Background
As soon as you arrive in Lothering you will be stopped by some bandits who will let you enter the village if you give them 10 silvers. There are multiple ways to complete this quest.
Walkthrough
- If you pay them the money they'll want more and demand 20 silvers.
- You can intimidate them to prevent from attacking your party. Also with persuasion you can convince them to give you 20 silvers for sparing their lives. You can subsequently further intimidate the leader into leaving Lothering for good.
- You can also convince them that a poorly defended caravan is heading that way and so they'll leave.
- To get rid of the bandits once and for all you can provoke the them to attack you. Focus on their leader because he'll surrender when he's almost dead. You can decide to kill the bandits or let them go.
- Looting any of the boxes around the bandit's barricade will cause them to attack you without warning. The normal conversation still occurs after defeating them though.
- After defeating the leader, you may demand he give you everything they stole. This should give you over 1 gold, and you may then either kill him or let him go.
- You may inform a family of elves by the bridge near the Chantry about the bandits if you either killed or drove them off. There doesn't seem to be a reward for this though.
Result
Ser Bryant will reward you with 20 
.If you ask for additional help he will give a key to the cabinet in the back of the Lothering Chantry. There are some Health Poultices and the Elven Ancient Boots(In the PC version the boots are not there because of a bug).
Note
There is at least one way in which you won't get "credit" for killing the bandits and you are unable to recieve a reward from Ser Bryant for their deaths. It can also affect other NPCs (such as the robbed family of elves, the farmer at the entrance to town and the Templar at the entrance to the village Chantry) so that you will be unable to tell them you killed the bandits. The option simply will not show up in dialogue. The helpful refugee in front of the tavern will thank you for taking care of the bandits, however.
If your character is a mage, and you choose the dialogue options that lead to "(Intimidate) Do you really want to fight a mage?", the bandit named Hanric will panic and run away if you then choose the "It's time to test some spells. (Attack them)" option. This can prevent you from completing the quest and getting credit for the kill, as you haven't really killed all of the bandits.
There are a couple ways around this:
- Avoid the "fight a mage" dialogue choice.
- Instead of attacking them after Hanric says "A mage? Ahh! I don't want to be a toad!", and the leader tells you they'll waive the toll just this once, select the "You are too kind" option. Hanric will stay with the group.
- You can then re-enter conversation with the leader, and either initiate a fight or drive them off.
- Or you can walk past them, plunder their crates, and they will attack you.
If you drive them off, you will complete the quest, and get your reward. If you fight, it will take you through the surrender/kill-or-drive-them-off cycle, and again, you will complete the quest and be able to claim your reward for taking care of the bandits.
However, if you progress through the dialogue to "It's time to test some spells," even though Hanric runs off, you can still recover and claim your reward. When the leader surrenders, intimidate him into leaving, and even if he is the only bandit still alive, all the bandits are counted as driven off and the reward will be yours.
Bug
If you kill him close to the side of the bridge, you wont be able to loot him.