Chapter 3: Loc Muinne (Roche)

For Temeria!

All roads lead to Loc Muinne now. Your first task is to find a way to get into the city, so you can track down Síle and Letho. Begin by following Roche and helping him kill harpies. These fights should be fairly trivial for you, especially if you’re using the blood sword. As you work your way down the winding mountain path, you eventually come within sight of an encampment of knights from the Order of the Flaming Rose. You must pass through their camp to proceed.

Before you follow Roche in, though, take a right and head up the mountain path that leads to a dead end. There’s some valuable treasure tucked away here, if you can defeat the two arachi that guard it. One spawns in front of you and the other behind you. While fighting a pair of arachas in such a narrow area would be deadly for a lower-level Geralt, you should be able to handle this quite easily. You can use Quen to mitigate an arachas’s poison attack and your attacks should do tremendous damage. You can simplify the battle by dodge-rolling past one of the two arachi so one blocks the other in, though it’s a matter of chance if an opportunity for this ever presents itself.

Once you’ve defeated the arachi, loot the area just behind them. You should find a great many orens, some random loot, and the silver sword Deithwen. While Deithwen is not the chapter’s strongest silver sword in terms of pure damage, its +25 percent damage to large monsters and +25 percent damage to gargoyles come in handy.

Once you’ve picked up Deithwen, head back to the Order’s camp and speak with one of the guards. Unless you are playing the PC version of the game and meet certain requirements (see sidebar), you are allowed to enter the camp when Roche vouches for you. Explore the camp thoroughly. You can find a significant number of training dummies here (if you still need the Experienced attribute), as well as quite a lot of random loot. You can pass freely from the camp and into the city.

For now, you need to head toward the town square. On the way, you encounter a group of Nilfgaardian bounty hunters who want to arrest you. Take advantage of your build’s strengths when battling human opponents to defeat them. You probably want to prepare for this battle with potions and by oiling your sword blade if you can. This battle can be a little dangerous, mainly because there’s a combat mage leading the party that’s good at hitting you with fireballs while you’re swordfighting the armored soldiers. If you have levels of Feet Work, try rolling around to get at the mage before picking off the knights. This approach really only works with the extra rolling speed you get from Feet Work—at default speed levels it’s too hard to catch up with him.

Once you get to the town square, you can start focusing on side quests. When you get tired of side questing, return to the town square and speak to Roche to progress this quest and the other quests that relate to the main plot.

Loc Muinne

Now that you can take a breather to explore, you discover that Loc Muinne is unlike any of the prior environments you’ve explored in the game. It’s a massive area, easily the size of both Flotsam and its surrounding forest. Parts of the city are crowded and teeming with life, while others are infested with monsters. Most of the city’s points of interest are divided between the town square and amphitheater areas, with everything else often serving as hostile territory.

Amphitheater

The main attraction of this area is its merchants. If you spared certain characters you had the chance to spare or kill earlier in the game, you may encounter them in this area, too.

Falas

Falas is a craftsman and has a really good shop list, despite not being listed as a merchant in your in-game mini-map. The most notable things he sells are diagrams for the various colors of meteorite ore, a few unique weapons, some really good armor enhancers like the steel plate enhancement, and magic wraps. He also sells the diagram for the diamond armor reinforcements, which offer +2 and are relatively easy to make at this point in the game.

Ilona

Ilona is basically a trash merchant, and not one in a convenient location for selling stuff off. The real point of interest with Ilona is her day job as the bearded she-elf. Ask her about her beard and she offers to grow it in for 200 orens. (You can pay her up to 281 orens if you want, but there’s no real point to this.) After you give her the money, go talk to her again to see a truly magnificent beard.

Near the area where Ilona does business, you should find two other merchants with basically identical “trash merchant” shop lists. Both are women with randomly generated names. After you complete either the main quest Of His Blood and Bone or the main quest Where Is Triss Merigold?, these two merchants disappear. There’s no particular reason to deal with these women over Ilona, who is far more entertaining.

Aryan La Valette

If you rescued Aryan La Valette earlier in your game, you can encounter him in an area just southwest of the amphitheater. You can have a conversation with him and get a little information about the summit and its importance. If you didn’t save Aryan La Valette, then obviously, he doesn’t appear here.

Town Square

To the east of the amphitheater lies the beating heart of Loc Muinne, such as it is. In this area you can find most of Chapter 3’s best merchants, as well as the inn. To the north of the town square lie most of the NPCs who indulge in mini-games, as well as the entrance to the sewers.

Dalum

Storage

Dalum is the owner of Loc Muinne’s makeshift town inn, the Eternal Fire. Speak to him to access your storage, which really comes in handy in this part of the game. He’s also a trash merchant, so he’s useful for selling off stuff you decide you don’t want to store.

Bras of Ban Ard

Craftsman / Dice Poker

You can speak to Bras just outside the Eternal Flame. Bras is a craftsman and has an excellent shop list. Among his more interesting wares are the Runes of Power books needed to complete The Gargoyle Contract, the diagram for the exceptional silver sword Zerrikanterment, vran armor enhancements, and magic wraps. Look carefully at the abilities of the Zerrikanterment before you decide which silver sword you want to use through the end of the game. While there is another silver sword you can loot this chapter with better stats overall, the Zerrikanterment is about as good and may have special effects you find preferable. Bras of Ban Ard is also instrumental in two side quests, From a Bygone Era and The Gargoyle Contract.

The Incredible Lockhart

Dice Poker

The Incredible Lockhart sells potion formulas, alchemical ingredients, and a variety of diagrams. The best of them are probably the diagrams for the various types of runes, which are quite easy to make in this chapter of the game. Otherwise, you won’t be dealing with Lockhart too often, though he does crop up in a mini-game side quest.

EarSO

Craftsman

This silent fellow takes over Isidor Kay’s role selling traps and bomb formulas, along with a few other odds and ends. If there’s a trap diagram you want and haven’t picked up yet, go see Earso about it. Note that Earso isn’t marked on the in-game map, so consult your guide map to find him.

Felicia Cori

Barber / Dice Poker

Felicia isn’t marked on the in-game map, but she’s not hard to find. Her shop list isn’t exactly the same as it was in Chapter 2, but it’s very similar. She still sells mainly potion formulas, books, and items for crafting. She’s also the hairstylist for this chapter.

Marcus

Marcus primarily sells herbs for alchemy and some potion formulas, though he also sells blade oil formulas that can come in handy. He also sells the Anabolic Steroids potion, which you can take as part of this chapter’s arm-wrestling quest. You can buy as many Anabolic Steroids potions as you want, but it doesn’t do anything that’s mechanically useful outside of its quest role.

Zyvik

Dutiful Zyvik can be found hanging out near Bras of Ban Ard or in the inn. You can ask him his opinions on what’s happening in the city. His responses change slightly depending on if Henselt is alive or dead.

Street Preacher

Just across the street from the Eternal Flame is a street preacher who springs to life and begins haranguing the crowd whenever you pass by. This guy has nothing to do with any quests or getting loot, but you should pause and listen to his full rants once. He has two rants, both of which are too long and rambling to hear completely while you’re just running around. They’re pretty hilarious if you hear them in full, though, so pause if you happen to hear him saying something new while you run by.

Points of Interest

Polycarp of Rinde

You may only trade with Polycarp of Rinde if you are playing the PC version of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition and have imported a save from The Witcher where Geralt has allied with the Order. You can find him in the Order of the Flaming Rose’s camp, just outside the main gates of Loc Muinne. Polycarp must be persuaded or subject to the Axii Sign Hex before he is willing to trade with you. His overall shop list is very similar to Falas’s, as he specializes in selling crafting materials for making armor, runes, and armor enhancements. He also sells the steel sword Harvall, which is probably the chapter’s third-best steel sword.

Harpies

There’s an area to the northeast of Loc Muinne where you are attacked by harpies nearly every time you pass through. You are likely to encounter them for the first time when you go to do this chapter’s Poker Face side quest. In terms of difficulty the encounter is trivial, but it can be really useful if you end up needing to grind money in this chapter. The harpies respawn roughly once an hour, so you can simply meditate and then go trigger the encounter if you need to grind for some fast cash.

Side Quest: A Score to Settle

This quest triggers automatically the first time you enter the town square. Burton appears and vows to give you a proper thrashing for investigating the square coins in the previous chapter. What follows from there is an ordinary fistfight, where you should really have no trouble defeating him. You don’t get any orens for this final victory, but you do gain 150 XP.

For Temeria!

With Burton defeated, seek out Roche in the town square area of Loc Muinne and speak with him. Follow him into the Redanian camp. There’s some random loot you can obtain here, but nothing too interesting. For the most part, just follow Roche as he leads the way to King Radovid. During the conversation with Radovid, you can say whatever you wish. Some of Radovid’s conversation options will reflect choices you’ve made earlier in the game, such as whether or not you killed Henselt and whether Aryan La Valette still lives.

Radovid gives Roche and Geralt some information during the talk, that Foltest’s daughter Anais still lives and is being held by Dethmold at the Kaedweni camp. Radovid also makes it clear that Triss is being held in the Nilfgaardian camp. After the dialogue ends, follow Roche back into the town square. A conversation makes it clear that you face a choice, whether to rescue Triss from the Nilfgaardians or help Roche rescue Anais. You don’t have to make the decision right now. You can (and should) let it wait until the end of the chapter, after you’ve done all of the side quests you wish to complete.

Side Quest: Crown Witness

This side quests triggers automatically after you exit the Redanian camp. It also triggers the quest Lilies and Vipers, but you can’t do much with this quest until Crown Witness is resolved in one way or another. One of Roche’s agents, Brigida Papebrock, asks to be escorted out of town. You can opt to do the quest or turn Brigida down. If you turn her down, she waits by the city gates for one hour, then disappears. If this happens, you fail both Crown Witness and Lilies and Vipers and also cannot trigger the associated side quests The Messenger or Pacta Sunt Servanda.

If you accept the mission, you can opt to escort Brigida immediately or to put it off for later. There’s no reason to put it off, though. When you begin to escort Brigida, you are teleported to the gates of Loc Muinne. Follow her through the Order of the Flaming Rose’s camp. She opens the gate at the top part of the camp that is ordinarily impassable, letting you reach a new area.

Follow Brigida until you reach the forest, then lead the way. The forest is essentially a long, winding path forward if you check either the guide map or the map option of your menu frequently. If you try to follow the mini-map, you may get lost when passing through certain wide areas. After you’ve moved forward a ways, you encounter an ambush of bandits led by a combat mage. They’re out to get Brigida, so the battles ahead are a little different than most that involve NPCs in this game. Brigida has a vitality bar of her own and can die if you fail to keep the enemies away from her, similar to the companions you hire in Arena mode. If she dies, then you automatically fail both Crown Witness and Lilies and Vipers, and you cannot trigger any of the associated side quests.

Fortunately, Brigida is not an especially fragile NPC. Even on Hard difficulty, it is actually difficult for her to get killed as long as you approach battles normally. If you want to be cautious about keeping Brigida alive, though, then instant kills are a preferred tactic in this fight and the others that follow it. Aard is very useful for setting instant kills up. After you’ve defeated the bandits, you come to an area where you must drop down a cliff to proceed. If you choose to explore the forested area behind you, you run afoul of a group of endregas.

That said, once you reach this point, you can indulge yourself in an interesting diversion. Head to the eastern side of the map and you can find a curious cave. At first, it seems to be mainly inhabited by nekkers. At the rear of the cave is a book called Dorian’s Diary. If you pick up Dorian’s Diary at night, then a werewolf appears immediately to battle you. Like the werewolves in Arena mode, this one has a ton of vitality but is easily locked up by hit-stun through repeated blows. Brigida can be helpful in this regard, since she’ll hop in to help you with the fight. Killing the werewolf is the only way to get the rare werewolf trophy. Note that if you pick up Dorian’s Diary during the day, you miss this encounter completely.

As you head toward the quest marker, you should come across another group of bandits. These bandits have set snares and attack in greater numbers. Just focus on keeping them away from Brigida and getting fast kills and you should be fine. If you take a left after this, you can find another endrega and an actual endrega nursery. You can destroy the nursery as you did the nurseries in Chapter 1 to summon a queen endrega. You should do this if you need queen endrega pheromones for the quest An Encrypted Manuscript.

When you arrive at the quest marker, you find that Brigida’s contact is dead. You’re immediately ambushed by a group of around half a dozen bandits, led by the combat mage you saw earlier. This time focus on eliminating the mage from the field, then mopping up the other soldiers. If you’ve handled the other battles well, then Brigida should be in no particular danger here. After the battle, a dialogue sequence begins. Whatever you say here, it ends with Brigida getting away safely after she gives you the orders changing the convoy’s route. You get 250 XP at this point for resolving Crown Witness. Furthering the quest line involves pursuing Lilies and Vipers.

Side Quest: Lilies and Vipers

You need to go find Baron Kimbolt and speak to him about the fate of Foltest’s children. Head back to Loc Muinne and enter the Temerian camp. Kimbolt’s tent is just off to your right. Enter to trigger a cutscene. You can get a lot of information here by asking the additional questions. Regardless of what you say, you end the conversation with two options. You can take the orders changing the convoy’s route to John Natalis and accuse Kimbolt, or you can take the orders to Kimbolt’s scribe to have them checked for authenticity. Kimbolt offers to pay you for confirming the true source of the orders, too.

If you choose to accuse Kimbolt based on the letter, then go see John Natalis immediately and hand the letter over to him. Kimbolt is arrested, with the support of Maravel’s forces. This resolves the quest immediately and nets you 250 XP. You cannot trigger the side quests The Messenger or Pacta Sunt Servanda if you take this decision.

If you choose to go see the scribe, you find him too drunk to stand. Go examine his things instead and you should find the note for scribe item. You can mix up the substance to test the letter yourself, but be careful. If you botch the test, you end up destroying the orders. To mix the substance, you select from a long list of options that appears when you approach the scribe’s desk.

Before you approach the desk, scan the room. You should find the book Invisible Ink and eight scribe’s notes on a shelf. Read Invisible Ink before you do anything to the orders, then read the note for scribe. This sould give you an idea of what you’re trying to do the orders. If you want to work out the correct method of making the invisible ink visible on your own, you can experiment on the scribe’s notes. If you just want to see a list of the correct ingredients to add in the correct sequence, here it is.

• Add burnt lime to the flask.
• Add water to the flask.
• Add cormorant guano to the flask.
• Heat the flask, capture the vapors, and douse them with water.

After you finish successfully testing the letter, it turns orange. That’s the wrong color for Kimbolt’s secret missives, so he had nothing to do with this. The orders become a different item, the falsified orders changing the convoy’s route. Go back to Kimbolt and report your findings. He pays you for your efforts and then offers you the task of finding out what the contents of Maravel’s letters to the Nilfgaardian camp are. If you accept this request (and you should) it triggers the side quest The Messenger. When you leave Baron Kimbolt’s courtyard, you automatically trigger the quest Pacta Sunt Servanda. You may finish either quest. You can complete the quests in any order, or choose to only complete one. These decisions affect the way the overall quest line turns out.

Side Quest: Pacta Sunt Servanda

Go see Count Maravel as the servant invited you. After the conversation, follow your quest marker to the location of the men blackmailing Baron Kimbolt. This triggers a cutscene. Toward the end of it, you must choose whether to try and defend the blackmailers or to stand aside and let Kimbolt’s huntsmen do as they will. If you stand aside, the quest effectively ends here.

If you decide to protect the blackmailers, then it works like protecting Brigida did. The mercenary leader has his own vitality bar, and if it’s depleted, he dies and you fail the quest. That said, the mercenary leader has a ton of vitality and you’re not likely to lose him if you’re capable of beating the huntsmen at all. The huntsmen are fairly typical armored sword-wielding enemies. You can take them down quickly if you have leveled-up Aard. Even Garlen, the toughest of the lot, goes down surprisingly quickly. After the battle, the mercenary leader gives you all the information you need to accuse Kimbolt. You receive 250 XP for resolving the quest.

Side Quest: The Messenger

Meet Aldrich, Kimbolt’s messenger, by the fountain. He leads you to a nearby area where you see Maravel’s messenger, Hieronymus Lash, walking toward the Nilfgaardian camp. Now you need to chase down Lash and get his scrolls. You first fight off Lash’s two guards, who are ordinary swordsmen. After that, you chase him into a courtyard where five Nilfgaardian troops wait for you in ambush. Expect two swordsmen, one shieldman, and a couple of crossbowmen. They shouldn’t be hard to defeat, but try to take them out quickly. You catch up to Lash in the next courtyard, where he fights you. He teleports like most mages, but attacks using a spell that makes firebolts erupt from the ground. It works like the draug’s trebuchet fire did in the last chapter, so use the same methods to dodge it.

What’s difficult is actually damaging Lash. If you simply dash or dodge-roll toward him, he always teleports away. If you fire Aard or Igni at him, he teleports away. The best way to defeat him involves a sneaky use of Yrden. Plant your Yrden sigil in a location after he teleports away from it, then dodge the firebombs until he teleports back to that spot. If you have a leveled up Yrden, you can plant sigils in multiple locations. Lash’s teleportation around the area of the battle always follows a pattern, where he teleports to and from set places. If you place an Yrden sigil in a location where Lash was standing previously, he eventually comes back to it and gets stunned. Once he’s stunned, you can probably take him out with a single attack combo.

Loot Lash’s body after you’ve defeated him to get the diagram for the clawer and Count Maravel’s correspondence. This gives you all the information you need to accuse Maravel. This resolves the quest and gives you 250 XP.

Side Quest: Lilies and Vipers

Once you’ve completed The Messenger and obtained Count Maravel’s correspondence, you can take the letter to John Natalis and accuse Maravel. This leads to Maravel being arrested for treason. If you haven’t already completed the quest Pacta Sunt Servanda, it automatically fails after Maravel is arrested. Visit Kimbolt to gain your reward. Kimbolt gives you 100 orens and hands over the ceremonial Ellandrian sword, and you also get 500 XP for simply resolving the quest. His dismissive attitude is probably going to leave you feeling like you’ve been had despite your apparent victory.

If you’ve completed Pacta Sunt Servanda, go see John Natalis. You can use the mercenary’s testimony to accuse Kimbolt. This leads to Kimbolt being arrested for treason. If you haven’t already completed the quest The Messenger, it automatically fails after Kimbolt is arrested. Visit Maravel to gain your reward. Maravel gives you 200 orens and the encrusted Nilfgaardian lawgiver, which is an excellent steel sword for builds that rely on a lot of blocking and parrying. You get 500 XP for simply resolving the quest. You may leave feeling a bit like you’ve been had.

Now, if you’ve completed both Pacta Sunt Servanda and The Messenger, go see John Natalis. Now you can choose to accuse Kimbolt, Maravel, or the both of them. Choose to accuse the both of them and Geralt puts together an accurate picture of what happened to the royal children. A very different cutscene plays out than the one you get for just accusing Kimbolt or Maravel. You don’t get any equipment or orens for finishing the quest this way, but you do get 750 XP, since you actually figured out the truth this time.

Side Quest: Poker Face: Loc Muinne

Head for the remote area where the dice players gather, beyond the harpies. It’s near the location of your earlier run-in with the Nilfgaardian bounty hunters. Begin by approaching the two elven players, Filly and Aylaya. You can face them in any order. After you’ve beaten them both, head over to the next table and challenge first Hadrian the Black, then his apprentice. With these victories under your belt, you can go back to the town square and challenge The Incredible Lockhart. When you defeat him, you get a choice of “something nice” or 150 orens as your bonus for finishing the quest. The something nice is the diagram for making magic wraps, a runic armor enhancement, or a fire rune and an earth rune. Bear in mind that the recipe for magic wrap demands troll skin. So if you haven’t been slaughtering trolls as you came across them, the diagram is basically useless to you. Players on Roche’s route have likely had difficulty finding runes and may want to take that over the magic wrap diagram, even if they’ve otherwise been slaying trolls.

Side Quest: Bring It On: Loc Muinne

For this quest, you must beat only one opponent, the Mighty Numa. Go find him and challenge him. Wager the minimum amount of orens for this first bout, because it’s designed to be impossible to win. After the bout ends, you have a few options for how you can react to Mighty Numa.

You can accuse him of cheating. If you do, then this opens up a dialogue branch where you have two choices. If you say “Make my day” to Mighty Numa, it initiates a fistfight with him. He’s not especially difficult to beat. After you beat him, Mighty Numa swears to stop cheating. You get 25 XP.

You can try to intimidate Mighty Numa by saying “You’re not fast enough…”; Numa is usually fairly easy to intimidate, and most of the time this option is successful. Mighty Numa says he doesn’t need potions to beat you and swears not to cheat the next time you arm-wrestle. You get 10 XP.

You can also simply admit “I lost.” If you do things this way, then you next need to buy an Anabolic Steroids potion from Marcus. Drink it, then challenge Mighty Numa to an arm-wrestling match again while the potion is active. You should defeat him easily, so bet the full 200 orens possible so you can reap a 400-oren reward. After you beat the Mighty Numa, you get 25 XP and Numa gives you the diagram for the long, robust gauntlets. The quest resolves, awarding you with an additional 100 XP.

If you go to arm-wrestle Mighty Numa again after fistfighting him or intimidating him, the effects are the same as challenging him while under the influence of Anabolic Steroids. You should defeat him very easily, then get 25 XP, the diagram, and then an additional 100 XP. So overall, the most lucrative way to tackle this quest is to fistfight Mighty Numa after your first loss. The Anabolic Steroids potion is quite expensive, so not buying one maximizes your profit.

Side Quest: Mystic River

Head into the sewer entrance near the Mighty Numa’s area of the town square. When you pass by the initial chamber, if you have Malget’s notes in your possession, a giant flaming head set into the wall begins talking to you. There’s nothing you can do with this creature just now, though you’ll come back to it later. Simply say “See you,” and ignore it for the time being.

Take a right and you come to a tunnel where two bullvores patrol. As long as you don’t let yourself get caught between the bullvores, defeating them should be simple. Adrenaline abilities are highly effective here and it’s also easy to just beat them to death with strong sword strokes, provided you’ve got a strong defense at your disposal, like leveled-up Quen.

Once you’re past the bullvores, the tunnel empties out into a dead end (the gate you passed through earlier is locked now) stuffed with treasure chests. Loot them to get an amazing array of treasure. One chest contains the diagram for the armor of Ys, and the other contains the diagram for vran armor, an armor of Ysgith, a fire rune, and the steel sword Deireadh.

The quest isn’t finished until you’ve crafted the vran armor (so if you don’t want to use it, you may just want to skip this). Once you’ve gathered the materials needed to craft it and the whopping 2,000 orens it costs to make, just go visit any craftsman. The in-game quest text may make it sound like you need to specifically visit Bras of Ban Ard, but any craftsman will do. After you’ve successfully crafted the vran armor, the quest resolves. You get no XP for resolving the quest, but then again, you’ve now got the most powerful armor you can obtain on a standard difficulty. Equip and slot it with +2 enhancements before the next side quest.

Side Quest: From a Bygone Era

You can only initiate this quest if you obtained Malget’s notes in Chapter 2 and kept them instead of selling them to Dethmold. You need to take Malget’s notes and go speak to Bras of Ban Ard. Say “I want to know everything about this manuscript.” Bras quickly figures out that Malget’s notes contain a password that lets you access a secret vault—but he won’t tell you how to use the password for free. At this point, you come to a dialogue branch where you can opt to bribe him or use Axii on him. If Axii works, he just goes ahead and tells you how to use the password. If you bribe him, you probably need to give him at least 300 orens to get him to talk. Note that if Axii fails against Bras, you can try it again by refusing to pay the bribe and just restarting the conversation.

Once you get Bras to talk, he explains that you don’t need to know what the book actually means to use the password correctly, just which part of it must be repeated to the sentry if you want to pass. You can work this out on your own, but to state it plainly, you need to say:

1. Zi

2. Uddu-ya

3. Ia Ia

4. Gat

5. Exa

6. Nibbit

7. Kanpa

8. Gat

9. Uddi-Zi

Go to the sentry down in the sewer tunnels and say this exact sequence of words to it. The sentry disappears and turns into a teleportation portal. If you’re having a hard time finding the sentry for some reason, consult the sewers map. On the other side is a simple puzzle you must solve to proceed through the room’s door.

In this room is a series of braziers. To pass through the door, you must light them all simultaneously. The problem is that lighting any one brazier causes the state of two others to “reverse.” That is, if they are alight, they are extinguished, and vice versa. So to get all seven of the braziers lit up simultaneously, you need to take advantage of this property. This involves understanding the relationships among the braziers, which we’ll refer to with letters to make what’s going on a bit clearer.

• A reverses B and D
• B reverses E and G
• C reverses A and B
• D reverses C and F
• E reverses A and G
• F reverses C and E
• G reverses C and F

So solving the puzzle is simply a matter of taking advantage of the reversals so that you can get all seven braziers going at once. There are a lot of different ways to do it, but the sequence that uses the fewest number of moves (that we’ve found) is A, F, B, A. Once the door unlocks, you should save your game. Once the room is open, you’re free to enter and speak to a forbidding NPC called the Operator.

Basically, you can use the Operator to respec your Geralt build if you aren’t happy with it, or you can attempt to fight the Operator to obtain a powerful weapon and some rare drops. You can also use this to test how good your build is. The Operator is by far the toughest encounter in the game, and only very strong builds are going to be able to drop him. If you try fighting the Operator and can’t get his vitality below 50 percent no matter what you try, then your build is weak and you should probably respec.

You can only speak to the Operator once. If you attempt to leave during that conversation, he disappears and you can never re-enter this area. So before you speak to the Operator, take a look at where you are in the game. If you’re positive you want to reset your skills, you can go ahead and speak with him regardless of level. If you’re interested in fighting him, make sure you’re fully prepared for the battle.

Visit craftsmen to make any traps you might want to use (notably, the Talgar winter). Make sure you have ingredients on hand for any potions you want to drink or bombs you want to make. The best steel sword to take into battle against the Operator is the forgotten vran sword, which you can only obtain by completing the main quest Of His Blood and Bone.

You also want to wield Deithwen, wear a complete Elder Blood set or its equivalent, and wear vran armor or (if you’re a mage) armor of Ysgith. All of your equipment should be fully slotted. You should be at level 35, so Geralt has every skill and stat bonus possible. If you feel Geralt’s level is too low, go complete any side quests you haven’t bothered with or advance the main plot. You can attempt to defeat the Operator at any time before you initiate the main quest A Summit of Mages.

If you want to get the Operator to respec you, say “What does this artifact do anyway?” and then “Yeah. Get started.” You immediately enter a meditating stance and get all of your talents back. You must still spend six on the training tree to unlock the others, but after that you can spend your talents however you wish. If you invested in some ability you really don’t like or picked a skill tree you’re not totally happy playing, then you can use the respec to put your points toward something different and hopefully better.

If you want to fight the Operator, say either “I’m no chosen one” or “What does this artifact do anyway?” followed by “I think I can use this thing myself.” You get a slightly different response for each, but either way the Operator becomes enraged and vows to kill you. Do not undertake this decision lightly. If you decide to fight the Operator, then only do it after applying your strongest potions, enhancing your sword with whetstones, and having huge stacks of the appropriate traps or bombs in hand.

The Operator begins by shooting powerful fireballs at you constantly. He can defend himself with Quen and moves too quickly for daggers to interrupt his spells. The best way to damage him is to roll up to him while he’s preparing a fireball and hit him before the animation completes. You can usually get in a three-hit combo before he throws Quen up. If you corner him, he teleports away or hits you with his staff, which can stun you or knock you down. The Operator’s vitality regenerates at a frightening rate, so turtling isn’t an option when you fight him. His only real weakness is being fairly vulnerable to incineration, so dancing stars and leveled-up Igni can be useful here.

The Operator by himself might be manageable, but there’s a huge complication to the fight. When the Operator is reduced to 75 percent, 50 percent, and 25 percent HP, he summons a pair of incredibly strong gargoyles. Although the Operator is clearly a supernatural being, the game considers him human and you need to be wielding a steel sword to do optimal damage to him. The gargoyles he summons are ridiculously powerful, though, and can batter your Quen down in no time. You can’t afford to attack them with anything but an optimal silver sword like Deithwen, since they do so much damage they can easily kill you in one or two hits on all but the lowest difficulties.

Defeating the gargoyles quickly and efficiently is the key to winning this battle. There are a few ways to go about it, but they all amount to the same basic idea: Get rid of the gargoyles fast, then go back to hitting the Operator before his vitality has time to significantly regenerate.

One way is to rely heavily on your adrenaline effects. For this method, you immediately blow your adrenaline effect the moment the gargoyles appear so you can kill them quickly (possibly instantly), then get back to battling the Operator. The danger of this method is that even if you’re using equipment to boost your adrenaline regeneration, it’s really hard for mage and swordsman builds to generate adrenaline quickly enough for handling all three waves of gargoyles. Alchemists can come close to doing it, but still probably need a backup plan for dealing with wave two or three. Swordsmen and mages need a backup plan for getting through the rest of the battle.

Since adrenaline is unreliable, you can try to focus on instant kills to eliminate the gargoyles. If you go this route, optimize your equipment so that every piece of your kit possible is upping your instant kill chance. Also make sure you’ve taken every instant kill skill available to your skill tree. Mages don’t get any such skills, so pursuing this method is probably not going to be successful. This can be a fruitful approach for alchemists or swordsmen, though, especially ones with access to Aard III.

The third and final way is to abuse the freeze critical effect. Very few things in the game let you inflict freezing on enemies, but you can do it consistently with use of the Talgar winter trap. The forgotten vran sword can also do it regularly in the hands of a swordsman, or any build that has taken skills that bolster critical effects chances. Gargoyles are fully vulnerable to freezing, so at the very least the critical effect slows them. If one is frozen solid, then you only need to hit it once to shatter it. This acts as an instant kill, but depending on your build, it may be easier to trigger.

A few tactics may seem useful but actually aren’t worth it. The big one is mind-controlling the gargoyles. This does get the gargoyles off of you, giving you time to recover. The problem is that you can’t really damage the Operator at all while the gargoyles are beating on each other. He just stands there and keeps his Quen up until the gargoyles are back on his side. If the gargoyles turn on the Operator, they can’t really damage him, either. Overall this tactic just makes the fight more frustrating.

Another tactic to avoid is hiding behind pillars. You may notice that if you stand directly behind one of the pillars, the Operator’s fireballs can’t hit you and gargoyles may hesitate to attack you. Once behind the pillar, it seems like you can just throw bombs at your enemies all day and win that way. The problem is that you can’t easily damage the Operator quickly enough this way to outpace his regeneration. Even if you make headway, eventually he’s going to summon another wave of gargoyles. Hanging around in the areas behind the pillars tends to result in the gargoyles pinning you against a wall and beating you rapidly to death. It’s much safer to just keep moving around, relying on Quen to help you soak up blows.

A positioning trick that is far more useful is to try to keep the gargoyles positioned between you and the Operator after they appear. It is difficult to do this consistently, but if you pull it off right, then the Operator basically smacks his gargoyles in the back with fireballs while he’s trying to target you (similar to the friendly fire you sometimes have to deal with when Triss is your ally). The Operator’s fireballs don’t do a lot of damage to the gargoyles, but if the fireballs are hitting the gargoyles then they’re not hitting you.

If you defeat the Operator, he drops the Operator’s staff, dragon scales, a vran armor enhancement, and a magic wrap. Only the Operator’s staff is worth it, as this weapon has a perfectly ridiculous +80 percent chance of incineration and a +10 percent chance of freeze. Using it in battle with humans results in hilariously one-sided victories. You don’t need anything like this to finish the game, though, and only a handful of battles with human opponents are left in the game. In short, while the Operator’s staff is an amusing curio, it’s not worth fighting the Operator to get. It’s more of a trophy.

You can successfully resolve this quest by either getting a respec for Geralt or defeating the Operator. You must choose one or the other. If you kill the Operator, you cannot respec. If you respec, you cannot fight the Operator. Either way, you don’t get any XP for resolving the quest but should be better off for having done it.

Side Quest: The Gargoyle Contract

You can grab this quest off of the notice board outside the inn. As with most contract quests, the first step is researching gargoyles. You probably haven’t fought them enough to pick up full knowledge, so instead pick up a copy of Gargoyles, Gutters, Sputters—Maintenance and Repair from Felicia Cori if you haven’t already. If you already have a copy of that book, read it. You may also want to pick up all four volumes of Runes of Power from either Bras of Ban Ard or Felicia Cori. You aren’t required to buy these to complete the quest, but they contain information about a certain puzzle you must solve. This guide contains the same information you need, so if you want to save your orens, you can skip them.

The locations of the three “gargoyle courtyards” in Loc Muinne are labeled on your map. The easiest way is to start with the room to the northwest, near the amphitheater, and then circle around clockwise to find the others. This method also lets you obtain a very powerful piece of equipment early in the quest, so you can use it later on. When you enter a gargoyle courtyard, you are immediately attacked by three or four gargoyles. Fight them using whatever tactics work well for your build.

After you defeat the gargoyles that guard the courtyard, look around the area for a stairwell leading down. At the bottom of the stairwell is an iron gate, then beyond it an underground room. The room should contain a magically locked chest, four magic runes glowing on the walls, and a podium. When you come to the podium, press the interaction button to read what it says. What you get is a snippet of poetry that acts as a code, indicating the order in which you should extinguish the runes.

You must move toward each rune and press the interaction button to extinguish it. If you extinguish them in the correct order, they remain extinguished and the chest magically unlocks. If you extinguish them in the incorrect order, then Geralt takes some damage and a random critical effect (usually bleeding, poisoning, or incineration). After that passes, you can try again. Each room’s clue is randomly selected from a list of six possibilities. If you read the Runes of Power books they detail 12 possible runes, but in practice the Loc Muinne rune rooms use varying combinations of only four runes: art, time, sky, and animal. Here’s what each rune looks like.

Art

Time

Sky

Animal

Here are the six possible clues you can find waiting for you on the podium of any given rune room. You won’t get the same clue twice. Basically, in any given game’s version of this quest, you should encounter half of these clues.

You absolutely must correctly extinguish the rune sequences in the three underground chambers, or it does not count toward the completion of this quest. As long as the runes burn, the gargoyles simply respawn in each courtyard as time passes. Once you’ve extinguished the runes, the gargoyles cease to appear. While the exact puzzles you solve in each room will be semi-randomly generated, you do find certain treasure consistently in each room.

In the northwest room, where we advise that you begin, the locked chest contains the silver sword Addan Deith and the diagram for the Elder Blood trousers. You also obtain some interesting information about the Wild Hunt here. In a game on standard difficulty, this is the strongest silver sword you can consistently obtain in the game in terms of pure damage. That said, Deithwen’s large damage bonuses make it deal more damage in one of the game’s climactic battles. You can use either sword comfortably to finish the game, but if you’ve already slotted Deithwen with runes, you might as well keep using it.

Circle around to the northeast room that’s near the dice players next. After you’ve defeated the gargoyles and entered the northeast underground room, you find it’s guarded by a golem. This fight is extremely dangerous, due to the small size of the underground room. It’s very hard to retreat from the golem for long and very easy for the golem to kill you even on normal difficulty by just hitting you once or twice. Prepare for this battle by drinking an array of potions that supports your build and oiling your silver sword with Falka’s blood or whirl to increase your damage output. If you have any adrenaline abilities, you should definitely use them here. When you head over to the northeast room, which isn’t far from the dice players’ building, the locked chest consistently contains the diagram for the Elder Blood gauntlets.

The final southeastern gargoyle courtyard must be approached carefully. To get to it, use a series of doors to pass around the Temerian camp. Once you’ve unlocked the room’s chest, you can obtain the diagram for the Elder Blood boots and the encrypted manuscript quest item.

Once you’ve solved all three puzzles, go talk to Bras of Ban Ard to resolve the quest and get your reward. He gives you 200 orens in payment and you receive 150 XP. Take some time to craft the Elder Blood items and equip them. Unless you’re already using something that has really good synergy with your build (like the mage’s trousers on a mage or the herbalist’s gloves on an alchemist), the Elder Blood items are essentially the best boots, trousers, and gauntlets you can obtain in a game on standard difficulty.

Upon completing this quest, if you’ve finished every other side quest in the game that involved destroying monster nests, you should unlock the Pest Control achievement. Remember that you need to turn the quest in to Bras of Ban Ard for it to count as completed. You also get the character attribute Arcane Knowledge for completing this quest.

Side Quest: An Encrypted Manuscript

Talk to Bras of Ban Ard after you obtain the encrypted manuscript during The Gargoyle Contract. He says that the book is sealed by a powerful magical spell that he can only break if you bring him a bunch of very specific alchemy items. What makes this quest a bit tricky is that you cannot go out and obtain most of these materials during this chapter. Most of them are rare monster drops you obtain in previous chapters. So if you skipped their relevant quests, used up these items in your own alchemy, or sold them, it is impossible to finish this quest or obtain its rewards.

To cast the spell that decrypts the manuscript, Bras of Ban Ard needs one warrior nekker blood, one queen endrega’s pheromones, one bullvore brain, and one harpy’s egg or rotfiend tongue. You can obtain warrior nekker blood by fighting nekkers in the wilderness cave north of town and queen endrega pheromones by summoning an endrega queen in the endrega nursery located in the wilderness. You pick up a bullvore brain every time you kill a bullvore, so unless you sold or used up all of yours, you should have one. You can grind harpies in this chapter to get the harpy’s egg if necessary and may have a rotfiend tongue on hand from your many battles with them in Chapter 2.

If you have all four of the required items, bring them to Bras of Ban Ard and he can automatically decrypt the manuscript. This resolves the quest and grants you 50 XP. From the manuscript Bras extracts the diagram for Caerme, which allows you to make a powerful steel sword. You can obtain a more powerful steel sword in this chapter only by completing the quest Of His Blood and Bone. If you decide to rescue Triss instead by doing Where Is Triss Merigold?, then Caerme is the most potent steel sword you can obtain in Chapter 3. Either way, crafting Caerme is worthwhile.

For Temeria!

Now that you’ve cleared every side quest you’re interested in, you need to decide whether you wish to help Roche rescue Anais or if you wish to rescue Triss. If you wish to rescue Triss, skip ahead to the Where Is Triss Merigold? section. If you wish to rescue Anais, read on.

Note that this quest doesn’t actually resolve until you’ve made a concrete decision either way. You get exactly the same XP rewards regardless of your choice, so you shouldn’t let that influence your decision.

Of His Blood and Bone

Make sure you’re carrying three runes suitable for slotting into a very powerful steel sword, as you’ll be obtaining one later in the quest. Meet Roche at the bottom of the sewer tunnel that’s just to the left of The Incredible Lockhart, in the town square. This tunnel leads to the entrance to the Kaedweni camp, which includes a tower where Dethmold is holed up. To rescue Anais, you must bust into the tower, which means…well, beating the living hell out of the entire camp. You should go into this battle prepared for a grueling fight against a large number of human foes. Although you will soon find a better steel sword, it can be helpful to craft Caerme just to make the Kaedwenis more manageable. Use whatever potions are best for your build and oil your sword with hanged man’s venom. All the usual sorts of bombs and traps are useful for crowd control, too. Just make sure you bring lots of them.

To get through the tunnel, approach the locked gate guarded by Kaedwenis. During the dialogue with the soldiers, you come to a point where you can use Axii to distract them. After the cutscene ends, the gate is unlocked and the way is opened to you. At this point For Temeria! successfully resolves and you receive 500 XP.

When you emerge from the sewer tunnel, a cutscene ensues. Geralt helps Roche up onto the walls surrounding the courtyard where the Kaedwenis have made their camp. This is extremely important to how the rest of the fight plays out. Crossbowmen lining the walls will take potshots at Geralt until Roche dispatches them. You need to manage the location of the Kaedweni soldiers as they attack you, leading them out of dangerous areas within range of the remaining crossbowmen back into safe areas Roche has already cleared out. Before you head for the Kaedwenis, duck into a walled-in alcove just to the right of where you emerge from the tunnel. A treasure chest here contains a stack of stings and some other loot.

The battle begins with waves of Kaedweni soldiers. They have unusually high vitality and hit very hard but otherwise have all the usual vulnerabilities of human opponents. You tend to fight them in groups of two or three at a time, though you can end up fighting five or six opponents at once if you move such that two waves come after you at once. Generally, every time you move a little deeper toward Dethmold’s tower, a new wave of Kaedwenis appears to try and stop you. Roche clears the eastern side of the camp of crossbowmen first, so try to lure Kaedwenis back in that direction as they jump you. Your adrenaline abilities are extremely useful here for managing the crowd.

Keep slaughtering Kaedwenis until Roche has eliminated the crossbowmen on the walls. This happens shortly after he announces that he has a crossbow and begins taking potshots at Dethmold’s apprentice, who has been commanding the troops. At this point, you should have reduced the forces on the field to a trio of mercenaries with heavy shields. Lure them away from the firefight between Roche and the apprentice, then dispatch them the way you would the other Kaedwenis. The mercenaries are a little tougher, but not by much. After this, you can finally get into the western half of the camp. Look around for a circle of strength and a nearby circle of life at the bottom of a stairwell. A final two mercenaries come after you, backed up by Dethmold’s apprentice. Roche heads down from the battlements to assist you.

Dispatching the mercenaries is simple, but Dethmold’s apprentice is another thing entirely. He casts spells quickly, so interrupting him with daggers can be quite difficult. He’s also very quick to teleport away once a blow or two is landed on him. If you use light attacks, you can knock off nearly half of his vitality with a solid combo, but setting one up is difficult. Keep an eye on where the apprentice is teleporting and dodge-roll to try to get a clear shot at him while he’s launching his fireball spell. A lot of opportunities will be blown by Roche beating you to the punch and hitting the apprentice for a sliver of damage, but with patience you should eventually be able to defeat the apprentice. After the apprentice is killed, the camp goes quiet. You can look around for loot, but don’t expect to find much. The soldiers drop very little of interest—mostly Kaedweni swords.

Head into the tower’s underground entrance. The tower holds little of interest. Don’t approach Anais’s magical prison, or you get damaged by the energy barrier. Head for the door set into the far side of the tower. This leads to Dethmold’s bedroom, and a cutscene plays. By the end of this cutscene, Dethmold is no longer with us.

When the cutscene ends, loot Dethmold’s body to get Dethmold’s safe key. The safe is off to your left, behind Dethmold’s desk. Open the safe to receive the forgotten vran sword, the most powerful steel sword in the game. Equip it and slot it with runes. You won’t have many opportunities to use it before the game ends, but it’s extremely useful when you do.

Head back out to approach Anais. Geralt and Roche have a conversation. Here, you choose between one of two different outcomes for this quest. If you simply say “Let’s go” at the first branch of the conversation, then Roche sides with Radovid. This affects the content of the cutscenes in A Summit of Mages but nothing else about the quest. It also affects the game’s Epilogue. If you take this option, then simply lead Anais out of the tower after the conversation. Outside, you meet a detachment of knights from the Order of the Flaming Rose. Lead the entire troop out of the Kaedweni camp and back to the locked gate in the sewer tunnel to end the quest. This is worth a whopping 2,500 XP and should unlock the achievement Kingmaker.

If you don’t want Roche to side with Radovid, then have Geralt say “Kings don’t always keep their word…” at the beginning of the conversation. This begins a sequence that lets you convince Roche to take Anais back to John Natalis instead of to Radovid. To convince Roche successfully, make sure you do not give any replies that seem to support Radovid. For instance, you can say “Stop and think—what else could you do?” at the conversation’s second branch and then “Freedom comes at a price” at the third. Once Roche is swayed, head out of the tower with Roche and Anais.

Outside, you meet a detachment of knights from the Order of the Flaming Rose who clearly intend to take Anais back to Radovid. Make sure you’ve got the forgotten vran sword equipped and then battle the knights. They have a lot of vitality, but the forgotten vran sword’s high chance of freezing should make this battle trivially easy for you. Once you’ve defeated the Order, take Anais back to the locked gate in the sewer tunnel you used to enter the camp. This completes the quest and grants you a 2,500 XP reward.

Where Is Triss Merigold?

If you decide to go after Triss, head to the Nilfgaardian camp. You find Shilard Fitz-Oesterlen haranguing the guards there. In a cutscene, Geralt seizes the ambassador and uses him as a hostage. After the cutscene, For Temeria! resolves and you receive 500 XP.

Now you can make your way directly into the Nilfgaardian camp. The fireworks start when you enter the camp and are confronted by Renuald aep Matsen and a troop of Nilfgaardian soldiers. Geralt attempts to bargain with Fitz-Oesterlen’s life, but Matsen replies by killing Fitz-Oesterlen himself. After that, the Nilfgaardian troops jump you. How difficult this battle is depends entirely on how well your build handles bunches of human enemies at once. If you have some reliable form of crowd control and mass damage, or at least a reliable defense like maxed-out Quen, you should weather this first battle easily.

Once you’ve killed the first Nilfgaardian group, take a little time to loot the camp. Shilard drops Shilard Fitz-Oesterlen’s second letter to the emperor. Everything else in your current area is random, but the orens at least are worth grabbing. If you check the door that leads to the next courtyard over, where Triss is held, you find it’s locked. Time to go looking for the key. To begin, head into the walled area where the Nilfgaardian harpy sword waits. Grab it and any random loot in the area you want, then climb up the ladder. Atop the walls you run into a pair of Nilfgaardian crossbowmen who should be easy to defeat. Follow the area atop the wall until you reach a point where you can jump down. Keep going until you find another area where you can leap down.

Pause before you make the jump down into the pond area. The next battle is a test of resources, so drink some potions, oil your blade with hanged man’s venom, and prepare some bombs or traps of your choice. Once you descend, you are in a challenge where you must fight waves of Nilfgaardian troops. You need to weather three waves of around four Nilfgaardian troops at a time. They all wear full armor and use their swords skillfully to parry your blows. You can afford to whittle them down with Riposte later on, but early in the battle you need to focus on dodge-rolling, getting cheap shots, and using your bombs and traps for crowd control. Adrenaline-based abilities can be hugely useful here, especially Heliotrope.

After you’ve mowed down Matsen’s waves of men, climb up into the courtyard where the entrance to Triss’s prison is located. You have a brief dialogue with Matsen where you may say what you wish. After the dialogue ends, you must battle another wave of around four Nilfgaardians. One of them is a combat mage. He uses the same combat tactics, teleporting randomly, throwing fireballs, and tossing up Quen. Pick off the mage first, then pick off the Nilfgaardian troops who are wielding only swords next. Once the mage is down, Renuald aep Matsen and his shieldmen wade into the fray.

Try to pick off the other combatants first, so you can slow down the pace of battle to deal with Matsen and his men. Use your crowd-control techniques, signs, and adrenaline abilities to try to pick off the shieldmen. Once Matsen is isolated, it’s just a matter of time until you defeat him.

After you defeat Matsen, you can loot his body to obtain Triss’s prison key, the Nilfgaardian camp key, Renuald aep Matsen’s letter, and the armor of Vicovaro. You can examine the loot the other Nilfgaardians you’ve defeated have left behind, too. Be sure to investigate the open tent to the left of the entrance to Triss’s prison cell. It holds the diagram for Nilfgaardian falconer’s gauntlets and Shilard Fitz-Oesterlen’s third letter to the emperor.

Now go unlock Triss’s cell and release her. After you do, you can have a long conversation with her about the Lodge and what’s really going on with the kingslayers. When the conversation is over, you must lead her out of the camp. This is pretty simple, as you can use the Nilfgaardian camp key to pass through the door that was locked earlier.

Exit through the door that leads out of the camp and into the area where the quest began, just north of the town square. At this point you resolve the quest and receive a 2,500 XP reward. Triss decides to go crash the summit with you. She’s going to go wait at a certain point in town and you can simply talk to her when you’re ready to move on to the ending of the game.

A Summit of Mages

Enter the Dragon

To initiate A Summit of Mages, go speak with your companion, who will be standing outside the entrance to the amphitheater. Depending on which of the two main quests you chose, it may be Roche or Triss. The rest of this quest consists of simply watching the events of the cutscene play out, but exactly what you see will be influenced by the decisions you’ve made in your game and who your companion happens to be. The quest resolves automatically when the cutscenes end.

You must now chase down Síle de Tansarville, who has been spirited off to her tower by a dragon. If you want to use potions in this battle, pause to drink them before climbing up into the tower itself. An alchemist may be able to keep potion timers going throughout the entire sequence by skipping dialogue, but for other builds, potions are probably going to wear out shortly after you catch Síle.

The chase up the tower is a setpiece where you can minimize damage by giving yourself immunity to incineration and dodge-rolling up the stairs as much as possible. You may take a little damage, but if you’re using Quen it should be extremely minor.

When you get to the top of the stairs, you face a choice. After a brief cutscene, Síle prepares to teleport away using her megascope. When she begins the teleport, it becomes clear that someone’s tampered with the megascope. You can choose to save Síle by removing the flawed diamond using an interaction prompt, or to simply let her be torn apart by doing nothing at all. Whether you save Síle or let her die has little impact on the rest of your game. If she dies, you unlock the Witchhunt achievement. If you save her, she thanks you with a very important bit of information before she teleports away and you unlock the Sensitive Guy achievement.

After Síle departs, you begin your battle with the dragon Saesenthessis. For the first phase of the combat, you fight only the dragon’s massive head and neck, smashed into the tower room where you stand. During this part of the battle, you simply need to evade its attacks, then roll up to the dragon’s head to get in a quick counterattack. Keep Quen up to mitigate damage and use any tricks you think might be appropriate. Note that Quen prevents incineration, so as long as you have Quen up the dragon’s breath cannot hurt you. When you get her down to about half of her vitality, she leaps off the side of the tower and flies up to its flat roof.

Follow her by climbing up to the tower roof. In this phase of the battle, you still damage her in basically the same ways. Dodge-roll to evade attacks, then try to roll in to her right or left to get in a quick blow of your sword. Don’t try to score multiple hits, or you’re likely to get smacked around by one of her claws or a snapping bite.

Occasionally, Saesenthessis takes to the air to attack you. She may rear up or hover in place while breathing flame at you. If you can give yourself immunity to incineration, this does no damage. Throwing up Quen is the simplest way, but alchemist builds will have more options. She may also attempt to attack you with lunging dives. To avoid these, keep an eye on her when she takes to the air and then dodge-roll to either side. Sometimes she decides to attack by lashing her tail at the tower’s roof. This is also something you can dodge-roll away from easily enough.

Note that you can also damage Saesenthessis with thrown daggers. If you have two points invested in the Dagger Throwing skill and a sufficiently large stack of silver throwing daggers, it is possible to kill her through thrown dagger damage. Alchemists can achieve a similar effect if they have two points of the Alchemist skill and a sufficiently large stack of a heavily damaging bomb like grapeshot. Even if you don’t want to try killing her purely with thrown weapons (it can demand a very large stack on higher difficulties), keep in mind that you can damage her with bombs or daggers while she is flying around and also when she rears up to breathe fire at you.

While she doesn’t deal heavy damage per blow, she has a ton of vitality and you have to hack at her for some time until you can reduce it all. If you’ve got some sort of strong defensive ability and optimal equipment, you should survive long enough to whittle her down. Once you reduce her vitality to a tiny sliver of red, a cutscene begins. There are a couple of QTEs here, and you need to hit them to finish the battle. Hit the interaction button when prompted, then the strong attack button.

Now, you face a decision. You can slay Saesenthessis, who is clearly being magically controlled by Síle, or you can walk away and simply leave her to whatever her fate might be. If you choose to kill Saesenthessis, you unlock the achievement Being Witcher George. If you simply walk away and leave her alive, you unlock the achievement Dragonheart. Which decision you make won’t affect the rest of the game dramatically, but your companion comments on what you did. After that, you proceed to the game’s Epilogue.

Epilogue (Roche)

The Assassins of Kings

Returning Memories

If Your Companion Is Roche and You Sided with Radovid

Roche helps you up as you climb back into Loc Muinne, then fills you in on what’s happened in the city. Egged on by the revelations from the Nilfgaardians at the summit, the soldiers left in the city have begun a bloody pogrom against the mages who gathered in Loc Muinne. During the chaos, Roche received a message from Letho, who is waiting for Geralt along with Triss at the Temerian camp.

On the way to the camp, you encounter a sorceress who has gone mad from what she’s witnessed in the dice players’ building. In the area just beyond that, where you fought the bounty hunters, you find a small detachment of disgruntled Temerian soldiers. They consider Roche a traitor and attack the both of you. This can be a surprisingly tough fight, so use any leftover bombs or hanged man’s venom you have on hand. If you have the Operator’s staff handy, equip it to make the battle trivial.

When you make it to the former Temerian camp, you do find Triss with Letho. She immediately gets up and walks toward you. After a quick dialogue scene, she goes to wait with Roche outside the walled-in camp area. This encounter automatically resolves Where Is Triss Merigold? for this chapter.

If Your Companion Is Roche and You Sided with Natalis

Roche helps you up as you climb back into Loc Muinne, then fills you in on what’s happened in the city. Egged on by the revelations from the Nilfgaardians at the summit, the soldiers left in the city have begun a bloody pogrom against the mages who gathered in Loc Muinne. During the chaos, Roche received a message from Letho, who is waiting for Geralt along with Triss at the Temerian camp.

On the way to the camp, you encounter a sorceress that has gone mad from what she’s witnessed in the dice players’ building. In the area just beyond that, where you fought the bounty hunters, you now find a small detachment of knights from the Order of the Flaming Rose, supported by Redanian arbalists. They’re under orders to slay Roche for his patriotic treachery in dealing with Radovid. This fight should be quite simple for you thanks to the forgotten vran sword. The knights with shields can be a bit of a pain, so try stunning them with Aard or Zerrikanian suns. If you have it, the Operator’s staff can make quick work of the shieldmen.

When you make it to the former Temerian camp, you do find Triss with Letho. She immediately gets up and walks toward you. After a quick dialogue scene, she goes to wait with Roche outside the walled-in camp area. This encounter automatically resolves Where Is Triss Merigold? for this chapter.

If Your Companion Is Triss

Triss helps you up as you climb back into Loc Muinne, then fills you in on what’s happened in the city. Consumed by fury at the knowledge of Síle’s role in the regicides, the soldiers left in the city have turned on the mages. Only the Council’s re-establishment has kept it from turning into an all-out bloody pogrom against magic-users. She also mentions receiving a letter from a messenger sent by Letho, who wants to meet with Geralt one last time at the site of the former Temerian camp. Begin heading in that direction.

Along the way, you stumble across a group of Kaedweni soldiers who are menacing Roche and a little girl. The girl is Anais, whom Roche went off and rescued himself while you were rescuing Triss. You should have an easy time defeating them all, between your high level and having two NPC companions. Just remember to keep Quen up so Triss doesn’t set you on fire by accident. Say your farewells to Roche and the princess-in-exile, then make your way into the now-deserted Temerian camp to confront Letho. Read on.

Letho’s Fate

When you enter the camp, Letho begins a dialogue scene with you. During this dialogue, you have the option to ask him many different questions about his motivations and activities. Say “I chased you for many reasons” to get into the optional dialogue branches where you can ask Letho for explanations of his behavior. (The first decision, whether or not to accept his vodka, is purely for flavor.)

When you’re ready to make the Epilogue’s major decision, say “Let’s finish this.” At this point, you can choose to spare Letho or to kill him. The decision has no mechanical effect, as you might expect at this late date in the game. It’s purely a matter of whether you want to fight him (or, perhaps, whether you’re comfortable with the idea of killing him).

If you wish to spare Letho, say “Go. Somewhere far away.” Letho is true to his word and simply leaves. Geralt returns to his companion (or companions) and proceeds to make his way out of Loc Muinne. The game is over, enjoy your ending. Finishing the game by sparing Letho unlocks the achievement Old Friends. By completing Chapter 3, you unlock the Once Ain’t Enough achievement. By finishing the game, you unlock the achievement To Be Continued.

If you wish to fight and kill Letho, say “Give it your best shot” to initiate the fight. This battle is tough enough that you should make whatever preparations for it you deem necessary. If you want to use potions, be sure to drink them just before entering the Temerian camp and skip all of the optional question-and-answer stuff. Oil your steel sword with hanged man’s venom. Letho’s vulnerabilities are the same, so traps and Yrden can be very powerful here if you succeed at getting him to chase you. Letho still punishes you for getting too far away by throwing bombs, but in the wide open Temerian camp it’s easier to evade and outrun his bombs. In particular, you can make good use of the pool in the middle of the square for both evading Letho and luring him into walking over any traps or Yrdens you might want to lay.

Letho’s vitality is absurdly high and it’s going to take a while to chip it down. Letho is if anything a little bit faster than he was in your first fight, so you may not be able to interrupt his signs with thrown daggers. Strong attacks are usually too slow in this battle, but it’s easy enough to get in a couple of light attacks before you roll away from him. Having both levels of Feet Work makes this battle much easier, perhaps even more so than having a maxed out Quen to use for defense. When you get Letho’s vitality down to about 25 percent, he enters a “battle fury” where he stops using any signs or bombs and instead just does his spinning attack nonstop. Keep Quen up, roll around him, and try to use light attacks to hit him a couple times.

Never go for more than a couple of blows. Even when his vitality is low Letho is going to block you. Getting staggered usually means you get punished with counterattacks. Letho still hits like a freight train, even with your upgraded equipment and maxed-out stats. You need to be patient and careful if you want to defeat him once and for all. When you do beat Letho, you trigger a cutscene, then transition into the game’s normal ending cutscenes. Killing Letho unlocks the Avenger achievement. By completing Chapter 3, you unlock the Once Ain’t Enough achievement. By finishing the game, you unlock the achievement To Be Continued. See the Endings Guide section for more information about the game’s various endings.