Loot the other bodies in Hennessy’s room of the catacombs, then head back to town. You should be entirely done with this location now, with no need to return to it. For the rest of this sequence, you’ll be resolving With Flickering Heart . First, go find Dandelion at the Cauldron and show him the poetry sketchbook by saying “I found some of your scribblings.” Eventually, you cajole Dandelion into meeting you at the burned village after midnight. Head out through the Mahakam Gate and, if necessary, meditate until the right time.
When you walk toward Dandelion, you trigger a cutscene that is then followed by the player taking control of Dandelion for a while. To successfully lure out the Succubus, you need to correctly sing the third set of lyrics Dandelion wrote in his poetry sketchbook, which you should read before starting this part of the quest. Each of these decisions is timed, too, so you must make the correct decision quickly. The correct responses to make at each of the timed decision points are written here, to help jog your memory.
Correct lyrics
- If our bodies...
- My heart would inquire…
- Or treat it as a morsel…
There is no penalty for singing the lyrics incorrectly, it just means that you failed to lure out the Succubus and have to try again. Once the Succubus responds to Dandelion in a cutscene, you have to make a decision as Dandelion. You can have him enter the Succubus’s lair alone or have him report back to Geralt once the way is open.
If you choose to send Dandelion into the Succubus’s lair, Geralt immediately curses Dandelion’s foolishness and goes in after him. Speak to the Succubus once you’re in her lair. At any branch in the dialogue, you can initiate a battle with her by saying “You’re lying, I won’t let you murder anyone else.”
The Succubus is not a strong combatant and most Geralt builds at this point in the game should have no trouble overwhelming her, though she does have a lot of vitality. She fights like a mage, so throwing daggers come in handy here to interrupt her spells. Once you defeat her, she drops the Succubus’ wand, an additional weapon that you otherwise can’t obtain, and somerandom loot that can be quite valuable. If you’ve killed the Succubus, then you need to go see Ele’yas back in town to complete the quest. He gives you the steel sword Angivare, which is otherwise unobtainable, and 100 orens. You also get 200 XP.
If you say “Like the others?” then the Succubus attempts to justify her actions. Say “Who’s the murderer?” to find out that the Succubus isn’t killing anyone, but rather one of her mad lovers is doing it instead. If you ask after the murderer’s identity, the Succubus claims it’s Ele’yas. At the final branch of the conversation, you can say “Why should I help you?” and the Succubus explains that she doesn’t want people to think she’s a murderer and also offers a reward. At this point, you can say “I’ll talk to Ele’yas” if you want to help the Succubus instead of killing her.
If you have Dandelion send Geralt in alone, then the entire conversation that leads up to “Who’s the murderer?” happens automatically. From that point on you can choose to fight the Succubus at any point by saying “You’re lying” or select “I’ll talk to Ele’yas” at the dialogue’s final branch if you want to side with the Succubus.
If you say you’ll speak to Ele’yas, then return to the Cauldron. You can accuse Ele’yas of lying to you or say that you’ll return to the Succubus. If you accuse him of lying, Ele’yas claims that he hasn’t killed anyone. At this point, you can choose to believe him or not believe him. What you say doesn’t actually matter; as soon as you talk to Ele’yas at all it sets up an alternative method of finishing the quest.
Go talk to Iorveth in the Vergen Outskirts. Say “Ele’yas is a murderer.” Iorveth asks for proof. This is where the metal fragment you extracted with the surgical tools earlier becomes important. Without the metal fragment, there’s no way to resolve the quest without killing the Succubus. If you have the metal fragment, you can offer it to Iorveth. He goes off to see Ele’yas, then quickly returns saying that Ele’yas has fled town. Return to the burned village.
When you step into the burned village, you find Ele’yas lying in wait for you. He’s not an especially tough opponent, since he uses the basic Scoia’tael fighting style, but he does have a lot of vitality to whittle down. Like most elves, he is highly flammable, so mages and alchemists can make good use of incineraction here. Once Ele’yas is defeated, go see the Succubus. She tells you to disrobe and relax, which means that you’ve got a chance to get Geralt some action. You can turn her down, but you don’t gain anything from doing so.
Either way, after the Succubus is through with you, she says she left some gifts for you nearby. Loot a chest near the best to get Thyssen’s armor, which is otherwise unobtainable, along with a handful of orens and a Rook potion. You also gain 200 XP and get to stagger around drunk on monster sex for a while if you slept with her. While Thyssen’s armor is probably a little better than what you’re wearing now and can definitely see you through the chapter, it’s not as good as the armor of Loc Muinne you can obtain later—unless you’re playing an alchemist build. For an alchemist Geralt, the +50 percent bomb damage multiplier can be ridiculously potent, especially in the chapter’s climactic sequences.
So which way of resolving this quest is better? Mechanically, they’re about equal, unless you’re playing an alchemist build. Both outcomes offer a unique but not incredibly useful item, a handful of orens, and what is otherwise some very minor loot. Simply killing the Succubus is much faster, but if you don’t kill her then you get to trigger one of the game’s handful of love scenes. Of course, siding with the Succubus is inevitably the more heroic of the two options, since you can confirm that Ele’yas really is the murderer and the Succubus really is innocent.
where is triss merigold?
Now is a good time to try to figure out what happened to Triss. First, head to Philippa Eilhart’s house. Philippa says she could find Triss if she had one of her possessions. Geralt doesn’t have anything, but Philippa suggests Geralt speak with a local drunkard who claims he saw a woman fall from the sky. Head to the Cauldron and speak with Mantas Birut, who is going to be standing near the innkeeper’s bar just to the left of the entrance. Mantas offers to tell you his story in exchange for some mead. If you opt to buy him the mead, it opens up the interface you use for haggling. The maximum you can spend is randomly determined, but usually a very small amount of orens. Just spend the maximum bid to make sure you get Mantas talking.
If you want to spend fewer orens on mead, try to get the innkeeper to tell the story by saying “Not sure if it’s worth it.” He says he will if you pay for Mantas’s wine. The price is randomly determined, but usually at least a little lower than the price of Mantas’s mead. You get the information you need either way. The important thing is finding out that Triss and Letho dropped into the gullies southwest of Vergen. Exit through the Mahakam Gate and take a left at the group of Scoia’tael near the bonfire, or use the shortcut through the Tunnel of the Founders and go straight past the statue at the bottom of the path.
You come to a troll stirring a cauldron of soup. You can interrogate the troll, who is pretty docile initially. He tells you that he found Triss and had her bandana, but his wife got jealous and ran off with it. The troll happily tells you where his wife went but asks you to promise not to kill her. At this point, you can choose to resolve the quest in a kindly way or a merciless way. Doing things in a kindly fashion counts toward the Friend of Trolls achievement if you also spared the troll in Chapter 1. Doing things the merciless way counts toward the Trollslayer achievement.
If you want to do things the kindly way, just promise not to kill his wife. If you want to do things the merciless way, say “We’ll see about that.” The troll gets hostile and you get another dialogue sequence. If you say “I don’t like to be threatened” at the branch after that, the troll tries to kill you. Fighting the troll isn’t very difficult, as he’s extremely slow. If you do kill him, be sure to loot the body. You may get the potent troll trophy.
Head into the gullies, following the quest marker. This area can be confusing, so don’t hesitate to consult both the ingame mini-map and the guide’s area map. You’ll fight a lot of harpies and maybe some nekkers along the way. At the top of winding path, you should meet Adam Pangratt and a group of mercenaries with him, fighting the she-troll. If you promised the troll to bring his wife back alive, say “She needs to live.” This pisses off Pangratt, who seems pretty determined to kill the she-troll. Eventually, if you want to save her, you’re forced to fight Pangratt. He gives up once you reduce his vitality to zero or defeat all of his allies. Pangratt is immune to Combat Acumen’s adrenaline ability and cannot be instant killed. After you’ve defeated Pangratt and/or his men, he surrenders and offers to give you some information about who hired him. Geralt then has a conversation with the mercenaries that confirms they’re looking for Letho. Tell them to surrender to Saskia, which they agree to since they think you’re an okay guy. Then you have cutscenes with the trolls. These are kind of useful in that they teleport you back down the mountain to the troll’s lair, which means a shorter trip back to town. Say whatever you wish to the she-troll—she goes back to her husband either way.
If you do things this way, then you can go find Adam Pangratt later in the game in Vergen’s prison. You can talk to him to find out some extra information about who ordered him to kill Letho and Triss. If you’ve put off doing Death Symbolized , then you can also get some extra information about the Dun Banner from Pangratt.
If you’re being merciless, then agree to help Pangratt at the first dialogue branch with him. She is even easier to beat than her husband, thanks to the help of Pangratt’s mercenaries. Be sure to loot her body to get Triss’s bandana. Note that if you agreed not to kill the she-troll and do so anyway, the troll attacks you when you pass back through his territory.
So is it better to kill the trolls or leave them be? Mechanically, saving the trolls is much more lucrative, even though this is the last chance in the game you have to kill trolls for a troll trophy and the troll-killing achievement. By saving the trolls you get the troll horn and a vran armor enhancement. You can use the vran armor enhancement as a component for making some pretty powerful equipment in Chapter 3. You also obtain the troll horn, which makes the two trolls appear later in the game during the Vergen Besieged quest to help fight Henselt’s army. While this doesn’t really make Vergen Besieged any easier for you, it triggers some extra dialogue and cutscenes.
Whether the trolls are alive or dead, this quest doesn’t actually resolve until you take the bandana back to Philippa and initiate a conversation with her. Say “I have Triss’s bandana” to initiate the dialogue cutscene that resolves the quest. At the end of the cutscene that ends Where Is Triss Merigold?, you get a visit from a messenger saying that the peasants believe Prince Stennis poisoned Saskia and are clamoring for his blood. This automatically triggers the Royal Blood quest and awards you 1,500 XP for completing this quest.
royal blood
In this quest, Geralt plays detective and tries to uncover what really happened with Saskia’s poisoning. Begin it by heading toward the Castle of Three Fathers, where a mob has gathered. Head toward the quest marker to initiate some cutscenes. After the cutscenes, Geralt needs to decide how to spend the time he has investigating. He can speak to two parties from a master list of six before cutscenes trigger that force him to render judgment. Here’s the master list of all six parties you can speak with.
- The nobles outside Stennis's room
- The peasants
- A fellow leaning against the wall
- Zoltan and Dandelion
- The three dwarves
- Prince Stennis himself, but only if you can successfully use Axii on his guards
This may not seem intuitive, but the two most important parties to speak with are the three dwarves and the peasants. Everyone else can be kind of interesting, but they don't actually give you any worthwhile rewards or pertinent information about the murder. By speaking to the peasants and the three dwarves, you spawn two lucrative side quests that you can pursue to investigate the poisoning. Finishing them both can be very tricky. Go trigger these side quests, then make absolutely sure you don't return to the Castle of Three Fathers.
suspect: thorak
Go speak to the trio of dwarves standing in front of Iorveth in the castle. Among them is a founder, Ogden, who says he’s made all of the tableware used in the council hall. While most of the tableware was decades old, Saskia was drinking from a new goblet. Ask the founder about it. This flags up the possibility of someone having made a duplicate goblet that was used in the poisoning. The founder says that Thorak might have tried it. Finish the conversation and go investigate Thorak. Ask him if he made Saskia’s goblet. If Thorak is still alive, as he should be in your game, he says it was a wretched piece of work and he’d never turn out something like that. If you investigate Thorak’s house, you find a suspicious locked chest that could contain something interesting. Leave this quest alone for now.
the walls have ears
Go speak to the peasants gathered in the Castle of Three Fathers. They all but order Geralt to go find the servant who gave the poisoned wine to Saskia. Question them and you eventually find out the servant is under Scoia’tael guard at the Human Enclave. Go there and speak to one Willy Oblate. You have to use Axii or intimidation to get him to talk, but if he does then he gives up information that Priest Olcan (who’s dead now) told Stennis that Saskia was really a monster. Willy also heard Stennis and the priest saying suspicious things outside Saskia’s quarters. Since the priest is dead, you should go speak with Cecil Burdon. Ask him where Olcan was quartered. Once he marks your map, go search Olcan’s room. It’s at the Human Enclave next to the Mahakam Gate. You won’t find anything in the pile of books on the floor, but search the desk to find Olcan’s notes. So Olcan clearly commissioned a duplicate goblet, but you’re not yet sure where it came from.
If you’ve followed the walkthrough’s instructions exactly, you should now have both of the Royal Blood side quests triggered and at a point where tracking them in your journal says “Wait for events to unfold.” This means you can now…completely ignore the Royal Blood quest. Yes, really. You’re going to go do the last major quest line remaining in the chapter, which is going to give you the last piece of evidence you need to confirm whether or not Stennis is guilty of anything and where the duplicate goblet came from. Royal Blood won’t resolve until you speak to a third potential set of witnesses, so you should have no trouble moving on to do other things for a while.
hunting magic
First, initiate this quest by going to Philippa Eilhart’s house and asking her about a magic artifact. She tells you to go talk to Cecil Burdon about potential candidates, so go do that. Say “Saskia needs medicine” to trigger the dialogue you need. He gives you Cecil’s map, which marks the location of a place that magicians are known to favor. After that, exit Vergen through the Old Gate and head north. Remember that area where you always get jumped by harpies? It should be around the base of an area on your mini-map that’s shaped like a hook. Go there, slay any harpies in the area, and then climb to the top of the hook-shaped ridge.
At the end of the ridge, you get the prompt to leap across onto a small butte. Once there, you are probably going to be attacked by more harpies. Slay them, loot the bodies, then leap across to the central plateau marked on Cecil’s map (and in the guide). Once on the plateau, expect to be attacked by about a half dozen harpies led by a celaeno harpy. Swordsman builds should have little trouble handling this many harpies through brute force. Mages want to use Igni and Axii, while alchemists equipped with Thyssen’s armor can do devastating damage with dancing stars and furies. After you’ve slain the harpies, loot the bodies and then climb up to where the harpies kept their nest. By searching it, you should find a magic crystal. Take the item back to Philippa and say “I have a magic crystal.”
Next, go talk to Cecil Burdon again. You want to get him to open a gate in the Old Quarry. Once the gate is open, you can progress this quest and clean out a bunch of side quests all in one shot. Go to Cecil and say “I need to reach the harpy lair.” By the end of the cutscene, Cecil agrees, but you have to bully him a little bit first. Next, go pick up a couple of side quests from the notice board outside the Cauldron (if you haven’t already gotten them all).
the harpy contract
the queen harpy contract
The Old Quarry is teeming with harpies and you can earn some extra orens by destroying their nests and slaying their queen, in addition to picking up the dream crystal you need to fulfill Hunting Magic . To destroy the harpy nests, you need to go manufacture some harpy traps. You can buy the diagram of the harpy trap from Haggard, Earso, or Thorak or acquire it by reading the book Harpies: Daughters of the Gale . You need to make exactly seven of them, no more and no less. Set out for the Old Quarry. Use the Tunnel of the Founders shortcut to get there quickly if you can. Before you enter the quarry itself, take a right to head into the cabin nearby.
a sackful of fluff
The cabin belongs to a fellow named Elthon, who offers Geralt work as he passes by. He says he knows a collector in Vengerberg who pays well for harpy feathers. He begins by asking you to bring him 12 if you agree to the quest (which you should). You may already have 12 harpy feathers on hand. Elthon pays three orens per feather for the first 12, which is considerably below the usual nine orens you’d get for selling harpy feathers. Sell them anyway, since what you’re really trying to get out of this quest is a unique item.
After you give him 12, he asks for 60 more. At this point, you have a chance to haggle with Elthon to raise the price. Take the toughest stance you can, so you can get Elthon to give you 11 orens per feather. That’s above market value and makes this quest a bit more worth your while in terms of raising cash. If you don’t already have the feathers on hand, you are going to acquire them shortly. If you humor Elthon’s next request by saying “Let me hear it,” you get asked to bring by 8 more. Elthon gives you 100 orens for the last batch of feathers. Go do something else for a while—maybe blow up some harpy nests.
Come back after some time has passed if you want to see why Elthon really wanted all of those feathers. After you pick your jaw up off the floor, engage in some small talk with Elthon. After the conversation finishes, A Sackful of Fluff resolves. You don’t get any XP for finishing this quest, but you do get Elthon’s trophy. While Elthon’s trophy is not mechanically super-good, you can wear it during major story cutscenes to transform The Witcher 2 into a delightful surrealist comedy.
the harpy contract
Once you enter the Old Quarry, you need to slowly work your way down to the quarry’s bottom, where the gate into the harpy lair is located. You will be attacked four times by large groups of harpies, usually right as you pass by a nest. It is possible, though rare, for all of the harpies in the quarry to spawn simultaneously and move to attack you at once. This creates serious problems for fulfilling The Harpy Contract . If this happens to you, retreat from the Old Quarry to some safe area and meditate for about a day. When you return, see if the harpy spawns work normally (i.e., harpies only attack you as you near a nest). You need the four harpy groups to come at you one at a time in order to easily complete The Harpy Contract .
To complete this quest, you need to destroy the four nests in the area. The nests are extremely difficult to see from the ground, and even when you can see them, you can’t reach them. You can only destroy a nest by getting a harpy to pick up and carry a harpy trap back into it. The easiest way to track the proximate location of the harpy nests is to move forward slowly down the quarry’s slope and stop when a group of harpies starts to attack you.
When harpies first approach you, quickly set down a harpy trap and back away. Note that you should only do this when a standard harpy approaches you, not a celaeno or an erynia, as they don’t have the AI to pick up a trap. If you accidentally misplace a harpy trap, you can pull it up and add it back to your stack, much like a snare. A normal harpy is immediately distracted by the harpy trap and picks it up, taking it back to the nest. You should hear an explosion a few moments later, signifying that the nest was destroyed. If you track The Harpy Contract quest, it will display exactly how many nests you’ve destroyed. This is the best way to keep track of when you’ve destroyed a nest; the moment a blast goes off the counter goes up. After you destroy a nest, stay in the area and defeat the waves of harpies as they attack you. Once there are no more harpies coming after you, loot the bodies, return to give feathers to Elthon if you’re doing A Sackful of Fluff , and then head farther down into the spiraling quarry pit.
Battling the harpies should be trivial for most Geralt builds, save when they throng around you in groups of five or six. Then you’re getting attacked so often that even a maxed-out Quen won’t last long. When battling large groups, mages can use any number of signs but particularly Axii or leveled-up Igni to keep the harpies from getting overwhelming. Alchemists should focus on trying to set the harpies on fire with dancing stars, laying fury traps, and keeping defensive potion buffs up. Swordsmen need to bull through using brute force, though Whirl and Combat Acumen skills can be extremely useful here.
After you’ve bombed all four harpy nests and reached the bottom of the quarry, look around to find a corpse carrying some Temerian jackboots and other loot. There’s also a circle of power you can activate. If you follow the ridge above the door, you find a locked chest. This is part of the Baltimore’s Nightmare quest line, so you’ll return to it later. The chest is locked, so you can’t do anything with it now. Proceed through the now-unlocked gate into the harpy lair. While in the harpy lair, you are occasionally attacked at certain set points by groups of celaeno harpies. You tend to fight in very close quarters in the lair, so be careful during the battle.
Explore the harpy lair, setting harpy traps whenever you enter a new area where ordinary harpies are spawning. That always indicates one of the nests is nearby. You can pick up the entirely decent Kaedweni leather armor off of a corpse you pass by. After you’ve destroyed the seventh harpy nest you get the Birdman character attribute, which is going to come in handy in the battle against the queen harpy. Note also that destroying all of the nests counts toward the Pest Control achievement.
When you reach a pale blue dream crystal stuck into a wall, be sure to take it. A group of celaeno harpies attacks you, but by now you should’ve worked out a method to dispatch them quickly. Just beyond is the area of branching pathways at the rear of the lair. Begin circling around counterclockwise. At the end of each of the dead-end branches of the path is a dream crystal you should pick up. Fight off the celaeno harpies that patrol this area and pick up any extra loot you find. None of it is especially good, but there’s no point in leaving anything behind. If you circle the area counterclockwise, then you come to the area that was initially on Geralt’s left last. As you approach it, you trigger a cutscene.
the assassins of kings
This cutscene is the main thing that advances The Assassins of Kings on this branch of Chapter 2. You see a harpy stick one of the dream crystals into a projector, which lets you see that the dream is Letho’s. This reveals that Letho has an accomplice in his kingslaying and that he’s in the area, in addition to revealing the dream projector and how it works. You can take Letho’s pink dream crystal from the projector, but doing so triggers a battle that can be very difficult. Make some preparations first.
the queen harpy contract
Removing the crystal from the projector summons the queen harpy and her absurdly large court of celaeno harpy followers, around eight in all. Prepare for this battle by first preparing potions appropriate to your build and combat strategies. Next, scatter traps around the room around the projector. Conflagrations and furies work particularly well here, but you can also do quite a bit of damage with plain old snares. Finally, brew up some dancing stars to use as emergency crowd control measures. If you’re playing an alchemist Geralt with a lot of bomb damage bonuses, make a ton of these and they can see you through the battle. Just don’t let the harpies gang up on you and you should be fine. After you kill the harpy queen, you can loot her body to receive the silver sword Harpy. It probably isn’t as good as what you’re using already, but it’s not bad.
Approach the projector and slot the dreams in, one by one, to figure out which one is the most powerful. The silver crystal turns out to be Baltimore’s final dream, which lets you pursue the side quest Baltimore’s Nightmare . The green crystal turns out to be a bawdy peasant dream about Saskia, which is kind of funny but not too useful. The red crystal is the dream of the dragon who attacked you at La Valette Castle, which probably contains a lot of power. The blue crystal is Iorveth dreaming about good food in elvish, which is sad but not entirely surprising.
Discovering the dragon’s dream completes Hunting Magic and awards you 1,000 XP. Now that the harpy hunt is over, head back to town to wrap up a few of these quest lines and begin Baltimore’s Nightmare . If you need to give Elthon feathers to complete a A Sackful of Fluff , you should be able to do so on the way back. First speak to Cecil Burdon and tell him you destroyed the harpy nests. This is worth 100 XP, 200 orens, a dwarven enhancement, and a fire rune. This is worth 100 XP, 200 orens, and a fire rune. Next, tell Cecil you killed the harpy queen, for an additional 50 orens. These conversations should resolve The Harpy Contract and The Queen Harpy Contract . Now, it’s time to do Baltimore’s Nightmare .
baltimore’s nightmare
Begin by investigating Baltimore’s old house, which is conveniently right next door to Cecil’s. This triggers a cutscene and updates the quest, so that your next task is to discuss Baltimore with Thorak and his pals working the anvil nearby. After the conversation, you can enter Baltimore’s house. Loot the room, then use Aard to knock over the false wall toward the rear of the building. Behind the false wall is a small silver chest tucked into the wall. This gives you Baltimore’s directions and Baltimore’s key. The directions are a riddle meant to lead you somewhere. For now, take Baltimore’s key back to the Old Quarry so you can open the chest hidden there.
As you exit Baltimore’s house, Thorak stops you and asks you what you found. Tell him “Yeah” if you want more options for finishing the quest, though by lying to him you can still get the quest’s best possible outcome. Go back to the chest in the quarry to see what’s inside. Open it to receive the runic key, which opens…well, you don’t actually know yet. You need to explore.
Specifically, head to the shipwreck indicated on your map, far to the southwest. To get there, go to the trolls’ dwelling, then beyond into the gullies. Instead of heading left as you did when you were seeking the she-troll, go right. When you find the ship, examine the cliff faces to see if you can find a patch of the stone covered by vines. The ship should be on your right and the entrance to your left as you enter the area. The vines conceal a secret door that leads into Baltimore’s Cave. There’s a circle of vigor just inside you can activate. When you step into the cave, quickly loot the room. Once you’ve looted the chest that contains Baltimore’s notes and the beaver cap, Thorak appears and a cutscene begins.
If you lied to Thorak earlier, then he goes straight to declaring that he’s going to kill you and take Baltimore’s notes. If you told him the truth, though, he offers to let you have everything in the chest except Baltimore’s notes. He even offers to throw in a lifetime discount at his shop, which would be nice if he didn’t have one of the crappiest shop selections in Vergen. You can take Thorak up on his offer, but if you do, then you can’t finish Suspect: Thorak , which means you can’t finish The Walls Have Ears .
If you want to finish these other two quests, you really need to kill him so you can loot Thorak’s key off his body. Say “I don’t like shady deals” to initiate a combat with him. Thorak and his men have a lot of vitality but pretty lousy reach, so you shouldn’t have any problems defeating them. If they begin to overwhelm you, toss some bombs or use Axii to turn one against his comrades. Be sure to loot Thorak’s key after the battle, and also loot the chest. You should get the beaver cap you can use as part of Death Symbolized , Baltimore’s notes (which make it clear that Thorak murdered him), and some runes.
mystic river
Before you head back to town, examine the shipwreck to progress this quest. You should find a chest that’s glittering orange. Loot it to get the journal of the Eyla Tarn, which discusses a treasure discovered beneath Loc Muinne. You’ll be able to search for it in the next chapter, but for now you’ve done all you can with this quest.
suspect: thorak
the walls have ears
Head back to Thorak’s house so you can use Thorak’s key on the locked chest inside. Open it to obtain Olcan’s receipt, a diagram for the robust yellow meteorite sword, and around 200 orens. You also automatically obtain 1,000 XP for successfully completing Suspect: Thorak and roughly the same amount over again for completing The Walls Have Ears . You may level up two or three times, just off of opening Thorak’s chest at exactly the right time.
Now that these two quests are complete, go talk to Cecil Burdon to resolve Baltimore’s Nightmare . It is essential that you absolutely do not do this before opening Thorak’s chest to finish Suspect: Thorak and The Walls Have Ears . The XP payoff for finishing these quests is huge, but doing anything in the quest chain out of order causes the quest chain to be impossible to complete.
For instance, if you complete Baltimore’s Nightmare before initiating Royal Blood , chances are Thorak is dead and so you can’t initiate Suspect: Thorak . If you can’t initiate Suspect: Thorak , you can’t finish The Walls Have Ears and it’s automatically failed at the end of the chapter, no matter what you do. Now that the quests are complete, you can show Baltimore’s notes to Cecil Burdon to get 300 XP, 60 orens, and Gwyhyr, the best steel sword available in this chapter. Slot it with runes and you’ll be well-prepared for the chapter’s final quests.
royal blood
Now you need to resolve this quest by passing judgment. If you’ve done the Suspect: Thorak and The Walls Have Ears quests, it’s fairly obvious what happened: Olcan commissioned a duplicate goblet to carry poisoned wine from Thorak and made the switch just before the toast at the war council. Based on what you know from speaking with the peasants and Willy Oblate, you know that Olcan couldn’t possibly have pulled this off without Stennis’s help. Stennis is probably guilty, if not beyond the shadow of a doubt.
So you face a fairly major decision here. You can turn Stennis over to the mob’s justice by saying “The prince is guilty.” You can choose to spare his life by saying “A lynching would be a bad idea.” If you choose to let the mob execute Stennis, then you can discreetly gather some of his blood after he passes on and use that to cure Saskia. That resolves this quest very easily, if a bit cruelly. You are awarded 1,000 XP and the elven gauntlets, which all but alchemist Geralt builds should find a little bit better than the herbalist’s gloves. You can also loot Stennis’s body to get Stennis’s sword, which is not especially good but is otherwise unobtainable.
If you choose to let Stennis live, then you can’t get any of his blood. You get no XP and you don’t get the elven gauntlets right now. You instead obtain them later. If Stennis lives, then resolving Royal Blood means sneaking into the Kaedweni Camp and getting Henselt to give you some of his blood a bit later in the game. If you do things this way, then you get the 1,000 XP for resolving the quest and the elven gauntlets after you’ve successfully gotten Henselt’s blood. Getting into Henselt’s tent involves a stealth sequence that isn’t especially difficult, but it is something you can skip entirely if Stennis pays for his crime.
Neither decision is more lucrative than the other in the long run, nor is either decision treated as more heroic. Both outcomes raise some troubling ethical issues. If you pronounce the prince guilty he’s lynched, and if you spare him he later betrays Saskia in Chapter 3. If you dislike stealth missions, then you may want to let Stennis die just to avoid the one with Henselt. Otherwise, you should simply make the decision that you think makes sense for how you roleplay as Geralt in your game.
where is triss merigold?
Regardless of whether Stennis lives or dies, go talk to Philippa Eilhart. This time you hear what Geralt thinks is the sound of another massage before he walks in, but he finds out he’s incredibly wrong. Eilhart says that she’s going to help Geralt cross the mist to find Triss. Before you depart, you should get the tattoo from Hung Over removed (if you want to do that and haven’t already), and be sure to ask Philippa about the Wild Hunt. These are strictly optional activities, but this will be your last chance to do them.
After you ask Philippa about the hunt and have the Wild Hunt investigator’s notes you acquired during Death Symbolized , you can mention them and she directs you to discuss the Wild Hunt with Cynthia. Speaking with Cynthia lets you find out a lot of truths about the hunt that you otherwise will not stumble over in the course of the game. Given the importance of the Wild Hunt to the Returning Memories quest, you probably want to do this so you understand a bit more about Geralt’s situation.
When you’re ready to begin the quest, exit through the Mahakam Gate. Head past the burned village and enter the fog near the Scoia’tael bonfire. Be ready to fight a large number of wraiths and draugir as you pass back across the battlefield, guided by Philippa’s owl form. This time you don’t have any allies helping you, but you should be all-around much stronger, with more skills and better equipment. Alchemists should make sure they’ve applied appropriate potion buffs and created a store of specter oil for the journey. Mages and swordsmen can probably bull through with no special preparations. You should encounter two or three draugir with wraith escorts. Once you’re through the mist and across the Pontar, look around to find a dead body you can loot to obtain Shilard Fitz-Oesterlen’s order. Next, head toward the quest marker to trigger a cutscene where you obtain an interesting item and meet up with Roche. After Roche berates you a bit, he gives you instructions for how you can get into the Nilfgaardian camp, either by using a secret tunnel infested with monsters or by sneaking through the canteen. Before you select either, take a detour to do a quick side quest.
from a bygone era
You’re only supposed to do this quest on Roche’s route, but there’s nothing from stopping you beginning it on Iorveth’s route if you know where to find Malget’s house. It’s marked on your map, along with the area just southwest of Roche’s Camp where you need to cross the river. You can only get to Malget’s house by approaching from this direction. Stop by Roche’s Camp to loot the place before you go.
When you get to Malget’s house, you find it’s a little hut that overlooks a beach infested by drowners. The inside of the hut is empty, but beside it you find some barrels you can interact with to blow them up using Aard. Before you do this, head down the little path southwest of the hut that leads to the graveyard. Make special note of the sigils etched on Malget’s grave marker: down arrow, diamond, up arrow. Now go blow up the barrels. Be sure to approach the barrels from the front side of the house, or the interaction prompt you need won’t appear. Beneath the barrels is a trap door. Enter it to find an area where three candles stand on three podiums.
One podium is marked with a wooden diamond, another with a down arrow, and another with an up arrow. You want to light candles by interacting with them in the order of the marks etched on Malget’s grave marker: first the down arrow candle, then the diamond candle, then the up arrow candle. If you light the candles in the incorrect sequence, you must battle a wraith. If you light them in the correct sequence, a hidden door set into a stone wall slides open. Enter it to find a desk and a bookshelf. If you scan with your medallion you won’t find anything, but approach the desk anyway. You should get a prompt to interact with the desk to pick up Malget’s notes.
Now that you have them, you can take them to someone who can decipher them in Chapter 3. You have more options for what to do with the notes on Roche’s route, but on Iorveth’s route this is really all you can do with them.