[BUGS] Freeing merchant north of the hanged man's tree

[warliukz]

[BUGS] Freeing merchant north of the hanged man's tree

Hi,

So I freed merchant (north of the hanged man's tree) from its cage and followed him north to the bridge. There I did a quicksave near the merchant and did something stupid and died. After loading the quicksave I noticed that the merchant and its icon were gone. To my surprise I found him inside that cage again and it was open. The merchant set off to the north again but his icon stayed in the cage. After this point I encountered several bugs:

• I can't talk to that merchant anymore - his doppelganger appears instead with dialog that does not work;
• Other merchants of the same type no longer have icons on the map;
• Sometimes other merchants have doppelgangers too.

Here are some screenshots of that special merchant:

And another merchant below hanged man's tree (doppelganger + no icon on the map):

 

[warliukz]

Here are 2 savegames. One is before freeing him and the other is after:

Savegames

Bugs appear only after loading the savegame where he is freed. My guess is that, when saving a game, some flags regarding this merchant are not saved properly. For example one flag could show that "Person in distress" for that place is complete while other would show that that merchant is active or something. Failing to save one flag could easily mess up game logic and some unhandled exception might occur. With that said, I don't know how savegames for the witcher 3 work, but I thought I might try to provide some insight. Good luck at fixing this.

Also the current solution for this bug - let him rot in the cage :devil:

 

[warliukz]

*Update* It seems that other merchant (the one in 4th picture) of the same model get doppelgangers (like in the 3rd picture) no matter what (after some time or random event ?). After leaving said merchant and coming back after clearing bandit camp I found that yellow doppelganger has replaced the merchant and is now working properly... Deserves some sort of monster hunt to find out what happened to to real one, I guess :yes

Posts with similar bug:

• ricko99's thread;
• CkNoSFeRaTU post.

 

[Jamman2020]

I freed the merchant who goes into Pontar (red hat lives in that northern part of valen slum like area) and on first prompt he's okay he'll sell but if I leave or save and reload he goes back to letting his yellow hat buddy take over. So since they haven't fix it do you know if this will be a problem for other merchants or just him and the blue hat guy you mentioned earlier? Thanks, I'm on ps4 btw