Hoo boy, let me be honest with you about this one: I hate this bug. It makes me wanna kill myself.

Let's start at when I booted my two month old save up just today (8/8). I was ready to jump back into W3 what with the new patches and the free DLCs that had been released in my absence.

So, I start it up and everything is fine for a while. I'm getting on a boat to Skellige but I save before talking to the boat captain - as is my rule of thumb for conversation - and it tells me saves are incompatible with previous versions of the game. Cool, understandable. I only keep three saves in rotating fashion anyway. I've since overwritten those saves now. <--- This'll be important later, so like, remember it.

Anyway, shit goes down on the Skellige-bound boat and Geralt is knocked unconscious. When he awakens and I regain control, I notice his weapons are not strapped to his back. Thinking it a visual glitch, I check the equip screen and sure enough, they've been unequipped. But they now have glaring red "X"s across them. I am now inexplicably four levels below their level req. For reference, they are the enahnced Feline Steel/Silver swords, req. level 23.

I have no other weapons in inventory, I was not waiting to level myself up to these weapons. Also, I have not simply forgotten the circumstances of my situation over my two month reprieve. I have a 5% Igni damage bonus in my silver sword; why would I have slotted something in if I couldn't use it? Furthermore, if I return to a previous save before my weapons were auto un-equipped, I can see that these weapons which shouldn't even be usable based on my (apparent) level our equipped to my person and can be drawn and attacked with!

So now you see my issue. I have overwritten the saves from pre-patch (the patch is what I assume somehow caused this) and now can only A) tough it out (not actually that hard, but it means the game bug wins and laughs at me) B) find some arcane solution. C) start over; not fucking happening.

Has anybody encountered anything similar and if so, any suggestions? Is this some weird retroactive version of that quest XP bug? I'm fully prepared to simply be told I'm fucked and to get replacement swords until I reach the Feline level. Still, this is "walk the fuck away from this shit" level of problems. What if I had saved two months ago just before a scene that both happens to unequip my weapons and later forces me into a boss battle? Make due with the game's token sword? Fuck that.

Like... Fuck.

I figured it was a balancing thing. That sort of thing sucks, and I'd usually stick to 2 or 3 rotating saves. Nowadays I make sure to have a dozen or so in lengthy games, because you never know.

You should be able to undo a patch, if I'm not mistaken, but if you overwrote everything it kind of sounds like you're boned. I haven't played in a month so I might have the same issue when I return. Hurrah.

Yes, a lot of stuff was rebalanced with the latest patch. In your inventory there should be a potion called the wolven hour or something like that. I haven't encountered this myself, but I remember the devs talking about this specific feature/bug.

Exactly. The developers planed for this when they rebalanced the level requirements. Take that potion, and all the level requirements on your gear will drop dramatically for an hour, leaving you time to find new gear.

And for the future, just to be on the safe side, you should probably use all ten saves.

I'm glad I'm still rocking that starting chest but I feel for anyone who has to go through this. From what I can tell the potion only lowers the level requirement by two levels if I'm not mistaken?

@spaceinsomniac: They didnt plan for this. The rebalancing was done in the previous patch. After a massive outcry from their community which couldnt reequip their gear they introduced the wolven hour pot in this patch as a rushed temporary fix.

Like others have said, it's not a bug. Gotta drink that potion and fight your way to a blacksmith and buy some new shit, yo.

@shadowconqueror: You can also drink that potion and make sure you dont do anything that automaticly unequips your eq until you have leveled up. Once the eq is already equipped you are fine.

From what I understand, you have a working save in Novigrad. At that point you're already underlevelled for your main gear. Just go to a blacksmith, buy a crappier sword and use it until you gain 4 levels. No big deal.

Also, it's quite easy to avoid combat in the area you land in Skellige. You can just as well buy some new equipment there.

Instead of sticking with rotating saves do a couple of milestone saves. I for an example quicksave alot and then every 30-60min or so i make a hard save that i rotate between a couple of saveslots. At the end of every play session i make another hardsave that i never overwrite unless i run out of saveslots and even then i judge it carefully what saves to overwrite so i got the most important milestones intact.

If you do indeed have a save in Novigrad you can roll back to that but my suggestion is to just buy some cheap eq and get by until you level up again. It also aint expensive to craft some ordinary feline armor if you wanna roll with that.

Yeah this isn't a bug. Go to a merchant or a smith and buy/craft a sword and use it until you're leveled high enough for the feline ones.

You'll also get a crap ton of runes over the course of the game. I ended up using them all the time to clear up inventory space.