THE WITCHER 3: WILD HUNT

This achievement is highly missable!

This achievement is quite involved and you can begin working towards it once you read the “Wine Wars” note on the notice board outside the Cockatrice Inn. This will trigger the “Wine Wars: Belgaard” quest. Follow the objective to the auction near Plegmund’s Bridge and it will trigger a cutscene with Liam Coronata and Matilda Vermentino.

Liam will give you the “Wine Wars: Coronata” quest and Matilda will give you the “Wine Wars: Vementino” quest. Start with Matilda’s quest and when you reach the objective that contains the elegant letter guarded by Archespores, kill the beasts, read the letter, and then halt progress on this quest IMEDIATELY.

Switch your quest to “Wine Wars: Coronata” and work through the objectives until you reach another letter. Read it and a new quest will trigger. It’s called “Wine Wars: The Deus in the Machina.” Switch over to this quest right away and begin working on it. If you progress any further with either of the previous Wine Wars quests, you will miss the achievement (see note below).

After completing the main objective of “Wine Wars: The Deus in the Machina,” return to Liam and Matilda and they will give you a new quest entitled “Wine Wars: Consorting.” Complete this quest through and through, it’s fairly simple. Return to Liam and Matilda again once you’re done and after a short cutscene, you will get another new quest: “Wine Wars: Belgraad.” Complete this quest as you normally would – again, it’s straightforward. Once the five objectives have been completed, wait or meditate for three full days and then go see Liam and Matilda.

When you return, they will reward generously (they name a wine after you!) and the achievement will finally unlock.

NOTE: This achievement is missable because if you fully complete either Liam’s or Matilda’s individual Wine Wars quest, only one of them receive Belgraad vineyard and you won’t have a wine named after you. Thus, make sure to stop progress on both “Wine Wars: Coronata” and “Wine Wars: Vermentino” after reading the letter in each quest.

This solution is for anyone who had this achievement glitch on them after following another guide and expecting to get the achievement, but it never popping. Unfortunately this happened to me and quite a few others, looking at the comments about this achievement. Unfortunately, loading up an old save does not appear to work. I can confirm, however, that starting a new game with the sole purpose of getting this achievement will work to unlock it.

It is possible to start a new game from scratch and get this achievement in about an hour and a half.

First, from the title menu, choose new game. Choose "Blood and Wine only" which will allow you start with a level 35 character. Choose "story only" for the difficulty - we don't need to make this harder on ourselves than it needs to be.

This will start you off near an objective marker for a signboard. Immediately go to that signboard and read all notices. This should give you the "Envoys, wineboys" quest. Take a minute to use your skill points to make your character formidable. Personally I completed everything having only used about half my skill points, so you don't really need to worry about what you do here. I focused on red (attack) skills. My recommendation would be to do quick strike ones and the "Undying" skill which is nice to avoid a death. Combine this with one of the general skills that grants you an adrenaline point whenever you enter battle, and you are guaranteed a revive from a near-death experience at least once per battle. Even on the easiest difficulty, it is likely you will die a few times since you will be under-leveled and under-geared, so this is probably worth your while.

Proceed through the Envoys, wineboys quest up until right after you kill Golyat. At this point, you can ignore the main story mission, and you should go directly to Plegmund's Bridge, which should be northwest of where you are.

There should be a noticeboard there. Read the notices, which should give you the Wine Wars quest. Immediately make that your main quest and go a short distance to the arguing characters. Since you've already presumably done this once, you should know the drill, so I'm not going to be as detailed as a normal solution.

The two characters each give you their set of 5 tasks to fix up their wineries.

IMPORTANT: There are multiple "people in distress" during these wine tasks. For each of them, choose to immediately follow them back to their respective winery instead of meeting up with them later. Choosing to meet up with them later may contribute to the achievement glitching, and is one of the few differences I made between my playthroughs.

It doesn't matter which one you do first, but you should complete all 5 tasks (DO NOT TURN THE QUEST IN, HOWEVER!). Once all 5 are completed, move on to the other wine wars quest, and do those 5 (ALSO DO NOT TURN THIS ONE IN). At some point during the second 5 tasks, you should read a corpse with an elegant letter on it, which will give you the Wine Wars: Deuce in the Machina quest. Only begin on this quest once you have finished all 5 of the second set of Wine Wars tasks. Once all 10 of those tasks are completed, but you have not yet turned them in, go to the objective marker for the Deuce int he Machina quest. This quest will have a red skull to signify it's probably too high of a level for you. Don't worry, it's not very hard since we are on the easiest difficulty. Proceed until you get to the cellar, and kill the centipede. Although it has a red skull, it's not too bad.

Proceed through this area until your quest updates to talk to the two vineyard owners who gave you the quests earlier. Go there, and since you have already completed their mini sets of 5 tasks, you should proceed now to the new vineyard, that itself has 5 tasks to do (groan).

Do these 5 in any order, although the northeastern most one has a person in distress who will bring you back to the vineyard if you leave this for last, which is convenient.

Once these 5 are completed, turn the quest in and wait the 3 days. I talked to the guy, but I don't think it matters. Ask about the surprise, and fingers crossed the achievement will now pop for you.

The only differences between my original playthrough and this one, in an effort to deduce what might contribute to the achievement glitching is as follows:

-I didn't do any intervening quests, I just played this the whole way through. In my original playthrough I did some minor quests in the interim that could have possibly screwed something up.

-As already mentioned above, I agreed to escort all the people in distress back to their vineyards. In my first playthrough, I escorted only 2 of them. It is possible this is contributing the the achievement glitching.

-The first time around, I immediately stopped doing the vineyard tasks once the Deuce in the Machina quest came up. This forced me to go back and finish these tasks before the new joint vineyard tasks were available. I don't know if this contributes to the achievement glitching, but it's more efficient to finish them all at the get go anyway, so I would recommend that.

- The name you give the wine at the end is irrelevant. I chose the same name I originally went with (White Wolf) and it popped, so the name you choose has nothing to do with the achievement glitching.

Please post any comments if you follow this exactly and the achievement still glitches on you. If that's the case I don't know what to say. Also, please post if you think anything else might have contributed towards the achievement glitching or if you deviated from the above and the achievement worked, to help further deduce for others what may the cause of the glitch.

Strangely enough, I may have found a much quicker and easier way to complete this long series of quests and get the achievement, but I'll need help to confirm because I'm not sure if I got a friendly and lucky glitch or if that was intended.

So when I wanted to start this quest, I went to the location on foot and came across the "guarded treasure" shown on this screenshot:


In this guarded treasure I found the letter that triggered "Wine Wars: The Deus in the Machina" which is really weird because I hadn't begun the series of quests yet, I hadn't even talked to the PNJs, so I didn't do anything for them etc... but I was able to trigger the quest nonetheless.

Anyway, I decided to track the new quest (so the "Wine Wars: The Deus in the Machina one") so I went to the corresponding location, killed the centipede, got the note and the quest was accomplished without any following quests triggered. I decided to track the original quest again "Wine Wars: Belgaard" and when I arrived to the location, Liam and Matilda were arguing and Geralt took part in the discussion saying that he somehow knew what was the problem, and I directly got the "Wine Wars: Consorting" ; from there I just followed the normal path of the series of quest and ended up getting the achievement.

So in the end I didn't have to go through the "Wine Wars: Coronata" and "Wine Wars: Vementino" and I didn't have to be careful about reading letters, halting the quests at the very right moment, etc, so it's a much quicker and much more "braindead" way of doing the quests because you don't have to think about anything ; that's pretty much straightforward.

It seems weird because this specific way of doing the quests looks intended (according to the conversation Geralt, Matilda and Liam had when I first met them) but I find it hard to believe that no one before me found out about it.

I would like one of you to try what I did to verify if that was just a random nice glitch or if this is just for everyone else, which would save some troubles to all of you:

-First take the "Wine Wars: Belgaard" quest but don't do it
-Then go to the guarded treasure shown on the image, where you're supposed to find a letter that triggers the "Wine Wars: The Deus in the Machina" when you read it.
-If you didn't get any letter there, well that means I got lucky and you can just follow the other solutions to guide you through the quests.
-But if you were able to trigger the quest, then do it
-When it's done, just follow the "Wine Wars: Belgaard" quest, complete it and every other quests you receive after it and you should get the achievement.


I hope my wall of text wasn't too confusing for you, please don't downvote the solution untill you've tried, I'm just trying to help here. If my "solution" happens to be wrong after verification, I'll just delete it. Thanks.