Despite The Witcher 3 being a decade-old game, players continue to uncover hidden details. A Reddit user recently shared that after over 1,000 hours of gameplay, they discovered it’s possible to rescue an NPC burned at the stake just outside Novigrad’s gates. Since this minor character’s storyline appears only in the early game, most players likely walked right past him without a second thought.
According to the player’s video, when Geralt encounters a group of Redanian Witch Hunters conducting the execution, choosing to intervene—instead of avoiding the guards—triggers a confrontation. The player admitted that even after thousands of hours, they “never expected Moritz Ziegfried, the male witch, could be spared from his fiery fate.”
Subsequent plot reveals that this sorcerer, arrested for casting spells, actually has hidden ties to the main quest “A Matter of Life and Death.” If convinced to flee with Triss, he later appears during the “Escape from Crows Perch” mission, successfully evacuating with Triss and other mages to escape Redanian persecution.
Even more ingeniously, players uncovered unique dialogue options where Geralt directs Ziegfried to seek help from Triss—whom he’d feuded with at a masquerade ball years earlier.
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