The Witcher 2 Guide - Breaking the Blood Curse
On Roche’s side, you’ll get this quest at the start of the chapter, right after you talk to King Henselt about it. If you want to fix the curse over the whole region, you’ll need to prove your worth by breaking the curse that’s over Henselt. We’ll need to investigate the history of the execution and gather the necessary pieces to recreate the event and break the old magic.
As Geralt should note, you won’t be able to get much done before you investigate the death site. Leave the camp and walk away to the right. Note that if this is your first time leaving, Zyvik should stop you and mention that two of his soldiers missed roll call. He thinks that they went to the shrine made around the execution site. This will start off the quest “Lost Lambs.”
Lost Lambs
Go through the Blue Stripes’ camp to find a path past the river and over to ravines on the over side. Once you’re there, just follow the path over to the marked location on the beach. There shouldn’t be much in the area, except for a drowned dead. Just keep an eye out and keep moving. You’ll reach the execution site soon, and you’ll be able to talk to the two lost soldiers immediately.
Take the time now to investigate the site completely to make a note of the strange offerings and an artifact scavenger. When you’re ready to go, you can agree to protect the soldiers on their way back. It’s possible to send them off on their own, but there’s not much of a reason to do so. Just agree to help and start walking away.
A group of drowned dead should approach, so just pull out your silver sword. At this point, you should just be safe charging right into the fray and cutting them up. There aren’t that many, and you have the guards to distract them a bit. Once you cut through the first group, you actually should be in the clear, except for any other random enemies that may be hanging around.
Once you’ve talked to the guards, you’ll have a few options for investigating the curse of Sabrina.
Investigating Sabrina’s Execution
It actually doesn’t seem to be worth it to stop and talk to the relic peddler in the canteen, unless you just really want to stop back at the fort to get equipment or sell your gear. You may also want to turn in the “Lost Lambs” quest to Zyvik. He won’t give you the whole story until you talk to the visionary though.
To get to the Visionary, you’ll need to walk along the path to the left and follow the canyons. As you walk along, you’ll find some rotfiends near a three bodies and then a group of soldiers that are being attacked by endregas. There’s no real reason to not save them, so run in and take out the monsters and then talk to the men. They’ll ask you to please take their donation ahead, which we might as well do.
Move forward and follow the path until you see the house, at which point you’ll be rushed by an unlimited number of harpies. You will never clear this area, so just kill as many as you want and then run past the candles. These candles will scare off the harpies and make a nice little barrier. You can then talk to the Visionary inside and get some information on Sabrina’s death.
Before he’ll actually do any real help for you though, you’ll need to either bribe him or agree to join his “religion.” It honestly isn’t that big of a deal to join his religion, so I suggest that you do it. He’ll hand you a potion and direct you to a clearing. Unfortunately, the clearing has an arachas in it and a few endregas. I assume you still remember the strategies for fighting these guys though. Insectoid oil, rolling and hit-and-run tactics will take the arachas out with very little trouble.
Once the area is clear, just mediate until midnight and drink the potion, which will trigger a simply amazing scene. Just walk around until you can run through the vision, and then leave. Make sure that you read the journal entry, just so that you can read Dandelion’s analysis of it.
When you go back to the Visionary, you can just tell him the truth. There’s no real reason to lie, unless you intentionally want to mess with him. It seems that the potion was a bit bad, so there’s nothing to worry about.
The Spearhead
With this, you’ll have the information that you need. You can then piece it together with the artifact dealer to learn that spearhead was lost after a series of bad bets, and that it has apparently made its way over to the Vergen side thanks to Iorveth.
Fairly soon, you’ll get the chance to cross the battlefield to also get the symbols for death and hatred, so just wait for the chance. Once you make it over, you’ll need to talk to Saskia to get the symbol for hatred. She’ll then explain that the spearhead has been traded around until a dice poker player finally managed to keep it for a time. You can find the dwarf at the entrance gates for Vergen. Just talk to Skalen Burdon, and then challenge him to a game of dice poker. You should then be able to just play until you win and claim the spearhead.
You can play a few more times to get a basic sword and a Dun Banner cloak, if you want them.
Completing the Ritual
After that happens though, you’ll be able to talk to Dethmold and Henselt to finish the preparations to break the curse. When you’re ready, go to the execution site again and confirm that you’re ready. I strongly suggest that you get some specter oil ready though, and potentially take a Swallow potion, then save.
In order to start the ritual, you’ll need to draw out the weird goat skull on the ground, based off of the image that Dethmold gave you.
For this, you need to call out to Henselt and give him direction. He starts at the mushroom, so send him to the petrified bread, then the candles, the skull, the tree, the raven, the sour milk and then back to the mushrooms.
Once that’s ready, you can go up to the circle and use Igni on the wagon wheel to kick things off. This is where things get bad really fast. Wraiths will continue to come into the circle, until you’ve killed about 10 of them. Specter oil is practically vital, and you’ll probably want to keep Quen up at all times. For the most part, roll around and then hit them quickly with a series of fast strikes. Note that you’ll want to stay in the circle, or you’ll anger the wraiths outside and start to bleed off health.
If you’re having trouble with the fight, you can use a bit of a cheesy tactics. The wraiths still set off all traps. Snare traps work surprisingly well against them, and if you need a break, you can easily cast Quen and use the cover to roll around and set traps that you can then lead the wraiths through to split them back up.
Play very cautiously and know when to back off. If the wraiths can start to chain up combos against you, you will be in a world of hurt. It’s an endurance fight, so it’s more important to survive than to win quickly.
Once you’ve taken out around 9-12 wraiths (I lost count personally), Henselt will finally time the stab right and release Sabrina from her agony and break the curse.
References
All information and screenshots from Witcher 2
This post is part of the series: The Witcher 2 Walkthrough - Chapter 2 - Henselt’s Side - Main Quests
Chapter 2 will offer different main quests for players, depending on their plot choices. This walkthrough will focus on the quests available in Henselt’s camp, and cover how you can break the curses and seek out the kingslayers hiding in the region.
