Npcs

There are hundreds of people in The Witcher 3 and almost none of them matter, because almost all of them are interchangeable. A handful are not. Some hold a monopoly on a service nobody else in the game provides, which makes finding them a prerequisite rather than a convenience. Others are exclusive in the opposite direction, where taking one closes the door on another. Sorting this bucket by who can be replaced is the fastest way to know which names you actually need.

The people nobody else can stand in for

Craftsmen come in four grades, and that ladder is the single most important fact about them. An amateur handles basic weapons, a journeyman can take witcher gear as far as the superior tier, a master handles mastercrafted, and only a grandmaster can forge the top tier at all. Our blacksmith locations page maps every one of them by grade; the point for planning is that the top two grades are each held by exactly one person, and both of them are locked behind a quest.

Two entries there deserve a footnote. The Runewright is not a smith in the ordinary sense; he sells you sockets, three on a weapon and three on the chest armour, two more on the trousers and one further slot beyond that, and without him your gear simply has nowhere to put a runestone or a glyphword. Our enchantment slots page walks the unlock chain, and the runestones and glyphs pages cover what goes into them.

The Quartermaster is the one every playthrough should know early, and not for his stock. He pays more for your junk than anyone else in the game, which turns him into the answer to the money problem the gold farming page is written around. He does also carry Gwent cards, the free Nilfgaardian armour set and its crossbow once the add-ons are installed, and one of Adalbert Kermith's maps. Be aware that he sometimes vanishes after your first visit. That is a known bug, not a story event, and leaving the area or fast travelling away and back brings him back.

For everything else that is a person rather than a shop, the NPC locations page pins the vendors on a map, including where to buy the Zerrikanian saddlebags that lift your carry weight from sixty to a hundred and sixty, and where to get a Beauclair set free instead of paying for it.

The two who rule each other out

Only two people can be Geralt's partner when the credits roll, and choosing one means losing the other. That is the one genuinely exclusive relationship in the game, and it is enforced with a joke at your expense if you try to have both: pursue the pair of them and they will invite Geralt to a threesome, tie him to the bed and leave him there, ending both romances at once.

Triss Merigold takes two side quests, and the sting is that both of them expire. Count Reuven's Treasure opens her questline, then A Matter of Life and Death gives you a kiss in the garden maze and Now or Never gives you the confession at the docks, where you have to choose Stay with me and then I love you in that order. Both quests fail permanently if the Isle of Mists begins first. Do it properly and she takes Geralt to Kovir, where she advises the king and he takes the occasional contract.

Yennefer of Vengerberg gives you three separate chances instead, which makes her the more forgiving route. The King is Dead offers a kiss after the earth elemental in Ermion's workshop, The Last Wish asks you to agree with her near the end, and No Place Like Home at Kaer Morhen gives a final invitation upstairs. The trap is the same shape as Triss's: The Last Wish auto-fails if you finish Ugly Baby first. Take her and the two of them retire together, and she turns up at Corvo Bianco at the close of Blood and Wine.

The three who cost you nothing

The rest of the romances are deliberately consequence-free, which is worth knowing because players avoid them out of caution they do not need.

• Shani is the shortest in the game, effectively one quest. Attend the wedding in Dead Man's Party, then cheer her up during A Midnight Clear by bringing her rowan berries from the bush outside, and pick the dialogue that admits the harassment was Vlodimir rather than Geralt. She has no bearing on Triss or Yennefer. Requires Hearts of Stone.
• Syanna is the only romance in Blood and Wine and gets exactly one window, during Beyond Hill and Dale after the Cloud Giant falls. Choose to seek her out rather than Orianna earlier in the expansion or the scene never arrives. She changes which Blood and Wine ending you get, but not who Geralt ends up with.
• Keira Metz is a single scene at the end of A Favor for a Friend, reached through Hunting a Witch, Wandering in the Dark, An Invitation from Keira Metz and A Towerful of Mice. None of those choices matter to the romance, and the romance itself matters to nothing else.

The one you can lose for good

Keira is also the exception to the whole page, because she is the only person in this bucket who can die, and there are three ways it goes. Let her carry Alexander's notes to Radovid and she is impaled for it, which opens A Final Kindness where Triss and Geralt bury her. Demand the notes with You used me, I don't like two-faced serpents and Gimmie the notes, and she fights you and loses, worth 200 experience and a burned set of notes.

The third path is the one worth taking. Ask what's with the notes, tell her Radovid never forgets, say it's suicide, then send her to Kaer Morhen. She survives, she fights in the siege, and her presence there is what keeps Lambert alive, which in turn is what makes the Full Crew achievement possible. Our Save Keira Metz page lists those lines in order if you want them in front of you during the conversation.

That is the shape of the whole bucket. A few people you must find because nobody else does their job, two you must choose between, three you can enjoy without consequence, and one you can get killed by picking the wrong line in a single conversation. The quest deadlines that govern most of this are laid out in the quests guide, and the full romance roster including the Skellige and Novigrad flings that never got their own pages is on the romance guide.