Quests

The Witcher 3 will let you do almost anything in almost any order, and then it will quietly take some of it away. Push the main story forward at the wrong moment and a handful of secondary quests do not become harder or later; they become impossible, usually without telling you. That is the single most useful thing to know about this bucket, so it is how the whole page is arranged: by the main quest that closes each door, not by region or by act.

If you would rather just be handed a running order for a complete playthrough, our best quest order page does that from the prologue through both expansions, and the Velen and Kaer Morhen roundups list the secondary quests in those two regions with their levels and prerequisites. What follows is the reasoning underneath those pages.

The walls, in the order you meet them

Before A Matter of Life and Death

This wall is the least famous of them and catches the most people, because it is a secondary quest rather than a main one. A Matter of Life and Death takes Geralt and Triss to a masquerade at the Vegelbud residence, and starting it disables three other Novigrad side quests on the spot, Redania's Most Wanted among them.

That matters far beyond those three quests, because Redania's Most Wanted is one of the prerequisites for the assassination plot later on. Its own chain runs through An Eye for an Eye, where Geralt fights alongside Roche and Ves and where the wrong choice permanently locks out the quest the whole strand exists to reach. Get all of it done before you accept Triss's invitation and the rest of the act stays open.

The Novigrad main line that surrounds it goes Broken Flowers, asking Dandelion's women where he went, then Count Reuven's Treasure, which puts Dijkstra's stolen gold and Triss's interrogation in the same room, then Get Junior and its three approaches to Whoreson Junior, then The Play's the Thing and A Poet Under Pressure. Two side quests hang directly off that last pair: Cabaret starts automatically afterwards, and Carnal Sins is the Priscilla investigation that ends with a Katakan in a morgue.

Before Ugly Baby

Ugly Baby takes Uma to Kaer Morhen for the Trial of the Grasses, and two quests die when it completes. The Last Wish is the djinn hunt with Yennefer out of Larvik, and it is not optional if you intend to end the game with her. Following the Thread is Lambert's revenge on Jad Karadin, and it explicitly fails if Ugly Baby starts first.

Kaer Morhen is also where the six regional secondary quests live, and they are available only until Act II opens, which makes Ugly Baby the natural window to clear them. One of them needs the Eye of Nehaleni, so it is worth having finished Wandering in the Dark first. That quest is the one that introduces Keira, drops the golem and Nithral in your path, and hands over the amulet a surprising number of later quests assume you own.

Keira's own strand is threaded through this stretch: Magic Lamp with its four-brazier riddle in the Mire, then A Towerful of Mice on Fyke Isle where Anabelle's wraith asks a favour of Graham, and finally the conversation covered on our Save Keira Metz page, which is where she lives or dies.

Before Battle Preparations, on Skellige

Skellige has its own deadline, and it is easy to trip because the island content feels self-contained. The Lord of Undvik, where you help Hjalmar hunt an ice giant, fails if you start Battle Preparations without it, and losing it costs you both the Full Crew achievement and King's Gambit, the quest that actually decides who rules the isles.

King's Gambit itself needs two quests done first, The Lord of Undvik and Possession, the Hym investigation at Svorlag where you can trick the demon rather than fight it. The Skellige main line around them runs The King is Dead, with the theft from Ermion's workshop and the earth elemental at the end of it, and then The Sunstone, whose opening changes depending on whether Cerys, Hjalmar or Svanrige ended up on the throne.

The island's optional work has no deadline at all and is worth doing while you are there: In Wolf's Clothing and the two endings available to Morkvarg, Here Comes the Groom and the Melusine in the Svorlag caves, In the Heart of the Woods and the choice between Harald and Sven, The Nithing and whether Jonna deserves what happens to her, From a Land Far, Far Away and the foreign woman at the watchtower, and Practicum in Advanced Alchemy, which is how you earn Gremist as an alchemy vendor.

The fistfighting ladder is here too, and it has an internal order rather than a deadline. Master of the Arena must come first, because lifting Ulle the Unlucky's curse is what reopens the Spikeroog arena, and only then does Champion of Champions and its troll become available.

The Isle of Mists, which closes an entire act

The Isle of Mists is the big one. It is where Geralt finally finds Ciri, and our page states plainly what the game does not: it is the point of no return for Act II. Everything you left unfinished in Novigrad and Skellige is gone, and doing it well means arriving with the maximum number of allies recruited rather than the minimum.

Which is what Brothers in Arms is for. It is four quests rather than one, spread across Nilfgaard, Novigrad, Skellige and Velen, and each recruits someone who then turns up in the siege. Zoltan and Triss agree immediately, and Zoltan becomes a smith at Kaer Morhen afterwards. Keira only appears if she was sent there rather than killed, and her being present is what keeps Lambert alive.

Triss's romance is the other casualty of this wall. Now or Never, the evacuation of the Novigrad mages, has to be finished alongside A Matter of Life and Death before the Isle of Mists begins or both fail together. Magic Lamp is on the same clock, since you can only pick it up again before you sail.

After the island, the story stops branching and starts closing. The Battle of Kaer Morhen spends every ally you gathered and takes Vesemir from you. Bald Mountain splits Geralt and Ciri between Imlerith and the Crones on a coin toss. Through Time and Space follows Avallac'h across three hostile worlds to reach Ge'els, and On Thin Ice ends it.

Before On Thin Ice: the last two doors

Two quests survive all the way to the finale and then expire at the very end, which is a cruel place to lose them.

Reason of State is the assassination of King Radovid, and it is the most heavily gated quest in the game. It needs A Matter of Life and Death, Now or Never, An Eye for an Eye, Redania's Most Wanted and A Deadly Plot behind it, it only begins after Blindingly Obvious, and it fails if On Thin Ice starts first. It is also the quest that decides who ends up ruling Redania, so the whole chain is load-bearing for the ending you get.

Gwent: Old Pals is the other, a card-collecting quest that spans nearly the whole game and asks you to beat Zoltan, Vernon Roche, Thaler and Lambert. Finish the Kaer Morhen siege, or Reason of State, before you have wrapped it up and it can never be completed. Worse, Thaler's leg of it can be lost inside Reason of State itself, because siding with Dijkstra gets him killed.

The High Stakes tournament is the friendlier version of the same hobby, four opponents and then a heist, with no deadline attached.

The Velen chain, and the choices that outlive it

Velen is where the game teaches you that its consequences are real, and none of it is on a timer. Lilac and Gooseberries and The Beast of White Orchard get you out of the prologue, with a griffin, a herbalist and your first real contract, and Devil by the Well is the tutorial contract next door at recommended level two.

Then the Bloody Baron. Family Matters is the longest quest in the game and hands you the botchling, where burying it is the humane route and killing it is not. The Whispering Hillock then asks whether to free the spirit or kill it, with the orphans on one side of the scales and the Crones on the other, and Return to Crookback Bog settles the family's fate on which doll you pick from the shelf. The violet hollyhock is the right one.

The rest of Velen's optional work is genuinely optional, and most of it turns on a single decision. Wild at Heart asks whether to take Margrit's bribe and then whether she deserves the werewolf. Where the Cat and Wolf Play has the one procedural trap in the region: it starts automatically at the end of the Beast of Honorton contract and fails if you walk away from the area, so finish it on the spot. Fools' Gold turns a village into pigs. Mysterious Tracks near Lindenvale wants a Chort Lure crafted before the howler will show itself. Deadly Delights ends on whether the succubus dies for what the guards did to themselves.

Novigrad's unhurried side is much the same: Novigrad, Closed City and its three bandit keys, The Taxman Cometh and the three questions that decide whether Geralt keeps banking privileges, and Of Swords and Dumplings, which is not really optional at all, because finishing it is the only way to unlock Hattori and with him the master tier of the gear ladder.

Hearts of Stone: a chain with no branches

The first expansion is almost entirely linear, so its ordering is a matter of prerequisites rather than deadlines. Olgierd von Everec sets three impossible tasks and you take them one at a time.

• Dead Man's Party revives Olgierd's brother Vlodimir for a wedding, and it is where the Shani romance begins. Aim for level 33.
• Open Sesame is the auction house heist, with a crew to assemble and a choice between the Borsodi brothers at the end of it.
• Scenes from a Marriage follows both of those and is the one that stays with people, a house full of Iris von Everec's memories, a Caretaker and a decision about a rose.
• Whatsoever a Man Soweth closes the expansion, with Gaunter O'Dimm revealed and Olgierd's soul on the table. Save him and you are handed the steel sword Iris; leave him and you pick one reward from a list.

Blood and Wine: a level gate every few quests

The second expansion replaces deadlines with level requirements, and they climb steeply. Getting in means finishing A Poet Under Pressure, reading the Mulbrydale notice board and completing Envoys, Wineboys at around level 34, which our Blood and Wine starter page covers in full.

The Beast of Toussaint begins immediately with Golyat coming through a windmill, then a bruxa in the Corvo Bianco cellar, a shaelmaar in a tournament arena and a riddle that saves Milton if you answer it. La Cage au Fou is where Regis explains what you are actually hunting and where the Tesham Mutna armour is sitting in a chest. Wine is Sacred traces a vintage at level 42, and Capture the Castle storms Dun Tynne at level 47 with no smith available once it starts, so stock up first.

Toussaint's side quests are the most relaxed content in the game and several of them feed Aerondight's five virtues, which makes them worth doing for a mechanical reason as well as a pleasant one. A Knight's Tales lifts a curse from a crying tree at level 40 and counts toward Wisdom. Mutual of Beauclair's Wild Kingdom lets you spare or kill a silver basilisk, and either answer proves a virtue depending on which. The Warble of a Smitten Knight puts Geralt in a tournament under an assumed name and then asks who should carry Vivienne's curse. Father Knows Worst is a family dispute in a kikimore cave, and Wine Wars is a five-part vineyard feud that ends with a wine named after you if you take both contracts.

One Toussaint quest is a genuine trap of a different kind. The Unseen Elder is reached through a choice in The Night of Long Fangs, and the ancient vampire at the end of it will kill Geralt outright for the wrong line of dialogue. Bring the gift and pick carefully.

Which ending all of this is building toward

Our endings page lays out the three outcomes for Ciri and the separate endings for both expansions, and it is worth reading before Act III rather than after, because the choices that decide it are scattered far behind you. The major choices page gathers the twenty or so decisions that feed into it, and the NPCs guide covers the romance side, which is the one strand where doing everything is worse than choosing.

The short version: Ciri's ending turns on how Geralt treats her across a handful of small moments rather than on any single grand decision, Redania's turns on Reason of State, Skellige's on King's Gambit, and Velen's on the Whispering Hillock. None of those four are main quests. That is the design, and it is why a page about quest order in this game has to be a page about deadlines.

Frequently asked questions

What is the one rule that prevents most lost quests?

Clear Novigrad and Skellige completely before you follow the firefly to the Isle of Mists. Almost every horror story about missed content in The Witcher 3 comes down to crossing that line early.

Do contracts and treasure hunts ever expire?

Effectively no. Contracts sit on notice boards indefinitely and scale badly rather than closing, which is what enemy upscaling exists to fix. The expiring quests are almost all character quests tied to Triss, Yennefer, Keira, Lambert or the Redanian plot.

Can I do Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine mid-story?

You can start Hearts of Stone once you reach Novigrad, and it slots in comfortably. Blood and Wine expects level 34 and is written to be played after the main story, so treat it as an epilogue rather than a detour.

How under-levelled can I safely be?

Each quest shows its recommended level in the journal, and being one or two under is manageable while being five under is not, because your damage is scaled down against higher-level enemies rather than merely being insufficient. If you are behind, the levelling page has faster answers than grinding the main story.