I've seen players approach the contract in Oreton with a checklist mentality that completely misses the point of the narrative's design. They walk into the village, see the bodies, and immediately decide whether they're going to be a "judge" or a "merciful god" before they've even found the footprints leading into the woods. This is the first and most expensive mistake you can make when engaging with The Witcher 3 Where the Cat and Wolf Play. You treat it like a binary dialogue choice in a standard RPG, but the developers at CD Projekt Red designed this specific quest to punish players who ignore the environmental storytelling in favor of a quick reward. If you rush through the clues, you're going to end up killing a fellow witcher based on an incomplete picture, or worse, letting a mass murderer walk free because you felt a shallow sense of professional kinship. I've watched people lose out on unique items and meaningful narrative weight because they couldn't be bothered to look at the state of the homes in the village before confronting Gaetan.
The Error of Ignoring the Village Ledger
One of the most common ways to fail the intent of this quest is to skip the investigation phase inside the houses. Most players see the dead bodies and head straight for the girl with the doll. That’s a mistake. If you don't examine the specific prompts regarding the "payment" the villagers offered, you lack the context required to actually negotiate with Gaetan later. In my experience, the difference between a player who understands the situation and one who is just clicking through text is the discovery of the "letter" and the meager coins found on the bodies.
The villagers weren't just poor; they were actively trying to scam a professional. When you realize the "reward" for a leshen contract was barely enough to cover the cost of the oils used to kill it, the moral weight shifts. If you ignore this, your confrontation with the School of the Cat survivor feels unearned. You're just two guys arguing in the woods. But when you have the facts—the exact amount of gold they tried to stiff him for—the dialogue options carry the weight of a labor dispute turned bloody. People who skip this lose the nuance of the world's economy, which is a core pillar of the series' dark fantasy realism.
Thinking There Is a Right Choice in The Witcher 3 Where the Cat and Wolf Play
Stop looking for the "good" ending. It doesn't exist here. A massive misunderstanding I see constantly is the belief that sparing Gaetan is the "pro-witcher" move while killing him is the "law-and-order" move. This isn't about professional solidarity. This is about whether a mental breakdown triggered by a murder attempt justifies the slaughter of non-combatants. I've talked to players who spared him just because they wanted his sword, Teigr, later on. They felt clever for gaming the system to get a gear upgrade.
However, the fix is to stop looking at the reward screen and start looking at the girl. If you spare Gaetan, you're essentially telling the world that witchers are the monsters people claim they are. If you kill him, you're executing a man who was stabbed in the back while doing his job. I’ve seen this play out dozens of times: a player spares him, feels good about the "brotherhood," and then visits his hideout only to find trophies that suggest Oreton wasn't his first lapse in judgment. The mistake is assuming Gaetan is a victim. The fix is recognizing he is a consequence.
The Gear Trap
Don't let the loot dictate your morality. Many players kill Gaetan specifically because they want the loot from his body immediately. This is short-sighted. If you spare him, you get a quest called "Take What You Want" which leads you to his stash. You'll get the sword and some gold anyway, plus some lore notes that provide a much grimmer picture of his life. People who kill him on the spot for a quick payout miss the larger environmental story waiting at his campsite. You’re trading a deep narrative payoff for a few hundred crowns you’ll spend on bread and repair kits within an hour.
Mismanaging the Girl in the Village
The post-confrontation phase is where many people drop the ball on the logistics of the world. You’ve finished the main conflict of The Witcher 3 Where the Cat and Wolf Play, and now you have a traumatized child on your hands. I’ve seen players grumble about the detour to take her to her aunt in Oreton. They see it as a "fetch quest" back-track. That's a fundamental misunderstanding of how the game builds its reputation system.
While there isn't a "Karma" bar on your UI, these choices affect the dialogue of NPCs in the surrounding region. If you just leave or if you're stingy with the crowns you give the aunt, you're failing the "Witcher's Code" that Geralt pretends doesn't exist but actually follows religiously. Giving the aunt 40 crowns isn't just a loss of currency; it's a structural requirement for the quest's true "resolution." I have seen players complain about being broke in Velen while they drop thousands on useless horse blinders, yet they hesitate to give a pittance to a woman taking in an orphan. It's a lack of perspective on what currency is actually for in this game.
The False Comparison of Schools
There's a recurring argument that the School of the Cat is "naturally evil" and the Wolf is "naturally good." This is a rookie mistake. The game explicitly tells you that Cat witchers underwent flawed mutations that affected their emotional stability. If you walk into this encounter thinking "Cats are bad," you've already lost. In my years of playing and analyzing this sequence, I've found that players who approach Gaetan with the "Cat School" prejudice miss the irony of Geralt’s own nickname, "The Butcher of Blaviken."
The fix here is to realize that Geralt and Gaetan are mirrors of each other. Geralt killed a gang of mercenaries in a market to save people and was hated for it. Gaetan killed a village because they tried to kill him first. The difference is the scale and the intent. If you don't see that Geralt is one bad day away from being Gaetan, you aren't paying attention to the writing. I’ve seen players get very high-and-mighty during the dialogue tree, only to go out and slaughter a group of bandits who were just sitting by a campfire five minutes later. The hypocrisy is the point, but most people miss it because they want to feel like a traditional hero.
Historical Context of the Cat School
I've read through the lore books scattered in the game world, and the School of the Cat has a history of being used as political assassins. This makes them pariahs even among other witchers. When you confront Gaetan, you aren't just confronting a killer; you're confronting the end of a lineage that was doomed from the start. Understanding that the Cat mutations were experimental and "failed" adds a layer of pity to the encounter that makes the "kill" option feel much heavier.
The Logistics of the Fight
If you do decide to fight him, don't walk into it thinking he's just another bandit NPC. This is a common point of failure for players who are over-leveled. On higher difficulties, like Death March, Gaetan will punish you for being sloppy. He uses signs, he parries, and he moves like you do. I've seen countless players try to "button mash" through this fight and get countered into a reload screen.
The fix is to treat him like a boss encounter. Use Blizzard or Thunderbolt potions. Don't let him get behind you. If you give him the "Witcher's Honor" by letting him take a potion before the fight, he will actually use it to buff himself. I’ve seen people grant him this mercy and then get absolutely wrecked because they didn't realize he was going to use a swallow or a thunderbolt of his own. It’s a brutal lesson in how the game's mechanics align with its narrative: being "honorable" often makes your life significantly harder.
A Before and After Comparison of Quest Resolution
Let’s look at how this plays out for two different types of players to see the tangible difference in results.
The first player, we’ll call them the "Speedrunner," arrives in Oreton, skips the house investigations, and follows the red tracks. They find Gaetan, see that he killed everyone, and decide "killers must die." They refuse to let him drink a potion because they want the fight over with. They kill him, loot his body for the sword, and head back to the village. They take the girl to her aunt, refuse to give any gold because "money is tight," and ride off. This player gets a sword they’ll outgrow in three levels and a sour taste in their mouth. They’ve seen maybe 30% of the content this quest offers.
The second player, the "Practitioner," takes ten minutes to look at the bodies in the barn. They see the pitchfork wound in Gaetan's footprints—the same type of wound that "killed" Geralt in the books. They find the girl, give her the doll, and approach Gaetan with the knowledge that the village headman lured him into a trap to avoid paying a measly 30 crowns. They talk to Gaetan, hear his side, and realize he snapped after the eleventh time someone tried to cheat him that month. They decide to spare him, acknowledging the tragedy. They go to his stash, find the "letter from Joël" which explains the School of the Cat is being hunted and slaughtered by soldiers, giving context to Gaetan's desperation. They return to the aunt, pay the 40 crowns to ensure the girl’s survival, and later receive a hand-drawn thank-you note from the child.
The second player didn't just "play a game"; they navigated a complex social and economic simulation. They ended up with the same sword, more lore, and a world that feels lived-in rather than just a series of targets. The first player saved fifteen minutes but lost the entire reason the quest was written in the first place.
The Reality Check
Here is the blunt truth: no matter how you play this, you aren't the hero. If you kill Gaetan, you've killed one of the few remaining people who can protect the world from actual monsters, all over a village that's already dead. If you spare him, you've let a man go who admitted to slaughtering women because he "lost his temper." There's no gold star at the end of this.
Success in this quest isn't about the loot or the experience points. It's about whether you can live with the logic of your decision once the screen goes black. Most people fail because they try to apply modern, comfortable morality to a world that is fundamentally broken. Velen is a place where people sell their children to hags to keep from starving; applying a "black and white" legalistic view to a Witcher's contract is the fastest way to prove you don't understand the game you're playing. If you want a clean win, go play a different game. This one is about picking the lesser of two evils and then having the stomach to keep riding toward the next town.
It takes a certain level of cynicism to truly "get" the narrative here. You have to accept that the villagers were greedy enough to commit murder for a few coins, and that the "hero" you're tracking is a broken tool. If you can't handle that ambiguity, you're going to keep making the same mistakes, chasing "optimal" outcomes in a world designed to deny them to you. Stop trying to "win" and start trying to survive the choices you make. That’s the only way to play this right.
