Bakir's Distilleries: Destroy, Steal, or Refuse — What Difference It Makes

Bakir, the Warmonger, runs twelve court activities across his southwest fiefdom — and his three distilleries are the ones that hand you a real decision instead of a simple clear-out. Players standing in the first yard naturally ask what difference the approach makes: destroy the equipment, go along with the poison plan, steal what’s useful — does any of it change beyond the fight? Partially. Here is the honest accounting.

What the Distilleries Are

Bakir pumps cheap liquor mixed with blood into Vale Sangora so the valley stays drunk and compliant. Each distillery is a court activity: clear the yard, deal with what you find inside, and sabotage the still. Shutting each one down raises Bakir’s personal anger meter — the countdown to his boss duel — and nobody else’s; the meters are per-Boyar, as the Infamy system guide explains. His region is tuned for around level 20, so expect the yard fight to be real.

The three sites share one skeleton and differ in their flesh:

• Ends and Means — a yard fight, then a moral choice inside with a distillery worker over the plan to poison the vats
• Coercion and Duress — a yard fight, then a decision about what to do with the distiller before destroying the still
• Offshoot — the third still, same sabotage objective, its own setup around it

What Actually Differs

The NPCs’ fates. This is the real variable. In Ends and Means, rejecting the poison plan — telling the worker “I won’t let you do it” — turns the conversation hostile: the worker attacks and dies, and the distillery is destroyed and shut down for good. Going along with the plan spares the fight and leaves the worker alive, at the price of your complicity. Coercion and Duress offers a parallel decision about the distiller’s fate before the still comes down. These are small outcomes, but the game remembers them in exactly the same way it remembers everything else — through the epilogue’s accounting of who lived.

The fight’s shape. Refusing the plan adds a short internal fight on top of the yard. Accepting avoids it. Neither is dangerous at level; the cost is moral bookkeeping, not healing items.

The rewards. The sites pay standard court-activity rewards — XP and the anger raise — with the yard loot varying by what you loot before the sabotage.

What Never Changes

Bakir’s anger. Every distillery sabotaged raises his meter the same amount, regardless of how you handled the people inside. There is no “quiet” version of this content that leaves him calmer, and no version that angers him more. The strategic read — from the kill-or-spare hub’s logic — is that the anger is the point: you are dismantling his operation on purpose, walking his meter up to the Lunar Game, because a maxed Boyar is a Boyar you can drain for Shadowstorm. The distilleries are not a moral side errand; they are the ignition sequence for the fight that powers your build.

The Strategic Recommendation

Do all three, and take the internal choices deliberately rather than by reflex. If you are running a full-mercy accounting, know that the “clean” options here still end with a named worker dead or a disteller’s fate decided — the activities are written so that compliance and refusal both leave blood on the floor, which is very much Bakir’s design. Loot the yards thoroughly, sabotage everything, and let his anger climb. Then, at the end of the tournament, take the drain instead of the kill — it is the one decision in his whole arc where mercy actually pays.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do the distillery choices affect the ending? No ending is gated on them. They are remembered — the epilogue’s character accounting is thorough — but they do not branch any finale.

Does poisoning the vats poison Bakir later? No documented link. The poison plan is a local moral choice, not a secret boss strategy; the poison shortcut belongs to Ambrus’s entirely separate plot.

Can you skip the distilleries entirely? Yes — court activities are optional. Skipping them just means reaching Bakir’s duel slower, through his other activities, or not at all — and un-cleared Bakir content returns as castle minibosses in the finale.

What level should you be for the yards? Around 20 for a comfortable clear. Underleveled runs can still finish by fighting from the gate and pulling guards in small groups.