Turn and Face the Strange is a secondary quest in the Blood and Wine expansion. Completing this quest will unlock mutation abilities - powerful upgrades to Geralt's skills that can also add additional skill slots.
Walkthrough[]
Right after the main quest Blood Run ends you will very likely run into a boy who will deliver a letter for Geralt. It can be from Triss only if you romanced her, otherwise it's always from Yennefer, but it's different depending on whether you romanced her or not. Now you will have the option to tip the boy with 5
or not.
Important: If you tip the boy it will count as "Proof of Generosity" for There Can Be Only One.
Go to Orlémurs Cemetery near Lebioda's Gate. The grave you are looking for is just west from the fast travel point; however, someone has robbed the grave, so investigate with your Witcher Senses to find footprints and follow them. The trail ends abruptly with no way to continue the search so you must open your inventory and use the old map of Toussaint which will tell you where to go next. (50
) Go to the new location and dive underwater. You will find a portal there, so enter it, and you will appear in the ruins. (50)
Soon you will find spike traps, but you don't need to cross them unless you want some loot. Instead, start climbing down. Along the way some panther statues will come to life and attack; note that these are specters and not real beasts. Kill them (100) and keep going. You will run into evidence that the grave robber was there too, and you may also find remains of Professor Moreau's diary. After encountering another guardian, eventually you will reach a closed door, and to open it, you will have to shoot blocks on walls with your crossbow.
Inside you will find a pedestal and gargoyle statues. When you examine one, it will come to life, and you will have to fight it. After it's defeated (100), it will drop a hand which you have to place on a pedestal. Portals will open, and you have to enter the correct ones. You just have to notice which direction the statue at the center is looking, but if you're having trouble—take the left one, then climb down and climb up to the portal on the opposite side, enter it, then keep moving left until you see a gap. Jump over it and enter the portal you find there. This will take you to the lab. (100)
The laboratory[]
Search the lab and you will find a megascope, but you don't have to use it yet. Search the place to find two megascope crystals: one is on the desk with a book on it, and the other on a bench behind the machine that looks like an iron maiden. Go back to the megascope and use the pillow nearby that has crystals on it and place the remaining two. This gives you the optional objective of checking the additional recordings. There are a few other unimportant things to inspect, but a library shelf will give another book when examined.
Activate the megascope and listen to what Tomas Moreau has been up to. As it turns out, he tried to "cure" the mutations of a witcher to turn his son back to normal, but he only strengthened them. To perform the process, giant centipede eggs are required. If you find the extra crystals, you will get 100 for looking at them and an additional 100 if you found them before using the megascope for the first time.
You now have to search for the eggs; they are in a nearby cave, which you can enter through a hole in one of the cages. You will have to fight Pale Widows though, but you can entangle them with Yrden to make them defenseless. After you reach the nest, take the mutated giant centipede albumen out of one of the little mounds of eggs (100 if done after looking at the crystals). Only one dose is needed. If you take the other corridor, you will reach an Aard-breakable wall to drop back in the lab, but you can also return the way you came. Place the albumen in the machine that looks like an iron maiden, strip, and then activate it. With this, mutations have been unlocked.
Note: when playing on New Game + where mutations were previously unlocked, the process will instead award an additional skill point.
Now go to the new marker and activate the crystal with Aard to open the portal, enter, and it will teleport you to the lake where the entrance portal was to end the quest. (200)
Journal entry[]
- Default (didn't romance or doing standalone):
- It was a warm summer evening... or perhaps a cool yet sunny morning? The weather and time are of no import, what matters is that day Geralt received a letter from Yennefer, who informed him about a most unusual discovery she had recently made. She'd found mention of research conducted by a Professor Moreau on witcher mutations. It seemed this professor's workshop could be found in Toussaint. Geralt, realizing the importance of this discovery, decided to find this laboratory. The first step would be to find the professor's journal which, according to Yen, had been buried with him.
- If Geralt romanced Yennefer in the main game:
- It was a warm summer evening... or perhaps a cool yet sunny morning? The weather and time are of no import, what matters is that day Geralt received a letter full of kind words from Yennefer, who informed him about a most unusually[sic] discovery she had recently made. She'd found mention of research conducted by a Professor Moreau on witcher mutations. It seemed this professor's workshop could be found in Toussaint. Geralt, realizing the importance of this discovery, decided to find this laboratory. The first step would be to find the professor's journal which, according to Yen, had been buried with him.
- If Geralt romanced Triss in the main game:
- It was a warm summer evening... or perhaps a cool yet sunny morning? The weather and time are of no import, what matters is that day Geralt received a letter full of kind words from his beloved Triss, who informed him about a most unusual discovery she had recently made. In some old manuscripts she'd found mention of research conducted by a Professor Moreau on witcher mutations. It seemed this professor's workshop could be found in Toussaint. Geralt, realizing the importance of this discovery, decided to find this laboratory. The first step would be to find the professor's journal which, according to Triss, had been buried with him.
- Default (didn't romance or doing standalone):
- Geralt soon discovered not only he wished to find Professor Moreau's laboratory. When the witcher reached the cemetery, he found the professor's grave had been dug up and the journal was nowhere to be found. The only clue he did find was an inscription on a grave mentioning the legendary Dol Naev'de, the Valley of the nine, which had been flooded years before by the Sansretour River. Seeing no other way to find the professor's lab, Geralt decided to search for more information in those sunken ruins.
- As unlikely as it sounds, Geralt found the entrance to Professor Moreau's laboratory in the sunken elven ruins of Dol Naev'de. Things seemed to be getting more and more interesting, so the witcher did not hesitate to plunge onward...
His path was riddled with traps and other such obstacles, but our brave hero had much experience in running even more difficult gauntlets. Tired in both mind and spirit from his efforts, in the end he made it to the professor's lab. - Searching Professor Moreau's lab gave Geralt a somewhat expanded view of the professor's past and his research. It seemed Moreau's goal had not been to discover how to strengthen the witcher mutations, but just the opposite, how to reverse them, so he could "cure" his son Jerome of being a witcher.
- To Geralt's delight, the professor's plan failed to achieve its desired result. This failure could be of use to the witcher, however, for by mixing the professor's secret formula into his bloodstream he gained access to a whole range of new mutations. These promised to make him stronger, faster, more resilient – in short, better. Geralt looked forward to putting them to the test in combat.
Objectives[]
- Search for Moreau's grave at Orlémurs Cemetery using your Witcher Senses.
- Use your Witcher Senses to look for clues about the location of Professor Moreau's laboratory.
- Use your Witcher Senses to follow the grave robber's trail.
- Check the location of Naev'de on the map Yennefer / Triss sent you. (50
) - Search for the entrance to the professor's laboratory in the flooded ruins of the Valley of the Nine. (50)
- Search the ruins.
- Defeat the guardians. (100)
- Find a way into Professor Moreau's laboratory.
- Defeat the guardian.
- Go deeper into the ruins.
- Find a way to open the doors.
- Find Professor Moreau's laboratory.
- Find a way to go forward.
- Defeat the gargoyle. (100)
- Find a path through the portals.
- Use your Witcher Senses to search the laboratory.
- [Optional] Find the missing megascope crystals. 0/2
- [Optional] Place the missing crystals on the pillow. 0/2
- [Optional] Listen to the additional entries in the professor's audio log. 0/2 (100)
- Acquire mutated giant centipede albumen.
- Get undressed and activate Moreau's contraption.
- Leave Professor Moreau's laboratory. (200)
Notes[]
- While it's likely that you encounter the delivery boy after Blood Run, that's only because you probably haven't had a reason to go near the city squares yet. The quest can actually be started as soon as you have access to Toussaint and there are at least four squares where the courier can approach Geralt.
- When Geralt talks about the statue and its orientation, he's referring to the giant statue of a hooded figure (not the gargoyle sculptures in the first room).
- The letter received from the messenger boy will differ depending on Geralt's romantic partner at the start of the quest: letter from Triss, letter about Yennefer, or the "neutral" letter from Yennefer (also the default during an expansion-only game).
- Around the laboratory, there are also lootable greater blue mutagen and greater green mutagen, but no red. However, the higher-level pale widow guarding the eggs should drop one.
- In early versions of the game, there was a notice to help direct players to the courier boy.
- The game files still contain remnants of a "mutation serum", and a recipe for it with four custom ingredients, possibly an earlier method to unlock mutations that eventually got cut from the game.
Trivia[]
- In the area with the portals is a portal that's blue but also glows slightly orange if you look at its door frame. To find it, drop down the gap on the third level, and (facing the statue below) it's the portal to your right. Upon entering it, the room has a crate painted like the companion cube and a nearby container with cake, all clear references to the video game series Portal.
- The name of this quest is reference to quote from the song by David Bowie named Changes.
- The quest has references to The Island of Doctor Moreau, a novel by H.G. Wells. In the novel, Doctor Moreau is attempting to genetically alter animals into more human-like beings, through a process called vivisection.
- The mutation contraption and some of the journal entries might be references to Captain America: The First Avenger.
- The quest makes several references to the Tomb Raider series, namely suggesting the "grave robber" who beat Geralt to the professor's resting place was Lara Croft as indicated by her footsteps, avoiding the traps, her zip line, and a blood-soaked rag.
- The achievement you unlock for completing this quest is called Weapon "W". This is a reference to Marvel Comics' Weapon X, a secret genetic research project that tested subjects with superhuman abilities and enhanced them through crude experiments.
- The title of the quest is like a reference to the David Bowie song, "Changes", where the chorus goes "Ch-ch-ch-changes, Turn and face the strange".
Videos[]
