The Witcher 3 Imlerith Boss Fight: Break The Ice, Take The Acorn

Imlerith is one of the two generals who ride with Eredin, the other being Caranthir, and between them they have spent centuries raiding one world after another. Of every enemy in The Witcher 3, the Wild Hunt riders are the ones our bestiary singles out as genuinely frightening, and Imlerith is the first of the three you get to kill.

He is also the reason the third act has any personal weight to it. At the Battle of Kaer Morhen, with Eredin trying to talk Ciri into surrendering, Vesemir went at Imlerith with a dagger as a last throw. Imlerith broke the old witcher's neck for it, and it was that death that tore the scream out of Ciri which wiped the Hunt off the keep.

When the game lets you fight him

Not until Bald Mountain, which follows Blood on the Battlefield. Geralt and Ciri reach the top with two targets in front of them and settle who takes which on a round of rock paper scissors. Geralt wins, so he goes after Imlerith while Ciri drops into the caves for the Crones. That split is what turns the back half of the quest into two playable halves, one per character.

Geralt does not take the passage. He climbs the mountain face instead, and on the way up there is a Place of Power sitting off to the right of the path. Meditate at it. The sign intensity it grants is not a general nicety here, it is aimed squarely at the fight waiting at the summit, and it is the cheapest advantage available before the door closes behind you.

The fight is two signs on a loop

Imlerith does not stand and trade. He blinks around the arena for most of the encounter and reappears off your shoulder, so the fight is played with a dodge already half committed rather than from a planted stance.

The mechanic that decides everything is what arrives with each teleport. Every time he moves, ice closes over him as a barrier, and while it is up your sword accomplishes nothing. Fire is what strips it. That is the whole loop: Igni to melt the shell, then a window of real damage, then he goes again and you burn the next one off. Pair it with Quen between windows and you have the two signs you will spend the entire fight alternating between.

Because both of those are signs, stamina is the resource that actually runs out, not health. Drink Tawny Owl before you engage so it refills fast enough to keep casting at the pace the ice demands.

The failure mode is greed. His mace swing is the cue to dodge, and the correct answer afterwards is a short burst of hits into his back and then immediate distance again, before the next blink. Players lose this fight by taking one swing too many at a target that was already leaving.

What killing him pays out

• 1,000 experience points, plus one of the better death cutscenes in the game once his health is nearly gone.
• A Magic Acorn on his body, which is worth two skill points when consumed. This is the game's first opportunity to get one, since the item is gated behind the third act.
• If the loot prompt gets away from you, or Ciri pulls you off the mountain before you take it, the acorn is not lost. Climb back up later and the corpse is still there, though not always exactly where it fell, so sweep the area around the arena.
• On PC the acorn can be spawned repeatedly with a console command, which our console commands page covers alongside the rest of the item codes.

Clearing the summit closes Bald Mountain and opens Final Preparations, and the momentum carries straight into Through Time and Space, where Avallac'h takes Geralt to his own world to work out how to deal with Eredin and whoever is left riding for him. Nithral falls earlier and Eredin last, which leaves Imlerith as the middle rung of the Hunt. The rest of the ladder is on the bosses and monsters guide.