Pale Widow

The pale widow is a rare albino form of the giant centipede, white from head to tail. Like its darker cousins, it is covered in hard chitin plates and has rows of hooked legs underneath, and it lives in underground lairs. What makes it special is its albumen: scholars have bred pale widows for it, since it works as a base for mutagenic potions.

That is exactly why they matter in The Witcher 3. Professor Tomas Moreau kept a nest of them near his hidden laboratory, and he used their eggs in the machine he built to alter a witcher’s mutations.

You meet pale widows in Turn and Face the Strange, the Blood and Wine side quest that unlocks mutations. After tracking the grave robber from Orlémurs Cemetery, you dive through a portal in the flooded ruins of the Valley of the Nine, fight guardians and a gargoyle, and reach Moreau’s lab. The eggs you need are in a cave reached through a hole in one of the cages, and that cave is where the pale widows wait. You only need one dose of mutated giant centipede albumen from the egg mounds.

Combat strategy

Pale widows fight like giant centipedes, which means their armored back shrugs off most of what you throw at it. The trick is to take that armor out of the equation. A Yrden trap leaves them defenseless, so you can hit them freely instead of watching your blows glance off.

The cave is cramped, so cast Yrden where they will come to you and fight inside the circle. If several come at once, pull back and recast rather than standing in the open.

Use Yrden to entangle them and stop them from defending.
Apply insectoid oil to your silver sword.
Strike while they are trapped; their armor deflects hits otherwise.
They resist poison completely, so poison-based builds won’t help here.
Grab one egg albumen and leave through the Aard-breakable wall if you want a shortcut back to the lab.