[klisiu]

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Hello, so far i realy like the witcher. Its a realy nice game. But now im at the end of Act1 where the beast attacks me and Abigail.

Abigail always dies and i too shortly after her. I drank all the potions i have but this beast is damn hard. Im wondering how you guys did it ? Is it possible that Abigail survives ?

A little help would be great. :)

When I was killing the Beast Abigail survived... Firstly you should kill all dogs before killin the Beast..

[mcharj12]

Took me a couple of attempts to beat the beast, all i did was use the oil that damages specters on my sword, use group style to kill barghests quickly then focus on the beast with either fast or strong. If Abigail gets knocked out use your signs to stall the dogs while you use swallow regenerate, don't go too close to fires as you will starft to burn and stand writhing for a while wheile the beasts kill you. You can evade the dogs long enough for abigail to wake up if your lucky.

After i killed the beast though when i tried to save game, it crashed and i have to now start at the cave again.

[Candew]

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Okay here are the best tips I can give you...

Things to do BEFORE the villagers lock themselves in their homes:

1. Buy the specter oil from Abigail
2. Boost the sign of Aard
3. Gather the ingredients required to make the potions swallow and blizzard, then make those potions
4. Complete as mush side quests as possible

Things to do BEFORE you leave the cave and face the angry villagers:

1. Drink the potion swallow
2. Drink the potion blizzard
3. Put specter oil on your steel sword

Things to do DURING the fight with the beast:

1. Focus your attacks on the beast
2. Use group attacks when you are truly surrounded
3. Run away if your health is low and keep running until it's back up
4. Use the sign of Aard on the beast when he lost about half his health

Thank you Flaming Rose!

I finally beat it after following your advice.

[coco]

Finnaly done it, I've managed to kill the beast. An important thing about this battle that I don't know if it has been said by now, is that by using the aard sign you can turn off 3 of those 4 fires, so there will be less barghers to deal with.
I've used one Swallow potion at the begining of the fight and another one during the fight.
I've then used the aard sign again to disperse the barghers, and I've only attacked the beast. After 6 or 7 attacks the beast is ded. :P

[Vergigorm]

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(...)I wonder if the producer played the game!? (...)

Yes, and this fight is realy, really, really easy on hard diff for me. Believe me ;)

For ex. barghests are spawning from little "magical fireplaces" there. you can use aard on it and see what will happen ;)
And alchemy is your friend there (not only potions i mean).

I love this hint.  I discovered that feature of Aard by accident and blew out a fireplace that I was about to use and wasted a flint. 

[Stonker]

Well, after AT LEAST 15 attempts i have finally managed to kill the beast on hard mode. In the end i think a lot of it came down to luck. Having coated by steel blade with Spector Oil (along with a grindstone to increase damage) and drinking Swallow i used a combination of group style and the Aard sign. I must've stunned the beast because my next attack finished him in one blow. Phew! Had i not been enjoying the game completely up till this fight i would have definitely given up. However, as the game is awesome i struggled on. Hopefully this is a difficulty spike that won't reappear later in the game. Fingers crossed!  ;D

A couple of points:

The stun delivered by the beast lasts far too long.  It really does. >:( Other people have mentioned this and it is completely true. I'm sure this is fixable in a patch.
If stray too near the flames you are effectively stunned and cannot move. This also lasts far too long in my opinion.
Do the Barghests really need to reappear after you have slain them? This seems very unfair as the player would then be able to concentrate fully on the beast. This would not diminish the experience i think but rather enhance and remove the frustration factor.
The repeating of the cutscene prior to the fight is a massive frustration when you need to restart the fight. Surely give the player a chance to save their game and administer potion and such before the fight happens. Repeating the same scene 15 times is no fun at all.

[Tyranith]

I beat it on Hard with one blizzard and one swallow, and no other buffs.

Kiting The Beast works quite well while your swallow's affecting you, and igni+group style finishes off barghests quickly. After that it's just a matter of wounding The Beast enough and Aarding it until you kd/stun it so you can coup de graçe.

Not to say it's easy (it took me at least five goes), but if you're gonna pick the hardest difficulty then you should be prepared for the consequences. I'd much rather the game be too hard than too easy on the hardest setting. After all, you can always choose medium or easy, can't you?

In an RPG I actually like being afraid of venturing too far out into, say, the swamp, in case something'll eat me. Pissing all over every monster I fight = no danger = no atmosphere = no fun. ymmv.

As for the cutscene, it irritated me when I died a few times but forced me to actually think about the fight and play my cards carefully instead of becoming a quicksave-die-quickload bore-a-thon.

[janekk]

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3/ finally, how are we supposed to know that at the *very* moment that we leave Abigail in the cave, Geralt needs to coat his blade with "Specter oil" because he'd have no opportunity to do so after ?

It not needed to know. I'm playing on medium and i've killed it at first attempt and made all this things (drinking potions, oiling blade etc.) during battle.
It's not so hard you just need to find weak points of enemy and avoid beign hit. Its not simple click&slash and thats why i like it 8).

[Seffrid]

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I have to agree there. My major problem is the damn save. It saves right before two lengthy cutscenes. To start the fight again, I have to go through them everytime. I barely last 10-20 seconds. Please, either fix the fight through the next patch or release cheats. I really want to get through this lame part.

You can save the second you quit the cutscene, before commencing the fight.

EDIT: And press ESC to exit the cutscene.

[Solescape]

I killed it on Hard, took me about an hour and a half but here is the strategy:

- Potions: Make sure you have 1 Swallow, 1-2 Blizzards, and Spectre Oil. Spectre Oil isn't necessary (I did it without but the game froze right after I killed the beast), but it helps immensely.
- Apply the Spectre Oil to your sword while still inside the cave. It also helps to make sure your toxicity level is 0.
-Head outside and click through cutscene.

-As soon as you hear the battle drums, pause the game. Click on the icon to get your sword out and unpause, then pause again immediately. Make sure you have the AARD spell selected, and the group fighting style selected. Drink a Blizzard potion and then unpause.
-By the time you've finished the Blizzard potion, dogs should be surrounding the Witch. Cast AARD on her and the surrounding dogs will fall. Then  start attacking one of the standing dogs with group style.
-Get in a combo or two, and as the dogs and Beast surround you, hop over them (stay away from the Beast!!). Then attack a dog, get one or two combos in, hop over in the opposite direction of where the beast is, repeat. What happens during this is that you weaken the Beast down without directly confronting him. If you confront him directly you will be paralyzed. You need to stay away from him and weaken him only by attacking the other dogs with group mode. If you were hurt in the initial attack, drink a Swallow.
-Once all of the dogs have been killed, run around until more appear. In the meantime, if the Beast attacks the Witch, knock him off with AARD. Repeat this and the above process.
After a while, you should have weakened the Beast enough that your AARD spell will knock him down and keep him on the ground for a bit. When this happens, switch to Strong fighting style and take him out while he's on the ground.

Took me about 30 loads to figure this strategy out, but once I had it down it was easy. If you're having a hard time, try it out, best of luck!

[gunnarflax]

I have a problem: when i try to kill the beast after the whole thing with the salamander's, the mob and the cave. I try and try but i simply can't kill the hellhound. does anyone have any suggestions that might help me?

[Solescape]

I killed it on Hard, took me about an hour and a half but here is the strategy:

- Potions: Make sure you have 1 Swallow, 1-2 Blizzards, and Spectre Oil. Spectre Oil isn't necessary (I did it without but the game froze right after I killed the beast), but it helps immensely.
- Apply the Spectre Oil to your sword while still inside the cave. It also helps to make sure your toxicity level is 0.
-Head outside and click through cutscene.

-As soon as you hear the battle drums, pause the game. Click on the icon to get your sword out and unpause, then pause again immediately. Make sure you have the AARD spell selected, and the group fighting style selected. Drink a Blizzard potion and then unpause.
-By the time you've finished the Blizzard potion, dogs should be surrounding the Witch. Cast AARD on her and the surrounding dogs will fall. Then  start attacking one of the standing dogs with group style.
-Get in a combo or two, and as the dogs and Beast surround you, hop over them (stay away from the Beast!!). Then attack a dog, get one or two combos in, hop over in the opposite direction of where the beast is, repeat. What happens during this is that you weaken the Beast down without directly confronting him. If you confront him directly you will be paralyzed. You need to stay away from him and weaken him only by attacking the other dogs with group mode. If you were hurt in the initial attack, drink a Swallow.
-Once all of the dogs have been killed, run around until more appear. In the meantime, if the Beast attacks the Witch, knock him off with AARD. Repeat this and the above process.
After a while, you should have weakened the Beast enough that your AARD spell will knock him down and keep him on the ground for a bit. When this happens, switch to Strong fighting style and take him out while he's on the ground.

Took me about 30 loads to figure this strategy out, but once I had it down it was easy. If you're having a hard time, try it out, best of luck!

[Kajan451]

Another option..  while i agree with all the preparations... you down the Beast and all dogs go down with it. Its a little Luck/Speed Race to down Beast...

As soon as the Beast is down, hands off of your keyboard.. don't push any button, hesitate to attack the Mob... wait for the Cutszene.. and after that cutszene is over.. you can trash them. But don't hit anything, press anything, do anything... (okay you might as well breath)... otherwise you DO risk the game to freeze.

[Atavist]

I haven't tried it on hard yet, but on medium I get the impression that Abigail is unkillable, so it probably isn't necessary to protect her. She's good for a couple of free heals though...

Preparation:
As solescape said, put the spectre oil on in the cave - it has a 24h duration. I'd advise against taking any of the potions at that stage as in my experience quite a bit of time elapses between leaving the cave and the fight (theory: the game fastforwards to a pre-set night time such as midnight, so if it's already night when you enter the salamnder outpost this shouldn't matter). If you intend to use aard for crowd-control tawny owl helps quite a bit with keeping your endurence up and the sign ready.

Tactics:
Stay away from the beast or it'll hit you with Pain. However, on medium and with a swallow you can withstand the ensuing barrage of hits in any event. with the oil and an upgraded sword the barghests will go down in a couple of hits tops (again, on medium). Use aard to avoid being swarmed. Try to also have the Beast within the range of the sign's blast because if you do get a knockdown it's insta-kill time...

[RinoaHeartily]

am i right to say abigail will NOT die? She will just pass out and then awake again? The last thing i want is to have those NPC die under my watch, cept for LEO

[Kajan451]

I know for sure she won't die on Normal... i didn't try it on Hard if she comes up again. (The question would be, if the mob coming for her, would still come if she died... as its a scripted event)

[Ventriloquist]

The thing I REALLY detest about this part is the camera rolling over the fields prior to the fight. And this is for 2 reason:
Number 1: anoying as hell (imo even more than the cutscenes) because it doesnt have ANY meaning whatsoever.
Number 2: by the time that the camera finaly focuses in on the fight 1 of 2 things happen: eather the beast already chiped away 15%-20% of my vitality bar or Abigail is dead.
Out of my 10 reloads (+-1), I was 5 or 6 times about a hit way form killing the Beast when it managed a "counter" or one of its minions hit me in the back and i died. If it weren't for the 2nd reason i would have done it way sooner.

I think this is the issue that they should really fix.

This is just speculation but when I killed the beast I used an aard sign and pushed it into the fire circle. Now I'm not really sure if the beast died form that or was it due to a knockdown and Abigail stabing it right after, since she was right next to it.
If you fell like it try it out and let me know. ;)

[mothra]

i had to retry it 4 times but had the same strategy on medium:
swallow/cat/blizzard, finish off the small dogs with group style, then aard the dog, go in with strong.
if you get hurt bad, run around to recharge and don't get stunned by the hellhound.
having to click thru all those movies everytime is annoying though.

this game kicks ass.
i love the group style ! but had no finishing moves until yet in this one.
only fast and strong.

[RandomTiger]

Press on, its totally worth it, the game is really good after this point.