How to complete Poison in the Roots quest in Diablo 4

The next major season has arrived to Diablo 4, Season of Witchcraft, where you’ll be unleashing the powers of strong witches that have come before you. A notable quest you’ll need to do for this season is called Poison in the Roots.

This is one of the first significant quests you’ll have to complete as you make your way through the start of the season. Thankfully, it shouldn’t take too long to wrap it up to begin leveling your character, but it might take some time to figure things out. It’s a bit tricky, and there’s a small puzzle you have to tackle. We’ll be breaking down what you need to do to complete Poison in the Roots for Diablo 4, getting you started in the Season of Witchcraft.

All Poison in the Roots puzzle solutions in DIablo 4

You’ll receive this quest after your second outing of gathering up Whispers for the Coven in Diablo 4. These Whispers are where you’ll be completing limited-time objectives, such as defeating a certain number of enemies, taking down bosses, or finding items. You’ll need to check your map for where you need to go next, and when the next series of available Whispers are. Once you’ve done this, return to the Tree of Whispers, and there’s a ritual site where you have to interact with a circle to kick things off.

When you click on the ritual, you’ll have to watch Gelena prepare it for you. She’ll break down the start of the ritual, and you’ll want to pay attention to this part. After the witches begin the ritual, the next task is to “Invoke the Tree’s Old Name in the correct order.“

You won’t be able to reference your journal or look back at what this means. Instead, you’ll need to light the ritual altars in the order the witches were performing, meaning you need to click Ayh, then Yew, and then Oun. For Ayh, go to the bottom left ritual bowl and activate it. From there, head to the bottom right ritual bowl for Yew and activate it. Finally, the last bowl you need to activate is to the north, which’ll be for Oun.

All bowls should light up after you’ve done this. You’ll know it’s finished if three Nangari snakes appear in the ritual circle. Defeat them and collect the blood vials that fall from their corpses. From there, you’ll need to trace the ritual circle using their blood, which you must do by manually moving your character around.

Completing that portion brings you to a more combat-paced section of the quest. Multiple demons will begin attempting to attack the center, and you’ll have to fight them off until the ritual is complete. You can bounce around and move away from the circle to protect it, but do your best to ensure demons don’t make it toward the center. A final, bulky demon appears as you draw close to the end of the ritual, but so long as you protect the center, the demon and the others in the horde perish when the summoning time has finished. You don’t have to take them all out.

After completing that portion of the quest, you leave the ritual circle and speak with Gelena. She’ll explain that you’ll need to complete other Grim Favors for the Coven and work through additional Whispers before proceeding to the next step of the main quest in Diablo 4 Season of Witchcraft.