Side Quests and Court Activities

1. Side quests, Court Activities and Infamy

Three systems, and they are not the same thing. Side quests are the optional quests in the log; Court Activities are the menu of jobs that raise a vassal's Anger; Infamy is the single global number that rises while you do either. They overlap at the edges — two of the side quests below also tick off a Court Activity — and Infamy is the one that can quietly close a door behind you.

• 1

  The clock is a budget, not a countdown

  You have 30 days in total to defeat the three main bosses and rescue your family. Time does not advance on its own: it is spent like a currency on completing quests and on certain dialogue choices. That is why every entry on this page carries a time cost where one is known. Priced individually, the spread is enormous: several of the Svartrau City quests are 1 segment, while Letters to Lunka is listed at 9–15. Nothing else on this page is that expensive.

• 2

  Court Activities, and what they are for

  After the Prologue you unlock the Court Activities menu. Court Activities are how you raise the Anger Level of each boss, and when one reaches maximum Anger you get that boss's fight quest. Disrupting a particular officer's territory raises both that officer's Anger and your general Infamy. The activity lists themselves are per vassal, so they live on the three vassal pages. What belongs here is the overlap: two side quests on this page are also Court Activities, and completing them moves a vassal's Anger whether you meant to or not.

• 3

  Infamy opens doors and locks others, and it only goes up

  Infamy is a ratchet: there is currently no way to reduce or reverse Coen's Infamy once it has been gained. It rises from clearing soldier camps, sabotaging blood supply warehouses and generally causing chaos, and it can be kept down only by not killing civilians, rampaging or stealing. As it climbs, the open world answers with heavier checkpoints and more troops. It works as a gate in both directions: Where Loyalty Lies needs Infamy IV, a letter at Infamy level 4 is one of the two ways into A Monk and a Saint, and the amulet The Shredder sits behind Infamy level 2. Against that, reaching maximum Infamy is one of the three ways to lose A Dubious Gift for good. Infamy is not a difficulty slider you can ignore; it is a one-way clock of its own.

• 4

  Sources sort the same quest into different boxes

  Worth knowing before you go looking for something and cannot find it. PowerPyx lists The Ring as a Bakir main quest while Game8's side quest table has it as a side quest at The Lunar Manor; PowerPyx groups Hive and Seek under the Lacra questline in Svartrau City while Game8 files it under Rockfalls at Uriash Village; PowerPyx puts Buried Past in Maragir Wealds and A Bulwark Against Darkness in St. Tyna's Grove, where Game8's table gives St. Tyna's Grove and Svartrau City respectively. None of that changes what the quests do. It does mean a region heading is a weaker landmark here than a quest name.

• 5

  Is there a New Game+ to clean up in? Not yet

  This matters for exactly one reason: whether "missable" means "lost this run" or "lost forever". There is no New Game+ at launch, and the minimum is one playthrough if you keep a save before the final quest and reload it for all endings. The director has confirmed one is coming — “It's coming. But I won't tell you when”, on a PlayStation stream — and it is reportedly not part of the October patch. Until then, the safe behaviour is manual saves, a different manual slot every in-game day, and there are 54 slots to do it in.

2. A Mother’s Plea

The first of the two missables, and the harder one to protect, because you lose it several hours earlier and in a fight you probably thought you had won. It is hidden, missable and time-sensitive. It sits in Rockfalls, at Uriashi Village, and it is only reachable through a chain: A Friend Like This → Song of the Mountain → A Mother's Plea → The Heart Wants What It Wants, in that order.

• 1

  The thing that actually loses it: Song of the Mountain

  The condition is one sentence: the quest is only available if you enter the village peacefully in Song of the Mountain. If you end up fighting there, you have to kill all of the uriash in the village to progress, and you lose multiple vendors along with the A Mother's Plea quest, so resolve it peacefully. The dialogue for the peaceful route includes "Lacra, calm down" and "Nobody needs to die". Note what that costs you beyond the quest: vendors, plural. A sword, The Prizewinner, is bought from the Uriash Hermit; no source we read says whether that hermit is one of the vendors you lose, so this page does not claim it is.

• 2

  Getting to Song of the Mountain in the first place

  The quest giver is Lacra, in Svartrau City, and you must have finished A Friend Like This. The objectives then run "Find out where Isbrand is", then "Meet Lacra near the Crown Rock at night" in Rockfalls, then climb the mountain following the windchimes, then follow the Elder. It costs 4 time segments and gives 300 XP across its objectives. The night requirement is not optional.

• 3

  The quest itself, and who gives it

  The giver is the Uriash Elder, who stands by her house in the village centre. The objectives, in order: ask the Elder about her request, follow the Elder, inspect the sacred obelisk, then go looking for Ocha in the tavern in Altenmarkt, speak to Ocha, beat Ocha in a fistfight, resolve Ocha's problem and return to the Elder.

• 4

  What it pays, and the choice that does not change it

  250 XP, 150 coins, the Soul Stigma Manual, and Sacred Stones marked on your map. One choice is settled before you agonise over it: whether you convince Ocha to return or not does not affect the reward for this quest; you receive the same thing no matter what. The time cost is the one number here that is not a single figure — 3 time segments plus the time to finish The Heart Wants What It Wants, the follow-up quest, which Game8 puts at 4 segments at the Altenmarkt Tavern and Vandal at 2. Budget for the pair, not the one.

• 5

  There is a trophy at the end of it

  A bronze, The Outcast, is awarded for completing Ocha's quest. That is the whole chain's payoff in trophy terms, and it is one of the 18 missable trophies — with the caveat that applies to all of them: keep manual saves and nothing is truly missable.

3. A Dubious Gift

The second missable, and there is no hedging about it: the quest has very specific start requirements, and is highly missable because of them. It begins at Svartrau Cathedral, the Deacon gives it, and it is the one side quest on this page that is also a Court Activity — completing it counts as Cathedral Ritual.

• 1

  Three ways to lose it, and none of them feels like a mistake

  The quest becomes unobtainable if you learn about the Svartrau Crypt beforehand, if you complete Night Terrors, or if you reach maximum Infamy. The third is the trap, because maximum Infamy is where the main story is taking you anyway — after the three vassals are dead you should be at maximum Infamy. So this is a quest to do early in the city, not one to save for later.

• 2

  The prerequisite, which is a fork rather than a step

  You must have started the side quest A Monk and a Saint and spoken with Albertus, without having triggered it through Night Terrors. That reads oddly because A Monk and a Saint has two mutually exclusive openings, one after Night Terrors and one from a letter that arrives at Infamy level 4, and it locks you out of either Night Terrors or the Court Activity A Dubious Gift depending on your chosen path. The letter path is the one that keeps A Dubious Gift. The two paths then merge and both lead on to Forge It Anew.

• 3

  A disagreement about where A Monk and a Saint even starts

  Flagged rather than resolved, because it is the quest that gates this one. PowerPyx puts it in Svartrau City, reached through Night Terrors or the Infamy-4 letter, and prices it at "1 – 8 time segments (highly dependent on choices and how you complete the quest)". Game8's side quest table puts it at the Crossroads Inn in St. Tyna's Grove, started by completing Between the Words — a quest in Anca's chain — at 2 segments. Those are two different places and two different triggers. If you are following Game8's route and A Dubious Gift never appears, PowerPyx's prerequisite is the thing to check.

• 4

  The objectives

  In order: go to the almshouse, ask about the caretaker there, look for clues in the almshouse's abandoned wing, push the bookcase, investigate the abandoned wing, then tell the Deacon what became of the caretaker. The bookcase is the step worth remembering, because it is the kind of prop an investigation quest hides its only route behind.

• 5

  What it gives, and why it is worth the fuss

  150 XP and a Library Key. The XP is nothing; the key is the point. It opens the cathedral library, which is what lets A Monk and a Saint continue down the letter path — its objectives on that path include reaching the cathedral library and finding the Cathedral Chronicle there. A Monk and a Saint itself pays 1,000 XP, a skill point and the Broken Sword of St. Mihai, and that sword becomes the Imbued Sword of St. Mihai through the Forge It Anew chain. One 150 XP side quest is standing in front of all of it.

4. The chains the finale depends on

Two long side quest chains — Lacra's and Crake's — are the ones every endings guide we read tells you to finish before you commit to the last quest, because each one opens a route the finale would not otherwise offer. For the trophies it is a requirement rather than a suggestion. What they unlock and how to hold a save so you can use all of it is on the finale page; what they consist of is here.

• 1

  Lacra's chain, in order

  A Friend Like This → Song of the Mountain → Hive and Seek → Our Rotten Roots → The Night of Horrors (optional) → Midnight Reckoning, an ending quest. Starting points for several: A Friend Like This at the north-east wall of Svartrau City using Focus Mode, 3 segments; Hive and Seek at Uriash Village, speak to Lacra, 4; Our Rotten Roots at the Westridge Outpost Tower, speak to Lacra at night, 4; The Night of Horrors from the same tower, 6–7. Two things to carry out of that list: the chain runs through Song of the Mountain, so the peaceful-entry warning above applies to anyone doing Lacra's questline at all, and a bronze trophy, Misery Loves Company, is attached to Lacra's optional quest.

• 2

  Crake's chain, which is the longest thing in the game outside the main story

  Thirteen entries: The Firebrand → Under Watchful Eyes (optional) → Taking Back What's Mine (optional) → Shadows in the Woods → Where Loyalty Lies → Old Friends, New Friends (optional) → What Hunts the Night → What Moves the Dead → Who Pulls the Strings → Distant Shadows (optional) → A Closer Look (optional) → Rise at Dawn → Fall Before Dusk, the last two being ending quests. The gates and the prices: The Firebrand at Vlad's Hut north-east of Laslea Centre, 1–4 segments; Shadows in the Woods unlocking on completing it; Where Loyalty Lies requiring Infamy IV as well as Shadows in the Woods, at 5; What Hunts the Night and Distant Shadows and Who Pulls the Strings from the Manumit Hideout at 0, 4 and 5. The bronze trophy here is The Manumit, for Crake's optional quests — which is to say the five entries marked optional above are not skippable if you want it.

• 3

  Father Florin's chain, which a fourth source ties to the finale

  PowerPyx lists it as two quests in Svartrau City, In the Name of the Father → A Hero's End, starting with Father Florin at Svartrau Cathedral at 4 segments, with A Hero's End from Florin's hideout at 3. Game8 has a third, The Champion of Old, at the Ancient Ruins, started by investigating a fresco or obtaining the Decrepit Key, 3 segments. VGC's endings guide treats all three as one chain and ties it to a finale route. PowerPyx's own endings guide does not mention Florin at all, so this is VGC's connection and the page attributes it rather than stating it. The gear is not in dispute: A Hero's End gives both the Ancient Hero's Armour and the sword The Hand of Fate.

• 4

  A Lone Wolf's Hunt is filed as a side quest and is not one

  It is listed under Svartrau City's side quests, which is where you will go looking for it. The quest itself is something else entirely: a quest that begins at Greifberg Castle, requires entering alone, has no time requirement and cannot be failed, and ends the game. Treat the entry in the side quest list as a signpost to the finale page, not as an afternoon's work.

5. Svartrau City and the Outskirts

The densest region — twelve entries, several of them chains — and the cheapest, because a cluster of them cost a single time segment each. Everything below is outside the vassal chains and outside the two missables.

• 1

  The Curious House four, at 1 segment each

  Working Her Magic, Enshrined Obsession, Faith and Punishment and Weaves of Rebellion are identical entries: the Curious House balcony, entered at night after the prologue, 1 time segment. Four quests for four segments is the best rate on the page, and one of them pays a skill manual — Burning Blood is the reward for Working Her Magic. Trouble with Silver is the fifth cheap one, started by approaching shouting NPCs in the city after the prologue, at 2 segments.

• 2

  Vicho's chain

  Two quests, in order: A Study In Crimson → The Good Samaritan. The first starts at Vicho's Emporium, from rumours or by visiting in the evening, 4 segments; the second at the Svartrau Medic once the first is done, 1 segment. A bronze, The Unquenchable Thirst, is awarded for completing Vicho's questline, and The Good Samaritan is the source of the amulet Vicho's Cross. A four-segment chain with a legendary and a trophy at the end of it is one of the better deals here.

• 3

  The Sanzhani chain, and a count that does not add up

  Six quests: Good Home → Come Hither → Burrow Sorrows → Pearly and Precious → Tiny Dancer → Letters to Lunka. The bronze, The Tsarina's Favourite Human ("Complete every task given by the sanzhani"), needs only five of them: Good Home, Come Hither, Burrow Sorrows, Pearly and Precious and Tiny Dancer. Letters to Lunka does not need to be completed for this trophy. The costs: Good Home 2–8 segments in the Outskirts, Come Hither 2, Burrow Sorrows 2, Pearly and Precious 2, Tiny Dancer 2, and Letters to Lunka 9–15 at the Yawning Burrow once Good Home is done. That last figure is the largest single time price for any side quest, and it is worth seeing before you start it rather than after. The chain pays two legendaries: the Coat of Darkened Scales from Tiny Dancer and the amulet Fear of the Wild from a chest in Burrow Sorrows.

• 4

  Night Terrors, and the thing it costs you

  The cathedral courtyard, approach the well at night, 1 segment. The chain is Night Terrors → A Monk and a Saint. It is listed here rather than left out because section 3 is the reason to think twice: completing Night Terrors is one of the three things that make A Dubious Gift unobtainable. One segment, and it closes a door.

• 5

  Not every list holds the same quests

  At least two quests appear in only one source's list: Into the Den, in Laslea Glen's northern foothills cave, started by defeating a bear and inspecting a body, 1 segment; and Of Wolves and Men, in Rockfalls, started by following a blood trail on a forest path near the river, at 0 segments. They are named here so that finding them in game does not read as a guide being wrong, but nothing else about them is on this page because only one source describes them.

6. The regions outside the city

The rest go by region, and the grouping is worth following because several of these are found by walking into them rather than by being handed out. Where the sources disagree about which region something is in, both are given.

• 1

  Laslea Glen and Briar Sloughs

  Laslea Glen keeps two entries after the prologue clears out: From Above, which only asks you to sync a watchtower and unlocks automatically after Smoke and Ashes at the Briar Sloughs Watchtower for 0 segments, and A Pilgrimage for Power: Bear Trouble, which Game8 places at the Briar Sloughs riverside by a wind chime at 2 segments while PowerPyx files it under Laslea Glen. Briar Sloughs proper has The Cursed Chasm (Greifberg Castle, enter the chasm, 2 segments) — the source of the sword Durandal — Finders Keepers (Cowards Path, picked up as a treasure map during the quest, 2), Forge It Anew, and a treasure map.

• 2

  Maragir Wealds and Boar's Back

  Maragir Wealds is two quests: Star-Crossed Lovers, from the Armourer at Maragir Crossroads, 1 segment, and Buried Past, which Game8 places at a Ruined Hut with an NPC called Volk at 4–11 segments and in St. Tyna's Grove rather than Maragir Wealds. Boar's Back is The Beast of Balaur, which starts by passing the Mount Balaur Shrine, 3 segments, plus a treasure map. The wide 4–11 band on Buried Past is the one to watch on a 30-day budget.

• 3

  Rockfalls

  Besides A Mother's Plea, Rockfalls has A Pilgrimage for Power: Dark-Thing, The Highland Grave, and two treasure maps, Pond Islet and Split Rock. The Highland Grave is the pick of them: a landslide site west of Rockfalls at 1 segment, paying both the Ring of Quick Strikes, a legendary, and the Blasphemous Echo manual. One segment for a legendary ring is the best return on this page.

• 4

  St. Tyna's Grove, and Anca's chain

  Anca's questline: Echoes of Silenced Bells → Most Precious Thing (optional) → Between the Words → Where Old Devils Lie → Stronger Than Achilles. It starts at the Crossroads Inn at 6–8 segments, then 0, 1–4, 5 and 6 — so the full chain is a serious chunk of the budget. Completing it gives the bronze Sins of the Past, and the Runic Enchantment comes at the end of Stronger Than Achilles. That last quest also contains an explicit either/or: at the Font of Life, choosing "We should destroy it" is what yields the Ancient Greaves, while drinking from it instead is how you obtain the Font of Life skill. One run cannot have both. The region's other three are A Bulwark Against Darkness, A Pilgrimage for Power: Fanatics (north of the grove waystone) and Lost Blood (north of the Pilgrim's Tail shrine, walk to the marker, 1 segment).

• 5

  The Silts and Tantari Woods

  The Silts holds three: The Hedgehog Herb (Eastern Road to Oghasti, approach the ruined house, 2 segments), The Price of Magic (the Swamp Menhirs Shrine, walk up to an unfinished ritual, 3), and Home Sweet Home, which is a side quest in every list we read and is also the secret ending — it has its own section on the finale page, because what it asks of you is four repetitions and a deliberate decision, not a walkthrough. Two things about it belong here anyway: completing it also completes Gargoyle Manufacture, one of Xanthe's Court Activities, and raises your Infamy; and it pays the Astrologer's Ring. Tantari Woods is Don't Kill the Messenger (south of Shepherd's Rest, walk to the abandoned camp, 2 segments), a treasure map, and, in Game8's table only, A Pilgrimage for Power: The Ritual at the southmost waystone.

7. Pilgrimages, treasure maps and forges

Three sets of quests that repeat the same shape in different places. They are easy to overlook in a regional list because they read as one entry each, and together they account for fourteen of the 74.

• 1

  A Pilgrimage for Power — four waystones

  Game8 gives four, all identical: walk up to a waystone, cost "varies". They are Bear Trouble (Briar Sloughs riverside, by a wind chime), Fanatics (north of the St. Tyna's Grove waystone), Dark-Thing (the north-west mountain waystone in Rockfalls) and The Ritual (the southmost waystone in Tantari Woods). PowerPyx's regional list carries the first three and not The Ritual. The skill manuals are the reason to do them: Bear Trouble, Dark-Thing and Fanatics each award the Ravenous Flock manual, which is the same manual three times — useful to know before you plan a detour expecting three different skills.

• 2

  Bandits's Treasure Maps — seven of them

  The series is spelled "Bandits's Treasure Map", and there are seven: Laslea Glen, Briar Sloughs, Boar's Back, Riverbank in the Svartrau Outskirts, two in Rockfalls (Pond Islet and Split Rock), and Tantari Woods. The Laslea Glen one is a prologue quest and so on the prologue page; Game8 prices it at 2 segments and PowerPyx at 1, obtained from a bandit camp at Outlaw's Gorge. Three legendaries are tied to these maps: the sword The Kingslayer to Riverbank, the Knightly Ring to Tantari Woods, and a second copy of the Coat of Darkened Scales to Rockfalls – Split Rock. That is PowerPyx's list; Game8 puts The Kingslayer somewhere else, in a chest at Howling Keep; the Xanthe page has that version.

• 3

  Forge It Anew — one quest, three caves

  It is filed in Briar Sloughs with three sub-objectives, which are also listed as three separate entries, all at 3 segments and all started by approaching a cave: Hostile Takeover in a northern mountainside cave in Rockfalls, Executive Order in a south-east cave in St. Tyna's Grove, and Do Not Disturb in a north-east cave in Maragir Wealds. They are in three different regions, which is exactly why a single line in a Briar Sloughs list under-sells the trip. The payoff is the Imbued Sword of St. Mihai — and the chain that feeds it starts back at A Dubious Gift.

8. What the side quests actually pay

Three currencies, and only one of them is XP. The argument for doing any of this is legendary gear, which makes the eventual fight against Brencis easier in terms of equipment — which is the practical reason a page about optional content sits between the vassals and the finale.

• 1

  Legendary gear, and which side quests carry it

  There are 30 legendary items — 6 chestpieces, 3 trousers, 2 boots, 3 bracers, 6 swords, 5 amulets and 5 rings — and a large share of them are on this page rather than in the main story. From the side quests covered here: the Coat of Darkened Scales (Tiny Dancer), the Runic Enchantment and the conditional Ancient Greaves (Stronger Than Achilles), the Ancient Hero's Armour and The Hand of Fate (A Hero's End), Durandal (The Cursed Chasm), the Imbued Sword of St. Mihai (Forge It Anew), Vicho's Cross (The Good Samaritan), Fear of the Wild (a chest in Burrow Sorrows), the Ring of Quick Strikes (The Highland Grave) and the Astrologer's Ring (Home Sweet Home). A Bulwark Against Darkness alone pays four pieces — the Enhanced Armour, Shin Guards, Boots and Bracers of the Arbiter — which makes it the single most valuable entry on this page by that measure. The general caveat: some items can turn up as rare enemy drops or vendor stock, but most armour or weapons can only be obtained once from specific locations.

• 2

  Skill manuals, and why not to panic about them

  There is no published total, and there are many more manuals than are required to unlock all upgrades — so there is no completion pressure here. The ones tied to the side quests on this page: Soul Stigma (A Mother's Plea), Ravenous Flock (each of Bear Trouble, Dark-Thing and Fanatics), Blasphemous Echo (The Highland Grave), Burning Blood (Working Her Magic), and Font of Life (drinking from the Font during Stronger Than Achilles). No source we read marks any manual missable or attaches a collection trophy to them.

• 3

  The questline trophies, in one place

  All bronze: Sins of the Past (Anca's questline), Misery Loves Company (Lacra's optional quest), The Manumit (Crake's optional quests), The Unquenchable Thirst (Vicho's questline), The Outcast (Ocha's quest, the end of the A Mother's Plea chain) and The Tsarina's Favourite Human (all 5 Sanzhani quests). The totals for context: 47 trophies, 18 of them missable, 0 online, and no New Game+ to mop up in yet — which is why the advice is a save per in-game day rather than a second run.

Side Quest Completion

✅ Before Moving On to the Finale...