Running the game from the old installer (not sure if patches fixed this).

Experiencing the same problem as this guy:

http://en.thewitcher.com/forum/index.php?/topic/21010-lock-and-key-missing-ladder/

Let me know if this can be resolved reloading from a recent savegame, otherwise I'll just put a giant x on the Witcher series.

I'm not restarting from scratch just because of a stupid bug.

I haven't encountered this before, but from that other thread it sounds like reloading a recent save is worth a shot. If you still have the problem, you can see if someone here might be able to fix your savefile for you.

I restarted from a savegame that was 2 hours before and that did the trick.

I lost 1 hour of monster grinding, plus a finished Gold Rush quest and some errants.

It's the second time I have to restart from an earlier savegame due to significant quest bugs (I lost 4-6 hours of gameplay last week because the wyvern head trophy "deleted" the wolf head trophy and I found out by looking at the walkthrough that this bug would cost me a powerful sword in the late game).

I'm not impressed with the game-breaking bugs in the product. This will be reflected in my review of the game.

Minor bugs, I can overlook, but when you are losing hours' worth of gameplay due to backtracking because of bugs in the quest system, it's hard to overlook.

It would have been good to have access to a cheat console to fix some of it (reset some quests and the like).

You mentioned you were using an old installer... how old is it? I only ask because I never encountered any major bugs when I played, just some minor things. Also, The Witcher was notoriously buggy on release, so the patches really help a lot.

My installed version dates back from when the game got out on GOG. I'm not sure if it has the latest patches or not (not the latest installer version, but for all I know, the only change they did was add compatibility with Windows 8).

I started playing a bit, then took a long hiatus and I started playing again about a month ago.

Assuming that the new installer has a more recent patch, I'm afraid it might not be compatible with my old savegames.

At this point, I no longer have the old installer that generated the savegames (silly me) so I'm not sure I want to re-install the game with the new installer and risk it.

I just want to complete the game without backtracking so much. AAA RPGs don't have much of a replay value (perhaps several years down the line, but not re-doing the same quest you did a few days ago).

EDIT: The latest patch I can find dates back to 2009, so I'll assume the original installer was patched to the latest version. It's still buggy.

Maybe the Witcher has some issues with Windows 8? I ran it on 7 without any problems.

I completely understand not wanting to lose your progress. I was just wondering if patching might help. But I don't know about savegame compatibility.

Anyway, since you got through the latest one, hopefully you'll be able to finish the rest of the game without any big problems.

The ladder was missing for me also. I had a save from just after starting the quest at 3 AM. If time passes, say until midnight, then the ladder will not appear. Otherwise, if the quest is continued immediately by going to the sewers, even if it's 3 AM, then the ladder will appear.

I use the latest gog version of the witcher.