I popped into The Witcher this morning and redid the Vesna bit, and afterwards went and did Odo’s quest over again before going and seeing Abigail, where more information about The Beast was revealed.

After that, I headed back to the inn and found my old dwarf friend there, and he taught me how to play dice with the sets I’d been finding. While I was there I bought the rest of the books that I couldn’t afford the first time I was there, though most of them just add history information to the journal.

Now that I could play dice, I went around and beat Odo, Haren, and Mikul at it, which is supposed to let me play more advanced players for better money later on. Then it was back to the inn again, but this time Shani was being threatened by troublemakers inside, so I had to come to her rescue. Unfortunately, this left the inn deserted, and I’m not sure where the merchants and blacksmith went off to.

I was running out of things to do, so I went off to the Salamandra’s secret hideout to finally confront them. They were pretty much pushovers, but Abigail was down there as well and I did get to learn all sorts of secrets that the villagers had been hiding. Apparently nobody in this village is particularly innocent. Abigail was appreciative of my efforts, and yes, another card was collected.

Upon leaving the base, the villagers and Reverend had gathered and accused Abigail of being the source of the Beast and presented their cases for why all of the events were her fault. Really, everyone had their fair share of blame for everything, including her, but I chose to defend her anyway. I’m just not heartless enough to love-her-n-leave-her, I guess.

After that, the Beast attacked, and it’s an infamously tough battle. It summons hounds to help it, it’s in an enclosed space where it’s easy to get blocked in and surrounded, it has a long-lasting stun effect that’s pretty deadly, and Abigail is helping you but gets knocked unconscious far too easily. I failed it numerous times, and it’s made even more annoying by having to go through the previous crowd scene, cutscene, and level loads each time you retry. I finally beat it by getting lucky with an Aard cast that knocked The Beast down long enough to get a coup-de-grace attack in, but it was a frustrating, unfun battle. Fortunately, it’s supposedly the only fight in the game that’s quite that bad.

After that I then had to fight the main villagers that had accused Abigail, but they were big pushovers. Abigail then said she was going to leave town, and that’s probably the last I’ll see of her. I went back to the inn to pick up Shani again, and we headed to the main city of Vizima.

As we approached it, I remembered that there was a cave near the city that I hadn’t explored yet. There were some echinops plants in there, and one of them dropped a skull for one of the earlier quests I’d picked up. I took it to the crypt in the town, where a lich-like ghost appeared, talked about destiny, warned me that he was still after me, and then summoned the ghost of Leo, a character from the prologue. I had to fight him, but it wasn’t that tough.

That was it for everything in the outskirts that I could remember, so I finally headed off to the city, where I was promptly thrown in prison by the guards. Hmmph, how cliche… And so starts Chapter II of the game.