I just want King Bay Leaf...

[Carface Is My Spirit Animal]

I'm post-meet the Duke, the people at the fountain aren't talking about the thing for "Witch Hunt", Quina is at the Abbey, I know off the top of my head that I escorted her there. Not sure what other arbitrary nonsense I'm supposed to do so I can get this quest and get to the only place in the game that spawns an item needed for other quests/upgrade certain gear.

This game is getting on my nerves with this FOMO/Permanent Missable Content garbage, I hope they cut this crap with DD2. There are great things about this game but... not this kind of stuff.

[eyeC]

From the wiki:

This quest initiates immediately after completing Come to Court.

When passing Fountain Square, the merchant Brice can be overheard talking with Lena and Cale about a hunting party going after a witch ... which is, of course, Selene: the townsfolk believe her to be responsible for the return of The Dragon, and intend to exact their own terrible revenge.

[zadymek]

WItch Hunt doesn't happen unless you've met Selene during Lost and Found (and cleared this quest). Check the Quests menu to see if you did.

Anyway, Witch Hunt is the way to access the locked part of the Witchwood...but not the only one. You can get there using the so called barrel glitch as well (you'll need a Ferrystone to get out, so don't go there untill fast travel is unlocked).
https://dragonsdogma.fandom.com/wiki/%22Barrel_Glitch%22

BTW FOMO is your problem, not game devs'.

[eyeC]

The game warns you about accepting certain quests. The warnings instruct you to complete outstanding stuff before accepting that certain quest. This is a cue. It's up to you to then determine whether or not you need to complete some existing quests before undertaking this new one.

That said, there are still certain other other quests that will be missed if not done before some required predecessor, and here I can only recommend the 'quests' page on the wiki.

You can't miss any main quests, though, and missing some side quests is not a game breaker unless you've OCD .... even then, the game is infinitely replayable.

[Carnatux]

Welp time for a ng+ walkthrough to fix all the stuff you missed.

This was super helpful for me during my main normal run then my hardmode ng+ run that got me done the fastest but still unlocked the important stuff

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=600969749