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Now that you’re done with Big Game Hunter, you might as well take care of the nearby quest, Vintner’s Contract: Chuchote Cave, which you can start by following the road northeast from the Chuchote Cave signpost until you find a Wine Merchant along the side of the road, near a wagon. Talk to him and he’ll waste little time complaining to Geralt about some spiders who have infested a nearby cave. Geralt, for his part, responds by being pedantic, but it arguably matters little to the merchant whether they’re actually arachnids, or arachnomorphs.

Haggle for coin if you wish, then accept the contract to officially start this quest. Apply Insectoid Oil to your Silver Sword, then head west into the nearby cave, where you may want to use some Cat if you find things a bit too dark. Not much detail is necessary, here, as the cave is essentially a giant loop, intermittenly scattered with your typical cave-bound ingredients. Otherwise, there are a few bits of loot you can pry out of objects, but nothing too lucrative.

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(1 of 2) Accept the contract to clear out the nearby cave from the Wine Merchant,

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Accept the contract to clear out the nearby cave from the Wine Merchant, (left), then head inside and kill all the Arachnomorphs. (right)

Vinter’s Contract: Chuchote Cave Walkthrough¶

As for the inhabitants, inside the cave you’ll find around a half-dozen Arachnomorphs (level forty-three), whose level exceeds the stated level on the quest by a bit. Hopefully you’re high enough level (thirty-eight or higher) so you don’t have to deal with any skulls. Two isolated Arachnomorphs can be found in side tunnels, while the final four (including a massive - but curiously not any stronger - variant) dwell in a large chamber to the north.

Arachnomorphs are no more difficult to face here than they were in Hearts of Stone, they’re capable of melee attacks, which they like to employ after shooting entangling webbing at you. They don’t have to use this webbing to precede an attack, however, and won’t do so if you’re close enough, and since Quen completely blocks the web attack with little drain in stamina, you can easily kill these bugs by keeping the active Quen sign up, advancing towards them slowly, and attacking when you’re within range.

Once all the monsters are dead, grab whatever paltry loot you can find, then leave the cave and talk to the Wine Merchant, who will reward you fairly and allow you to peruse his wares, which include Potions of Clearance, Potions of Restoration, Runestones, Diagrams, mutagen Formulae and various alchemical ingredients.

A short and sweet quest with a passable reward, but now it’s time to engage in work that’s a bit more involved. Fortunately, it’s also more lucrative. There are two quests on the horizon, and given the walkthrough’s trend of completing quests based on level (the quest you just completed excluded, of course), it should be pretty obvious to see what they are. The quest Wine Wars: Belgaard seems to be the next up, in terms of level, but it’s a bit more complicated than meets the eye. Then there’s also the long-overdue quest Gwent: To Everything - Turn, Turn, Tournament!, which requires you to venture a bit in search of the last two cards, a task that’ll also complete Gwent: Never Fear, Skellige’s Here. Let’s deal with Gwent first, then the numerous “Wine Wars” quests.