Quests

Very few games throw away half of themselves the way The Witcher 2 does. At the end of Chapter 1 you pick Vernon Roche or Iorveth, and the second chapter that follows is not a variation on a theme. It is a different town, a different cast, a different set of side quests and a different reason for everything that happens next. Whole questlines on this page will never appear in your playthrough.

So the useful way to read our quest coverage is not chapter by chapter but path by path. Below, all twenty-four quest pages on the wiki are placed where they actually sit: the shared opening that everybody plays, the two halves of Chapter 2 that nobody plays both of in one run, and the convergence in Loc Muinne.

The whole map

The prologue: one decision, three games later

Before any of the branching begins, the game asks whether Aryan La Valette lives. Our guide to that choice lays out both routes: pick Let's settle this between us and only Aryan dies, pick As you wish and you fight him alongside his soldiers, or pick Drop your weapon, fool and he surrenders.

Sparing him puts him in the castle dungeon as a prisoner later in the prologue, where he escapes and returns north. It also, per our endings guide, grants Geralt the Strong Back ability, which comes with a catch: the escape sequence gets harder, with more guards in the final dungeon rooms. Killing him denies you the ability and makes the escape easier.

Chapter 1: the part everybody plays

Flotsam and its wilderness hold the largest block of shared content in the game, and it is where the two witcher contracts, the two minigame questlines and most of the moral tests live.

Troll Trouble is the best of them, because the notice board version of the story is a lie. The troll on the bridge is drunk and belligerent, and the village chief in Lobinden will pay you 200 Orens to remove him. Take him to half health and the game offers a second option: ask what the drinking is about. His wife was killed, and following that thread through Zoltan, Sendler and a man named Kambialla leads to Demitri in the graveyard, whose corpse carries the Key to the Bandit Hideout and a letter of safe passage signed by Loredo. Our guide comes down on the side of helping him, largely because the loot is better.

Malena runs the opposite trick. The soldiers accusing the elven woman of spying have no evidence, so you go looking for some, and the two dead men in the cave turn out to have been shot with Scoia'tael arrows. Believe her anyway and she leads you into an ambush; believe her a second time by the waterfall and she ambushes you again. Every route pays the same 125 XP, which is the game quietly telling you that this one was never about the reward.

The two Chapter 1 contracts both start with a book rather than a sword. Einar Gausel in the Flotsam nonhuman district sells Nekkers in the Mist for 32 Orens, which tells you that Grapeshot destroys nekker nests, and Three Years Among the Endregas, which tells you to lure the Queen out by burning endrega cocoons. Both contracts end with Louis Merse paying out, and doing them together earns extra.

The minigames get their own quests too. Fight Club begins after the third bout of One on One: Flotsam, when King Ziggy offers to take you somewhere more lucrative, and ends in Loredo's basement pit against Twigs, Matho, Tassledick and finally Zdenek. Loredo will offer to split 400 Orens if you go down on purpose. Taking the deal genuinely fails the quest; refusing wins you 300 Orens and a fight with two of his thugs on the walk home.

The Ballista is a mini-quest inside Roche's Indecent Proposal, and it is solved socially rather than with a sword. The guard will not move, so you hire Margarita, and she will do it either for coin or for a favour: humiliating two of Loredo's men, Myron and Alphonse, at the arm wrestling table. There are no consequences for skipping it, but disabling the ballista shows up in the cutscene when you and Roche leave.

Rose of Remembrance takes you into an elven garden in the forest and offers a choice with a very obvious subtext: go with Triss or go alone. Going with her collapses you both into an ancient bathhouse, which is where our Triss romance guide picks the story up.

Mystic River is the only quest that stays with you for the whole game. A shipwreck near the Kayran's nest in Chapter 1 hands you the captain's journal, which sends you to a Royal Post drop box. Use the one in Louis Merse's house rather than the one in Loredo's office, because Loredo's needs a key you only get by killing him. The Chapter 2 wreck sits outside Vergen with a troll beside it, and the Chapter 3 chest in the Loc Muinne sewers carries Diagram: Vran Armor along with the Armor of Ysgith it is built from.

The fork

Chapter 1 ends by asking you to hand Iorveth his sword or side with Vernon Roche, and everything below this line is decided by that answer. Our choices guide lays out the immediate consequences in both directions: siding with Roche keeps you inside the Temerian story and sees Vergen fall, while siding with Iorveth abandons the Temerian cause, ends Dethmold's story and breaks Henselt's invasion.

Roche's Chapter 2: the Kaedweni camp

Roche's half of the game takes place in and around King Henselt's army camp, and its quests are about a military machine and the people it has ground down.

Dethmold's Necromantic Ritual is the standout, because it is the one time the game lets you replay someone else's memory. The sorcerer needs a mutant to survive Hanmarvyn's Blue Dream, and the mutant needs a Gadwall potion first, bought from Master Myron asleep outside the tent. Inside the dream you follow the second assassin through a field littered with traps, and touching one ends the vision and starts it over. What you learn is that Letho is heading for Loc Muinne and that Sile is working with the kingslayers.

Little Sisters is the camp's ghost story and the quest most likely to end badly by accident. Before you go down into Malget's basement, visit the cemetery, because the three candles have to be lit in the order carved on Malget's own grave: Down, then Diamond, then Up. Get it wrong and a wraith arrives. The room behind the door holds Malget's notes, which start From a Bygone Era, and the beach at midnight holds three specters who blame a soldier named Mavrick for their deaths. Only one route pays: hear both sides, then stand with Mavrick.

The Path to Vision sends you out to a hermit surrounded by candles who wants either a donation or a convert. Choose to join his faith, drink the Swallow he hands you, sleep at Sabrina's shrine near the Twin Lakes, and then tell him the truth about what you saw, which involves a giant chicken. Lying here ends the quest badly. The reward is what he knows about Sabrina Glevissig, the burning, and the spear that ended her, which is in Iorveth's possession on the other path.

Ave Henselt! is a tournament of four duels: Gwydion with his axe, Rendag hiding behind a shield, the two-sword Borin, and finally Ves, who is faster than any of them. Winning all four in one sitting is how you get paid, and beating Ves is the entry point for her romance. If Proximo will not start the thing, our guide's fix is to finish your outstanding side quests, then meditate to noon and find him near the arena.

Iorveth's Chapter 2: Vergen

The other half of the chapter puts you in a dwarven city under siege, working for a dragon-slaying rebel and a sorceress who is not telling you everything.

Hunting Magic is the spine of it. Philippa needs an artifact to save Saskia, the first crystal you find at the Place of Power turns out to be the wrong one, and the right one is inside the harpy lair beyond the Quarry, behind a gate that Cecil Burdon will only open once you have blackmail on him. Inside is a circular projector, a dream belonging to Letho, and a Queen Harpy waiting for you to turn around. The projector is also the trigger for two other quests, because feeding it different crystals shows you the dwarven smith Baltimore's dream and Iorveth's.

Baltimore's Nightmare is what comes out of the silver crystal. The runesmith vanished a month ago, his apprentice Thorak inherited the house, and behind a weak wall in the workshop are Baltimore's directions and key. Lie to Thorak on your way out. The trail past the wooden altar and the Ingrand's signs leads to a quarry chest, then to a hidden steel door near the shipwreck, and then to Thorak himself arriving with two friends to buy your silence. Refuse, and his body carries Diagram: Hunter's armor along with his key.

Royal Blood is the only quest in the game on a clock. A mob outside Prince Stennis's quarters wants him punished for poisoning Saskia, Iorveth asks you to investigate while he holds them off, and the trial starts whether or not you are ready. Two conversations are worth more than all the others: the dwarves who point at a copycat runesmith, which starts Suspect: Thorak, and the locals who name Willy, Saskia's servant, which starts Walls have Ears. Both threads lead to the priest Olcan, and the notes in his house are worth 1,000 XP.

With Flickering Heart is the succubus investigation, and the twist is in who is lying. An elf named Ele'yas hires you to look into bodies in the catacombs, the surgical tools from Felicia Cori let you extract a metal shard from a fresh corpse, and Dandelion's poetry book leads you to the succubus herself. Sing her the four-line verse correctly as Dandelion and she invites you in, at which point she names Ele'yas as the killer. She is telling the truth. Siding with her earns Orens, a Rook potion and Thyssen's Armor.

The Harpy Contract is the chapter's monster work and the most mechanical quest in the game. Craft ten Harpy Traps, seven for the job and three spare, and place them in the open where the birds can see them. Four nests are in the old quarry, three in the Quarry itself, and the trick is that the harpies destroy their own nests by carrying your trap home. The Queen Harpy follows once all seven are down.

The Eternal Battle: the same quest, twice

The Eternal Battle is the one Chapter 2 quest both paths run, and comparing the two versions is the clearest illustration of what the branch actually changes. The curse needs four artifacts symbolising hate, death, faith and courage. On Iorveth's path Philippa takes care of faith and courage herself and leaves you the other two. On Roche's path you fetch all four, which means Seltkirk's Armor from Vinson Traut during Conspiracy Theory and Henselt's medallion, which Dethmold will only hand over after the curse is lifted.

Vandergrift's Sword arrives differently too: Zoltan and Saskia hand it over in the Tunnel of the Founders on Roche's path, while on Iorveth's you simply wait for Saskia to recover and she offers it. The Dun Banner Standard is in the dwarven catacombs either way, guarded by the ghost of Ekhart Henessy, who can be answered, bribed with a Dun Banner Cloak and a Beaver Cap, or killed.

What follows is identical: four possessions in the mist, a run under flaming arrows as a messenger, and then Draug. Even the ending diverges, though, with Geralt waking in a camp brothel after three days on one path and in Philippa's house on the other.

Chapter 3: Loc Muinne

The ruined elven city is where both paths converge, though two of its quests are still path-locked and one is an Enhanced Edition addition on each side.

The Gargoyle Contract is the only contract in the chapter, and it is a reading exercise. Felicia Cori sells Gargoyles, Gutters, Splutters and four Runes of Power volumes, which teach you that a harp means Art, a line in a parallelogram means Sky, a snake along a riverbed means Animal and an open hourglass means Time. Three underground chambers each hold a puzzle drawn from a pool of six, and the three chests give you the diagrams for the Elder Blood boots, gauntlets and trousers.

From a Bygone Era begins back in the Kaedweni camp with Malget's notes and finishes here. Do not sell them to Dethmold. Bras of Ban Ard reads them, an Axii hex gets the password order out of him, and the wisp at the burning doorway wants the fifth option in the list. The braziers past it are lit in the order 1, 6, 2, 1, and behind the door is a Vran Guardian who asks whether you are the chosen one. Say no and you fight the Operator for loot; say yes and you get the game's one and only talent respec.

Lilies and Vipers is the Roche-path addition. Escort Brigida out of the city through two ambushes, learn that Maravel and Kimbolt are both dirty, and then decide how thorough to be. Handing Kimbolt's letter straight to John Natalis ends it for 250 XP and lets Maravel walk. Testing the letter for forgery instead, using burnt lime, water, cormorant guano and heat, opens The Messenger and Pacta Sunt Servanda, and charging both nobles pays best.

The Secrets of Loc Muinne is the Iorveth-path addition, and the richest puzzle sequence in the game. Two scholars hire you as an escort, Cynthia and Adalbert are already waiting in the Crypt of Mages, and refusing their deal ends the quest as a failure. Accept and you face the Guardian's Eye, whose three possible riddles answer to Time, Dream and Fate, then a second eye whose verses point to three of nine frescos: the Dragon, the Moon and the mountain mine.

Behind those doors stands the Talking Golem, and this is the one fight in the game you win with dialogue. Do not use Axii, do not ask its name, do not pose as Dearhenna and do not offer to free it. Present yourself as a guest, talk about lies and delusions, and agree that only the master's will exists, and it argues itself apart. Any other route summons two more golems.

How it all lands

Our endings guide traces sixteen variations back to their causes, and the shape is simpler than the number suggests: the path you took, whether Stennis or Henselt survived depending on which path that was, whether you chased Triss or the other priority in the final act, and whether Letho lives. Aryan's fate in the prologue splits the whole set in two.

For the decisions themselves rather than the walkthroughs, our choices guide lists every major fork and its outcome, and flags the handful that the third game carries forward. If you are here for the gear these quests hand out, the items guide covers where the diagrams end up.