The Witchers' Forge

The Witchers' Forge
Description
Region(s)	Kaer Morhen valley
Location(s)	Kaer Morhen keep Iron Mine
Suggested Level	30
Reward(s)	25 Mastercrafted Wolven armor
Additional Information
Type	Secondary quest
Enemies	Earth Elemental Fire Elemental

The Witchers' Forge is a secondary quest in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

Prerequisite: The Eye of Nehaleni is needed to complete this quest, which is received from Keira Metz during Wandering in the Dark.

Walkthrough

The quest is started by reading Monstrum, or a Portrayal of Witchers. Volume 2, which can be found at the base of the tower where Yennefer resides while at Kaer Morhen. Search the room around the base of the stairwell to find it.

The mine mentioned in the note is the Iron Mine, southwest of Kaer Morhen. Enter the mine and head through the tunnel until you reach an open space, where you'll be attacked by an Earth Elemental. After defeating the elemental, look around the cavern for a pedestal. Place the tome on the pedestal and another tunnel will open. Just beside the pedestal you will also find Diagram: Superior Wolven gauntlets.

Head down the next tunnel and you will reach a room with the forge. Interact with the bellows, and a voice from the smoldering ashes will warn you to leave. Tell the voice that you want to look around, and an Fire Elemental will rise from the forge and attack you. The fight with the Ifrit can be tricky as its fire provides protection against melee attacks. Just being near the Ifrit will cause you to suffer fire damage. To counter this, hit the Ifrit with Aard to put out its flames. Once its flames are out, fighting is essentially the same as fighting an earth elemental.

Once you defeat the Ifrit, go back to the forge and use the Eye of Nehaleni to dispel the illusion to reveal a small room with three chests, completing the quest. (25)

One of the chests will contain Mastercrafted Wolven armor and Eternal Fire executioner's armor, while the other two have Mag Deira cuirass and Ban Ard breastplate respectively. Only the Wolven armor is of notable quality though.

Journal entry

While poking around in the forgotten recesses of Kaer Morhen, Geralt happened across an illusory wall. He removed the illusion and behind it found a copy of the tome "Monstrum, or a Portrayal of Witchers. Volume 2" This tract had caused him no end of trouble and he would have tossed it onto the fire at once - if not for the intriguing handwritten note on the first page...

Geralt followed the directions found in the tome's notes and arrived at an old iron mine. After dispatching an earth elemental guardian, he found the tome could be used as a sort of key opening a passageway leading to an old forge. To his great surprise, this forge began speaking to him. Though some might suspect the witcher had merely breathed a bit too much of the musty mine air, he claimed an ifrit, a fire elemental of some kind, had been used ages ago by a mage who created special equipment for the Wolf School witchers. This elemental remained vigilant all these years after the mage's death and thus Geralt had to defeat it in order to get at the secret stash of high-quality gear hidden behind the forge.

Objectives

• Read the copy of the tome.
• Go to the mine near Kaer Morhen.
• Search the mine using your Witcher Senses.
• Kill the earth elemental.
• Put the tome on the pedestal.
• Search the mysterious chamber using your Witcher Senses.
• Kill the ifrit
• Remove the illusion. (25)

Bugs

• Killing the Earth Elemental before acquiring the tome will show the quest update, but it will not be on the player's quest list. However, the elemental stays dead and won't prevent the quest from continuing properly once the book is acquired.
• The false wall isn't properly enforced as a boundary for anything except Geralt. As a result, the Earth Elemental may move behind or into the wall. For the same reason, another odd effect is very often observed in stacked piles of wolven loot appearing at its location - these drops come from wolves in the forest above the mine, which the elemental is attracted to and kills. That in turn is also a possible reason why it would move behind the wall to begin with. The safest way to counter this bug is to load the last checkpoint save. It may be possible to put the book on the pedestal before killing the elemental, but that isn't tested and you may be stuck in combat mode preventing you from doing it.
• When this quest is done during a New Game +, the armor found behind the fire will still be a Mastercrafted Wolven Armor and not the Mastercrafted Legendary Wolven armor.