So I have this odd problem where Chapter 3 right from the beginning doesn't seem to be saving my progress correctly. It does save my inventory, character specs, character journal entries and the chapter 2 quests still active in chapter 3 - however it doesn't save the chapter 3 quests (except Witcher contracts).

For instance at the very beginning of chapter 3 *minor spoilers* when I'm talking to Triss I get the quest info from her, if I save, quit, and then reload the game at that save point, those quests will have disappeared and I have to talk to her all over again - which the game recognizes by the shaded text that I've done but they don't appear in the journal. If I actually try to complete those quests without doing talking to her again I can't, the dialogue for the Posh Reception quest for instance won't activate properly. And any quests that I completed in the meantime will disappear as though I never did them (except like the character and inventory items will still be there).

Essentially I can't save and load the game now. This was not a problem in the previous chapters.

Removing save files didn't work ... anybody have ideas about what might be causing this problem?

I have a massive amount of savefiles and have not had any problems so far. If all else fails, I could give you one of my neutral savefiles if you want.

i experienced this once before when i played as a scoiatel guy :)

The best you can do is replay the end part of chapter 2 before moving to 3.
Make a save.
When entering 3 before all else ,make a save game again.
Sometimes its due to a corrupt save.
After this all was fine for me

I tried replaying the end of Chapter 2 again. I have a save file right before fighting Javid and the Professor. I did the fight, saw the cutscene where the order beats the scoiatel, then I wake up in Triss' room. I saved as soon as I could after the conversation and unfortunately the same thing happened again. :/

Maybe I'll give it another shot. Third time's a charm.

it's my experience that something goes wrong when you save during an action thats incomplete.
I sometimes stared at the loading screen for 5 minutes without something happening.
Reload earlier save helped :)

I've tried reloading earlier chapter 2 saves and then playing through them through chapter 3, so far no luck. I get to the beginning of chapter 3, save, then load the game I just saved and the Chapter 3 quests disappear. I may need official help on this. Boo. :/

I have seen Thiev on these forums repair save files for some people. Might be worth getting in touch and asking nicely.

(I do not know how to do it)

Thanks will do.

Weird thing. Quest progress is not stored, because quest files are literally missing from the save. I added them back, hopefully it will solve OP's problem.

No idea what may be the cause though.

Unfortunately it keeps removing the quests from the save file! I've actually found the quest files under Application Data/The Witcher/temp/saves/. In that there are two folders with the save names Dom Triss-569 and Triss' house-570 and within them appear to be the quest files. Even weirder, the folder corresponding to the save I made off of the Dom Triss save (the one you gave me) lacks the Chapter 3 quests in the folder again!

I may reinstall The Witcher and see if that solves my problem. In full disclosure I am running The Witcher under Wine/OS X, but so far no one else has reported such a problem so I don't think that is the issue (yet).

The files stayed for me :(
Re-install is always an option, still I've no idea what may cause this.
All quest files should be contained in all saves, from the very beginning. Even Ch1 save normally has all quests.

In theory, some overzealous AV application could delete temp files, but 1) there is nothing suspicious with Witcher files and 2) I've no idea how that works under Wine.

Edit: start a new game, make a save and look at its size. It should be around 17+MB. If ti's smaller, something is wrong with the game from the very beginning.

All my save files are 14-15 MB so that would point to them never having been complete ... however the game & saving worked up until Chapter 3, why would that be? (rhetorical ... unless you have an answer! :P) My AV can't delete anything without me knowing about it - especially not within self-contained packages like the Witcher save files. I have not reinstalled yet (actually I'll probably create a brand new Wineskin and install there), but I will soon - I may even download the Witcher a second time just in case. :/

That's because quest files for Ch1 and 2 are present, as well as hunt quests. Ch3+ and Gravedigger quest (q2130_gravedig.qst) are missing from the very beginning, as file size indicates.
Re-installing is the best option at the moment.

Edit: it is possible as well that quests00.bif file got somehow corrupted during installation. Check its size (~7.82 MB). If it's smaller it would mean that files are missing from save because the game has nowhere to copy them from.