The path to the whispering hillock appears right after crossing the swamps and if youre not careful with timing here things can get messy real quick. The spirit inside uses a pulsing red glow to telegraph attacks, dodge right when you see that peak or youll take massive damage. Your main window comes during its recovery phase after the spirit blast attack, thats when you can land 2 3 solid hits before backing off.

Going for the crones first changes everything though. Their ritual chamber has specific positioning requirements where youll want to stay near the back wall whenever they start their synchronized casting animation, which glows purple about 2 seconds before release. The real trick is timing your decisions because hitting certain story beats in the wrong order creates completely different outcomes. If you take down the spirit first the orphans get sacrificed and anna dies setting off that whole chain with the baron, but freeing it early makes the spirit destroy downwarren instead while changing how the crones react to you entirely.

Good to know: watch the ground markings during the crones fight, they always telegraph their positions 3 seconds before teleporting. Really helps predict where theyll pop up next and lets you position for counterattacks especially during their phase transition at 50% health when they start chain casting their curses.

For best results position yourself between the ritual stones whenever possible since it gives you the most escape routes when things get chaotic and remember the timing on those spirit attacks is actually slightly delayed from when the red glow peaks so dodge a fraction later than your instincts might tell you.