Tainted Grail: Age of Excuse Quest Guide
Age of Excuse is a Horns of the South side quest about a knight who is convinced he is cursed when he is not. The fix is a placebo. You brew a Disgusting Health Potion, hand it to the knight Berach, and let him believe it broke the curse the Red Priest supposedly laid on him. Finish it and you walk away with 900 XP and a Soulstone, and you unlock the follow-up quest The Warmest Coat.
Here is the full path from finding Berach to the placebo reveal.
Find Berach under the broken bridge
Berach is hiding under a broken bridge northwest of the Archspire fast-travel point in Horns of the South. Travel to Archspire and head northwest until you reach the broken bridge, and you will find him underneath it. He is afraid and certain the Red Priest has cursed him, and he will not move on his own. He needs proof the curse is gone before he will believe he is free of it.
Get the recipe from Drest
The hermit entity:drest is the one with the answer. He gives you the recipe for a Disgusting Health Potion: five Sage, two Whiskey, and one Grindylow Claw. Gather those three ingredients and brew the potion at an alchemy station. Sage and Whiskey are common enough that the Grindylow Claw is usually the bottleneck, so check vendors and hunt grindylows in the water if you are short. Drest is the same hermit who turns up in Black Tar Prophecies, so if you have crossed paths with him before, you already know him as a druid worth listening to.
Brewing the potion is the only crafting step in the quest, and since you only need one, low Alchemy skill is no obstacle here. Grab the three ingredients, make the single potion, and you are set.
Drest also delivers the twist that makes the whole quest click. Berach was never cursed. The Red Priest did nothing to him. The fear is entirely in his own head, and the only thing standing between Berach and a normal life is his belief in a curse that does not exist. Drest's suggestion is to lie to him kindly: give him the potion and let him think it cured him.
The placebo reveal
Take the Disgusting Health Potion to Berach and present it as the cure. Because the curse was never real, the potion does not need to do anything except convince Berach that it worked. He drinks it, believes the curse is lifted, and is finally free to leave the bridge and rebuild his life. The placebo is the point: you cure a man by curing what he thinks is wrong with him.
Rewards and what unlocks next
Completing Age of Excuse pays out 900 XP and a Soulstone. The Soulstone is the prize here, a worthwhile pickup for an early-game side quest, and the XP is solid for the time invested. There is no fighting, no risk, and no failure state once you have the potion, which makes this one of the safest reward-to-effort trades in Horns of the South.
Finishing the quest also unlocks The Warmest Coat, so Age of Excuse is worth doing both for the immediate reward and for keeping Berach's story moving forward.
Why this quest lands
Age of Excuse is one of the quieter pieces of writing in Horns of the South, and it earns its place. There is no monster behind the curse and no villain to put down, just a frightened man who talked himself into a prison. The cure is a lie, and the game lets you tell it without flinching, because the kindest thing you can do for Berach is let him believe he was saved. It is a small story about how fear works, dressed up as a fetch quest, and it pays you fairly for seeing it through.
For more Horns of the South side content and the wider quest map, the walkthrough hub lays out the region's quests in order, and the crafting guide covers the Alchemy skill you use to brew the potion.