Part 40 - The Witcher 3 - 2nd playthrough - Death March

Two more witcher contracts down, countless more to go. :) This session I first completed The Phantom of Eldberg. A guy named Jorund posted this contract, and he wanted Geralt to investigate the lighthouse near the village of Arinbjorn.

The light is out, ships are in danger, and nobody dares venture to the island where the lighthouse stands, as it is infested by wraiths. Witcher 3 quests are never what they first appear to be, so of course this quests is more than just going to the island, getting rid of the wraiths and lighting the fire in the lighthouse. A man named Mikkjal lives on the island, and his job would be to keep the fire in the lighthouse burning. However, he deliberately put the fire out to cause ships to crash on the rocks so that he can share the loot with other criminals. He was stupid enough to leave a letter which proves this inside the lighthouse, so Geralt is able to find it.

Geralt establishes that the cause for the wraith infestation is this man's crime. One of the wraiths is a particularly powerful one, called a penitent, which only appears near people who committed a serious crime. Defeating it was not really difficult. It took a few tries, but once I learned a trick, it died quickly without being able to regenerate its health. And the trick is simply this: Do not stop hitting the penitent! It is slow to attack, so don't be afraid of staying near long enough to hit it plenty of times. The first few tries when I died was a result of me being too afraid and keeping my distance which allowed it to gain back its full health and unleash minor wraiths on me.

Once the penitent was gone and Mikkjal lit the fire in the lighthouse, I told him to get out of my sight. Then I went to collect my reward from Jorund and the next thing I knew, Jorund was dead and I was in prison.

Stranger in a Strange Land is a quest which starts automatically after The Phantom of Eldberg - unless some specific order of the quests was followed, which I obviously didn't do. After Jorund paid my reward at the Arinbjorn inn, two thugs attacked us and killed him. I killed the thugs, after which their father confronted me and had me taken to the jarl's prison. The jarl in the region is Madman Lugos, my least favorite jarl. He let me go free for now on the condition that I help his son Blueboy later on an adventure. That will be The Cave of Dreams secondary quest, but I'm sticking to witcher contracts for a while.

I reached level 21 while doing The Phantom of Eldberg, so now I'm working on witcher contracts no higher than level 24.

I love the title of this contract: Muire D'yaeblen. "Muire d'yaeblen" means "drowners" in the Skellige language, but it sounds way cooler. After listening to Skelligers at the Kaer Trolde harbor telling me heartbreaking stories of their loved ones having been killed by drowners, I decided to find the root of the problem.

It took me a while to realize the entrance to the drowners' lair was underwater, because I suck at finding hidden things in video games. It was not before my daughter told me it was boring to watch me play and went to bed, disappointed.

Eventually, I reached the monsters' lair and found that the main culprit was a water hag. Now, I'm not sure if this fight is supposed to be difficult or what, but I seriously didn't even notice when I killed the water hag. I barely saw anything in the cave, killed the drowners by waving my silver sword around in the dark, and somehow the water hag was also dead when the battle ended.

I collected my reward and called it a day.