Hag

The Wizened Hag/Hag/Hag Witch is a human boss that appears in the Weald.

History
According to the Ancestor, the Hag started out as a young woman who persistently approached the manor offering him mastery of alchemy and medicine. The Ancestor was initially compelled to work with her because of her alluring appearance. He quickly developed a genuine respect for her upon recognizing the full extent of her expertise. The two worked experimented together for some time with herbal and alchemic processes. The woman soon gained an interest in the "Thing" deep beneath the Estate. While the Ancestor hoped to physically unearth the horror, The woman believed she could gain insight into its nature via the consumption of certain herbs and concoctions. The relationship soured due to the woman's increasingly compulsive self-experimentation, which twisted her both mentally and physically. Disgusted, the Ancestor turned her loose into the Weald. There she continued her research, further developing a taste for human flesh. As a result she preyed on the locals and furthermore seems to have played a role in the Weald's transformation into an overgrown wasteland.

Behaviour
The Hag always appears taking up rank 3 and 4, with her pot taking up the front two ranks and her ranks 3 and 4. Neither she nor her pot can be moved from those positions - the empty pot has a massive amount of HP so should not be attacked.

During the first turn of the battle, she will use In the Pot! on one of your heroes. This places them in the pot, where they cannot do anything and take constant HP damage every time you or the Hag makes a move. The Hag has multiple moves per turn.

The filled pot has substantially less HP and can be attacked down to 0 HP to tip it over, which releases the trapped hero. The pot immediately respawns however, and the Hag will duly put another hero in on her next move(it can be the same one). The pot automatically tips over when the hero inside reaches death's door. The pot doesn't have a lot of HP and doesn't cause a huge amount of damage to the trapped hero per tick (but it will mount up), therefore its worth maintaining DPS from all your heavy hitters on the Hag and getting her down as soon as you can whilst whittling down the pot with your smaller guns.

It is worth noting that a hero currently inside the pot will not retreat with the rest of the party, if retreating from combat, but will instead count as having died.

Whilst a hero is inside the pot, the Hag uses Seasoned to Perfection, Meat Tenderizer and Taste the Stew on the rest of the party, concentrating mostly on building stress. None of them do much damage, but because the Hag gets multiple turns and because Tenderizer hits the whole party, they are extremely dangerous to heroes at death's door.

Strategy
There is no strategy universally agreed upon, but the most recommended is to stack bleeds on the Hag and tip over the cauldron if a character is inside. Ranged characters are heavily recommended, as some melee characters may not be able to hit the Hag herself. Arbalest and Man-at-arms are higly recommended classes due to far range of their attacks.

Some have also suggested running the fight at low light level, due to the mechanics of her attacks, her increased accuracy and damage is not significant compared to the increased PC critical chance to focus her down while ignoring the PC in the pot.

Another strategy that is quite viable is to bring two or even three Hellions. The reason for this is threefold - the Battle Trance camp ability works on both the Hag and her pot, She is very vulnerable to a Hellion's bleed attacks, and due to her never moving, the extremely hard-hitting Iron Swan can be used every turn.

A party with a high Dodge build can have a strong impact on the battle. Combining very agile characters with the Man-at-Arms' Bolster ability and Dodge-boosting camping skills can cause "Into the Pot!" to miss entirely, resulting in dramatically reduced incoming damage and increased damage output against the Hag when all party members are able to continue fighting.