Game Guides > pc game > all pc >  

The Witcher 3: Novigrad Contracts - Apiarian Phantom

This page will serve as the the walkthrough for all contracts that are available in the Novigrad region of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. This includes The Apiarian Phantom, The Creature from the Oxenfurt Forest, Deadly Delights, Doors Slamming Shut, An Elusive Thief, Lord of the Wood, The Oxenfurt Drunk, and The White Lady.

If you do not see the contract you're looking for on this page, try the links to the right (scroll down), as they will lead you to our other contract walkthrough material.

Contract: The Apiarian Phantom

Begin this quest by reading a message on a notice board in the settlement of Beanston. Travel southwest to Honeyfill Meadworks, and ask Holofernes Meiersdorf about the contract on the Apiarian Phantom. He introduces you to his sons, who proceed to tell you about the death of a farmhand that seemed to be frostbitten. Agree to a price for the contract, and then follow the halfling to an adjacent field where the farmhand was killed. Use your Witcher Senses to examine the area in search of clues. Here you will find the following:

  • Dried, blackened blood from several days ago.
  • A hive covered in frost.
  • A set of footprints.

Follow the footprints westward toward a nearby lake. Head to the left, along the bank of the small lake, and prepare to fight several drowners that emerge here. Search the area around the lake using your Witcher Senses, and uncover the footprints again along the southeast corner of the lake shore. Discover some claw shaped footprints, and follow the tracks eastward toward the entrance of a basement. Run to the eastern side of the house to find a large, locked double door.

With the help of Holofernes’ son, the door unlocks. Open the basement to discover a cellar filled with icicles, and a hound of the Wild Hunt that quickly charges past you. Chase down and kill the fleeing beast. Call for Roach and chase down the hound on horseback, then dismount to fight the creature on foot.

Consult your Bestiary to learn the weaknesses of this particular elementa. Defeat the hound of the Wild Hunt, utilizing any of the following:

The Witcher 3 Walkthrough

The Witcher 3 White Orchard Contracts

The Witcher 3 Velen Contracts

  • Bomb: Dimeritium
  • Oil: Elementa Oil
  • Sign: Igni, Axii

Be sure to take a trophy from the hound of the Wild Hunt, and then travel back to the Honeyfill Estate to collect your reward from Holofernes Meiersdorf.

Contract: The Creature from Oxenfurt Forest

You can begin this quest by reading a message on a notice board in Oxenfurt. Locate a Mercenary Camp to the east of Oxenfurt, and talk to the leader, Hans of Cidaris. He recently lost two of his crew while searching for a beast that had been recently stealing cows. Agree on a price for the reward, and then head south toward a ravine where Hans last saw his men.

Explore the ravine, and examine where the monster attacked using your Witcher Senses. Here you will find the following:

  • Human remains covered in claw and bite marks, with armor ripped to shreds.
  • A severed arm on a rocky outcrop.
  • Nearby blood splatters

Investigate the blood trail, and follow it uphill through the woods. Be prepared to fight several wolves along the way. The trail ends where birds have picked the ground clean of evidence. Listen for cawing using your Witcher Senses to follow the ravens. Head southeast, looking to the skies to find an unkindness of ravens circling a rocky outcrop. Trek up the hill to an eyrie, where you’ll discover some leftover body parts and a mercenary contract, as well as some sparse feathers in the remains of the nest.

The evidence indicates an archgriffin, which you will find on its nest if you approach at night. Return after dark, when the griffin is in its nest.

Refer to your Bestiary to prepare for a battle with a daunting archgriffin named Opinicus. Utilize any of the following to aid you in battle:

  • Bomb: Grapeshot
  • Oil: Hybrid Oil
  • Sign: Aard

Kill the griffin, and take a trophy from the griffin before heading back to the Mercenary Camp. Collect your reward from Hans. There’s a chance to increase the reward if you mention the mercenary letter you read from the nest earlier.

Contract: Deadly Delights

Begin this quest by accepting a message on the notice board in Hierarch Square in Novigrad. Head to the canal bridge near the fish market to find a concerned temple guard named Gilbert Witschke. Talk to the guard about several officers who have been ravaged to death, likely by a female assailant. Settle on a reward price, and agree to investigate the situation.

Gilbert tells you to speak with the medic who tended to the corpses. Head west to find the medic dockside. Get information from the medic by asking him various questions about the condition of the corpses.

To examine the crime scene, run southward around the docks to a small market area. Use your Witcher Senses to discover the following clues:

  • A child’s footprints.
  • Guard footprints.
  • Hoofprints, from something with only two feet.

Follow the tracks, which lead you through the alley behind Crippled Kate’s brothel. The trail ends at the stairs leading to the brothel door. Look carefully in a small dead-end alley near the stairs to find a small empty perfume bottle. Note that there is a scent trail to follow from the perfume. Go inside the brothel door to talk to the brothel owner, and attempt to glean information from her first. Then, go back outside where you found the perfume vial, and follow the scent of perfume using your Witcher Senses until you happen upon a well kept townsman in distress outside of a house.

Talk to the man who is acting strangely. He tells you that he was inside the house, but that he must rest. Find your way into the house by entering a door on the ground level to the south of the distressed man. Head up the stairs to where a pair of poor townsman are lounging, and find a ladder to the left, which leads to an open doorway outside. Follow along a wooden platform on the perimeter of the adjacent building, and find another ladder leading up to an attic. Drop down through a hole in the floor to find a fancy bedchamber belonging to a succubus.

Go downstairs to find Lilith, a succubus, brushing her hair. Confront the succubus about the death of the guards. You can handle the situation in one of two ways:

Insist on killing her, and combat with the succubus begins. If you choose to fight her, you can utilize these enhancements to aid you in the fight:

  • Oil: Hybrid
  • Sign: Quen

You can tell her that she must leave the city. Although she is angry with you, she understands the circumstances and agrees to give you a trophy anyway, as well as a sword.

When finished with Lilith, head back to the canal bridge and collect your reward from the guard, concluding the contract.

Contract: Doors Slamming Shut

Begin this quest by finding a post titled “Haunted House” on the Hierarch Square notice board. Head up the first flight of stairs in the Kingfisher Inn to find the contract issuer, Kurt Dysart. Talk to Kurt Dysart about a potentially haunted estate east of Novigrad. Settle on your reward and agree to investigate, and you will receive a key to gain entry to the estate.

Travel to the haunted mansion by heading east out of Novigrad. You will find the Moldavie Residence near an orchard and a small lake. Use the key Kurt gave you to unlock the door, and investigate the haunted mansion using your Witcher Senses. Navigate the shaking estate, discovering the following:

  • Rotten food on the floor, and a goblet on the table.
  • A pile of scattered salt in the corner of the next room atop the stairs.

Descend the stairs to find a small crack in the brick wall. Use Aard to blast a hole in the wall. Enter the hole and investigate the basement using your Witcher Senses, discovering ruins underneath the house.

Inspect a wooden table with a magic root on top, as well as a second table across from it with an open journal. Take the journal and read it in your quest inventory to discover that elemental magic was practiced here.

The archway is sealed, so jump into the water and swim east through a corridor. Come up and pull a lever on the wall, opening the archway. Go back to the archway and enter a chamber to find the elemental bound by magic. Walk behind the elemental to find a small pedestal with a stone lock on top. Use Aard to disalign the lock and deactivate the magic barrier, freeing the large elemental named Therazane.

Check your Bestiary and use these tools to aid you in combat:

  • Bomb: Dimeritium Bomb
  • Oil: Elementa Oil

Quick strikes and good use of your dodges help to eventually kill the elemental. Take a trophy from the elemental, and head back to the Kingfisher Inn in Novigrad to collect your reward from Kurt Dysart, concluding the contract.

Contract: An Elusive Thief

Start this quest by finding a post on a notice board in Hierarch Square titled “Contract: Imp”. You’ll find the contract issuer at a small market inside the Tretogor Gate. Go to the marketplace during the day and talk to Sylvester Amello, who tells you of an imp who has been stealing from the stands in the marketplace. Negotiate a price for the reward, and agree to investigate.

Follow the imp using your Witcher Senses. On the ground near a guard to the side of Amello, you’ll find a set of tracks that look to be paw prints from a giant cat. Follow the trail of prints past the horse drinking fountain towards a wall on the right. Here you will find scratch marks, as well as some dropped loot from the imp.

Look across to the opposite side of the arch to find more scratch marks on the stone bridge, indicating that the creature must have dropped down into the moat. Carefully climb over the bridge wall and drop down into the moat. The trail begins again on the sandy embankment. The paw prints change to footprints, leading to a house.

Enter the front door and search the house using your Witcher Senses. Locate a letter on the corner of a table, and read the letter in your quest inventory. The letter’s contents indirectly reveal that you are dealing with a doppler.

Continue to search the house to try and find a way to track the doppler using your Witcher Senses. Upstairs, locate some scattered clothing next to a bed, smelling of a strong scent of lavender. Follow the scent of perfume out of the building roughly eastward until you reach a Redanian guard talking to an elf. Confront the doppler, who happens to be the Redanian guard. Once you outwardly claim that he is a doppler, the doppler will change into peasant form and then flee. Proceed to chase down the doppler.

Run and follow the doppler along the moat before he turns right under a bridgespan. As you capture the doppler, he shapeshifts once more, this time into Geralt himself.

The doppler witcher utilizes the same signs and maneuvers, but with much less prowess than the original. Get some swift cuts in during combat to defeat the doppler, causing him to eventually surrender.

You can be rid of the doppler in one of two ways:

  • Finish killing the doppler, taking the trophy afterward.
  • Tell the doppler to leave Novigrad permanently. The gracious doppler agrees to your conditions, and gives you some crowns and a diagram.

Return to the marketplace during the day to talk to Sylvester Amello to claim your reward. If you freed the doppler, Amello only gives you half of the reward.

Contract: Lord of the Wood

Begin this quest by locating a message titled “Devil in the Woods,” on a notice board south of Novigrad at the Cunny of the Goose Inn. Talk to Brean Hotsch, a halfing logger found inside the Inn near the bar. He tells you of several loggers who went into the woods to harvest lumber, and were attacked by a monster. Settle on a price for the reward and agree to investigate the situation.

Talk to the witness, a lumberjack dwarf sitting in a corner of the inn. The dwarf describes the details of the vicious attack. Travel west along Novigrad’s river bank to find the woodcutter’s hut where Hotsch is staying. Investigate the yard using your Witcher Senses, discovering deep ruts from the logger’s wagons.

Follow the wagon tracks to where the monster attacked, roughly westward along a trail close to the water. Prepare to fight several nekkers along the way.

Locate the abandoned wagon, and use your Witcher Senses to investigate the site of the monster’s attacks. Here you will find the following:

  • Evidence of a wounded dwarf opposite the wagon, trying to flee while bleeding.
  • A nearby rock with claw marks.
  • A blood trail leading to a dwarf who bled to death from deep wounds.
  • Footprints to a campfire where another dwarf was strangled to death by roots from the ground.

Based on the clues, you discover the attacks were caused by a leshen, and must destroy the leshen’s totem to lure it out. Use your Witcher Senses to follow the sounds and find the leshen’s totem. Several totems will appear on your map, but some of them are false leads. Look for a skull topped totem at the base of a large tree. You must lure the leshen out by destroying its totem. Use a blast of Aard to destroy the totum, causing a looming, skull faced leshen named Kernun to emerge from the forest.

Kill the leshen, consulting your Bestiary for tips on how to combat this relict. The leshen makes powerful swipes with his long claws, and can draw from the environment to unleash devastating root attacks. Use the following tools to aid you in combat:

  • Bomb: Dimeritium Bomb
  • Oil: Relict Oil
  • Sign: Igni

After defeating the mighty Kernun, take the trophy, and travel back to The Cunny of the Goose to collect your reward from Brean Hotsch.

Contract: The Oxenfurt Drunk

Begin this quest by finding a message titled “Monster in Oxenfurt” on a notice board near Oxenfurt Port. Head to the docks in Oxenfurt, and talk to the Redanian officer named Nikolas Friedman. He tells you of a beast that has been attacking victims and leaving their bodies in gutters throughout town. Settle on a price for your reward, and agree to look into the situation.

Head over to The Alchemy Tavern in the center of town and talk to the witness, a woman standing near the bar. You have two options for getting information from her:

  • Give her 30 Crowns to buy a drink
  • Use Axii Delusion Level 3 to convince her she’s fine without alcohol.

She doesn’t provide much useful information, but you do learn the location of the crime. Go outside the bar and examine the site where the monster was seen using your Witcher Senses. Scan the ground near a stone archway to find a bracelet that seems to belong to the attacker.

Next, travel along the dockside, and locate a small morgue. Talk to the medic, pressing him for more information. He will give you the key to the morgue, where you can examine the bodies yourself.

There are two corpses inside the morgue. Look over the victims’ bodies using your Witcher Senses, and discover the following:

  • One body was dragged over cobblestones, with fang marks on the neck.
  • The bodies both have vampire bites and the strong smell of alcohol.

The clues suggest that the attacker is a katakan, who happens to prefer alcoholic blood. The best way to lure such a creature is for Geralt to get drunk himself. Return to the tavern. Talk to the innkeep and get drunk in order to bait the katakan. Fifty crowns and some cheap wine, and you’ll be slaying the katakan in no time!

Stagger out of the tavern a few hours later, and walk around near the tavern in order to provoke the katakan. Despite your attempts to charm the creature with some lovely tunes, the katakan doesn’t hear you. Walk to the second objective area, and sing the next part of the song. When this still doesn’t yield results, hobble over to the third objective area, in an alley further up the street.

You will hear the low, raspy voice of Gael, who claims that he can sense your blood. Geralt goads Gael to come out and fight. The katakan appears, but instead charges at you, pushing you to the ground before running away. Use your Witcher Senses to track down the katakan, making your way to a hut by the river.

Get inside the katakan’s hideout by climbing the ladder on the side of the hut and dropping down to the building. Kill the katakan, making sure to check your Bestiary for tips on how to exploit the vampire’s weaknesses. Katakans are vulnerable to the following:

  • Bombs: Moon Dust, Devil’s Puffball
  • Oil: Vampire Oil
  • Signs: Yrden, Igni

Once you have successfully slain the katakan, take a trophy and collect your reward from the Redanian officer.

Contract: The White Lady

Begin this quest by seeking out a message on the notice board between the Portside and Glory Gates, south of Novigrad. If you happen to have stumbled upon Castle Drahim during your adventures, you can also begin the quest here.

Head to Farcorners, just outside the southern wall of Novigrad. Talk to the widow named Helma, who tells you of a wraith near the fields that has been keeping the villagers from their crops. A few drunkards attempted to rid the fields of the wraith on their own, and now their bodies litter the fields. Negotiate your reward, and then look for the bodies of the White Lady’s victims using your Witcher Senses.

Go roughly south through the orchard and find a small campfire surrounded by the bodies of the aforementioned men. Investigate the place where the White Lady attacked using your Witcher Senses to discover the following:

  • A corpse of a man that was pale from fright before death.
  • A cluster of beer bottles.
  • A completely dried corpse, with burn marks.
  • Another pale body.
  • A pile of hay a few steps away with a dried bloodstain & fresh singeing.
  • Uneven footprints from someone fleeing the scene in a panic.

Follow the tracks using your Witcher Senses. The tracks lead you northeast, up a hill towards Drahim Castle. Investigate the ruined tower for the final body. The tracks merge with a large pool of blood, leading down to the castle cellar. Here you find a ghoul gnawing on the remains of the final body. Defeat the ghoul, and look over the corpse to discover that it was dragged there by ghouls, but not killed by them.

Before leaving, you can go back out to the front of the castle and use Aard to destroy a wooden door on the eastern side of the building. Use the wooden ladders to make your way to the bottom floor, where you will find a Cat School diagram in a chest. However, this step is optional and not part of the contract.

Return to Farcorners and talk to the widow about the noonwraith. Helma reveals that she believes the wraith to be Luzi. She hands you the silver dagger that Luzi used to slash her wrists in the fields. You must use this to lure the noonwraith out.

Go back to the campfire area in the field where you previously found the corpses. Set the time to day, and prepare to fight the noonwraith before luring her out. When ready, throw the silver dagger into the fire to lure the noonwraith out.

Consult your Bestiary for ways to exploit a noonwraith’s weaknesses. Some helpful tools include:

  • Bombs: Dimeritium, Moon Dust
  • Oil: Specter Oil
  • Sign: Yrden

Kill the noonwraith. When combating noonwraiths, it is best to lure them into your Yrden sign trap, causing them to take physical form. Make quick dodges, and beware of the smaller wraiths that can leech life from you.

After defeating Luzi, take a trophy from the noonwraith and head back to the village to collect your reward from Helma.