The Wild Hunt: Escape

[Part of the Wild Hunt story]

With Triss more hunted now than ever after her pyromania episode, she asks Geralt to help her and a few other mages finally flee Novigrad. The witcher soon learns that "a few" is an understatement, as there are around thirty mages to escort from the basement of a mage friendly inn all the way to the docks via sewers crawling with drowners and rats, mostly attracted by all the corpses Cleaver has been dumping.

The sewer monsters have no chance against this duo.

The White Wolf clears the path, and is surprised when Dijkstra himself helps at the dock end to slay a witch hunter patrol. With the way clear, all the mages board and Triss bids farewell to Geralt, leaving him and Dijkstra at the pier.

At this rare moment Dijkstra speaks plainly to the witcher, admitting he had been helping the mages in hopes to ally with them one day, and then about his hatred at the current ruler of Redania - suggesting Geralt aid him in assassinating the mad King Radovid. Knowing what the witcher's immediate answer would be, Dijkstra instead implores him to "think about it" before leaving.

Insight: It seems named allies are in no danger of dying if their health bar doesn't appear on the screen. Your mileage may vary with nameless henchmen support though.

The Wild Hunt: Clues

[Part of the Wild Hunt story]

With legal papers in hand, Geralt's next stop was to find one of the Emperor's spies for information about Ciri. Unfortunately the Wild Hunt had visited first, and with the spy dead the witcher had to piece clues together from his hidden ledger instead. He didn't expect one such clue to lead him to an old acquaintance.

"Burn everything" is an interesting search method...

Keira Metz, once a member of the Lodge of Sorceresses, was now in hiding in a nearby village from Redanian Witch Hunters. Despite her situation, it doesn't take much convincing to get her help in the search for Ciri and she takes Geralt to a cave that might hold more answers.

All the pair find instead is the Wild Hunt, who leave one of their members behind to battle Keira and the witcher. This does not end well for the Wild Hunter, who shatters the illusion that the Wild Hunt are invincible. Tough? Yes. But also still kill-able. Geralt's hopes rise a little at this revelation.

Insight: Rolling is great to put distance between you and an enemy, like to get away from a wall or from an exploding rotfiend. However if you want to strike back, using the small dodge step (Alt on PC) is much more versatile. Just don't move into an attack with it.

The Wild Hunt: Squirrels

[Part of the Wild Hunt story]

Since a forged pass was now out of the question, Geralt asked the local Redanian soldiers about getting a proper document. They agreed to make it his payment if he tracked down the beast that kept attacking their supply wagons.

Beasts and men can all be monsters.

It would have been easy to blame the alghouls he found loitering in the woods but upon closer inspection the beast was actually a group of "squirrels", better known as Scoia'tael: militant  racist, non human commandos.

Geralt agreed to surrender his weapons to be taken to their hidden camp just to make sure he wasn't missing anything, but as he expected - they were no better than common bandits. Not one to mince words, he says exactly that to their leader who responds by giving the order to kill him. Try as they might, they are still no match for the unarmed witcher.

Insight: Alghouls are like ghoul porcupines that sprout spikes in combat. Attacking them in that state will also damage you so use Aard to break the spikes first!

The Wild Hunt: Vultures

[Part of the Wild Hunt story]

Yennefer gave Geralt a task he couldn't refuse: finding his old ward, Ciri. While officially they were working for Ciri's father, the Emperor of Nilfgaard, Yen had discovered that the malevolent force known as the Wild Hunt was also after her for some mysterious reason.

To cover more ground the two decide to split up with Geralt heading Velen, a no man's land between the territories of Nilfgaard and Redania. Knowing it would be easier to move around with a pass, the witcher accepted a job to assist a forger and his "vulture crew" to pick clean a nearby battle field of all the free loot just lying with the dead.

The local vultures are also pretty monstrous.

As expected, the necrophages are here too and while the ghouls are more numerous this time and led by a rotfiend (zombie that explodes) they still aren't a problem for the veteran monster slayer. What he didn't expect was for a nearby mounted bandit patrol to get involved, resulting in the deaths of all the vultures - the forger included.

Insight: The fire sign, Igni, is effective in startling horses to throw off mounted enemies.