Playing with the devil (minor spoiler)

[sniperdoc]

Ended up with having to sneak into the woods to observe the 3 women. Got to the part where you end up fighting two bandits. Killed the bandits, saved all 3 women. Went to pastor and he chastised me for killing the men. Fine… totally cool with this. However, I want to save the 3 witchcraft practicing women as well as not kill the men…

So, reloaded a save that is right when the women think Lucifer is in the woods coming to greet them. I go through the same procedure, offer to have sex with the Mare… 2 bandits show…

No matter WHAT I do… how I choose to keep the men alive, the quest won’t move on, if you just knock out the men. At least one of them will continue to run back and forth into the affected area, and the quest won’t progress to the time advance… If I go into the woods to start the time advance, the women show up dead and no Bandits present. There’s something wrong with the fact that the Bandits, even though you knock them unconscious, or made them run away, they still come back to kill the women…

Either that possibility of a quest branch doesn’t exist, or it’s broken and too difficult to achieve… this should be offered as a choice as well. Feeling a little shoe-horned…

[Kolomnitcki]

Welcome to club.

SPOILER * Dance with devil

Did anyone find an satisfying solution for that quest? For me it ends up with someones dead regardless of my previous actions. My first idea was to use a blunt weapon with low damage. This seemed to work as the “bandits” yielded but the next morning they were dead anyway. For the next try I used my fists. This time the “bandits” started to run around the fire and the women just died after some time. Is this quest buggy or do i just miss something?

[sniperdoc]

Ugggh… I was afraid of that…

[MrGold]

Yeah. I also wanted to do the quest without interfering at all but that is not possible apparently as the quest doesn’t move forward until you eventually enter the circle. I really dislike that especially as it gives you the optional objective of not interfering.

[Kolomnitcki]

the quest doesn’t move forward until you eventually enter the circle.

No, you can fail task “Interrupt” and wait until bandits are come. But game doesn’t check player status, and even if you not on drugs, bandits (why are they bandits?) fancifully dressed.

[Baraz]

That part of the quest is just terrible, extremely linear and scripted. It not only contradicts the spirit of this game, it’s a total insulting illusion of choice (insult to intelligence).

Whether you wait or enter the circle, same result.
You chose dialogue A or B, it is the same.
You do not want to fornicate… no choice at all.
You try an Antidote potion…
You run away… nothing can be done at all.

If I join in the circle or wait outside the circle, there is an attack and the attackers are dressed the same.

Check out this one : I shoot an arrow, one woman flees. They all leave. I enter the circle: it triggers the same old script again!

If I pull the attackers away (who are doing zero damage to me), I magically fall down and wake hours later… which is just a bad programming script (I was never near the Witch potion).

If I poke them for only 3 points of damage with the Dollmaker potion, the attackers fall dead.

Might as well just have made it a long cutscene as we have no choice at all.
Love the game, but this bit is … [censoring myself]

EDIT: best solution I found. Wait outside of the cutscene zone, as suggested by the game actually, and wait for their entire ceremony to be done. Two bandits attack: take them down. no loss in Reputation I think and the women should still be alive.

[deV]

In my case, after becoming the Lucifer and killing the bandits/woodcutters and after talking to priest I’ve decided that the Inquisition inspection must end.
Sir Hanush was mad at me that the investigator has dissaperared without a trace.
I laughed my back off when he added something like: “I knew it would end that way if I let you go alone”.

And the life in Ushitz returned to normal.

[Boru9]

I keep thinking that there was supposed to be another solution somewhere earlier in the quest. The Witch potion can be brewed, so the logical thing to do would be to spike the women even before they get to the woods. That way they realize just how much trouble they would get into and abandon their plans. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to discover any game mechanism to do this in any of my 5+ attempts.

[Multitallented]

I couldn’t find a way to save both the women and the woodcutters. The best option I found was to follow the women to their fire, watch from a distance until the woodcutters show up, agro the woodcutters, then ride out of there without hurting anyone. You can tell the father that you followed the women, but you did everything you could to save them from the woodcutters.

I found that if you follow the women to the fire, but then leave immediately after that to go sleep at the Uzhitz inn, then the quest bugs out. It fails you on the intervene in the chanting objective, but then doesn’t give you another objective. The quest is still there, but has no next objective. If you go back to the fire later, then the women are still there and the woodcutters attack. I guess you could just let the quest hang if you never go back, and let the women live at that campfire for the rest of the game.