I can't share your opinion, Time4Tea. I've played the game over the years on three different PCs and a laptop (less convincing). I never encountered any problems with this side quest: There's a precise instruction (-> Visit Cedric), there's a questmarker which brings you to the cave, and it's a sidequest which you can solve or not. The partial poison resistance is nice to have, but not really necessary, and when you are fighting the Kayran and could profit by this potion then in most cases the game will be over soon. This means: You should avoid situations where you could profit by it: It's a bad emergency repair...

So don't blame the devs; there's nothing to repair.

Obviously you're entitled to your opinion, but we'll have to hard disagree on that one then. Issues that are apparent to me in my playthrough:

- it seems very unclear in the quest prompts that the ostmurk is not required to make the mongoose potion and that any ingredient that contains fulgur could be used.

- I made the potion without ostmurk and then found it in the cave afterwards. The ostmurk quest didn't resolve properly - at that point it was still telling me to find ostmurk. That is clearly a bug (possibly specific to the order in which I chose to do things).

- as discussed above, there is also confusing wording in the kayran quest prompt that makes it seem as if you can take on the kayran without Sile.

- this thing about the mongoose potion giving a permanent benefit to Geralt doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere in the game, does it? I wouldn't have known anything about it if you hadn't told me. Hang on, does the potion give the permanent boost without the ostmurk, or only if you use it as an ingredient?

Imo, that (admittedly small) section of the game is sloppily designed and quite confusing, which is totally on the devs.

The permanent bonus is a hidden content, like finding the assassin on the prologue give you a bonus on attack on the back or something like that or helping Lavalette to escape give you a +50 inventory, there is some little bonus hidden in the game but i let you discover them :).

I'm fine with hidden content, but imo the player should be notified if they find a secret. Otherwise, there isn't much point finding a secret, if you don't know about it.

The other thing is that, in this case, if the player has no knowledge at all of the permanent benefit of the ostmurk, then it appears to be thrown in there as a totally pointless quest!

I think they told you when you got the Keyran quest that the ostmurk quest is optional but recomended as he as poison. The bonus aren't notified but you can check if you have any in you character page, i think it's the third tab when you enter character, you can see all your unlocked special abilities, the bonus aren't that big except for 2, saving Lavalette for the +50 bag and merchant who gave you the keyran contract, you should tell him to double the price for the monster to have a bonus when you buy or sell to all merchant in the game (i think it's a 20% bonus)

Perhaps you misunderstood me, but I am not suggesting the player should be told where secrets are or guided to them. I'm saying that, if/when the player finds a secret, imo they should be clearly told they have found something.

Secrets should be secrets - until they are found!

Ok, I know I have been whining a bit about Witcher 2. Despite those niggles, I am enjoying it although so far I'd say I preferred the first game. So, I am curious as to how the 3rd game compares to the first two. I've obviously seen a lot of people raving about it being one of the best RPGs of all time, so I am keen to try it before too long.

How does it compare mechanically to the first two - which one is it closest to? How is the difficulty balance (which seems a bit unpredictable in W2)? Did they bring back combat styles/group style? Sword combos? Does it still have the restriction on drinking potions only whilst meditating? Hits in the back doing double damage? Does it have more of the casual sex that the first game had (which seems to have been toned down in W2 :,-( )?

A mix of the best things of both, the combats are like the second but Geralt is a real Witcher in the third game not the turtle from the second andyou can use sign easier.