So i was playing last night, last thing i did was kill a bunch of bandits in their camp before i saved and quit.

Today I load up the game and noticed that the it was a 'person in distress' camp and there's a guy in a cage that needs unlocked to set him free.

Trouble is, all the people i killed have somehow disappeared - no bodies, no loot, hence no key to free the guy.

Fixes anyone ?

The only fix you have is to go back to an earlier save and do it again. The game "cleans up" bodies frequently - particularly after a save re-load - to ensure the necrophages stay where they are supposed to stay...

Damnit, most recent save is too far back to bother doing that.

The reason bethesda games can get away with bugs like this is you can always use the console to work around it. In this circumstance I would just open the console, click the door and type 'unlock'. Take notes cdpr!

Go back & do a search of the area you killed the bandits using your Witcher sense. The bodies might have disappeared but their loot should still be there it's just sometimes it can be hard to spot & your Witcher sense will highlight it.

If the loot is not there then unfortunately it is bugged, it is possible to give yourself the key using the Debug Command Console Mod. A quick search & you will find info on how to do this.

Yeah I have done a thorough search and it is a small area, definitely isn't around. I'm trying to console command mod now and the only problem is I need the exact item code for the cage key which unlocks this one, which doesn't seem to be on any of the item lists that I've found with google.

i search "Witcher 3 console commands" & the 1st two results it finds have a list of all the console commands available & full lists of item names.

There are two ways to give yourself the key,
One command will give you every key available ingame, but having all the keys is a little OP & game breaking & as the keys are quest items they can only be removed from your inventory by using the removeitem command. As you will have other quest items in your inventory the keys have to be removed individually.

The other way is to try & figure from the item name which key is the one you want.
Give yourself the key see if it works & then remove it if the is not correct. This way is probably the best way & the key names are fairly obvious which lock they are for.

Yeah I have tried, that command does not give you every key in the game because I still can't open this cage. Maybe it gives you every key needed for an actual quest or something. What I've learned is that the item code will almost definitely be 'something_something_cage_key', but each cage key for these mini-quests must have its own specific code and I can't figure out how to determine which i need for this one. I've looked at the same item lists and there are a lot of items there but it is clearly not a full list.

So the lesson is to save often.

I always quicksave every 5 mins, problem is that's a new save each time and the most recent auto save had been from 45 mins+ ago. Definitely not going to jump into the menu to create a manual save every time, i'm actually glad that the normal quicksave doesn't work the same way as the first game as you ended up with hundreds of saves which increased load times greatly.

The lesson is get these bugs out of the game :)

Some of those cages are bugged in that the leader with the key never spawns as well.

Since that is not a realistic option with a game this size the only alternative is for the user to manage their saves. Either do that or as you've unfortunately found out lose out on the quest.

lol! i dont even... /thread

Loot from enemies always disappears after a save and reload. It's a bad design, but right now the only way around it is to loot everything before saving.