Adding another question to this, how do I get the recipes from the witch?
If you complete the 'proof of a warrior' that's given by Rhot you get a spear that deals damage to the slimes.
The witch recipes have to be manually brewed to be learnt, the mini poem the day witch recites is the ingredients order and the same for the night witch drawing. You kinda have to guess what the ingredients are but it's easy to do that, since they're not extremely rare or anything.
You have to take the raptor back at night since the witch at night is different from the witch at daytime. Unless you accidentally aborted the mission if that's the case I have no idea of how to get it back.
You just need to take them with you and your character will automatically ride them, it just doesn't show on the estimate time to get to places but you'll get there faster. Also to get the animals energy up you need to feed them the dog, wolf and raptor all eat meat, the horse eats carrots and the wolbak eats driolba(?).