Lilac and Gooseberries - White Orchard
Last we left off, we were at the end of the major tutorial, the quest known as Keir Morhen. We are instead in a location known only as White Orchard. We are soon presented with but two clues that will continue us on our journey, a letter with the scent of Lilac and Gooseberries and a trail nearly run cold.
Main Quest: Lilac and Gooseberries
This is where the game starts, so to speak, and our only quest now is Lilac and Gooseberries which gives us the task: Kill the ghouls. Ghouls are nasty creatures but you can learn more about them by viewing the Glossary and looking in our Bestiary. We learn that they are actually vulnerable against Necrophage Oil, an ointment that can be applied to our silver sword to help us weaken enemy ghouls. Unfortunately for us, if we check out our inventory and view what oils we have, we have none - I guess we’ll have to figure out how to make some later. For now we’ll just have to fight them off the old fashioned way. Thank god for Witcher Silver Swords.
While fighting these ghouls you may notice some blue orbs floating in mid air. If you interact with this, we are presented with what is called a Crystal Skull. If you were observant, this is the same skull we saw from the cinematic. Do you remember the raven that the woman with the black hair had? Well this is that raven’s skull, and on top of that we now know the woman who the bird was protecting. We know her as Yennefer. You would be remiss if you didn’t piece together that the raven haired woman in the cinematic was the same person we saw in our dream. We can pick up the skull and Geralt says, “A black crystal, why do I think it is Yen’s?” We will actually be able to return this to Yen at a later date.
Once the ghouls are slain we can take a look around us and pick up the items the ghouls dropped using our Witcher Senses to find them. Our Witcher Senses also notice other things we can interact with and pick up such as forgeable items. It’s always a good idea to pick up anything and everything you can find, if not to create an oil, potion, or bomb, or upgrade our weapons and armor - we can sell them to make money.
A new task is set out for us in our quest. Follow Vesemir.
Going Off Quest
It is important that you take time to explore the map as thoroughly as possible and we can do this almost immediately. If you look at the map, we are just south of a significant landmark, a field - that being the location of the battle we witnessed in the earlier cinematic. Although we are meant to follow Vesemir, I suggest exploring the field just north of our camp fire. We’ll find lots of things here that we can later use or sell, so collect everything you find.
At the very least you’ll be able to collect: 14 Rusty Novigard Swords, 51 Blunt Axes, 8 Ashes, and 2 Horse Hide. There are at least two documents that we can pick up, one being the Dead Soldier’s Letter, and a recipe for Albedo, an alchemy substance. The letter reveals a point of interest where loot an be found. Maybe we should look for it.
If you continue north towards the tree line, Geralt will make a comment about "a place of power” and that his medallion is humming. This acknowledgment will place a marker on your map. However, don’t interact with it just yet - we will come back to this later. These Places of Power grant Geralt a temporary bonus and 1 Ability Point that can be invested later. There are five places of power on this map and if you activate all five at the same time, you can unlock an Achievement.
We can leave it here for the time being and get back to our quest. Call Roach over and mount him so that we can meet back up with Vesemir.
Follow Vesemir
Once on the road you can canter and Roach will automatically follow it. As you ride, you will pass through the village and witness the tragedies of a war torn country as the locals cry for their loved ones and the loss of Tameria. If you take a moment to look at your map you will see that green sign posts will appear as you find them. These are for fast travel, so unlocking them are a main priority to save time in the later game.
You’ll be forced into a cut scene and your next fight begins and will end rather abruptly. Talk to the commoner and you are left with a choice. He will ultimately direct you towards an inn which might as well be your next stop. Before we go anywhere however, we have a new entry in our Bestiary that will give us some more insight that will help us kill the Griffin a little later.
Go to the tavern in White Orchard
Cross the bridge and we can enter the Inn Bram suggested we visit. The innkeeper offers food on the house, and gives you four Roasted Chicken Legs. You can peruse what she has on offer but there are quite a few things we can accomplish now. First go to your inventory and look at Other. Here we can sell 42 of our Blunt Axes for 4 gold a piece clearing her out. But now you’ll have some extra cash to pick up the 5 Gwent Cards she has on sale for 160 gold.
Decoy, Neutral Card: 20 gold - Allows you to switch out one card in play.
Catapult, Northern Realms: 50 gold- A multiplier card, meaning it’s value will increase when both of these cards are put into play. The second card will be acquired at a later date.
Blue Stripes Commando, Northern Realms: 20 gold - A multiplier card. The second and third card will be acquired at a later date.
Crinfrid Reavers Dragon Hunter, Northern Realms: 20 gold - A multiplier card. The second will be acquired at a later date.
Foltest, Northern Realms: 50 gold - This is a leader card that gives you the ability to clear any weather effects once per game. This is my favorite leader card so getting it even before your first game of Gwent gives me a good advantage.
Once you buy the cards you can sell the remaining nine Blunt Axes for 36 gold, eight Ashes for 8 gold, two Horse Hides for 78 gold, and any food items you have. Only exit once you’ve either sold all your items or she has no gold left to offer. This interaction of buying Gwent cards will start a Secondary Quest Collect ‘Em All which requires you to find every Gwent card available in the game. This does take some effort as you will need to do very specific things at specific times during the game in order to acquire every card and unlock the Achievement.
If you do not use the “There a contract on the griffin?” prompt in the tree dialog when talking to the innkeeper, she will ask about it once you end the interaction. However, you refuse to do anything about the griffin until you are offered coin to rid of it.
Ask travelers about Yennefer.
There are only two other NPC’s you can have a conversation with about Yennefer inside the inn, the scholar and Master Mirror. Talking to Master Mirror, you will have an interesting conversation but the dialog choices you make here have no influence on anything except a tailored response from the Master. You will receive a Nilfgaardian Lemon - an Alchemy ingredient - during this conversation.
Engaging the scholar in conversation will prompt a bit of back and forth until you end the conversation. It is at this point he will offer to teach you Gwent, and - upon agreement - you’ll receive a base deck, a copy of the book “A Miraculous Guide to Gwent”, and enter a tutorial. See Gwent Tutorial.
The last thing you might want to interact with is at the back of the Inn which is the chest called Stash. “You can store weapons, armor, or junk in your stash for safekeeping, confident they will not be stolen or otherwise disappear. You can access your stash in a number of places throughout the world. Items stored in your stash in one location will be available in all other locations as well. Stash locations are always visible on the map, just look for the chest icon.” The stash is great especially early on in the game as you can store particularly heavy items to prevent you from becoming over burdened.
You may notice that cats are compulsively scared of you and will hiss at you. They are not a danger to you in any way, they just don’t like you. Something about your eyes perhaps.
You can now leave the inn. At this point you will be confronted by three commoners - there is no way to avoid this fist fight. Be on guard and use parry to nock them back. You’ll have your opening to take them down fast. The interaction ends here and you can continue on with no further distractions.
Notice Boards
Continuing our journey west we will be met with a Notice Board which will have an offering of quests for us to collect. By interacting with Notice Boards you will automatically unlock points of interest that will be marked on your map by white question marks, and collecting the notices on these bords will add quests to our logs. Here we can collect Missing in Action and Contract: Devil by the Well.
Here for the first time we will be presented with a quest that has a number besides it’s name. This number is the suggested level you should have before attempting to complete said quest. Here we pick up Contract: Devil by the Well which has the number 2 in front of it. The game suggests that we are at least level two before attempting to go through with our task.
When collecting quests know that there may be a time frame in which some quests must be completed by or you will lose the ability to complete them. For example, you must complete the following quests before leaving White Orchard or your departure will force them to fail:
A Frying Pan, Spick and Span
Missing in Action
On Deaths’ Bed
Precious Cargo
Twisted Fire Starter
A Marked Quest
Occasionally when you are wandering the world of the Witcher, you might pass by an area and realize a Quest Marker appeared. These are quests that you can collect just by being in the area. To actually accept the quest and add it to our log you will need to interact with the Quest Giver. If we continue our way west, we can over hear a very angry Dwarf hammering away at his anvil.
Engaging him with conversation we’ll learn someone set his whole forge on fire and in the process he lost everything. Talking with him, we can convince him to higher us on to find the arsonist. See Twisted Firestarter - White Orchard. We can continue to explore or we can head north to learn more about Yennefer.
Ask the Nilfgaardians about Yennefer.
Heading north we don’t have to go far to find our next Yellow Marker, a woman standing on the side of the river. We get our first opportunity to interact with the environment with our Witcher spells. Interact with the woman to find out how you can help. See A Frying Pan, Spick and Span.
Our trip is quite the hike to the upper boarder of the map but if we hug the river we will happen upon a dead body that we can loot. Take the Temarian Lily Key. Be quick as two Drowners will attack. It’s not hard to fight them off however. If we look in our Bestiary we can figure out what they are vulnerable against; Necrophage Oil and Igni, one of our Witcher signs. We’re still missing a few ingredients to make the Necrophage Oil, but we know how to make fire. See if you can collect a Drowner Brain from the drowner courpses - we will need this to make Swallow, a heath potion.
If we use our Witcher senses we’ll quickly find a chest at the bottom of the river to pick up a few items, including a book “Blood-Soaked Military Orders”, what remains of an unheeded request. While we are in the water, forage some Buckthorn that can only be found in the deepest part of the river. We will need that later.
Upon reading the book we just found, we unlock a new quest, Temarian Valuables. You’ll notice that it suggests being at least level 4, so we will put this aside for now.
Just west of our current location, we can find our first Location of Interest. If you happen upon the bee’s hive - you can use Igni to dispel the bees and collect 3 Honeycomb, it is a consumable food item. The Location of Interest turns out to be a place of power. As mentioned earlier, we need this to unlock an achievement so we will ignore it for now, but remember it’s location.
Let’s get back to the road and continue north. This will lead us to another Location of Interest, a Guarded Treasure. We’ll find wolves protecting the treasure that we must fight off. To prepare us for this battle, I use the Meditation function to heal up before taking them on. Once complete, check the wolves dropped loot for Dog Tallow as it is a valuable Alchemy Ingredient. You may also find Wolf’s Liver. The Guarded Treasure will provide us with various Crafting Components that will be useful later.
The road towards the north will turn west and we will come upon a set of wooden stairs. Ascend them, and turn right to participate in a cut scene. The two guards will welcome you in. There are quite a few forgeable items such as Verbena and Blowball, and a quartermaster you can purchase and sell crafting and weapon items to. I usually sell off low level runestones, glyphs, and any extra weapons or armor I’ve found along my journey to pad my wallet, while keeping items like Repair Kit.
Follow the stairs right of the quartermaster and you’ll enter into a cut scene. This interaction does give you hope that there can be peace between the Temerian people, and the Nilfgaardian army that took over the area. You will ask after Yennefer, and the Nilfgaardian will set his price; Deal with the griffin or be turned away. You’ll be directed towards a herbalist named Tomira, and a hunter names Mislav. You can end the interaction.
To continue with the Lilac and Gooseberries quest, you will have to complete the griffin contract: The Beast of White Orchard.
Prepare to leave White Orchard With Vesemir
After finishing The Beast of White Orchard, I made one quick stop before meeting up with Vesemir. This means making our way to the Inn once again.