The Witcher 3 can reveal what kind of RPG player you are

The Witcher 3 has a serious problem – for some people. The epic fantasy roleplaying game from CD Projekt RED is suffering from an XP bug that can cause players to stop getting experience from some quests. According to the developers a fix is on the way, but the patch has been delayed to next week. In the meantime, players should enjoy the game because the issue doesn’t impact normal progression in “any significant way” and their monster-hunting characters will finish the game “within the threshold” of the character level the designers planned. Unfortunately, for many RPG players, knowing that a bug may be denying them that max level, that even a teensy bit of the XP bar will remain unfilled, is unacceptable.

After the jump, why you should or shouldn’t care about The Witcher 3’s XP bug!

There are two ways to handle this issue. You can either play the game with the XP bug potentially handicapping your character and just drive on, or you can set the game aside until the patch is released. For many, the answer is already clear because the bug has been present since the game launched. Just play the game. There are over a jillion hours of content in The Witcher 3 and a few hundred points of experience won’t matter. Besides, the story is why you should be playing the game anyway, right? The Witcher 3 really isn’t about loot, or grinding, or leveling a character to hit some nebulous “endgame” content. It’s about taking Geralt through an epic tale of warfare, monster-hunting, and card playing, all informed with Andrzej Sapkowski’s unique take on the genre. Just ignore the bug and play the game!

Those people are crazy.

We’re all gamers here, right? Some of these casual do-nothings may be satisfied with being virtual tourists, but the really sane folks like us know that you haven’t beaten a game until every nook and every cranny has been explored and conquered.

Have you gotten every question mark on the in-game map removed? Did you fulfill whatever needed to be done to make that map symbol turn gray? No? Then you aren’t done, soldier! These activities aren’t going to do themselves. Get to it. There are guarded treasures, and monster dens, and cave entrances, and bandit camps, and and and… Oh my. There are even horse races and fist fights that aren’t even shown on the map! You can’t say you’ve finished the game until you do it all.

How many Gwent cards have you collected? If you’re missing any from this list, then you’re nothing. Nothing! You have to defeat every opponent and take their cards, then you have to win the tournament. Just to make sure, you’d better go back through and beat everyone one more time. More cards unlock, right? They have to. Why would CD Projekt RED put a card game into their RPG unless it unlocks some hidden bonus? Maybe you have to beat everyone a third time, but with a completely different deck? Time to reorder the cards!

As for the quests themselves, you’re nuts if you can just do one, not get any XP, and move on to the next one. That werewolf is worth at least 100 XP, maybe even 150. You found the job notice, asked the miller about his missing daughter, tracked the monster to its lair and now there’s no XP reward!? The werewolf is dead! The ploughing monster hunter did his ever-ploughing job and he expects to get paid! Not in useless gold crowns, or herbs, or with a pie! With XP!

Oh, the werewolf was actually the village priest who may or may not be affiliated with a mercenary army that was smuggling drugs through the land? The killing of the werewolf may have set off a chain of events that relates to four other quests? Because The Witcher 3’s quests are never just simple “kill Foozle” stories, and each action has hidden consequences that SCREW YOU because where’s the XP!? The XP is missing! So what if you’re already level 24 and the main quest is at level 13? The progression bar is forever ruined!

Patch 1.05 for The Witcher 3 is scheduled to release next week.

UPDATE: Patch 1.05 has made it out before the weekend on PC. It’s available now on Steam and GOG versions of the game.