Bosses

Ordinary fights in The Witcher 2 reward a routine. Oil the right blade, drink before the door, roll and poke, put Quen up when it drops. The two boss fights we cover in depth are notable because each one deliberately removes a different piece of that routine, and neither tells you which piece before it starts.

So the question worth asking of each is not what its weakness is, but which of your habits it invalidates.

Draug: the one where standing close is the mistake

Draug arrives at the end of The Eternal Battle in Chapter 2, and it does not matter which path you took to get there. Roche or Iorveth, the same demonic arch-wraith is waiting in the mist once the four artifacts are gathered.

The habit he breaks is aggression. Geralt's whole melee kit is built around closing distance, parrying and countering, and Draug cannot be parried at all. Everything about him has to be dodged, which turns the fight from a sword duel into a matter of reading his wind-up and being somewhere else when it lands. He also carries a layer of shield health that has to come off before your damage touches the real bar, which is what makes the opening minutes feel pointless if you have not been told.

Bombs are the honest answer. Dodge, throw, and aim for his sides, and you can take him apart without ever being in range of his melee. Once his health falls under half he opens up with a swirling tornado attack, and the correct response is to run: getting caught in that maelstrom is the fastest way this fight ends badly. Yrden buys a few seconds by pinning him if you need breathing room, and if you have run out of bombs entirely, timing a silver sword strike on his sides is the fallback.

There are two shouted warnings worth listening for. Archers means flaming arrows and Trebuchets means meteors, and both mean hiding behind rocks rather than pressing the attack. Beating him pays out generously in crafting components, including Diamond Dust, Amethyst dust, red, blue and yellow Meteorite Ore, Essence of Death, Draug essence, a Draug armor fragment and the Draug Trophy.

The Operator: the one where your preparation is worthless

The Operator waits at the end of From a Bygone Era in Chapter 3, and he is optional in the strictest sense: tell the Vran Guardian you are the chosen one and you get a talent respec instead of a fight. Tell him you are not, and this is what you get.

What the Vran Guardian breaks is everything you did before walking in. He is immune to poisons and to every weapon oil, so the coating you applied is doing nothing. He carries a Protection Spell that absorbs your hits outright. And the swordsman path's adrenaline abilities have no effect at all on him or on the creatures he summons, which means using them simply drains your stamina and loses you the fight. Three of the four things a prepared player leans on are off the table.

The fourth still works, which is where the fight turns. Signs are the way in. Aard knocks him down before he can finish a summoning spell, and Quen keeps you standing through the fireballs he opens with. His two Gargoyles are vulnerable to silver, and the trick our guide teaches is not to kill them where they stand but to lure them next to him first, because each one explodes when it dies and the blast lands on the Operator.

Gear matters here more than in most fights. The Armor of Ysgith nullifies half the damage from his summoned attacks, which is the single largest swing available, and a silver sword such as the Deithwen does extra work against the Gargoyles. Both are covered in our items guide. Bombs are useful as well, particularly Dancing Star, Red Haze and Samum, since knocking him down is a legitimate way to open a window.

The drops are the reason to take the fight rather than the respec: a Dragon Scale, a Magic Wrap, a Vran Armor Enhancement and the Operator's Staff. The Dragon Scale in particular is one of the hardest components in the game to find if you are assembling a Dark Mode set.

What carries between them

Two fights, two different lessons, and one thing in common: in both cases the answer is the tool you were least likely to have invested in. Draug wants bombs from a player who has been leaning on the sword; the Operator wants Signs from a player who has been leaning on oils and adrenaline. That is a fair summary of how The Witcher 2 handles bosses generally, and an argument for keeping at least one point in a Sign even on a pure Swordsmanship build.

Beyond these two, the game's other set-piece encounters are folded into their quest walkthroughs rather than given their own pages: the Kayran, the Queen Endrega at the end of the Endrega contract, the Queen Harpy in the Vergen quarry, the golems below Loc Muinne and the demon at the end of Little Sisters. Our quests guide is the index for all of those, and the combat guide covers the parry, dodge and Sign fundamentals that both fights above test.