I'm very annoyed because in this area you have to sit through a very long dialogue sequence and then make your escape, all without any opportunity to save your game. A mistake means starting all over again, dialogue and all. Sure you can skip through the dialogue, but not very quickly.

Anyway, I got stuck without a key after having jumped down through a trapdoor in the dungeon and could not get back up - there is no way to jump back up once you're down in this area. I think there was supposed to be a guard with a key, but there was no guard in this particular room. Somehow this seems wrong to me, that you could end up in a blind alley with no escape. I spent about an hour looking for a key for the door down there, but never found one (and anyway the quest log said I should take the key from the non-existent guard). Is this a bug? what could I have done wrong here?

If you jump down through the trap door you should find a crack in the wall that looks into the torture chamber where someone is being tortured. Just past the crack in the wall there is a hole in the wall proper that you can climb on to and over into the next room and continue from there.

Actually what happens depends on if you kill the prince La Valette live, or convinced him to surrender.

I convinced him to surrender.

i was unable to peek through the crack, though I tried for about ten minutes. I jumped down, nobody in there, no way to get out. But that was the only time I was able to get past the first two guards in the dungeon.

I roll past them, run up the stairs, turn out the torch, use Quen, and then get beaten to death. Every time. Every single time, without fail, and then I have to spend another ten minutes of my life going through the dialogue all over again. Not fun. Why on earth did they not allow a game save in this sequence? I'm trying hard to love this game, but having a tough time of it, and it's suptid things like this that are spoiling an otherwise great game.

Try playing on a lower difficulty setting, then. There's more than one setting for a reason. :-)

OK... this is not the game fault for sure, you need to position yourself such that the hint will appear to press the left mouse button to peek. Or you can climb into the window/opening right away (also position yourself right in front of it). You can load the earlier save in the worst case and don't jump down. I'm not sure what can be easier than clicking one mouse button.

Hi, and thanks for responding, but yes, actually I'm beginning to understand that this is the fault of the game:

1. I can SEE the hint to peek; that's how I know I'm supposed to do it. The problem is, I click fifteen thousand million times on my left mouse button, as indicated, and nothing happens. Just for fun I tried altering the mouse sensitivity, with no result, clicking the right mouse button, just to make sure, and backing off and retrying about a hundred times. No dice. In my game, I cannot peek through the hole in the wall in the dungeon. All I can do is know that I'm supposed to, without being able to do anything about it.

In my first attempt, I gave up on the peeking and jumped down, and that is how I got to be in the room with no guard and therefopre no key. No peek=no guard=no key.

2. I can reload an earlier save, yes -- but the last save position is about fifteen minutes back each time, and I have to go through all the dialogue over at the beginning of the dungeon sequence oer and over and over and over...which is why I'm sofrustrated that you can't save right at the start of the dungeon sequence or anywhere after that.

3. I am playing on easy. One of the first two guards is easy; the other onbe is impossible. Geralt seems to freeze up when he fights him and it's just no use. I managed to get past him again, but again, could not progress as i can;t peek through the hole.

Sorry, not you fault, but I'm a bit angry. I was really looking forward to this game, but so far I haven't had much fun. I hope the patch addresses this problem, or I'm hooped.

So - nobody has any suggestions? Still? I've run throgh this area many times and I keep coming up with the same issue. Where is the second way out of the dungeon?

ok this is going to be all the way full of spoilers

5

4

3

2

1
LaVallette dungeon
1. you were in the dungeon, and harassed the two guards and then knocked them out with the QTE
2. You then proceeded to loot the stuff near the table, so you got a club and some gloves and various other gifts to save for later
3. Then you 'blew' out the light and knocked out the first guard past the door... waited and did that again with the second guard
4. you are now at the place where you can go right or left-- choose left and fight something like 7 or so guards- can be hard if the light won't blow out
choose right and go up the stairs, knock out the first guard and he drops a key to the door back at the bottom of the stairs, but remember to clonk the other guard while you are still up there. the door up there will not open as far as I know.
5. If you went Left from the stairs, then proceed to loot all over whacking guards as needed, you will eventually reach a cut scene for Arian being a badass for about 6 seconds and he will ask you for a favor.

If you went right at the stairs, then the key opens the door just at the bottom of the stairs, follow around, looting corpses and such. eventually there is a place to peek where Arian is supposed to be tortured. just about half way down that hall is a place to climb ( on the left side) before you get to the locked gate. Climb in there and hopefully you will need to kill two guys one is strong and one is not nearly strong. follow the path around and Arian will help you leave the castle.


Good Luck

You have me very, very confused - it sounds to me like you're talking about two separate areas. In order to go into the room with the trapdoor, you need a Rusty Key which you get from a nearby guard about to force himself upon an imprisoned she-elf. Once you have the key, you can go down the trapdoor inside the now-accessible door. Following the corridors (there's really only one way to go), you eventually start hearing voices of someone being tortured. Keep going a little bit more, up a small slope, and there's a big crack right in front of you, in the wall. If you want, you can go up there and left-click to peek through, when prompted; but this is purely optional, and not at all needed to advance. In order to proceed, however, take a few steps to the right and look up high on the wall as you go, and you should see an opening above. You can climb up into this opening, and then jump down into the torture chamber. There's a scribe with his back turned towards you, so you can easily stun him, after which the executioner will spot you, and you need to defeat him in combat. The rest will sort itself out, more or less.

You also have the option of proceeding through another prison block, to the left of the locked door leading to the trapdoor I mentioned earlier. There are two guards there, and the one patrolling in the room up ahead that is full of barrels, carries a different key than the one you use to open up the room with the trapdoor in it; Upper Level Key or some such. This key opens up the only door in the room in which you found said guard, and you can proceed with the escape from there.

Also, you can definitely save during the escape from the dungeon. Not only should there be autosaves, but as soon as you are outside your cell, you can quicksave as often as you want (unless you're in combat, of course).

Skipping through dialogue does not take long - simply hammer the right mouse button and then stop to pick a conversation option when prompted. All the cutscenes should also be skippable by using the same button.

If you're still having some sort of weird problems, I suspect there's some hardware failure on your end. There are the occasional input bugs even if your machine meets the requirements, but neither manifests itself in the way you describe here, and they are never this frequent (or constant, rather). Never before have I heard anyone describe a problem similar to yours... :/

EDIT: Video - maybe this will help. Since your description of your location and what path you're actually taking is not made clear to me, you can instead take a look at this video, showing you exactly how it is done (well, one of multiple ways, I suppose).

Did you find and equip the glaive like weapon that is in the dungeon?