The Witcher 3 Lord of the Wood quest guide

Warning: mild spoilers for a Novigrad side quest below.

Need a break from the main story in The Witcher 3? The Lord of the Wood Contract sends Geralt into the forests near Novigrad to hunt down Kernun, a beast that's been leaving bodies in its wake. It's a solid early Contract with a straightforward structure: find the client, follow the trail, burn some totems, and win a fight.

Here's everything you need to know, from picking up the job to claiming your reward.

How to Start Lord of the Wood

Your starting point is the noticeboard at the Cunny of the Goose Inn. Grab the note titled "Devil in the Woods" to kick things off. It's from Brean Hotsch, who wandered into the forest recently and stumbled across something grim. Your task: figure out what caused it and put a stop to it.

Find Brean and have a chat. As with most Contracts, it's worth pushing for extra coin during the negotiation before you accept. Once the deal is settled, it's time to dig for clues.

Back inside the inn, look for a dwarf puffing away on a pipe. He's had a few drinks, but he's still your best source of information. Run through every dialogue option with him until you've squeezed out everything he knows.

How to Find Kernun

With the preliminaries done, ride west and then swing north into the woods. You're looking for a cluster of buildings. When you arrive, dismount and switch on your Witcher Senses to spot the tracks left where the carts stopped. Follow these marks west through the trees — and expect trouble along the way, as a pack of nekkers will ambush you. Deal with them and press on.

You'll soon reach the wagon you've been hunting for. Sweep the area with your Witcher Senses and you'll piece together a grim picture: a blood trail ending at a dead dwarf, footprints leading to a campfire with another body on it, and a third dwarf torn apart by deep claw marks. Clearly something big and nasty is at work here.

Next, open your World Map. Four totems are now marked, and you'll need to visit every one of them. You'll run into wolves and other forest creatures on the route, so stay sharp. At the totem near the oak tree, you'll find a bone — hit it with the Aard Sign to topple the totem. That's the trigger: Kernun himself will appear, so prepare for battle.

How to Kill Kernun

A few preparations make this fight far easier:

1. Dimeritium Bombs — Kernun is highly vulnerable to them, so stock up and throw often.
2. Relict Oil — coat your silver blade before the fight to boost your damage.
3. Igni Sign — setting the creature on fire adds steady damage throughout the encounter.

Stack these three together and the Lord of the Wood goes down much faster than he otherwise would.

Once the beast is dead, loot everything from the corpse, including the trophy skull you'll need as proof. Then ride straight back to the Cunny of the Goose, tell Brean the job is done, and hand over the skull to collect your payment. That wraps up the quest — and leaves you free to take on the next Contract in the region.

If you need help elsewhere in the game, our full Witcher 3 walkthrough has you covered.

Source: the original publisher