Question About The Whispering Hillock Quest

[forceface344]

Question About The Whispering Hillock Quest

SPOILERS AHEAD IF YOU HAVENT BEAT THIS QUEST

I've seen a lot of people saying if you SAVE the tree BEFORE meeting the crones the Baron lives, Anna lives and village is destroyed

BUT

What happens if you KILL the tree BEFORE meeting the crones? Anyone know what the outcome of that is?
I just feel the tree is also evil especially after reading about it..plus I'm just curious =)

 

[Axtun]

Pretty sure the same outcome, only change is that the village is saved but the children dies

 

[cyberpunkforever]

if you save the spirit in the tree, the spirit destroys the village,

if you kill the spirit, it does not destroys the village, in both cases, killing or saving the spirit does not affect the baron or anna or tamara, the baron lives or dies dependeing on your choices in that quest. i think you have to save the botchling and anna for the baron to live

 

[forceface344]

Pretty sure the same outcome, only change is that the village is saved but the children dies

what i heard is the children arent saved either way because they are never mentioned if you do this quest before the crones/baron

 

[jj284b]

if you save spirit before meeting Crones, children will die.. Spirit will only save them as bargaining chip with you, but she doesn't care about what happens with them.. She wants revenge, on village, and on Crones that killed her and cursed her into that form.

so practically, this is probably the worst option of the three..

Personally, i kill the spirit. She killed a lot of people, and would wipe out the village if she can.. i know that means children will die, but at the time you take that choice, you dont really know you wont be able to save them (but of course you know exactly what will happen to them after first play-through) Anyway i feel that releasing a spirit fueled by revenge will just in the end cause a lot more harm than necessary..

 

[forceface344]

if you save spirit before meeting Crones, children will die.. Spirit will only save them as bargaining chip with you, but she doesn't care about what happens with them.. She wants revenge, on village, and on Crones that killed her and cursed her into that form.

so practically, this is probably the worst option of the three..

so killing the tree before the crones/baron
what is the ending on this?

we dont know what happens to children
village lives
baron and anna live?

 

[jj284b]

killing the tree would have no other effect, you still get that contract, you just tell the eldorman you already handled it. everything else happens as if you killed it after getting that contract.

 

[forceface344]

killing the tree would have no other effect, you still get that contract, you just tell the eldorman you already handled it. everything else happens as if you killed it after getting that contract.

hmm, what would you suggest is the best outcome?
i was reading that the tree is actually the mother of the crones, and is much more evil. i am debating on killing it

 

[jj284b]

whatever you see right - killing it is my usual result, but i'm influenced by the fact i want Baron to live, because he helped Ciri. Anyway first time around i saved it and saw Baron die. Saving it before meeting Crones seems like the worst option to me(village is destroyed, kids dead, but Baron lives = 2 of 3 negative outcomes).

 

[forceface344]

whatever you see right - killing it is my usual result, but i'm influenced by the fact i want Baron to live, because he helped Ciri. Anyway first time around i saved it and saw Baron die. Saving it before meeting Crones seems like the worst option to me(village is destroyed, kids dead, but Baron lives = 2 of 3 negative outcomes).

good points.
So if i kill it before i meet thr crones does the baron live?

 

[jj284b]

i think he should. as you complete contract Crones want you to.

 

[Lytha]

good points.
So if i kill it before i meet thr crones does the baron live?

I am testing just this scenario in my current playthrough. But it will be a long while until I see the results (I aim to finish the mainquest in the order Skellige->Velen->Novigrad this time around and haven't even been to Skellige yet.)

I am quite sure it will have the following outcome:

- children dead
- villagers alive
- Anna mad, Baron lives



I had intended to do a "free spirit before meeting crones", but then I saw Geralt's face as he was talking to that thing. And wondered if Geralt would really release some creepy thing with a creepy voice and monster-type skeleton, with lots of corpses near the lair and a werewolf standing guard, just because it tells him that it is cruelly imprisoned beneath that tree... or rather not do that.

 

[Jehane]

I had intended to do a "free spirit before meeting crones", but then I saw Geralt's face as he was talking to that thing. And wondered if Geralt would really release some creepy thing with a creepy voice and monster-type skeleton, with lots of corpses near the lair and a werewolf standing guard, just because it tells him that it is cruelly imprisoned beneath that tree... or rather not do that.

Same here. I did that quest yesterday and at first, I was inclined to free the spirit but then I thought that something's not right there and that Geralt would never release such a creature which would probably destroy the whole village. It had already killed lots of people; also, it commanded a werewolf. Plus the spirit had told Geralt that nature doesn't discern between innocent and guilty - that remark was crucial for my decision not to help that thing. That and the fact that I didn't trust it after all it had done.

 

[Lytha]

Oh, right. The outcome of "killed spirit before visiting the crones" led indeed to the predicted outcome in my posting from a month ago.

- children dead ("in a better place now")
- Anna mad, Baron lives
- villagers alive

As an extra bonus I accidentally set off the Baron towards Crookback Bog before visiting Tamara, so I met Tamara & friends there for the first time, which was also graced with extra dialogue lines just for this case.

I really love the amount of attention given to quest order flexibility in this game.

 

[Jehane]

That is cool - the bit about extra dialogue when meeting Tamara there for the first time

 

[Kirisuma]

Question About The Whispering Hillock Quest

SPOILERS AHEAD IF YOU HAVENT BEAT THIS QUEST

I've seen a lot of people saying if you SAVE the tree BEFORE meeting the crones the Baron lives, Anna lives and village is destroyed

BUT

What happens if you KILL the tree BEFORE meeting the crones? Anyone know what the outcome of that is?
I just feel the tree is also evil especially after reading about it..plus I'm just curious =)

Oh that. I once made an experiment: What if you meet Hansi (this weird goblin halfling thingy... not sure if his name is different in english) and help him but instead of then following him back to speak with Anna, you go to the tree. Suddenly you can get the bargaining chip. You can tell it to save the kids... but later on the game gets a bit confused on how to handle things. Because Anna is shocked because the kids are supposedly dead... but the hags are angry at you for freeing the kids but don't punish Anna for it... so it seems as if it once was a legitimate option but they didn't properly implement it... I also remember that my voice audio bugged out in that scenario. (All the lines are usually used but each for a different scenario... I guess the game was confused on wich audio it should load now?) Anyway... it has been some years since then. And I'm still not sure if the kids are alive or not, because I get mixed messages from Anna and the Hags... I only know one thing for sure: riding through that village is always an annoyance afterwards xD