I've been playing on normal difficulty but have gone down to easy but still have been stuck for 4 or 5 hours on the Kayran, how do i avoid the tentacles, I cant jump or dodge them and 4 hits and I'm dead, Ive cut two tentacles but cant get any further, I see loads of you have done it without problems, please help. To be honest this is a ridiculous jump in difficulty so early in the game.

when it raises the tentacle, it takes 2 secs before it slams down. you always face it and roll to either side. you yrden the spot where you stood before to trap the tentacle when it slams down so you can hit the glowing red spot.

I am sure youtube also got loads of how to kill kayran videos by now.

Okay, Here is one of many : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oschdW3HKUs

I had the same problem as you. It, too, took me hours and many , many reloads but as Boozee said get on youtube and type Witcher 2 Kayran and you'll get some great videos of how others have beat this. This really helped me.

I do know that the first 2 tenticles you need to cut off are on the left. The other two are way over on the right and only the tenticles with those reddish, scabby, "balloon"-like things are the only tenticles you can cut.

Use Quen alot! Make sure you ALWAYS are "Quened" up so if you are hit you don't die and keep moving and ROLLING throwing down Yden when you can even if you can't tell that's where the tenticles will land. Odds are eventually you catch a tenticle.

Please watch those youtube vids. It really, really helps and GOOD LUCK. Let us know how you do.

While i have no problem with Kayran at all.. Developers should add QTE battle in order for people to breeze to it.. Otherwise day upon days, we see this kind of thread everyday.

I don't think too many beat Kayran on the first attempt. After reading all of the can't do.s, My first couple of attempts were halfhearted as i just wanted to see what was what. After that, I think it took about two or three serious attempts to beat him. I found the key for me was to be patient ( and I had found a "Safe" area in which to recuperate ). Just don't try to rush through it as it takes some time. When facing Kayran, I took off a left tenticle first, wnet into my safe zone and recouped my health, then went around to the other side and took off a tenticle and back to the safe spot.once my health was back to full I took off the thrid tnticle on the side i was already on and where the broken bridge is and got the tenticle ride. Once off, it was a dash up the broken bridge and game over for the Kayran.

I don't get what the big deal is about the Kayran fight. The "By the way, what happened with the dragon?" episode in the prologue is 100 times harder and more frustrating.

I had zero to none trouble with the kayran on Normal, and that's saying something, because I am clumsy and slow on the account of old age.

- Kayran Trap is fabulous, but optional. Insta-tentacle hack.
- Even if you are clumsy, Yrden trapping is easy with Quen. Wait for the tentacle to go up, drop Yrden, roll away... or get smacked like I did almost every time, with Quen it doesn't hurt much...
- Final QTE consists of mashing LMB and then pressing "Space" once. C'mon, fistfighting is harder than this because you have to go all "dance dance revolution" on your keyboard.

Also note that you don't need to cut off all of his tentacles to proceed to the next phase. I've had the impression that the tentacle at the very right is much easier and less likely to kill you than the one on the very left.

When you're done cutting off tentacles, prepare for a quick time event. [minor spoiler] After that he'll start throwing rocks at you, which kills you damn fast, but all you need to do to finish him off is to run up some stone thingie to trigger a cutscene. [/spoiler]

I think for most people it's because there aren't enough indicators on what to do. Okay, so you cut off the tentacles, now what? Oh, you jump on a tentacle (RMB). Now what? Oh, mash LMB. Now what? Oh, spacebar. Now what? Well, you run up the stone ramp, but there's no indication at all that this is what you're supposed to do.

I took about a dozen tries to get through that fight, mainly because for a number of them I didn't see the QTE prompts to tell me what I needed to do. And it likely would have been more if I hadn't read on these forums that you have to go up that stone ramp to get the cutscene to start.

It's not that difficult once you get the handle of it....
Tips first:
* Get the krayan trap. Quick way to dispatch one tentacle. The game shows you where to place it.
* If you get hit, run to your left and stand behind the bride. You can wait for your health to regenerate there.
* Roll a lot :) When you are rolling, nothing can hit you anywhere in the game.

If all of that fails and you reached your frustration level:
Copy and paste this text into a file named tentadrake.xml inside CookedPC/abilities.
If the abilities directory is not there, just create it.
You can use wordpad or notepad.
What this does, it reduces the tentacle damage tenfold. You can adjust the damage as you see fit by editing the first 2 lines under <ability name="Tentadrake Default"> The original game defaults are 40 40 and 70 70, respectively.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-16"?>
<definitions>
<abilities>

<ability name="Tentadrake Default">
<damage_min mult="false" always_random="false" min="4" max="4"/>
<damage_max mult="false" always_random="false" min="7" max="7"/>
<vitality mult="false" always_random="false" min="100" max="100"/>
<level mult="false" always_random="false" min="8" max="8"/>
<experience mult="false" always_random="false" min="500" max="500"/>
<damage_reduction mult="false" always_random="false" min="999" max="999"/>
<damage_reduction_block mult="false" always_random="false" min="999" max="999"/>
<TentacleYrdenDelay mult="false" always_random="false" min="12.00" max="12.00"/>
<crt_poison mult="false" always_random="false" min="100.0" max="100.0"/>
<poison_duration mult="false" always_random="false" min="8" max="8"/>
</ability>

<ability name="Tentacle Default">
<vitality mult="false" always_random="false" min="100" max="100"/>
<level mult="false" always_random="false" min="8" max="8"/>
<experience mult="false" always_random="false" min="0" max="0"/>
<damage_reduction mult="false" always_random="false" min="1" max="1"/>
<damage_reduction_block mult="false" always_random="false" min="0" max="0"/>
</ability>

</abilities>
<items>
</items>
</definitions>

How many points in footwork do you have? That ability's a must have for basically any build. Very useful against the Kayran because evasion is the best defense.

I gotta say that if I fought the Kayran without using my 360 controller, i might have broken my keyboard in two out of frustration. I know some people can pull it off, but i just can't play using KB + mouse with that kind of camera angle..

anyways, good luck OP. it would be a shame if you quit at this stage..

Kayren was not that bad, just pay attention to his tentacles and stay near the side of the area, not in the middle where he can flatten you.

The fight does not feature large, glowing symbols telling you exactly what to do and when, but seriously, if you just look at the guy, it's fairly obvious what's happening and what you must do. The only time it may be hard to avoid his tentacle slams, is the sequence of multiple smashes he goes into after you've cut off one of the smaller tentacles - and even then you can simply run off to the side. He only uses the 'multi-smash' in the middle. Figuring the fight out can't possibly take five hours. Five minutes, perhaps, and then another ten to fifteen or so (depending on various factors) to get a successful routine going. It's honestly not a more complicated fight than your run-of-the-mill action game boss fight, but I guess the lack of those auto-win attacks and flashing cue cards still make it hard for some people...