A Practical Guide to Actually Doing It
100 percent completion in The Witcher 3 isn't just about finishing the main questline. You need every treasure map, every contract, every Gwent card, and every diary entry unlocked. I spent roughly 120 hours on my first run across all DLCs before I realized I still had over 40 percent of map areas unexplored. I went back and did another 40 hours to clean up what I missed. The process is mostly methodical rather than brilliant, but there are enough traps that a blind run will leave you stuck at around 82 percent no matter how much you grind.
The Witcher 3 Gameplay Tips And Tricks 100 Percent Completion
Start with New Game Plus for your second run through the base game. This is not optional if you want to do everything without carrying awkward level gaps. You keep your gear, mutations, and most skills. More importantly, enemies scale to your level and certain quest variations that locked you out of content on a standard playthrough become available. I lost roughly 15 hours on my first run by picking the wrong option during Bloody Baron. NG+ let me revisit those choices. Here is how I actually track everything. Skip the automated checklist apps and use the in-game Codex section paired with a simple spreadsheet. The Codex lists completed achievements and most collectibles. Your spreadsheet notes the specific sub-items like "Kaer Morhen siege quest variant taken" or "all Skellige Gwent opponents defeated." Apps break sometimes when new content drops or when you have unfinished branching paths. A spreadsheet does not. For Gwent, the hardest part is not finding cards. It is tracking which NPCs drop which cards and knowing which opponents are permanently missable. I missed three Rare cards on my first playthrough because I passed a Skellige quest early and never returned. Those cards are only obtainable in New Game Plus or through trades with NPCs who appear after certain story nodes. Check the Gwent deck database before committing to a quest branch.
Treasure maps require exploration that feels tedious until you find the trick. Use the quest log filter for "Treatises and Diagrams" and mark every single location on your map before you start looting them. Most players miss this step and end up walking around velen swamps with no clear objective for hours. When I marked every icon first, the remaining uncollected items dropped to under twenty after completing all major contracts. The rest scattered into areas you visit during the final act. Contracts are the engine that drives your completion percentage. Complete all monster contracts, not just the signed ones. Signed contracts appear on notice boards. Unsigned contracts appear on monsters themselves and require you to find the beast before you see the posting. There are roughly 78 contracts total across all territories when you include the DLCs. Each one grants experience, crowns, and usually a mutagen or diagram. Mutagens unlock the alchemy upgrades that matter for the late game. Alchemy is where most runners stall. You need every diagram in the game to unlock all mutagens. Some diagrams come from random loot, but many require specific bosses or hidden chests. I spent an entire afternoon hunting a single Advanced Griffinmutagen recipe that only drops from the Griffin nest near the Fell Cat contract area. If you skip contracts, you skip the monsters that drop those recipes. Do all contracts.
Get the Full Details
Diaries and letters are quietly the most annoying category. They are tucked inside buildings you pass but do not enter. Enter every building on foot, even in cities where fast travel exists. The count is around one hundred and fifty total across the base game and expansions. Most appear as small white icons on the minimap when you are very close, but they disappear quickly if you are riding Roach. I found a reliable workaround: switch to third person, walk slowly through every district, and trigger the pick-up icon with a keyboard or controller input. It adds roughly eight hours to the total time but recovers the entire missed percentage. DLC-wise, Hearts of Stone completes relatively cleanly if you finish all side quests and the main story. Blood and Wine is heavier because the Toussaint area has roughly forty percent more content than the base game's Skellige. Treasure maps alone add another twenty to thirty minutes of pure navigation if you have not already mapped every zone. One edge case I ran into: certain Gwent opponents reset after you complete the main storyline. If you finish the game before collecting all Skellige opponents, you can go back and fight them again in New Game Plus, but only if you have not triggered the final ending sequence. I accidentally finished "Something More" without realizing it reset my remaining Gwent deck, forcing a reload from a checkpoint. Save before the final quest. Always.
The biggest bottleneck for completion is the "all treasures collected" requirement. This alone can easily add twelve to eighteen hours depending on how thorough you are. I found a shortcut that works about ninety percent of the time. Use the map zoom function to spot chests near water edges and in caves that block your path. These are the chests players skip most often. The chest count per region varies, but Skellige tends to have the densest clusters, followed by Velen and then Novigrad. If you want a realistic timeline, expect around 140 to 170 hours for full completion across both expansions with all DLCs included. That includes the time spent searching for diaries, replaying quest branches, and hunting missable Gwent cards. Anything under one hundred hours means you are skipping categories or relying on incomplete external checklists. I should mention the limitations honestly. There is no way to unlock certain collector achievements without playing through specific story branches multiple times. You will burn at least two full campaigns. Some rare cards are tied to NPC friendship meters that do not carry over between playthroughs, so you need a separate save file dedicated to Gwent completion if you want to be thorough. Also, any choice made during the "Wild Hunt" questline can lock out up to six side quests. Make sure you know which options preserve optional content before proceeding.
Download a guide is unnecessary if you follow the sequence above. The game itself tracks most of what you need. What you really need is patience, a spreadsheet, and the willingness to enter every single building twice. Once you do, the completion percentage climbs steadily rather than stalling at that frustrating 82 percent wall.
