I had a crazy idea. The swamp witch first meets us in the role of a level 5 merchant in the tiefling camp, the location of the tea house is found later.
What if we kill her when we first meet at the tiefling camp, and then go to the teahouse? I wonder if Larian took this possibility into account, how this will affect the quest associated with this witch
Interesting question so I decided to test it.
You're free to test it out I guess
I haven't tried it myself, but I imagine she just teleports away if you attack her in the camp.
That's what I expected, but no.
The answer:
I went through my saved games and found one right after Goblins at the Gate. So not a high-level party and crap for gear. Killing a level 5 mob w/112hp is not so easy without prep but lets try it anyway.
Try 1: Go down to her and have Astarian open up with a poisoned sneak attack. She takes damage, runs off, and disappears. Looks a lot like when quest NPCs run off and disappear. Good news, no one seemed to care. Never entered combat mode though.
Try 2: Same thing but start in Turn-based mode. Got in several hits but she has a really high movement speed, so she still out distanced me and disappeared.
Try 3: I split my party up along the route she runs and do it again. I get enough hits on her that she is at 3/122. I magic missile her for the win and....she is still standing there at 0/112. No reason to stop... so I keep pounding on her. I do at least another 50 points and at the end of all my party's turns...she gets like x10 speed boost and runs way the hell away and disappears.
So...didn't seem to work but maybe she died after disappearing. Next place you usually see her with Myriana's brothers. So I head there. There she is as normal except I never notice she is now level 1 with 8hp. Well that's easy to kill so BOOM. She instakills the brothers and disappears.
Ok lets check the Tea House. Its normal there with a Pissed Ethyl for not helping her and shes back to level 5 w/ 112hp.
So yeah...that's the answer.
