Only 5.6% of players completed the rarest quest in The Witcher 3

Game Checklists, a site that works with progress trackers for achievement hunters, dug through data from more than three thousand The Witcher 3 player profiles to figure out which quests get skipped the most. Incomplete playthroughs were removed from the sample to keep things accurate. This audience specifically aims for 100% completion, so the numbers would be even lower for regular players.

The scale of the task explains the results. The base game has 58 main quests, 115 side quests, 30 witcher contracts, 33 treasure hunts, 23 gear quests, and 18 races, fistfights, and gwent tournaments, adding up to 337 items without counting the expansions. A full playthrough takes anywhere from one hundred to one hundred seventy-five hours, and missing any single branch means starting over from scratch.

The four rarest quests in the base game look like this:

• "A Final Kindness" – 10.2%

• "Free Spirit" – 10.5%

• "An Unpaid Debt" – 11.1%

• "Reason of State" – 11.8%

The list leader requires Keira Metz to die. There are two ways to make that happen: skip the entire magic lamp and Fyke Isle storyline, or send the sorceress to Radovid instead of Kaer Morhen. The quest itself is short, since Triss asks Geralt to retrieve the body for a proper burial at the Hierarch Square, and the guard either needs to be charmed with Axii or killed.

"Free Spirit" takes place on the Skellige island of Snyedhollow and starts with rescuing a man named Ivar from an attacking warrior. If Ivar dies, the quest is lost for good. "An Unpaid Debt" unlocks after Geralt gets locked up by Lugos the Mad, when a few days later Simun Bramblewine, who helped him earlier, turns up at the Novigrad harbor tavern and asks Geralt to kill a man named Volund – turning him down ends the storyline.

"Reason of State," which involves killing Radovid, made the list for a different reason. It's considered one of the most memorable quests in the game, but it requires finishing three other quests first, including "A Deadly Plot," "Wanted in Redania," and "An Eye for an Eye."

With the expansions, the numbers drop even further. The rarest turned out to be "Dead of the Family" at 5.6%, followed by "Prison Break" at 6.1% and "Between Two Worlds" at 8.3%.

Both prison-related quests tie into Syanna death in the final confrontation, after which Anna Henrietta throws Geralt in a Toussaint prison cell. Order matters a lot here, since "Dead of the Family" needs to be started earlier, and finishing "Prison Break" locks that option out permanently. The first one boils down to passing notes through the brick wall of the cell, where another prisoner asks for a hammer and chisel, with the reward retrieved at the same wall a week after release.

"Between Two Worlds" leads to one of the Blood and Wine endings and only opens up if the player chooses to go to Orianna instead of helping Damien save Syanna.

There will be a reason to replay the game next year. CD Projekt RED announced a third expansion, Songs of the Past, set to release in 2027 on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series, once again putting Geralt back in the player's hands.