Part 68 - The End - The Witcher 3 - 2nd playthrough - Death March

Today I finished The Witcher 3 for the second time. I started this playthrough at the end of August last year. What a ride! While Death March was much easier than I expected, there were three fights I would never call easy: The werewolf in the Wild at Heart quest, Imlerith, and the final boss, the king of the Wild Hunt, Eredin. More about Eredin later...

As you can see, Nilfgaard has set up camp in Skellige. But Skelligers will soon have more to worry about than an attack from the empire.

I knew the final battle was coming up, so I checked if I had enough apple juice, had my weapons repaired, then told Avallac'h I was ready.

He opened the box containing the Sunstone. The Wind Hunt's GPS navigator Caranthir would sense this and send all of their ships into the trap set by us.

Ciri joined Avallac'h in waiting for the Hunt.

Caranthir was the first boss we had to kill. He was a piece of cake to defeat.

"Hello, Wild Hunt warriors."

"Come on, come closer."

The fight with Caranthir is started by Ciri and finished by Geralt after she breaks his magic staff and teleports away.

Caranthir waving around his broken staff and unleashing weak ice elementals on me was nothing I couldn't handle, and he was down in no time.

Eredin, on the other hand, was a different story...

RIP, Crach. :( You died a hero.

So the fight with Eredin has three phases. It starts on his ship, the Naglfar, from where he teleports both himself and Geralt to this snowy mountaintop after losing a bit of his health, then when almost all of his health is gone, he opens a portal again that leads back to his ship.

I used Tawny Owl, Swallow, Thunderbolt, Full Moon, Quen and Elementa Oil. Nothing helped. He killed me in three strikes whenever I made a mistake, and the more times I restarted this fight the more tired I was, thus the more mistakes I made. I had to realize that my Signs focused build was underpowered against him.

So I reloaded a checkpoint before the quest On Thin Ice started. I visited Gremist, bought a Potion of Clearance, and created the above build. This did the trick. I hit way harder, while Eredin's hits turned into tickles, and I killed him on the first try after this.

IMPORTANT: At the end of the second phase, when he opens the portal again, and there are two objectives, to kill him and to follow him, go to the Quests list, and select the objective to "follow" him before entering the portal. If you enter while "kill" is selected, a glitch may occur. I had it happen the first time I got to that phase, after a long and tedious and nerve-racking fight still using my original build, and it was no fun...

Bye, Eredin.

Nobody will miss you.

The last main quest before the epilogue has started. It is called Tedd Deireadh, The Final Age, and it sure does look like the end of the world. This is the ship that the crazy cannibal jarl and his men were building for the giant.

With Yennefer's help, I entered the tower where Avallac'h brought Ciri to stop the White Frost.

Ciri convinced me Avallac'h didn't force her to do this, it was her decision to sacrifice herself. OK, but still!

"What can you know about saving the world, silly? You're but a witcher." This has to be my favorite line in the entire game. A gentle reminder that this story is not about Geralt but about Ciri and the decisions she has to make for herself.

One of my dreams is a game made by CDPR starring Ciri and her future child as main characters. I feel like her story just started, and I didn't get to see it, because this game ended here.

Ciri went to stop the White Frost, and all the good memories she had with me gave her the strength to survive. :)

A few months later, White Orchard in winter.

I spoke with Zoltan and Dandelion at the tavern. Dandelion told me Priscilla had recovered.

When I left the tavern to go rabbit hunting, I ran into a quest called Faithful Friend.

I saw a soldier returning from war reunite with his beloved horse. An interesting little quest that serves to fill you in about what the war was like and how it ended from a soldier's point of view.

And then I found my Ciri. :) She was tense, worried about something, but happy to see me. I knew she wouldn't be as happy as empress as she was when she became a witcher, but I was curious to see this ending.

This is seriously the cutest scene in the whole game.

It made me smile and wish I had a father like this.

White Orchard is literally white now and no less beautiful than it was at the beginning of the game in late spring.

Nilfgaardians came for Ciri to take her to her father, the victorious emperor who intends to pass the throne to her. She is willing to accept it.

This concludes my second playthrough of The Witcher 3. This time, Ciri became empress of Nilfgaard after the empire won the war, King Radovid and Dijkstra are dead, Cerys is the queen of Skellige, Temeria has been reinstated, and Geralt lives happily ever after with a raven-haired sorceress named Yennefer...

THE END :)