Witcher 4 Complete Walkthrough: Main Quests, Side Content & Best Routes Through Kovir

I finished my first Witcher 4 playthrough at 62 hours. That's with most side content, a lot of Gwent, and about three hours wasted wandering the Kovir coastline looking for a treasure I'd already looted.

The main story clocks around 30 hours if you push straight through. But you'd miss half the game. Maybe more.

This walkthrough maps out the full journey through Ciri's first adventure as a witcher. No deep story spoilers. I'll tell you what choices lead where, but not the narrative outcomes. Fair enough?

Act I: Kovir's Welcome, The Valdrest Introduction

The game opens with Ciri arriving in Valdrest, Kovir's busiest port city. She's freshly mutated, carrying Zireael, and looking for her first real contract. The opening quest chain teaches you the basics: combat, Sign casting, alchemy brewing, and how the new chain weapon integrates into fights.

The critical early choice comes after your second contract. You're offered two paths. Investigate a nobleman's missing daughter, which leads to the Baug storyline. Or help a sorceress track a rogue mage, which leads to the Elder Blood tutorial arc. Both quests unlock later. The order changes some dialogue and affects which allies are available for the Act I finale.

I did the Baug path first. The Baug is a new monster drawn from Serbian folklore. Think a shadowy bear-like creature that phases through walls and hunts in complete darkness. The investigation takes you through Valdrest's warehouse district and underground canal network. Bring Cat potion. Fighting the Baug blind is a special kind of misery. I mean that.

If you do the sorceress path first, you unlock the Elder Blood upgrade tree earlier. This makes the Baug fight easier. But the sorceress quest has a timed segment that's genuinely stressful. Your call.

Side content in Valdrest is worth your time. The fistfighting ring in the docks district has a champion with a unique counter pattern. Beat him and you get a dagger called Sea Wraith that applies bleed. Useful on the Baug and most Act I bosses. The Gwent tournament in the inn also runs during this act. Winning it nets you a hero card tied to Ciri herself. Lynx School Witcher, 12 strength, scorch ability. One of the best cards in the game, honestly.

Act II: The Canals of Lan Exeter

Lan Exeter, Kovir's capital, is the game's largest city. Canals instead of streets, gondola fast travel points, and a vertical design that puts Novigrad to shame. The main quest here involves navigating the city's political landscape. Merchant guilds, mage councils, and a witcher from a rival school who doesn't appreciate Ciri operating in his territory.

The rival witcher is School of the Bear. His questline runs parallel to the main story. You can fight him, befriend him, or mostly ignore him. Befriending him unlocks a chain weapon technique called Bear's Grip that adds a grapple effect to your chain pulls.

Worth it. No question.

Missions I almost missed in Lan Exeter: the theater quest starts from a poster near the canal bridge. Rewards a unique medium armor chest. The alchemist's apprentice chain is six small fetch quests that cumulatively unlock the Superior Swallow recipe. And there's a haunting in the upper district that references a character from Witcher 2. Book readers will catch it.

Lan Exeter is also where the game introduces gnomes. Yes, actual gnomes. They're not comic relief, surprisingly. The gnome quarter is a fully developed district with its own faction reputation system and a surprising number of contracts involving cursed garden statuary.

Sort of weird. Sort of great.

Act III: The Northern Wilds

Once the city storylines resolve, the map opens into Kovir's northern territories. Farmland, dense forests, mountain passes, and a stretch of coastline with shipwrecks and harpy nests.

The main quest here splits into three parallel threads. You can tackle them in any order. Each thread involves a different monster type tied to the region's history. The leshen-like forest guardian in the ancient woods. The harpy matriarch on the coastal cliffs. And a fiend corrupted by a mage's experiment in the mountain caves.

The fiend fight is the hardest of the three. It charges through Yrden traps and has a roar attack that disables your Signs for eight seconds. You want Reaver Oil and Tawny Owl active before engaging. Stay near the cave pillars. They block the charge if you position carefully. Four tries before I figured that out.

This act also introduces the first major romance choice. A mage from Lan Exeter and a ranger from the northern settlements both have companion quests that can develop into romance paths. Neither is the "right" choice. But the mage path gives more dialogue options later. The ranger path unlocks unique combat techniques involving thrown knives.

I went with the ranger. The thrown knife techniques are surprisingly deep for what feels like a side system. You can chain knife throws into Sign casts. Took me a while to get the timing down but once it clicks, it's very satisfying.

Act IV: The Return

The final act brings the story back south. Through familiar territory from Witcher 3, at least one visit to Velen if the trailer footage is accurate, and into the endgame sequence.

Geralt appears here in his supporting role. Doug Cockle returns as the voice. The scenes between Geralt and Ciri are some of the best writing in the game. He mostly offers advice and context rather than fighting alongside you. Though there is one sequence where you briefly control Geralt in a flashback. It's short. It hits hard.

The final boss depends on choices made across all four acts. Without spoiling specifics: there are three possible final confrontations, each with different attack patterns and weaknesses. The Baug-corrupted noble is the most mechanically demanding. The rogue mage is the most narratively satisfying. The third path requires specific dialogue choices in both Act I and Act III. It's the shortest but hits hardest emotionally.

Post-Game and New Game+

After the credits, you're dropped back into the world with all your gear. New Game+ scales everything up and adds a few exclusive contracts not available in the first run. There's also a secret boss in the northern mountains that only appears in NG+.

Bring your Death March experience from Witcher 3. This thing is harder than anything in the base game.

One thing worth noting: CDPR confirmed Witcher 4 kicks off a new trilogy with a 6-year release window for all three games. Some post-credits content seems to set up the next entry. Pay attention to the final scenes. They're not just epilogue, they're setup.