How to Unlock and Access Toussaint in The Witcher 3

This guide will help you understand how you can unlock and access Toussaint, the region added with the Blood and Wine expansion to The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt, and why you should do it as soon as possible!

What is Blood and Wine and how to get it

Blood and Wine is the name of the second digital expansion to The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt. It was released as a separate purchase DLC in 2016.

Blood and Wine adds a giant new playable and explorable area to the world of The Witcher 3 – Toussaint. It’s a Duchy, under the helm of the Nilfgaardian Empire. Its capital is Beauclair.

To play Blood and Wine, you need to own both the base game The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt and the Blood and Wine Expansion.

If you own the base game of The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt only, you can purchase just the Blood and Wine Expansion. Its retail price is ~$20. You could opt to get the Expansion Pass, which grants you access to the two paid expansions to the base game.

Today it’s most common that you would see “The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt – Complete Edition. It is available on all platforms and packs absolutely everything ever released for the game. This includes the base game, all free DLCs as well as the two expansions: Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine.

The Complete Edition was released shortly after the Next-Gen Update. You can find it in physical and digital format for PC, PlayStation and Xbox.

If you are starting out your adventure in The Continent and in the world of The Witcher, I recommend you get The Complete Edition.

How to unlock and access Toussaint

There are two ways to access Toussaint and play the Blood and Wine expansion content. The first method is to unlock the region by playing the base game first and leveling up to reach the level requirement. The second is to start directly from Toussaint with a pre-made character.

How to get to Toussaint if you play the game normally

After you complete the main quest “Poet Under Pressure” (recommended level 13), where you save Dandelion, you will be given the first Blood and Wine quest “Envoys, Wineboys” automatically.

This quest is for level 34 and it will give you access to Toussaint. All Blood and Wine quests are marked with a red exclamation mark and their titles are colored in red to visually separate them from the base game quests (white) and the Hearts of Stone quests (blue).

Toussaint is a high-level region in The Witcher 3. To access it, you need to pick up a Contract quest from a notice board in Velen. Look for a message entitled “Appeal to Sir Geralt of Rivia, the Bridge his Crest”.

This message is available on multiple notice boards all around Velen. When you pick up the message, read it and it will progress the quest “Envoys, Wineboys”.

Just for the sake of mentioning at least one location, you can pick it up from the Inn at the Crossroads, located in the heart of Velen.

You can go to Toussaint as early as you wish. There are a couple of combat encounters you have to go through, one of which includes a boss.

After you read the message from the notice board, you will get a new objective to meet the knights from Toussaint in Holloway (Stonecutter’s Settlement), which is southwest of Oxenfurt, in Velen.

When you arrive there, you will see two knights in shiny armor arguing with a few peasants. Approach the crowd to trigger the first cinematic cutscene.

The two knights are Sirs Palmerin de Launfal and Milton de Peyrac-Peyran. I know, a mouthful. They serve Anna Henrietta, the Duchess of Toussaint. The knights will formally invite you to go to Toussaint as Her Grace requires your help.

You will get this message in your inventory, just in case you want to re-read it for some reason. If you want to access Toussaint, you have to accept this contract.

Before you get to the contract, during this conversation, you will learn that the two knights want to defend the peasants of this village against some bandits.

You can accept and help them or advise them to not get involved in foreign customs. This is not Toussaint. The customs are different in Velen and the two knights are not obligated or even supposed to meddle in people’s affairs here.

Whether you choose to help against the bandits or not, the story will not change. If you decide to stay and help Palmerin and Milton, you will see another cinematic cutscene of the bandits arriving at the settlement.

Here, you will have a couple more choices to make, but whatever you do, you will end up fighting the bandits.

If you advise the knights against helping the peasants, you will travel directly to Toussaint after you agree to take the contract.

A new cinematic will start with Geralt and his two knightly companions passing under a large tree. Birds are singing, the weather is beautiful. A few days have passed. You have arrived to Toussaint, the land of love and wine!

As you approach a windmill in front of you along the path, a challenge will present itself. You will have to help a young knight (Guillaume de Laufnfal) in his struggles to defeat a giant called Golyat.

His skill set includes wide swings with his club, swipes with his free hand and stomping the ground with a large frontal cone effect. He is not a thought opponent to beat. Dodge and roll when you see him preparing to swing or run towards you.

Golyat will often get distracted by the other knights participating in the fight, so you can often approach from a safe direction to deal some damage.

The objective to defeat Golyat is from the next main quest “The Beast of Toussaint”. This quest starts automatically upon your arrival, which is triggered with the cinematic scene right before you have to fight the giant.

At this point, you are still not out of the sequence that brings you to Toussaint. You have no other way but to fight and defeat the giant. Golyat is weak against Ogroid Oil. You can also use Axii and Quen.

After you defeat Golyat, another cinematic will play. After it ends, you will be tasked to follow Milton down to the river. This is the moment you can start to roam Toussaint freely. Milton will wait for you indefinitely.

How to start The Witcher 3 directly from Toussaint

You cannot start directly from Toussaint. You can, however, start directly from the quest “Envoys, Wineboys”. With a pre-made Geralt character that will be equipped well enough for the content in Toussaint.

To start the Blood and Wine expansion directly, without first leveling up through the base game and origin story of The Witcher 3, choose to start a new game from the main menu. Then pick “Blood and Wine Only”.

Doing this will start a new game with all of the quests from the main story locked as completed. You will get the “Envoys, Wineboys” as your first default main quest.

What to do first when you get to Toussaint

There are a number of advantages to starting Toussaint a bit earlier than the recommended level 34. You can gain access to more merchants in Beauclair and the other regions.

The Grandmaster crafter in Beauclair is incredibly rich and can buy stuff from you at a very decent price too. Talk to him to get your Grandmaster witcher gear sets.

Another important merchant you should visit right away is the Dye vendor. He is at the shores in eastern Beauclair.

You can start the side quest “Turn and Face the Strange” to unlock the Mutations System in the game. This will allow you to add and customize yet another layer of your build.

Among the first items I recommend you pick up after you do the two aforementioned quests, is to get Aerondight. This silver sword is by far the best weapon in the game and it will continue to level up with you as you play.

These quests are for high-level characters, but as long as you have not skipped most of the content in the base game so far, you will be fine. You can fill any blanks you have in the collection of your collectible item by finding and crafting Oils for your swords, and brewing Decoctions and Potions to boost your combat performance.

Some of the most useful consumable items you’d need in Toussaint are Insectoid oil, Hanged Man’s Venom oil and Vampire oil. Preferably in their Superior tier. You should also make sure to bring at least the following Potions: Superior Swallow, Superior Black Blood and Superior Tawny Owl. On the Decoctions front, things are more optional and down to personal preferences, based on the build you are going for.

If you are a new player on your first playthrough, I would advise you to not do the Mutations quest and Grandmaster sets scavenger hunts if you are lower level than 30-35.

If you are on a low difficulty level, you should be fine, but on Blood and Broken Bones and Death March, the enemies you will encounter will all be at or around level 35-40 and this could prove too much for you.