>>>> It worked, go to the whispering hillock first (without doing the Ladies of the Woods quest), and free the spirit.<<<<

Third time around (raised difficulties for this):

if you are not doing the ladies of the woods (but the quest is listed in your journal), it will be different to the situation where you NOT have the quest listed.

If you do not have the quest, you can still kill/help the hillock, but there will be no Mrs. Senger, no Johnny, no crones.

If you have the quest, well the only real options to decide is - again - if you kill/help the alien.

The sequence here is meaningless, same outcome for each "path".
Only some minor dialogue lines will be different - linear game :).

You must be trolling, Ladies of the Woods is a main quest so you can't miss Johnny etc. What was meant is that you do the whispering Hillock quest first without the Ladies of the Woods quest, then let the spirit free if you want both the orphans and Anna to live. I can confirm that everything played out normally, as I did this myself.

You are 100% correct. The bottom line is that if you free the spirit the town gets devastated and the orphans are taken somewhere but you have no idea where or if they are really safe or not. All you know is the crones didn't eat them.

As for Anna/Baron you can get her to the crazy outcome following either path.

The real decision here is are 5 orphans worth the life of many more people including babies and the kids there?

Also, the tree spirit is evil. There is no denying this. So Geralt can either do his witcher thing and get rid of another evil or let it lose to terrorize the world. One outcome removes it the other unleashes it.

The townspeople are in league with the crones, or at least complicit in their evil doings. The children are just children... innocent, and abandoned by the evil townspeople. This is meta-gaming. Geralt does not know that the spirit is evil. He only has her word to go on, and has absolutely no way of knowing the outcome.

Your argument is fatally flawed.

So now you are judge and jury? The townfolk are evil? Since the orphans came from the town they must be evil too right? Does that mean that baby that gets mashed into a tree was evil? And there are dead kids int hat town. How do you explain that one?

And what meta-gamming? It's all there in one of the books "She Who Knows". Ever bother to read them? Maybe if you played the game a little more and read the in game stuff you will learn things.

Thing is you know you made a bad choice and are trying desperately hard in this thread to justify it. Sorry but you can't. The tree spirit kills more people than the crones. Your Geralt let that evil lose on the world. How many more deaths lay at your hands?

What are you waffling on about? "Judge and jury"? "trying desperately hard ... to justify it"? You've lost it.

The townsfolk are evil because they give their children to the crones -- it's in the dialog. Children who become orphans are not evil because they come from an evil town.

It's meta-gaming because it's the player who reads the books and has prior knowledge, not Geralt. Do you know anything at all about role playing? No, I don't think so.

I will say it again, your argument is fatally flawed. You are arguing from a player perspective only.

Not really studied any debate or logic in your life I see.

The book is in the game for your character Geralt to read. Strange that this very basic simple fact eludes you. Oh well.

Now you claim that the twonsfolk are evil. Nice that you can pass judegement on each person there. You didn't even try "meta-gaming" and went right to an assumption that only you can arrive at because logic surely can't. Did you even listen to why they took kids there? Yet you assume everyone did it.

Now at least you admit that the kids aren't evil. Yet that tree spirit kills many kids in the town. How is that OK? Oh wait can't answer that one?

I knew I was getting into something sinister from the word go, soon as Keira put me on scent of the Crones. I got the feeling they were seriously bad juju, just from coming across the Trail of Treats, and it only got worse as the encounter progressed. The Spirit of Whispering Hillock was drawing people to it and killing everyone who approached, at least as I heard it (yes, yes, "nature's wrath doesn't discriminate" and all that)

So the choice is between the Obviously-Evil Crones of Crookback Bog, and the obviously-vengeful spirit under the tree.
Politics as usual in the world of the Witcher; felt like cutting down the spirit was the choice that led to less collateral damage.
Then I find out about their treatment of Ciri; but that's damage already done.

(My question, although I've the Prima guide which has nothing for it; is there any way to out Gran as Anna before completing the task for the Crones? I know, probably not... should've been, though. >_>)

Oh, and it's not just the Downwarreners who talk about the Trail of Treats, so those kids probably came from all over Velen.

for my current playthrough, i'm gonna let the tree live.

and just read the book "she who knows", that will tell the relations of the crones and the tree spirit.

At least this proves you conceded the points. Once again may I suggest you go look up the informal fallacy "Appeal to the stone" and how you counter is to just use Ad Hominem arguments such as this response.

While you won't know this at the time you do learn this latter on. Two and maybe even all three of the crones end up dead. So killing the evil tree spirit (not vengeful but actually evil) means you eventually can get rid of almost all (and in one ending all) of the evil beings. That in and of itself shows what the best choice really is.

I conceded nothing.

We're still arguing the morality of this choice?

Downwarreners aren't necessarily evil themselves; probably been worshipping the crones for generations, don't know better. Leave them out of the debate.

Although only the Downwarreners might actively worship the Crones, people in the other settlements of Velen have at least heard of their Trail of Treats, (there's at least one notice about it from someone else ingame who outs it as bad juju) and forced between starvation or cutting someone off...

tl;dr: Leave the civvies out of the debate.

Actually the "Tree Spirit" is NOT evil per se. Find and read the book She Who Knows, and the spirit is revealed as the "mother" of the Crones... an older spirit, who went mad and was murdered by the 3 Crones. The villagers are aware they are sacrificing their own children to the crones, not to mention ears and whatever else.
In short, freeing the spirit doesn't necessarily mean their survival (we never find out their fate) unlike freeing the spirit AFTER meeting the crones. This makes sense, because meeting the crones first allows you to SPECIFICALLY bargain for their freedom with the spirit under the tree.

[673 days later...]
Don't necro old posts.