Nest of Vipers Optionals are the worst

[Germanic Tigress]

Disguise or boosted stealth and at least one person will always see you magically through walls or some such. Worst optionals in the game and has been frustrating me all night so had to rant a little. The quest itself isn't hard, but there's not good way to sabotage everything aside from doing the mad dash around doing it which is just immersion breaking and stupid. Poisoning a pot when I'm in stealth shouldn't aggro people when I can literally stand up and walk around to some small degree in the pitch blackness of night without them seeing me, even more so if I'm sneak crouching and walking. The arrows they always investigate which is fine, but they magically know where you are even if you're in the next province over. It's so utterly frustrating to deal with when you can go around robbing them of chests that you have to unlock and even pickpocketing without any issue, but as soon as you try to do a stealth knockout or kill, at least one person notices every time no matter how high your stealth is. I hope they fixed this in the second game cuz my God was this mission a massive mood and momentum killer to have to reload over a dozen times to get a satisfied "role-playing" result and then eventually give up on it. Like seriously, if they can't see me when I'm all of 3 meters in front of them as long as they don't have a torch out, why can they see me poisoning the food supplies? How do they hear me killing their allies in their sleep? It all makes no sense. All these nice mechanics to add to a great game that don't function right in the epitome of a mission meant for it. I like so much about the game and the missions and how this return playthrough is different from the one I had 5 years ago, but man this mission sucks, and it sucked back then too cuz I remember having a similar issue.

[Kabirbd]

Yeah, I agree.

They seemed to really struggled to make this quest.
Because you have to burn 4 four arrows and poison 4 food pot to finish the objectives. But like why though? I think poisoning 2 food pot should still have an effect for the final battle. It's as if it's suddenly all or nothing.
I can see myself deciding to rush the top bandit camp to at least burn the arrows and escape with the horse.
There are other problems too with the script. In my first playthrough, I was getting close to the top bandit camp. But it started a cutscene where Runt kills a guy and immediately after it, Henry is just standing close to the guard and immediately starts a fight.
It makes sense if Henry was in disguise to get up close to see what Runt was doing. But without a disguise, why would Henry get so close?
And no speech check or nothing to pose as a bandit? The quest still has cool details but it needed better execution.

[Germanic Tigress]

Radzig was still happy with the 2 pots I poisoned, though it honestly didn't seem to have any effect in the battle. That said I Witcher'ed up and ran through many enemies with a warhammer then two shot Runt with a shortsword with dollmaker on it so I mean... Main quest quests in general seem to have balance all over the place, but the battle was fun at least after all that hell the previous mission put me through.

[danilo.schoeneberg]

You can actually cheese that mission easily. Go in disguised as a Cuman. Across from the church, left to the entry to the badit side of the camp is a waggon with three barrels on it. Hop onto that and the bandits can't reach you, except the handful of them who have bows. You can shoot them like rabbits with bow and arrow, one after the other. Once you killed all 30 bandits, shoot a few arrows into the tents of the cuman side of the camp. That will make them come up the hill and you can pick them off one by one too.

Now you have all the time in the world to collect loot by the bucket load and sabotage all the arrow stashes and pots in both sides of the camp.

[Kabirbd]

Originally posted by danilo.schoeneberg:

You can actually cheese that mission easily. Go in disguised as a Cuman. Across from the church, left to the entry to the badit side of the camp is a waggon with three barrels on it. Hop onto that and the bandits can't reach you, except the handful of them who have bows. You can shoot them like rabbits with bow and arrow, one after the other. Once you killed all 30 bandits, shoot a few arrows into the tents of the cuman side of the camp. That will make them come up the hill and you can pick them off one by one too.

Now you have all the time in the world to collect loot by the bucket load and sabotage all the arrow stashes and pots in both sides of the camp.

Op is talking about immersion and role playing plus the stealth mechanics.

I don't think killing everyone in the camp by standing on a wagon with barrel and shooting arrows is gonna fix that.

[「HS」Interfector ex Domini]

Originally posted by Germanic Tigress:

Disguise or boosted stealth and at least one person will always see you magically through walls or some such. Worst optionals in the game and has been frustrating me all night so had to rant a little. The quest itself isn't hard, but there's not good way to sabotage everything aside from doing the mad dash around doing it which is just immersion breaking and stupid. Poisoning a pot when I'm in stealth shouldn't aggro people when I can literally stand up and walk around to some small degree in the pitch blackness of night without them seeing me, even more so if I'm sneak crouching and walking. The arrows they always investigate which is fine, but they magically know where you are even if you're in the next province over. It's so utterly frustrating to deal with when you can go around robbing them of chests that you have to unlock and even pickpocketing without any issue, but as soon as you try to do a stealth knockout or kill, at least one person notices every time no matter how high your stealth is. I hope they fixed this in the second game cuz my God was this mission a massive mood and momentum killer to have to reload over a dozen times to get a satisfied "role-playing" result and then eventually give up on it. Like seriously, if they can't see me when I'm all of 3 meters in front of them as long as they don't have a torch out, why can they see me poisoning the food supplies? How do they hear me killing their allies in their sleep? It all makes no sense. All these nice mechanics to add to a great game that don't function right in the epitome of a mission meant for it. I like so much about the game and the missions and how this return playthrough is different from the one I had 5 years ago, but man this mission sucks, and it sucked back then too cuz I remember having a similar issue.

i really wanted to stealth the quest but couldnt, had to fight every time
i even downloaded cheats to put stealth to the max,noise, vision, conspic, they were all on 0
still the whole camp comes straight towards you

this fact makes doing the monestary quest as intended an absolute hell
for every thing you have to do, you get a day in jail, getting to watch that slow ass time skip
and they know everything you do