The Witcher 3 Fist Fights: Every Circuit and Brawl Master

Skellige's reigning fistfighting champion is a bear. The Champion of Champions on Spikeroog is a rock troll. And before the troll will fight you at all, you have to walk into the same arena and let a ghost beat you.

That is the Brawl Master achievement in three sentences. Steam's global stats put it at 13.7% of players. It spans five base-game quests across Velen, Novigrad and Skellige, one of them isn't a fistfight, and one of the fights inside it can't be retried if you lose. Blood and Wine adds a fourth circuit that the achievement doesn't count at all.

Here is every circuit opponent, 17 of them counting the troll and Toussaint's champion, where each one stands, what each one pays, and the order that gets you through without locking anything.

Five quests, and one of them is not a fistfight

The Witcher wiki's Brawl Master page lists five secondary quests the achievement needs:

Master of the Arena is the odd one out. It is a quest about a haunted arena, not a brawl, but the Champion of Champions fight takes place in that arena, and the bookie keeps it closed until the haunting is dealt with. That is why the achievement page lists it.

The regions can be done in any order. The wiki notes the Champion of Champions offer comes after you become champion in your third region, "wherever that happens to be".

The rules of an official bout

In a tournament bout Geralt fights shirtless, with no weapons and no signs. The wiki's fistfighting page records one exception: if your armour carries the Protection glyphword from Hearts of Stone, the automatic Quen shield it grants on entering combat still applies in the ring. Protection is a runewright enchantment built from a Glyph of Quen, a Glyph of Yrden and a Glyph of Warding, and our Hearts of Stone guide covers how to unlock the runewright.

Four more rules worth knowing before the first punch:

• Food and potions are the exception, not the rule. The Skellige quest page says the Olaf fight is unlike other fistfights in allowing consumables, and the Champion of Champions page allows them against the rock troll too.
• Base-game fistfight XP ignores your level. Every base-game Fists of Fury page says its XP is unaffected by the level constraint and by difficulty, so doing them late costs you nothing. Blood and Wine's circuit is the exception: its XP is cut by the usual +5 level rule.
• Bets. In Novigrad a win doubles your bet, per that quest's walkthrough. Velen bouts take a bet too, and the Velen walkthrough puts the maximum there at 70 crowns and the minimum at 1. Skellige's page lists 70 crowns per regular win.
• Losses can usually be re-fought. The troll can't. The wiki's Brawl Master page calls the troll one of the few fights you can't re-fight until you win. More on that below.

Velen: the last fight waits on the Baron

The first three can be beaten in any order. The Sergeant can't be fought until the main quest Family Matters is over. Until the Baron leaves Crow's Perch, he dismisses Geralt with "Nothing here for you." The wiki's Velen page files this under bugs, then explains it is the Family Matters gate. It isn't a bug.

Stan Fishgulper asks you to lose. Before the bout he takes you aside: he knows he can't beat a witcher, but the prize is a sack of flour and his family needs it. You can throw the fight and then win a rematch. The catch is that you've already placed your bet, so a thrown fight at the 70-crown maximum loses you 70 crowns. The wiki's advice is to bet the 1-crown minimum if you plan to throw his fight. Win it straight instead and you can still give him 5 crowns afterwards for food.

Novigrad: Claytop's offer and the Iron Mortimer bug

Claytop pays you to lose to Georg. He offers 80 crowns on top of your doubled bet, plus 50 XP, and the walkthrough puts the most you can walk away with at 240 crowns. Lose, then fight Georg again for real, and the circuit carries on. Agreeing doesn't bind you either; you can still win. But if you don't throw it, three bandits may jump you later in Novigrad on Claytop's behalf.

Iron Mortimer has a known bug. An invisible barrier can stop Geralt closing the distance, or Mortimer can drop to zero health without being knocked out, or retreat outside the ring. The workaround the wiki records: talk to the bookie, ask about the fight organisers, leave the conversation, make a manual save, then ask to start the fight again.

Durden is the title fight. The wiki rates him one of the hardest fistfights in the game: the ring is small, and his short, quick jabs are hard to dodge, so the usual trick of keeping your range and parrying wide overhead swings works less well. He tells you to come back after sundown, but the wiki says he will fight at any time of day.

Skellige: three islanders and a bear

Two diagrams drop by order, not by opponent. The first islander you beat hands over Diagram: The Digger, a silver sword. The third hands over Diagram: Nilfgaardian guardsman armor. Who you fight first doesn't matter.

Valgard asks you to lose, too. He's trying to impress a woman called Eryka. Throw it and you can rematch; promise to throw it and then win anyway, and he's upset with you.

Olaf is the Skellige champion, and he is a bear. Talk to the bookie at the arena, enter when you're ready, and after a short cutscene you are punching a bear. Two warnings from the quest page. Your health isn't restored at the start or the end of this fight, so heal before you step in. And food and potions are allowed, so bring some. Beating him unlocks Brawler, a Silver trophy and 30 Gamerscore.

The prize is Gwestog, a relic steel sword with three upgrade slots, +2 to 10% Quen intensity, a 2% chance to freeze and a +4 to 10% chance to dismember. The same sword can also turn up in random chests and drop from witch hunters during Now or Never. Our runestones and glyphs guide covers what to put in those three slots.

Olaf counts for something else too. In the Skellige quest Iron Maiden, Jutta an Dimun only duels Geralt after he proves himself, and beating Olaf is one of the feats she accepts. The wiki adds that you can beat Olaf even after she has given you a different task, then come back and ask again. Our romance guide covers the duel itself.

Champion of Champions: lose to a ghost, then beat a troll once

Win your third regional title and a man approaches with an offer to fight the Champion of Champions in the arena at Hov, on Spikeroog. Before that fight happens, the arena has to be reopened.

Master of the Arena: let Ulle win. The arena is haunted by Ulle the Unlucky, a warrior who lost every bout he ever fought and was cursed never to win one. Two steps, in this order:

1. Talk to the guards in the tower first. They promise a reward plus a share of the takings once the arena reopens, and that second payment only exists if you spoke to them before lifting the curse. You also need to talk to the guards or to Ulle before he will fight at all.
2. Lose to him. Killing Ulle achieves nothing; he comes back a few days later. The curse lifts when he finally wins. You don't even have to take damage: the wiki notes you can hold your guard up and he wins after a few strikes.

That pays 35 XP and 15 crowns, plus 25 XP and 20 crowns when you come back a few days later, if you spoke to the guards first.

The troll: save first, because you only get one try. The Brawl Master page is explicit that this fight can't be repeated after a loss, and that losing it makes the achievement unobtainable. A save made right before the fight is the only safety net. Three more things from the quest page:

• Food and potions are allowed here, the same as against Olaf.
• Hit him from behind. The quest page says this troll is vulnerable to fist attacks from behind. That is the reverse of the usual rule: the rock troll bestiary entry says blows to a troll's rocky back do little damage.
• Don't start this fight hurt. If you start it straight after Master of the Arena without restoring your health, the game can treat Geralt as already beaten and flag the quest failed. Heal first, and save.

The reward is 50 XP, 90 crowns and Diagram: The Tamer. That diagram is also sold by every blacksmith in Skellige, so the real prize here is the achievement. Win, talk to the troll afterwards, and he finally tells you his name: Athak Akydalv.

Blood and Wine's circuit does not count

Toussaint runs its own tournament, and Brawl Master's text names only Velen, Skellige and Novigrad. Do it for the XP and a trophy for your house, not for the achievement.

The Fisticuffs! posting on the Gran'place notice board starts Fists of Fury: Toussaint (level 36), and the bookies are in San Sebastian by the docks. Each of the three challengers pays 100 XP, and two of them don't have to be punched at all:

You can still refuse Mancomb's and Colossus's gimmicks and fight them normally. The wiki's pattern for all three is simple: counter their attack, land two strong attacks, step back, repeat.

Beat all three and Raging Wolf (level 40) opens: a title fight against the Maestro at Beauclair Port. He won't fight anyone sober, so you drink with him first and fight with the screen swaying. Unlike the troll, you can keep challenging him until you win. The win pays 200 XP, 75 crowns and the Fist fighting championship trophy for the trophy stand at Corvo Bianco. Our Blood and Wine guide covers the rest of the estate. It also counts as a Proof of Valor for There Can Be Only One, the quest that ends with Aerondight. Our New Game Plus guide covers why that sword is worth the chain.

Fist of the South Star and the fights outside the ring

The third fistfighting achievement is the easy one. Fist of the South Star asks you to beat any fistfight opponent without taking damage, and at 49.3% it's the third most common achievement in the game on Steam. It can still be missed, because the wiki's page for it warns that the number of fistfights is limited. Save before you try.

The wiki's tip for a no-damage win: most opponents open with a quick punch as the screen fades in. Counter it, throw two light punches, then dodge backwards to a little over arm's length. From there they tend to throw a slow, telegraphed overhead swing, which is easy to counter, and you repeat the loop.

You don't have to burn a circuit fight on it either. The wiki lists optional fistfights inside other quests. Some of the easiest to find:

• Drunken Rabble, outside the Golden Sturgeon in Novigrad. Refuse the drunks' demand for coin twice and one of them swings.
• King's Gambit, where you can fight the three vildkaarls before you speak to Crach an Craite.
• Of Swords and Dumplings (Sukrus), High Stakes (Finneas, after you beat him at gwent) and The Play's the Thing (Sofus the Bull and his brother Hal).
• Lilac and Gooseberries, which the wiki lists as the unavoidable first brawl, outside the White Orchard inn.

How many players finish the circuit

Brawl Master sits just 1.7 points below Brawler. Brawl Master can't be completed without beating Olaf, so its 13.7% is roughly 89% of the 15.4% who beat the bear. Nearly nine in ten Steam players who beat the bear go on to finish the whole thing. Our achievements guide ranks all 78 achievements by the same Steam data.

Does Remastered change any of this?

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered launched on 29 September. As of 2 October, three CD PROJEKT RED notes cover it: the Remastered patch notes, Patch 5.00b for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Xbox Play Anywhere, and Hotfix 5.00c for PC, the last two both posted on 1 October. None of the three mentions fistfighting or any quest on this page.

Two caveats. The Remastered notes say CD PROJEKT RED "polished the combat behavior of many non-boss monsters" without naming which. Two of the opponents here are a bear and a rock troll, so treat the tactics for those two as descriptions of the pre-Remastered game. The notes also list combat-wide changes, among them a new dynamic combat camera, smoother gap-closing animations and better target-lock switching. The notes don't say whether any of that reaches the fistfight ring. This page was checked against the wiki and CD PROJEKT RED's published notes, not a playable Remastered build.

On achievements, CD PROJEKT RED's Remastered FAQ says achievements you've already earned in the base game and both expansions carry over. GOG players should also be on Hotfix 5.00c, which fixed earned achievements not appearing in GOG's unlocked list. Our Remastered mods guide covers the separate console rule that modded saves don't earn trophies.

Quick Action Checklist

• Do the three regional circuits in any order; base-game fistfight XP isn't reduced by your level.
• Velen: beat Smithy, Jonah and Stan Fishgulper, then the Sergeant at Crow's Perch once Family Matters is over.
• Bet the 1-crown minimum before throwing Fishgulper's fight in Velen. Don't for Claytop's throw in Novigrad: he doubles your bet on top of his 80 crowns.
• Novigrad: take Claytop's 80 crowns to lose to Georg, then rematch him. If Iron Mortimer bugs out, talk to the bookie about the organisers, save, and restart the fight.
• Skellige: heal before Olaf, since your health isn't restored, and bring food and potions, which are allowed.
• Beating Olaf also satisfies Jutta's feat in Iron Maiden.
• In Hov, talk to the arena guards first, then let Ulle the Unlucky win.
• Heal, then save, before the troll. A loss can't be re-fought and costs you Brawl Master.
• Hit the troll from behind with your fists.
• Toussaint's circuit and Raging Wolf don't count for Brawl Master, but they pay XP and a Corvo Bianco trophy, and Raging Wolf is a Proof of Valor.
• Save before any fight you want to use for Fist of the South Star.