Bosses

The bestiary does not sort The Witcher 3's monsters by how hard they are. It sorts them by class, and the class is the only thing that decides which oil belongs on the silver sword. Get that one choice right and a fight that looked impossible becomes ordinary. Get it wrong and you are swinging a stick.

So that is how this page is arranged. Not by difficulty, not by region, but by the bottle you should have opened before the fight started. Our oils page has every formula and where to buy it; the short version is that the plain oil adds ten percent attack power against its class, the enhanced version twenty five, and the superior version fifty. Take the Fixative skill to its top rank and the coating stops wearing off at all, which is the single best reason to spend points in Alchemy even on a sword build.

Necrophage oil: the two that share the waterline

The drowner is the monster you will kill most times in a playthrough, and the water hag is its neighbour. Both are necrophages, both live in mud, and a hag hunting alone will happily drag a drowner pack into a fight she started.

Both burn. Igni is the sign for this class, and the hag in particular is exceptionally weak to it. The difference is range: the hag throws mud that blinds you, so she wants to be answered with Yrden or a Northern Wind bomb to pin her down, while drowners are a crowd problem that a crossbow bolt solves outright the moment they are in water. The Skellige notice board's Muire D'yaeblen contract ends on an Abaya, which is a stronger hag with a drowner pack at her back, so the same two bottles cover that whole fight too.

Insectoid oil: poison first, then the abdomen

The arachas is the most venomous thing in the early bestiary, and its class oil is only half the preparation. Golden Oriole comes first, because it makes you immune to the poison the pincers and the projectiles apply; without it the fight is a slow bleed you cannot heal through, and on Death March a Venomous Arachas will simply end you.

The armoured back is not a weak point. Its abdomen is, which means the whole fight is a matter of getting behind it. Yrden slows it enough to circle, Axii does the same job if you prefer, and Igni buys a stagger. Aard is wasted here, and the reason is worth remembering: unlike a shaelmaar, an arachas cannot be flipped. All three variants, including Harrisi in the Velen mine from the Missing Brother contract, answer to the same plan.

Vampire oil: one bottle for a dozen monsters

This is the broadest class in the game. Our vampires page walks the full roster, from Ekimmaras and Katakans in the base game up through the Alps, Fleders, Garkains and Higher Vampires that arrive with Blood and Wine, and one bottle serves all of them.

What varies is the second item. Most of the lesser types turn invisible, which is what Moon Dust is for, and the superior version of that bomb removes the trick permanently rather than for a few seconds. Black Blood is the answer to anything that bites for your blood to heal itself. Aard is a genuine one-hit execution against an Alp or a Bruxa in the open world, which makes them far less frightening than their speed suggests.

The two named fights break those habits. The Bruxa of Corvo Bianco is immune to the Aard knockdown that works on her lesser cousins, so she has to be pinned in a Yrden circle first and finished there. Dettlaff is immune to fire, alone among the vampires, so Igni and every incendiary bomb are dead weight in the Tesham Mutna finale; oil, Black Blood and a permanent Quen are the whole kit, plus the Second Life mutation if you have unlocked it.

Ogroid oil: the ones you cannot block

Both ogroids in the folder are enormous, slow and impossible to interrupt. The cyclops at the Destroyed Bastion cannot be blocked or dodged in the ordinary sense, so you beat it by walking, not rolling: it swings, you have already moved. Aard achieves nothing against it. Axii, oddly, does, because an enraged cyclops flails at nothing and gives you room.

Golyat bursts out of a windmill the moment you set foot in Toussaint, and he is the same shape of problem with a shortcut attached. Yrden slows him, Quen lets you tank a hit and stay in for two more swings, and a crossbow bolt through the eye kills him outright for the David and Golyat achievement. That shot is one attempt only, so save before you enter Toussaint.

Elementa oil: bring silver and a Dimeritium bomb

The golem in Wandering in the Dark is the only one in the game, and it is weak to acid rather than to any sign. Aard and Yrden push and slow it, its back is the place to stand, and a charge that ends in a wall stuns it long enough for a real combo.

Ice elementals are the sharper lesson. They are immune to fire and to poison both, so Igni and a poisoned blade do nothing at all, and none of their attacks can be parried. The one thing they cannot resist is a Dimeritium bomb, whose silver cloud shuts off their magic and opens them up to the silver sword. Skellige is the only place they spawn naturally, usually guarding a piece of Bear School gear, and Caranthir summons them on top of everything else he does.

Relict oil: a third eye and an armoured shell

A fiend regenerates and hypnotises, and both of those are stopped by noise rather than by steel. Samum or Devil's Puffball halts the regeneration and blinds it, and a well-timed Samum can disable the third eye for the rest of the fight. Axii interrupts the hypnosis as it starts, and an Enhanced or Superior Cat potion makes you immune to it outright. Fight the first stretch from horseback if you can.

Shaelmaars are blind, hunt by sound and are armoured everywhere except the belly, so the fight is really a single trick performed four times across Blood and Wine: bait the rolling charge into a wall, or stun it mid-roll with Aard or Samum, and hit the underside while it lies there. At a third health it starts flinging rock, which is your cue to take cover and then step straight back in.

Specter oil: nothing lands until Yrden does

Wraiths phase through everything, and fire, poison and bleeding are all useless against them. Yrden is not optional here: it nullifies magic inside its circle, which forces the wraith into a body you can actually cut. Moon Dust stops the teleporting. Time of day matters as well, since catching a Nightwraith in daylight is a much shorter fight than meeting it at midnight.

Jenny o' the Woods is the contract version of all that, a Nightwraith outside Midcopse who has to be summoned at a campfire at nine in the evening or later. She splits into three clones and heals off your vitality, so the crossbow goes to the copies while Yrden holds the original. Clear the bandit camp nearby before you light the fire, and read the contract as level ten but arrive nearer fifteen.

Cursed oil: the class two of our pages disagreed about

Werewolves are Cursed Ones, which puts Cursed oil on the blade, and steel is worthless against them from the first encounter. Their real defence is regeneration: a Moon Dust bomb switches it off for twenty seconds, Devil's Puffball adds damage on top, and Axii and Yrden buy you the slower opponent you need. Seven quests in the folder can put one in front of you, Wild at Heart and In Wolf's Clothing among them.

The Toad Prince is the other Cursed One, and he is a poison fight before he is a sword fight. The Oxenfurt sewers themselves are full of fumes, so Golden Oriole is compulsory rather than helpful, and the Viper armour set does the same job if you would rather not drink. Yrden pins him between hops, Igni timed to an open mouth ignites the gas around him for the biggest single hit available, and Quen stays up the whole way. Come at level thirty three, or forty on Death March.

The five fights where no oil helps

The Wild Hunt and the Ladies of the Wood sit outside the class system entirely, and that is precisely why they are the hard fights. There is no bottle that makes them easier. What you bring instead is a silver sword, Igni for the frost armour, and a bomb that interrupts.

Notice the pattern in that table: three of the five want Elementa oil or Igni, not because the general is weak to it but because what he calls in is. Nithral hides in a bubble and heals while his hounds occupy you, so the oil that kills hounds quickly is the oil that shortens his fight. Caranthir works the same way with ice elementals. Treat the coating as ammunition for the adds, not for the boss.

The signs that do nothing

Half of learning this bestiary is learning where your reflexes fail. Aard is inert against an arachas and against a cyclops. Igni is inert against ice elementals and against Dettlaff. Parrying is impossible against ice elementals, against an Ekimmara's melee, and against a drowner's leap, though the same drowner's ordinary swipes catch on the sword perfectly well. The Crones cannot be blocked or dodged with any reliability at all. Our parry and counter page draws the line between what blocks and what has to be rolled.

None of this costs much to prepare for. The oils are cheap, the bombs recharge on meditation, and the class is written in the bestiary entry before you swing once. If a fight on this page is going badly, the first question is almost never your build; it is which of the nine rows above you skipped. For the rest of the kit, the items guide covers the swords and the bombs, and the mechanics guide covers toxicity and what it costs to keep three potions running at once.

Frequently asked questions

Which oil should I always carry?

Necrophage, because drowners and water hags outnumber everything else, and Vampire if you are playing Blood and Wine, because that expansion is built almost entirely out of the vampire class.

Do oils stack with runestones and potions?

Yes. The oil multiplies your attack power against a class, a Thunderbolt raises attack power outright, and runestones socketed into the sword add their own effect. The three are separate systems, which is why a superior oil plus Thunderbolt turns most named fights on this page into a short one.

Is the steel sword ever the right choice here?

No. Every entry on this page takes silver, and several of them, Eredin and Nithral included, barely register a steel hit. Steel is for humans and nonhumans, which is what Hanged Man's Venom is for.

Which fights on this page can be missed entirely?

The Unseen Elder, who is not killable in the ordinary sense and is covered under quests rather than here, and the third Crone, who only becomes a fight if you take the bad ending. Everything else in the table is either a main quest or a contract you can still pick up late.