Chapter Three: The Daily Grind
As it turns out, THIS IS HARD AS SHIT. I spent the majority of my time grinding and upped my death count by 200%. Report below.
PLEASE BE ADVISED: This blog series (obviously) contains major spoilers for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
Current Level: 4
Current Location: Blackbough, Velen, Northern Temeria
In our last chapter, you may remember that we agreed to help Phillip Strenger, self-appointed "Bloody Baron" of Velen, locate his missing daughter and wife in exchange for information about Ciri's stay in his home. You may also remember we found out that the baron is kind of a terrible person!
I really did want to bring you all that story this chapter, but as it turns out, THIS IS HARD AS SHIT. I spent the majority of my time grinding and upped my death count by 200%. Report below.
What did we do?
Well, first, the pellar has some solid alchemy supplies, so I did some shuffling of resources to buy formulas and ingredients and make some more stuff; tbd if I will find it useful later. I've never been a big alchemy user in the past, but maybe that will change as the game gets harder.
Meanwhile, back at Crow's Perch, there appears to be a fire inside the fort. Geralt asks himself if it's a lightning strike, but it turns out the baron just set the stable on fire in a drunken rage and everyone is too scared of him to put it out. Some guy's brother is still in there with the horses, though, so it's time for Geralt to put on his hero pants and save the day by going into the stable and unlocking the doors from the inside. The baron seems somewhat pleased with us, actually, until Geralt brings up his wife's miscarriage and the baron attempts to to beat Geralt to a pulp. In this case, he succeeds (twice, actually) and we are dead.
After finally we finally beat up the baron, it's time to chat about what actually happened to his wife and daughter. Turns out, Anna "always knew how to get him angry"—I forgot how much I hated him—and that she and Tamara actually just ran away. But never fear! Either way, Geralt still has their rescue plan in his hands and gives the baron the rundown, suggesting they get started on the attempt to either kill or break the curse from his botchling child tonight at midnight.
When the boys arrive at the grave site, the monster is already on the prowl and looking pretty nasty. I decide, as always, to turn it to a lubberkin, and not just because I have never once been able to defeat the botchling. And this was ultimately a good call: I did get pretty destroyed by the second round of wraiths on our walk back up the hill. I confirmed my decision to break the curse when I took too long to kill the wraiths on my second walk up and was promptly annihilated by the rabid botchling. And then the wraiths again—and again!
Oh my god, I need a new sword so badly! I want to say I remember this quest being this brutally hard? But what really kills me about it is having to do the whole thing over every time I die. A checkpoint or two would have been pretty nice of y'all! I decide that this may need to be where I leave Geralt for the night. Good lord.
In the morning, after getting torn apart by the wraiths one more time, I began to think, "Hm, maybe I should prepare myself more for this so I don't get destroyed again." I went back to an older save file and told the baron I'd join him later...after a brief re-defeat in hand-to-hand combat. It's points of interest and side quest time, I guess. This may serve multiple purposes, honestly, since I clearly also need a silver sword besides this terrible starter to do any kind of real damage to monsters. I decide to first return to the Eternal Fire priest's pyres. All is well until the last mass grave, where one body is not quite so dead yet, and "very talkative," as Geralt tells the priest upon his return. At that point, dude offers us a bribe, I decide that dude is as good as dead, and I loot him and his cronies for my reward. Never trust religious officials, kids.
Next, I head off to nearby Hindhold, where I'm reasonably confident I can destroy the harpy nest and snag some good loot. Only problem? A big-ass clan of endregas are guarding the main entrance, and the game promises they will kill me. Thankfully, my cowardice in the face of killer insectoids helped me find a secret back way onto the rooftop nest. Score. No silver sword on the premises, but the loot is enough to sell for a new silver sword—finally. Disglair replaces my starter and I'm onto other points of interest. Now I don't strictly need the Letter to get to Oxenfurt, since this is a decent enough sword in terms of sheer attack power, so big win.
I'm curious to test it, so I head to a nearby group of drowners. I did get killed by them because I let them ambush me, but the sword does a considerably better job than before. I knocked them out the second time around, looted the guarded treasure, and pressed onward. Nothing spectacular to report other than a staggering number of deaths, mostly at the hands of bandits. Why do people play this game on this difficulty? It's not even fun sometimes. Anyway, I finally liberated the refugee camp to gain access to its herbalist, really reinforcing the need for good combat strategy. I feel comfortable going into the fight with those wraiths at or near level 5, and I need to grind hard if I want to get there with this leveling rate.
I have to digress and talk for a minute about Geralt's fashion at this stage of the game, because it’s here I realize how bad his outfit currently is. This is before I can meaningfully craft any good-looking armor that's decent and am kind of just prioritizing what offers me the most damage protection and other good shit like that. Consequently, Geralt usually looks like a fucking clown. I’ve been able to reinforce my defense pretty solidly with just what I've found, but thank god Velen is not the fashion capital of the continent, or we'd have a real problem on our hands.
All that done and back to the timeline, wraiths no longer withstanding, we get to the baron's threshold gravesite (somehow better than the other one, I guess) where Geralt walks the baron through a ritual and helps him bury his daughter, the newly named Dea. Twenty-four hours later, we've done it: Dea has gone from a terrifying flesh monster to a Casper the friendly ghost version of the monster, and she's ready to lead you to Anna and Tamara—well, sort of. A journey down the road first leads us to a smokehouse, where there are signs of their presence. Then we encounter a horse carcass that's far beyond necrophage food at this point, surrounded by rotfiends. After eliminating the rotfiends, Geralt deduces that the horse belonged to Anna and Tamara and that whatever attacked them was strong; hopefully they got away. Good news is, Dea keeps moving along the road, so the trail doesn't end there.
She finally comes to a stop outside a fisherman's hut, where inside, a small child spills the beans that the fisherman helped them escape and one lady had been there. The fisherman admits that Tamara is safe with his brother in Oxenfurt, but Anna is another story. That night on the way to his hut, there was a sudden strong gust of wind and it grew dark. Anna was overcome by some sort of supernatural fit where there were mysterious marks burned into her hands like raw fire. Then, the beast that attacked them jumped out of the woods and snatched her. With not much more to learn here beyond what we already know about the baron’s drinking problem, it's about time Geralt pays a visit to Crow’s Perch.
What did we learn?
Fistfighting: There is no real other strategy here than trying to operate defensively and land strong attacks from the sides and rear. Otherwise, you're dead.
Alchemy: I've made good use of my alchemy materials so far, way more than I would have normally. Definitely need to keep making those upgrades happen.
Bandit camps: This grind particularly reinforced the need to take out the crossbow guys early. They were a major hindrance in the instances where I died.
Death Count (This Chapter): 15
Death Count (Total): 22
Beat to unconsciousness three times by the bloody baron.
Killed four times protecting the baron from wraiths while walking Dea back up the hill.
Killed by the botchling after taking too long to defend the baron from wraiths
Walked into a nest of drowners near Hangman’s Alley and was slashed to death.
Killed by pirates at a camp near Midcopse.
Killed four times by renegades while trying to liberate the Refugee Camp site.
Killed by bandits at a camp near Hangman’s Alley.
NOTE: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is the intellectual property of the appropriate copyright holders, including the screencaps from the game I have included in this essay. I have no official affiliation with CDPR or anyone else associated with the game/books/universe; I’m just a fan who plays Witcher to cope.