XP reward for resolving the quest, but you do get a pleasant buzz.

You can go straight to Madame Carole’s at this point, but hold off for now. With Odrin’s loud friends calmed down, now is a good time to tackle some other side quests. You may also want to go back and re-examine the area where you found Odrin.

The Camp Cave

You may recall seeing what looked like the entrance to a cave behind Odrin. That’s exactly what it is, and it’s a cave you can explore. Go back to that area and drop down to enter the cave. The cave is infested with rotfiends, so if necessary bring some necrophage oil with you so you can tear through them quickly. They shouldn’t be too dangerous if your equipment is the optimal set from the end of Chapter 1.

If you head to the right from the entrance, you can explore passages that lead to two major finds. One is a dead body carrying amazing loot: a steel plate enhancement, a set of Kaedweni leather armor, and a stack of superb well-balanced silver daggers. There’s also a lot of random loot and orens stuffed into the chests and bags you find at the cave’s dead ends.

The other major find is a massive monster called a bullvore. It can probably kill you in just a handful of hits, so prepare potions before you battle it. Fighting the bullvore isn’t tricky—you can basically keep Quen up and whale away at it with strong attacks when it’s not blocking. If you’ve got leveled-up Quen you can take it head on, while other builds may want to get behind it or try to find ways to stun it. Try not to run from it a lot, or it uses a potent poison spray attack. If you can defeat the bullvore, there’s a chance its drops will include a bullvore trophy, which is amazingly powerful at this point in the game.

After looting the tunnel alcoves near the bullvore’s territory, go back to the cave’s entrance and then begin exploring to the left. You should find a great deal of random treasure, weapons racks, and rotfiends. Scan diligently with your medallion to eventually discover a circle of strength. Pause here to prepare for a battle. Apply potions that buff your build’s basic attack and defense, assign Quen or Aard to your sign slot, and perhaps craft some bombs of an appropriate type. You’re about to fight a golem.

The golem is a big slow creature, similar to a bullvore. It’s a bit tougher, which is why most Geralt builds at this point in the game are going to want to have full potion buffs and maybe an oiled blade at their disposal when fighting it. You’re in very tight quarters, so you can’t do too much with traps. If you have maxed-out Quen, you can just wade into it with blows. Otherwise, try to dodge-roll behind it or interrupt it with your own sword blows while attacking. Aard can be useful here to stun it and give you a chance to get some blows in. After you defeat the golem, there’s a chance that it drops an elemental trophy, which is extremely useful to any build that uses signs regularly. Defeating this golem counts toward obtaining the David character attribute.

Loot the area the golem was protecting to find some truly amazing loot drops. The best of them is the armor of Ban Ard, which swordsman and alchemist builds may want to begin using right away. It’s stat-wise roughly the second-best armor in this chapter, but if you slot it out now then it can easily carry you into Chapter 3. The other potent armor you can acquire later in the chapter is only really significantly better for mage builds, and waiting for it forces you to make do with your Chapter 1 armor for quite a bit longer. Besides the armor, you can also find a stack of rare throwing daggers called poisoned harpy claws.

After you defeat the golem, scour the cave for the last treasures. Go all the way to the rear exits of the cave to make sure you find the corpse carrying a second stack of poisoned harpy claws. When you’re done, head back to the Kaedweni Camp. The cave’s rear exit puts you tantalizingly close to the Nilfgaardian Camp, but if you try to go there the entrance is blocked off. You’ll just have to content yourself with your massive haul of treasure and monster drops.