Finding a way to free Mert in Blood of Dawnwalker's Under Watchful Eyes quest took me a while to work out. At first, I slaughtered the entire fort, but after such a slog of a fight I realised there must be a better way to do it—turns out there is. You can take a sneakier route at nighttime which drastically reduces the number of soldiers you have to kill.
In my video runthrough of it below, I also show how to reduce the number of fights even further with some tactically-employed Voracious Bites. Here's how to free Mert without murdering the fort.
How to free Mert without killing everyone in Stoneward Post
There's an obvious approach to freeing Mert in Under Watchful Eyes, and that's killing every soldier in the fort, but this is understandably quite tricky. There is a sneakier route you can take via a back door instead which will really cut down the number of goons you've got to put down.
You can avoid the two-on-one fight in Friedo's office by following my exact route in the video above. To do it, you need to purchase the Shadow Dweller and Dimension Reach upgrades in the Vampirism tree so you can take a shortcut up to the battlements. These are generally very handy upgrades, though, as they buff Shadow Reach distance and reduce stamina used in Plane Walking.
If you don't, you'll have to fight a bunch of enemies in the upper courtyard outside Mert's office, Friedo and the miniboss in his office, and the prison guard by the cells. Even without the Shadow Step skip, you're still fighting far fewer soldiers than if you'd taken on the whole fort. These are the steps you need to take if you have the upgrades.
- After you've first spoken to Mert, go back up to Friedo's office and steal the Prison Keyring hanging on rightside shelves—he should be facing the opposite way, so just press Ctrl to sneak and yoink them. If you didn't do this the first time, return to the fort and grab them.
- Leave the fort and do other activities until moonrise (nighttime).
- Go around the back of the fort and use the Prison Keyring to unlock the back door.
- Head inside, use Shadow Step and Planewalking to reach the top of the tower to your right, and walk along the battlements until you're above Friedo's office.
- Get to a spot where you can Voracious Bite him to put him to sleep (as shown in the video)
- Take everything of value in the chests and head downstairs.
- Voracious Bite the guard by the prison cells to put him to sleep.
- Free Mert.
When you head back upstairs, you'll have to fight the miniboss, Rayko the Incorruptible, and then three soldiers outside and a dog afterwards.
You can also take out one of the outside soldiers with a Voracious Bite before any of the others get to you (also shown in the video). After they're dealt with, make sure you're above one health segment, then exit the back door with Mert. He'll thank you and ask where to go, and you can send him to the Almshouse in Svartrau.
This is one of those hunger moments, so if you're below one health bar, I'm pretty sure you'd be forced to feed on Mert instead, which would be a poor reward for all your hard work. It's worth noting that whether you killed the soldiers at the mill during The Firebrand will also have an impact on Renna and Mert's potentially happy ending.
