Of Dairy and Darkness

Of Dairy and Darkness is a secondary quest in .
== Walkthrough ==
This quest can be started 2 ways:
* find Aeramas' Abandoned Manor
* find the Gildorf district shop and buy the related quest item there
If you found the manor first, you can explore the residence if you wish, but won't be able to activate the portal to continue. Instead, you'll need to head to the shop in Novigrad to get the related quest item.
At the shop, the merchant sells a number of quest related items, but the only one you need for this is the lizard figurine (40 ). Buy it, then head to the manor east of Oxenfurt.
If you didn't already find the manor, you can look around a bit, finding the deceased mage's notes on the second floor, along with a lever that'll make everything dark for a small duration. a chest on the second floor contains Diagram: Enhanced Feline armor. Once done, examine the magic circle on the main floor then activate the portal to find Aeramas' secret laboratory. Note you can leave and re-enter anytime, simply activate the portals where you entered to leave/return.
As you enter the main chamber, Geralt will remark that Aeramas' must have been a tyromancer, explaining the smell and all the cheese statues. You'll see below what is essentially a maze: however unlike other gases, you can't use Aard or Igni on the toxic cheese fumes here. That said, it's pretty easy to navigate it to the other side. Follow the cheese pieces that have a glass case above them, the ones without glass are toxic, earning 50 as you go.
Make your way along the path until you reach what looks like a dead end room. However, interacting with the tiles before the other archway activates another portal to another location. Head all the way down to the water, then jump in and take the northern passage (there's no worthwhile loot down the other path). Continue following and climbing up ledges until you reach Aeramas' laboratory. However, as soon as you jump across the broken bridge, a foglet will attack if it spots you (otherwise you'll need to venture closer to it).
Once it's dead, head into the final part of the laboratory here and loot the bull figurine and Aeramas' notes off the desk. If you have The Eye of Nehaleni, use it on the nearby rock wall to uncover some more loot and possible random diagrams. Once ready, activate the portal near the fire brazier and enter to find the final room, earning another 50 .
The final room has a magical barrier that you'll need to deactivate before you can proceed.
 Prior to , you didn't need The Eye of Nehaleni to show the small pyramid on the left: you can simply hit the one already exposed on the right with Igni and the barrier will drop. However, with the patch, The Eye of Nehaleni is required as you will need to cast Igni on both the left and right pyramids to drop the barrier.
Once the barrier is down, loot the chest for 50 and the snake figurine (the last portal key), then take the sword, The Emmentaler, to complete the quest. (75) You can now exit the area through the final portal further behind the statue that had the sword.
== Journal entry ==
::If the merchant is spoken to first:
::: A Novigrad merchant told Geralt about a mage named Aeramas. The poor man had, like so many of his colleagues, met a gruesome death on a pyre. With no surviving heirs, his expansive rural residence was now abandoned - and, if the rumors about this eccentric sorcerer were true, inside it awaited a great many curiosities and valuable secrets...
::If the manor is found first:
::: An abandoned home, or even an abandoned village, was no rare sight in the Velen of those days, but a certain set of ruins attracted Geralt's particular attention. He decided to find out what exactly was responsible for the manor's sorry state.
: Geralt investigated Aeramas' estate and discovered the mage had been a raring tyromancy enthusiast - tyromancy being, as you surely know, the art of divining the future from cheese. This is a very rare specialization among mages, one only practiced by those for whom a social life is not a high priority - there reason being that the cheese they use to divine with is, and pardon my blunt language, fouler smelling than a drowner's scrotum. No wonder Aeramas' home hadn't been looted.
: Geralt searched the abandoned residence from top to bottom. Among the assorted worthless trinkets, he found some true treasures which Aeramas had cleverly hid from the world by setting murderous cheeses as guards. Tyromancers are not normally the cheery sort, but Aeramas certainly would have been delighted to know that his treasure had ended up in good hands.
== Objectives ==
* If found the manor first:
** Find out more about the run-down residence.
* Use Aeramas' artifacts to activate the portal.
* Search Aeramas' residence using your Witcher Senses.
* Find a way to activate the portal.
* Use Aeramas' artifacts to activate the portal.
* Use the portal in Aeramas' residence.
* Investigate Aeramas' dungeon.
* Find a way to pass the tyromancy rooms. (50)
* Find your way through the flooded chamber. (50)
* Deactivate the magic barrier and get to Aeramas' treasure. (75)
== Bugs ==
* Despite the quest being in the Novigrad region, in the quest log it's labeled as being in Velen.
== Notes ==
* The lever at the top of Aeramas' residence simulates a "light switch" and has no other functional purpose.
* It is entirely possible to skip the statue maze by climbing the rocks along the wall on the left side of the room as you enter.
* A notice board posting for this quest exists in the game files, but is unused.
== Videos ==
File:Of Dairy and Darkness - The Witcher 3 DEATH MARCH! Part 46 - Let's Play Hard
Category:The Witcher 3 secondary quests
pl:Nabiał i ciemne siły
ru:Сыр и тёмные силы