The Witcher 3

I think I missed a cat school map. Got the Viper School swords, but they get outclassed fairly quickly.

I'm also wearing heavy cavalry armour. Anyone notice any real difference in what the weights do? Quicker stamina regen vs health?

Also, Relic weapons degrade QUICK. They weren't joking when they said repairs were money sinks.

And thank god I don't need to find every damn resource for each potion this time round, otherwise I'd never have enough necrophage stuff.

Yeah, you just need alcohol to replenish it, all the other alchemy ingredients are superfluous after you make the potion/grenades/decoction for the first time, which I really like about this game.

I'll see what I need to do in order to get the Cat stuff built. I need to be level 14 to be able to wield the Griffin silver sword, though I can also eventually get the enhanced weapons which may be better than the swords I have at the moment.

Nifty trick as well... Cat potions don't just help you see in the dark. They help you see invisible enemies. Like the freaking Ekinmara.

Found that bugger in a cave and it trounced me. Goes invisible and makes you unable to target it or hit it. It's big AND fast. And level 14.

Going to level up, go back there and murderate it.

Also, I'm playing my Geralt as someone not loyal to North or Nilfgaard, but as someone with a good sense of social justice. Northmen about to lynch a bloke because of his accent. DEATH TO ALL. bandits murder a bunch of people and tell you to walk on. DEATH TO ALL. Toll bridge DEATH TO ALL.

Bump into me in the stre- DEATH TO AL- wait, no, that's bad.

Anyway, those bandits who'd KILLED A WHOLE TOWN. One bomb into the middle, kills half, igni another, sword takedowns on the last two.

The game does make you feel like a badass at times when you play like a Witcher.

Now I just need to work out which skills to put points in and then which skills to "activate" in the slots. GAH! Do I want more sword damage, more sign augmentation, better potions?!

So. Darn. Hard.

Yeah, I'm doing my best to dispense justice where it needs dispensing but at the same time I'm trying to make it so that the North will win the war. I've probably killed hundreds of bandits, deserters, and pirates. I also don't pay at toll bridges, and also saved an elven woman from being burned in her home. Then a while later I killed a group of Scoia'tael that were raiding Redanian supply lines. Geralt's opinion was my own. "Moral high ground my ass. You're nothing but common bandits."

Oh, before I forget, you guys know that one guy who told the story of that "Gaffer! Gaffer!" encounter? I had that happen to me. Bunch of drowners just standing there waiting for the conversation to finish. Watching five drowners just stand politely waiting for us to finish was hilarious to me XD

edited 26th May '15 9:10:15 AM by theLibrarian

That was me

It was fucking hilarious!

edited 26th May '15 10:01:40 AM by YoKab

Hi, folks. I'm jumping into this thread because I got the game last week (on PC, through Steam), on a friend's recommendation, and have been plowing through it somewhat obsessively — like I needed another "eat my life, stay up until 3 AM on work nights" RPG, but there you go.

I should also note that I am deliberately doing a Thread Hop to avoid being spoiled, so I apologize if I'm retreading any ground.

I have not played any games in this series until now, so the nearest point of comparison I have is Skyrim. In that sense I can say that The Witcher 3 has vastly better graphics and significantly improved world detail. It has quite a few less bugs that I've observed; Bethesda's "release it now, let modders patch it" philosophy is apparently not shared by CD Projekt Red.

At the moment, I'm level 12 and something like halfway done with Velen; I've been grinding out side quests and locations rather than pursuing the main story. I've got a few observations.

• How does one "witch"?
• Gwent is surprisingly fun.
• Combat is quite dynamic; the mechanics encourage defense, unlike Skyrim, especially since health can't be regenerated instantly and runes have cooldowns governed by Stamina. Getting hit interrupts attack chains so you can be overwhelmed by superior numbers.
• Quen is the best sign, hands down, except against Spectres that can't be seriously affected without the trap sign (whose name I don't recall offhand). I find the others inconsistent.
• So... much... exploration. So... many... sidequests.
• I'm so used to scaling difficulty that the static difficulty of this game's encounters took me aback. It feels almost like a throwback, especially when the difficulty can jump so wildly from location to location. A pack of level 5 wolves can be right next door to a level 23 griffin. It seems to discourage the "explore everything" mentality when you can be brutally one-shotted by wandering into the wrong place.
• That said, some monsters are much easier or much harder than their level would indicate. For example, I've discovered how to beat a griffin's attack pattern to the point where I can grind out one much, much higher level than I am with judicious use of Quen and dodging. However, beating higher level wraiths seems almost impossible.
• The loot system is very, very odd. I suppose it feels more organic to have such wildly varying quality levels and arrays of bonus statistics, but I feel like I need a strategy guide to compare the values of everything. It's exceedingly rare to find a clear-cut upgrade.
• Vendors are super, super stingy with their gold. My purse is only now starting to feel full enough to afford buying things, and if I go on a crafting spree at the armorsmith in Crow's Nest, I walk away a sad, lean Witcher. As the most profitable quests are the Witcher ones, it definitely behooves you to do them.

I'm a bit concerned about the replay value — not that I'll be starting a new game without mods and cheats, but it seems that the game, by presenting you with only one character and a limited set of development choices, doesn't offer much more than playing as a hardass instead of a pushover, or vice versa. I haven't gotten to the point of choosing sides in the North vs. Empire battle, though.

edited 26th May '15 11:34:52 AM by Fighteer

I mostly just mark the locations for later and then come back when I'm a higher level.

I forgot to mention that mounted combat is ridiculously OP. I can take down whole battalions of enemies from horseback, no matter what their level. Well, high level archers/crossbowmen are tough but everybody else is cake. The AI seems incapable of hitting a mounted target with melee attacks. As long as you manage your horse's fear properly and don't get trapped on geometry, you're unstoppable.

Speaking of geometry, I notice that this game continues with the tradition of having obstacles to movement all over the place that are terribly inconsistent in terms of whether you can jump or move through them.

Also, what's with underwater treasure guarded by drowners that you can't fight?

edited 26th May '15 10:59:56 AM by Fighteer

You can fight them. Take out your crossbow and shoot.

Also I normally dismount for combat. I did once kill a bandit on horseback but even when fighting mounted enemies I find it better to hop off of Roach and hit the enemies with signs.

You can shoot your crossbow in the water? How's that help against creatures with thousands of hp when your crossbow does a measly 50 or 60 per shot? I've just taken to swimming around and trying to dodge them while looting as quickly as I can. The lousy swimming controls don't help.

Also, you have no idea of the glory of mounted combat. Attacks from a canter do double damage and attacks from a gallop do quadruple damage. Plus, you can hit multiple targets at once if you're close enough, and holding the attack button lets you enter slow-mo when you approach a target in order to time your blow properly. There's nothing quite like gibbing two deserters at a stroke with 950 damage crits. You're a juggernaut. Maximum gore.

edited 26th May '15 11:07:50 AM by Fighteer

Fighteer: inexplicably, the crossbow insta-kills drowners underwater with one shot. As opposed to on land where it takes many, many bolts.

... Really? Be nice if the game told you about that in any way.

It does. It tells you you can use your crossbow underwater. It doesn't say that anywhere besides loading screens but it says it.

Question: Is there some kind of relative level-based scaling mechanic whereby creatures who are much stronger than you get bonus damage? It seems that trying to fight "deadly" monsters for my level gets me gibbed much faster than my stats would indicate.

I would say so, maybe.

Forget Geralt. Holy Christ Ciri is awesome and OP, especially as you hit Novigrad and her Blink power unlocks.

I like how thick the armor in the game is, makes Geralt look like someone who's overweight. Though to be fair lot of armor in medieval ages were like that.

The only exceptions so far are the Cat and Bear armors, they look pretty cool!

WTB some of the modded armor sets from Skyrim. A lot of the ones that actually look like proper armor anyway, instead of fetish gear.

I was discussing the crossbow thing with my wife and... yeah, we just went with "A wizard did it". Water makes crossbow bolts lethal it would seem.

I seem to have moments of brilliance with the combat system. And then utter moments of idiocy - I get cocky and try to wail on someone too long. Or forget that rotfiends and drowners just jump at you, so you have to keep distance initially then ignii them.

I need to work out a decent set of powers to have "active" - it's vaguely irritating that I can't just have them all "active" and I need to set myself up.

Just did the Family Matters quest. Oh my god. THE FEELS. The Baron is a warlord and a bastard but STILL.

Also, fighting Wraiths... They are buggers. Can never quite get my head round their telegraphing and how to dodge them or parry them. And Yrden doesn't seem to do much either (Not leveled it enough as yet)

edited 27th May '15 3:28:09 AM by JerekLaz

Normal Wraiths aren't hard to kill; you just beat them up and dodge, like anything else. Noonwraiths and their nighttime counterparts are the evil ones; you have to lure them into the Yrden trap zone to make them vulnerable to melee attacks.

You mean something more than her dash ability? That's pretty awesome but it doesn't stop her from being a one-trick pony in combat.

edited 27th May '15 5:01:40 AM by Fighteer

What does the Blizzard potion do exactly in this game? Not seeing any effect other than the edges of the screen getting blurry.

Yeah Wraiths are ok, but I get swarmed by them as I have a tendency to get impatient...

Noonwraith I can just manage. The Nightwraith (at least the quest related one) handed my arse to me.

On a different note - I love how they've done fast travel; yet another way it makes the world feel larger than Skyrim AND more lived in. It's there but you still have to travel places, giving weight to every destination.

Blizzard slows down time, I believe. Gives you more time to avoid attacks and whatnot.

Anyway, finished the Keira Metz subplot and killed a Noonwraith. Going around getting more Griffin witcher gear right now.

I've found that the Witcher gear that I have access to is all medium armor, which doesn't fit with my perks. Does crafted gear get randomly assigned bonuses and sockets, or is that only for found gear? If not, it's mostly vastly inferior to drops.

Another question: does the game have any mod support, and does that mod support include equipment set hotkeys? It's a pain to switch between people killing gear and monster killing gear, for example.

Well I messed up at one point XD I managed to upgrade my Griffin armor but my level isn't high enough to wear it yet, so I ended up running around Novigrad naked for a bit before I crafted new armor to wear XD Hopefully by the time I get done with the Bloody Baron quest line I'll be level 14 and can put on all of my griffin equipment.

And hopefully I can get regular Ursine armor. I have the superior set but not the normal ones.