Accidentally avoiding Bennhold? (Spoilers)[G5]

[Danny the Fool]

On my first playthrough I managed to slip past Bennhold by keeping him busy with creations, but not really fighting him otherwise. I wiped out everything in his keep, and got all the loot and so on. When I left the zone and later came back, unsurprisingly Bennhold was still in the location I left him in, but somewhat more surprisingly, some of his turrets had regrown. Is this supposed to happen this way?

 

In my currently ongoing game I play a Trakovite without creations and canisters. I didn't seem to be able to slip by without him noticing. I kept attacking Bennhold and fought the turrets and his creations along the way. Those soldiers are a godsend if all you have for meatshields is what charm can provide you with. At some point, he ran away, never to be seen again. Possibly, he died to acid or poison before the healing trigger went off? I cleared out the remainder of his keep, and then, remembering my previous game, left the zone and came back. I found Bennhold back in his original location. Again, some of the turrets had regrown. I fought him again, killing the turrets, and fighting a single wave of four soldiers that mysteriously appeared out of nowhere. Except the turrets and those four soldiers, everything else apparently staid dead. Finally, we made our way to his last retreat with the mines and the Rothdizons. Of course, I had cleared that part out before and disabled the mines as well, so that fight wasn't really hard. At one point, Bennhold referred to "testing his creations", but none appeared.

 

Is this the way this was planned, e.g. to give sneaky players a chance to make the last fight easier or completely skip it and still get the canisters? Or do I keep hitting a bug?

 

I play on normal difficulty, maybe some of this isn't possible on the harder levels (like accidentally killing the guy prematurely).

[BrownieMix]

I can't speak for Bennhold's ability to come back (I killed him the first time I entered the zone, and he never came back), but I can say the turrets do seem to regrow if you leave and then come back. Not all the turrets, but definitely some of them. I don't know if they are supposed to, but in theory you could just kepp going in and out of that zone, killing the turrets, and possibly getting an unlimited supply of thorns. Granted, they might not drop anything, they shouldn't give any exp at that point in the game, and thorns aren't exactly scarce, but still - I don't know if that's intentional or not.

[Danny the Fool]

He didn't come back when I killed him in his final location. He only sort of went missing once, and I couldn't find him until I re-entered the zone. But I don't know what happened to him exactly, he *could* have died from poison, or he *could* have been stuck somewhere in the landscape where I didn't notice him.

[Randomizer]

The turrets regrow every time you re-enter the zone, but I don't think they all grow back. The soldiers you saw may have been a group that you missed during your initial attack on that playthrough.

 

I've always killed Bennhold on my first time into the zone. He's scripted to retreat as he takes damage, so it is possible for him to stay near the starting point if you slip past him. The definitive way to tell if he is dead is if you find a puresteel charm that he drops when he dies.