Items Compendium

In a game of The Witcher 2, you define Geralt as much by the equipment he uses as by the way you spend his talents or the story decisions you make. Items can be found hidden throughout the game’s world as loot, purchased from merchants, brewed through alchemy, or crafted from diagrams. Some items can be found in a number of different ways, depending on what point in the game you’re reached. You can also sell items freely back to merchants, though usually for little more than a handful of orens.

Note that not every item that appears in these lists can be obtained in a standard game. Items associated with the Blasphemer’s, Oathbreaker’s, and Kinslayer’s sets can only be obtained when playing in Dark mode. Other items, particularly certain swords, can only be obtained and used as part of Arena mode. In addition, while playing a standard game, some items become unattainable as a result of your decision to side with Iorveth or Roche at the end of Chapter 1. Consult the walkthrough to see which items are available at given points in a standard game. Consult the Dark mode and Arena mode guides for more information on those aspects of the game.

All item statistics presented in these lists are default statistics. There are certain skills you can give Geralt that will affect the apparent statistics of an item, such as the alchemy tree skill Catalysis intensifying potion bonuses while weakening penalties. Swords with rune slots can have their effects and base damage altered by inserting runes in the slots. Likewise, armor with enhancement slots can have its effects and base armor value altered by enhancement pieces. If the numbers you see displayed onscreen in your game radically disagree with what is in the guide, check to see if you have some skill or enhancement active.

In the game’s menu, items are separated into tabs. The “Items Compendium” chapter breaks items up in roughly the same way, though some categories are further broken down for the sake of clarity. For instance, in the game, all forms of armor are listed under the armor tab. In the guide, armor, boots, gauntlets, and trousers are listed separately so you can get a better idea of how a piece of gear compares to what else is available in that category. Likewise, the enhancements tab in the game lists all forms of enhancements, while the guide breaks this category into runes, armor enhancements, and oils. Finally, any item that contains an alchemical substance is listed in the alchemy category, while all other items used in crafting are listed in the crafting category.

Steel Swords

Steel swords are intended for use when fighting human and humanoid opponents in The Witcher 2. Elves, dwarves, and other witchers count as humanoids for the game’s purposes. It is perfectly possible to fight monsters with a steel sword, but if you try you’ll find you do dramatically less damage than you would with an equally good silver sword.

Some steel swords grant additional bonuses in addition to simply damaging enemies. A sword may help reduce damage when you block a blow, have a chance of inflicting critical effects, increase your vigor, or speed up vitality regeneration. Note that in cases where a sword grants a passive effect, like extra vitality, the effect only becomes active when the sword is drawn.

Additional Weapons

Weapons from this curious category are primarily found as loot rather than crafted or purchased. Most occur as strictly random loot, though the Succubus’s wand and Operator’s staff are obtained only by defeating their namesakes. Additional weapons are equipped to Geralt’s steel sword slot and are found in-game under the steel sword tab.

Although some additional weapons appear to have strong damage stats and effects, the only additional weapon that’s really worth using instead of a steel sword is the Operator’s staff. Some additional weapons, like the broom and scoop, are effectively gag items, primarily worth using so you can take screenshots of yourself using them to wallop enemies. Others are used in the Prologue, during sequences where you’ve lost access to your steel swords.

Note that certain additional weapons are described as being swords yet do not count as steel swords. If you equip these weapons, you’ll notice that Geralt wears them belted at his side instead of strapped to his back. This is because swords in the additional weapons category are low-quality, common swords that aren’t really on par with the weapons in the steel swords category.

Silver Swords

Silver swords are intended for use when fighting monsters in The Witcher 2. In fact, you can effectively define the term monster as “anything that takes full damage from a silver sword.” If you are fighting something that isn’t an elf, dwarf, human, or rival witcher, you should be fighting it with your silver sword in hand. You can attempt to fight humans and humanoids with a silver sword, but you’ll find you do dramatically less damage than you would with an equally good steel sword.

Some silver swords grant additional bonuses besides simply damaging enemies. A sword may help reduce damage when you block a blow, increase the power of your signs, help regenerate vigor, or any number of other things. Note that in cases where a sword grants a passive effect, like extra vitality, the effect only becomes active when the sword is drawn.

You may also notice that certain swords grant damage bonuses against certain classes of monsters. Usually, these bonuses affect a single species and are relatively self-explanatory. Some of them aren’t so obvious:

• All types of endregas and arachasae count as insectoids.
• Anything larger than Geralt counts as a large monster. This includes arachasae, endrega queens, bullvores, elementals, the true golem, the kayran, the draug, and the dragon.

Armor

Armor protects the arms and torso. Most of the garments described as “armor” in The Witcher 2 are actually layered garments that can combine padding, worked leather, chain mail shirts, and even ring mail. A witcher like Geralt must be able to move swiftly.

Armor is perhaps the single most important piece of Geralt’s equipment. Armor can increase Geralt’s maximum load, protect against critical effects, accelerate vitality regeneration, and offer a number of far stranger, unique bonuses. Strong sets of armor are usually difficult to obtain in one way or another, whether hard to find, expensive, or only craftable through use of rare ingredients.

Trousers

Don’t underestimate the value of a decent pair of pants. Trousers typically serve a complementary role in Geralt’s gear, boosting his resistance to key critical effects or giving him extra vitality. Only the mage’s trousers offer any sort of rare or unusual bonus.

Boots

Boots also serve a complementary role in Geralt’s gear. Most boots increase Geralt’s total armor value slightly and also increase his resistance to damage from magic. A good pair of boots can go a long way when battling a mage.

Gauntlets

Gauntlets also boost Geralt’s resistance to magic and certain basic critical effects. Unlike boots, though, gauntlets sometimes carry more exotic bonuses like maximum load increases, bomb damage multipliers, or trap damage multipliers. A particular set of gauntlets can be a strong complement to a particular play style.

Ranged Weapons

To use ranged weapons, you must put at least one talent into the Throwing Daggers skill. Most types of thrown daggers cannot be crafted, instead needing to be looted or purchased. Silver thrown daggers damage monsters like a silver sword, while other thrown daggers are assumed to be made of steel. Ranged weapons are one of The Witcher 2’s many situational weapons. That is, when used in the right situations, thrown daggers can single-handedly turn the tide of battle in your favor. In the wrong situation, a ranged weapon is basically useless.

So what’s the right situation? Well, there are two where using a ranged weapon is a good idea. One is when fighting combat mages. Thrown daggers fly quickly through the air and, used correctly, can interrupt a mage’s spellcasting animations. You can also make good use of thrown daggers when fighting slow, individual opponents like elementals. Avoid using ranged weapons when you’re fighting extremely agile enemies or when you’re fighting groups enemies.

Oils

Oils can be applied to a witcher’s steel or silver blade to grant a temporary bonus. Typically, oils either increase critical effects or increase damage dealt against a specific type of enemy while the effect lasts. You can oil your blade from the inventory menu, so you can apply a bonus during the middle of a fight if you suddenly decide you need it. Oils can be prepared from alchemical formulas if the right substances are on hand. This is by far the most economical way to create and use them.

Runes

Runes can be slotted into a steel or silver sword to permanently enhance its effects. You cannot remove a rune once it is slotted into a sword, so this is not a decision you should make lightly. Runes can be crafted from diagrams or purchased from merchants. Generally, it is much cheaper to craft runes than to buy them, but this can be difficult early in the game.

Keep your build in mind when slotting runes. A mage gets the most mileage out of moon runes, while alchemists can benefit from the extra vitality granted by earth runes. Fire runes and Ysgith runes are useful to virtually all builds.

Armor Enhancements

Armor enhancements are the equivalent of runes for armor. If a piece of armor has sockets, you can place enhancements in them to increase its armor value and give it other special abilities. Generally, the special abilities granted by armor enhancements are relatively weak, although you can add significant boosts to sign strength onto armor through enhancements.

Unless you’re playing a mage build that relies heavily on signs, it’s best to slot armor with enhancements that give the biggest bonuses possible. Some enhancements can be crafted from diagrams, but the most powerful enhancements generally must be found and looted.

Potions

A witcher can drink potions to temporarily alter stats. Some potions offer mild boosts with no drawbacks, while others dramatically boost a handful of stats and significantly reduce others. You can get the most benefit out of these potions by drinking them in combination with others that cancel out the drawbacks. At default, Geralt can drink up to three potions. He can tolerate up to 100 points of toxicity before he becomes poisoned.

While you can occasionally purchase potions from merchants, it is much more economical to brew potions from formulas. Most potions require alchemical substances, which are obtained from commonplace ingredients like herbs and common monster drops. Only a handful of high-end potions, like Tawny Owl, require any sort of rare alchemical substance, such as fulgur.

Traps

Traps are a way for a witcher to passively inflict damage and critical effects on a monster or other enemy. When the enemy steps into the trap’s area of effect, the trap is triggered. The enemy immediately suffers damage and has a chance of suffering whatever critical effects the trap inflicts. Some traps can trigger spell-like effects. Enemies who step on a fury trap become affected as if by the witcher’s sign Axii, for example.

Traps can be purchased, but this is prohibitively expensive. It is generally cheaper to purchase a diagram for a given kind of trap, then pay a craftsman to make traps for you. If you place a trap and an enemy does not trigger it, you can pick it up and use it again. Otherwise, traps can be used only once each and then become junk. The only exception to this is the snare, which can be reused an unlimited number of times and can only be looted from certain areas in the game.

Note that a witcher can use the Talgar winter trap to inflict the rare critical effect Freeze on enemies. There are no witcher’s signs or bombs that can inflict Freeze, and only a handful of swords and one ranged weapon that can do so. This makes the Talgar winter trap extremely useful to virtually all Geralt builds. Few enemies resist freezing and no enemies are completely immune to it.

Bombs

A witcher’s bomb is very much like a magical grenade, able to deal damage and inflict critical effects on all enemies caught within its area of effect. While a trap can have similar effects, a trap is most effective if it’s set up before a battle even begins. A bomb can be quickly thrown at a group of onrushing enemies and is less likely to be interrupted by an enemy’s attack.

Bombs are made from formulas, so you can make a new batch of them from alchemical reagents wherever it’s safe to meditate. Bombs can inflict a wide range of effects on enemies, ranging from pure damage to incineration and stun. Bombs that inflict damage and critical effects are at their most potent in the hands of an alchemist, who can spend talents to get bonuses to a bomb’s effectiveness.

There’s also a family of bombs that have no real effect on their own but become powerful when coupled with another ability. Red haze makes Axii take effect more quickly, while dragon’s dream creates a cloud of gas that can be ignited by Igni. These are obviously very useful in the hands of mage builds. Swordsman builds get the stenchbulb, which increases the enemy’s vulnerability to critical effects.

Books

Books in The Witcher 2 can be inspected and read, just like their real world counterparts. Some books confer a mechanical benefit when read, such as granting your character knowledge of a particular monster type. Others simply act as quest items or help convey extra setting information about the world. In some cases, reading books you find as quest items can help you solve puzzles or otherwise understand what is happening with a quest line’s story.

You primarily obtain books by purchasing them from merchants or by looting them. Sometimes obtaining a given book signifies that you’ve progressed the plot to a certain point. A handful of books are encrypted, so you must go find another character to crack the code for you. If you attempt to read these, you get scrambled text samples.

Note that all books have a weight of 0, so you can carry as many as you want without taking up any encumbrance. Information you read in many books is added to your in-game journal. You can then sell that book back to a merchant but keep all of the knowledge you gained by reading it.

Trophies

A trophy is a body part hacked from the corpse of a freshly defeated monster and mounted on the hook that dangles from the back of Geralt’s sword-harness. Most monsters have a random chance of dropping a trophy whenever you defeat them, while unique monsters always drop their trophy upon defeat. Trophies confer a variety of effects when equipped, some of them quite powerful if equipped to a build with the right synergies. Others are little more than curios or gag items.

Mutagens

Mutagens work like runes and armor enhancements, only they directly enhance Geralt’s stats. Mutagens are equipped to mutagen slots that are opened up when talents are invested in certain skills, usually the skills in the upper half of a given skill tree. Like other enhancements, mutagens cannot be removed once they’ve been equipped into a slot.

Mutagens cannot be purchased. For the most part, they are obtained as random drops when defeating monsters or crafting alchemy items (if you take the right skill from the alchemist skill tree). It’s worth noting that if you slot a mutagen to a skill and then re-spec your skills with the Operator or Lady Adrianna, you retain the mutagen’s effect even if you do not repurchase the skill.

Since you cannot remove a mutagen once you’ve slotted it, it’s best to slot only the strongest mutagens. Lesser mutagens are ideally sold off or held onto until the very end of the game, to slot in case you somehow never find anything better. Generally, any greater mutagens, madness mutagens, range mutagens, and concentration mutagens are worth slotting (depending on your build).

Lures

Lures work a bit like traps. Equip them to Geralt’s pockets and you can place them with the command for using pocket-equipped items. There’s a chance that a monster attracted to a given type of lure will be distracted by it, perhaps even taking a swipe at it. The distraction effect is temporary and does not necessarily affect all members of a group of monsters.

The best way to use lures is in conjunction with traps. Place traps at the edge of a monster’s territory, or in an area where you know a monster is going to spawn. Place lures inside your traps’ areas of effect. Wait until the monsters spawn, or go deeper into the monster’s territory to get them to chase you. The lures help ensure that at least some of the monsters want to move directly toward your traps.

There are a lot of downsides to using lures, mainly the same ones to using traps. It can be tricky to place them without getting attacked by the monsters you’re trying to lure. Even if you place a lure, monsters may still prefer to attack you if you’re anywhere nearby. Most Geralt builds can safely ignore lures, but alchemists may find uses for them.

Junk

Junk is exactly you think it is, those items with no in-game function. You primarily find junk items as loot and can sell them off for orens. Junk can be found typically wherever you can find random loot, or picked up after defeating human opponents. All you can really do with junk is sell it off for orens. Most forms of junk aren’t especially valuable, but occasionally you find valuable figurines that are worth selling.

Alchemy Materials

Alchemy materials contain alchemical substances that allow them to be used in making oils, bombs, and potions. You generally find alchemy materials by picking herbs that grow throughout the game’s world, or by defeating monsters and harvesting their remains. You can take the alchemy tree Harvester skill to get more alchemy materials at once. Note that some monster drops that function as alchemy materials can also be used in crafting.

Crafting Materials

Crafting materials are items that can be given to a craftsman along with a diagram to make a particular item. Some crafting materials are more commonly used than others, and likewise some are more easily found than others. Crafting materials come from a variety of sources. Some can be found as random loot in towns and caves, while others can only be obtained by killing monsters. Some crafting materials can themselves be crafted from other materials and the right diagram, or purchased outright from merchants.

Thoroughly scanning each area as Geralt passes through is a good way to pick up lots of extra crafting materials. These materials tend to be heavy, so it’s best to keep things like timber, iron ore, cloth, leather, and twine in storage. You tend to pick up lots of these items, and the weight really piles up over time. Rare crafting materials like silver ore, the various meteorite ores, robust cloth, hardened leather, and studded leather should also be kept in storage for future use.

Formulas

Geralt uses formulas to combine alchemy materials he has on hand into whatever the formula makes. You can obtain formulas for creating potions, bombs, and oils. Most formulas must be purchased, but some can be obtained as loot, and you begin the game with a handful of basic formulas. Formulas can be used to craft items whenever Geralt can successfully meditate, so you can usually make whatever you need on the fly. Note that you must have a formula physically in your inventory in order to craft from it. Note that the formula for blade oil is an exception to every other formula in the game. It does not produce a bomb, potion, or (as you might expect) an oil you can apply to your sword’s blade. Brewing the blade oil formula simply produces the crafting material oil, just as if you’d used the diagram for oil. It is useful mainly as an alternative way to craft oil, which tends to be in short supply toward the end of the game

Diagrams

Diagrams are similar to formulas, but Geralt cannot craft from diagrams by himself. To craft from a diagram, Geralt must take the diagram, all the materials required to complete it, and enough orens to pay the diagram’s crafting fee to a craftsman. Any craftsman can craft any diagram and charges exactly the same crafting fee. Geralt must have a diagram physically in his inventory in order to craft from it.

Some diagrams only need to be crafted once, particularly the diagrams that create equipment. It’s safe to sell these diagrams off once you’re through with them. Other diagrams that make consumables, like traps, should be kept in Geralt’s inventory for future use. Most diagrams must be purchased from merchants, but some can found as loot (and even as random loot, if you get lucky).