I did. I am pretty sure it is a bug now. The guide says that I need to destroy some barrel to see the hidden cellar. I use aard sign to flow up everything in the house. But there is barrel outside. The entrance seems to be on the left of the house if you stand facing the beach. It is there, I cannot open it. Cannot use the medallion to highlight it either :(

It's not a bug, the barrels that you need to destroy are outside the house

I have just re-done this quest. You can not get the "Descend" icon until you ENTER the house through the normal door. The quest will then update and tell you to search AROUND the house. Now you can interact with the hidden cellar.

I don't remember precisely what I did for that quest.
1. I talked to Maverick (forgot to talk to Liva, I don't think it matters though),
2. go inside the house (don't remember if there was anything to find there) but there might have been a new quest phase
3. examined the graves (after you examine all 4 there will be a new quest phase)
4. there is a "click LMB to cast Aard" on the barrels outside the house which lets you into the hidden cellar.
etc...

Edit: Ok I checked my journal. There is a new quest phase upon arriving at the hut. I think Geralt will comment on it or something. After that you do step 4. You can do that even before examining the graveyard.

HTH

I remember visited the house before, I have a habit of exploring the area around. I really dont know if I messed up sth there.

After talking to Maverick, there is an update; after talking to Liva, there is also an update. But when I arrived at the house, there is no update, no comment by Gerald. I examine all 4 graves, no updates.

There is no barrel by the house. The secret door was there already.

You have to ENTER the house through the DOOR to update the quest log. It will then tell you to search AROUND the house. This is when you can now interact with the cellar door outside.

thanks for trying to help mate! but well, I am in the house, flow up everything, and outside there is no barrel. And yes, I understand what a barrel is lol.

I try to reload to earlier game, to the point where I first get out of the army camp. Yes! the quest updates.

I dont need to talk to Liva, dont need to go to the graveyard. I just come there at 23, I see the barrels, and can already cast the sign.

I must have already messed up the quest during my earlier "exploration". lol. Well with Witcher 2, I can still have fun replay the game. So no big deal.

Yes, I visited the gravestones and activated all. To no avail: the trapdoor is still locked. Interestingly, however, at the n-th attempt the ghosts did show up - most probably the event-triggering area is quite limited and close to the waterline; nothing like the markers shown. (Quest markers on general are wrong; bad quest markers even worse).

All this said, I was able to conclude the quest WITHOUT getting into the basement. This may have something to do with my having discovered the trapdoor before getting the quest in the first place. In allmost all RPGs I've played (with notable exception of Bethesda's work) getting to a quest location before obtaining the quest brings in similar problems. This, obviously, discourages independent exploration (which is not a strong point in this game anyway). Yes, Bioware, I'm looking at you!

When I was working on this sidequest, there were three markers, one of which is near the shoreline, not sure what your situation is.

*** Spoiler ***
The item in the basement is required for a sidequest in Act 3.

Yeah, this quest seriously is a bit dodgy. I went to the hut and examined the graves, and noticed the pile of barrels hiding the cellar entrance. However, I did not do anything to them at this point, because I noticed I hadn't talked to Liva yet and I wanted to hear her out. So I left the barrels and the entrance be, and went to her.

This is where it gets dodgy: When I later returned to the house, the barrels are no longer there and the cellar hatch cannot be interacted with. And no amount of running in and out of the house and ogling at the gravestones has remedied that.

This is going to be fixed in Patch 1.2 (to be released later today)
Quoting from the changelog "The “Three Sisters” quest has been fixed so that the door does not remain locked forever once the quest has been completed."

yep, I had the same problem. I wondered on that beach many hours until I finally found the forth tombstone.

That sounds nice, but the last bit is throwing me off a bit: "once the quest has been completed"? I hadn't completed the quest at that point. The cellar door stopped working mid-quest.

I ended up just loading an earlier save and were able to do it without further hitches, gladly.

Hey, sorry to dig up old topics, but was wondering if it's possible to complete the quest(not have Mavrick killed and fail) AND still get the Mahakaman Sihil diagram?

I'm assuming no, but would really like that diagram and the 300 exp:-)

Okay, sorry to necro a two year old thread (found it via Google), but it appears this issue has never been fixed (and I did not see it listed in the bug thread here). I just ran into the same problem: Got the message to "search around the house", but did not find the trap door immediately - I found the graveyard instead and thought that was what I was looking for. I don't remember the exact order of things after that - I think I did not realize at first that the fourth grave can be inspected as well, returned to town and got Mavrick to come to the beach with me; upon returning to the hut (and before facing the specters with Mavrick), I found the fourth grave (got some journal entry for that), then the trap door. But the barrels were gone and the trap door cannot be interacted with. Looks like it's gonna stay that way, and I did too much in between to warrant a reload...

So it looks like the trap door will lose its function if you complete some other stages of the quest first.