To Bait a Forktail... is a main quest in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

Walkthrough

The quest starts exactly at the Kaer Morhen fast travel point, so if you use another point to teleport there, the quest will immediately update. Use your witcher senses to find horse tracks and follow them. Eventually you will reach Eskel's horse Scorpion.

Search the area there and if you need enhanced draconid oil, make sure to examine the dish there so you can pick it up, as it will be gone later. Then look for Eskel's and a goat's tracks and follow them a short distance until they disappear due to the rocky path. Geralt will then decide to use the smell of the goat instead and you can examine the nearby tree to pick up its scent. Follow that, maybe having to kill a few wolves attracted by the wildlife. You will soon find new footprints and hoofprints to follow, and you can probably already hear the goat. The tracks eventually split, and you'll find Eskel there anyway, but the introduction differs if you go for the goat first instead of him just around the tree.

After a short conversation, the forktail will appear and you have to fight it. Once its health goes down by around 50%, it will fly away and you will have to chase it, but that's pointless. Use witcher senses to find a trail of blood, which will lead you to a cave. Inside you will find the Forktail again and this time it can't run away. After you finish it off, as you exit the cave, Eskel will propose a race back to the keep. You can refuse if you wish, but even then you'd still have to go on horseback. If you agree and beat Eskel, you'll be awarded 200 and he will offer you a prize, which again you can kindly refuse or accept.

If you accept, he'll give you Mountain Folk boots and Manuscript page: Hanged Man's Venom. If you refuse, Geralt will just ask Eskel to buy him a round next time they meet, but nothing like that happens further in the game.

Regardless, this quest ends here and the Ugly Baby quest will update. (600)

Journal entry

Yennefer asked - or rather, if I am to be completely honest with you, dear reader, ordered - Geralt to help Eskel hunt a forktail. The sorceress needed ingredients from this dangerous beast's body and clearly thought two witchers would get the job done sooner than one. Geralt thus set out to track the monster - but first, he had to find Eskel.

In the end, the hunters bagged their prey. Using their traditional and, while we're being honest, rather unrefined methods, the two witchers first lured the forktail close, then wounded the beast and gave chase as it fled, finally finishing it off in its lair. And so they acquired the ingredients Yennefer needed and, no less important, had a bit of time to catch up - Eskel and Geralt had not seen each other in years.

Objectives

• Search for Eskel's tracks near the entrance to Kaer Morhen using your Witcher Senses .
• Follow the tracks left by Eskel's horse using your Witcher Senses.
• Examine the area around Eskel's horse for tracks using your Witcher Senses.
• Follow Eskel's tracks using your Witcher Senses.
• Look around for more tracks left by Eskel using your Witcher Senses.
• Follow the smell using your Witcher Senses.
• Follow Eskel's footprints using your Witcher Senses.
• Fight the forktail.
• Chase the forktail.
• Follow the forktail's blood trail using your Witcher Senses.
• Find and kill the forktail.
• Return to Kaer Morhen.
• If accepted Eskel's challenge:
  • Beat Eskel back to Kaer Morhen. (200)

Notes

• The cave which serves as the forktail's lair also hides Diagram: Enhanced Wolven gauntlets. It's in a chest exactly where you kill the forktail.
• After completing the quest, if you return to the stake where Lil' Bleater (Eskel's goat) was tied to, it will be standing up next to the stake, still alive.
• Beating Eskel in the horse race would also award the formula for a Tiara potion, which however was cut from the game. As the item doesn't exist, it is simply invisible, but it is in fact still part of the reward list in the game files.
• Because Eskel doesn't have dialog to initiate and the quest states to just return to Kaer Morhen after the forktail is dead, using a mod or cheat to fast travel out of the cave can make the quest appear bugged as returning to Kaer Morhen like this won't update the quest. Just go back to the cave and walk in to trigger Eskel's race challenge and the quest will continue.

Bugs

• Prior to Patch 4.0, if you pick up the enhanced draconid oil at Eskel's campsite, but already have your own (unclear if it has to be a different version) it will remain in the inventory alongside the one you have. The only way to remove it from the inventory then is to drop the player's original draconid oil and upgrade Eskel's into superior draconid oil.
• Oddly, despite the quest already having started, once you arrive at the start of Scorpion's hoofprints, the notification will say "new quest" instead.