The Witcher -- violence, sex, and alchemy as part of your daily balanced breakfast

played well over 100 hrs of this according to the stats tab and only recently got to Kaer Morhen.

Does make me wonder exactly how big the game is and what the average completion time would be.

I've been doing a lot of side quests and exploration, plus I've probably left Geralt standing there while I make a cup of tea a few times.

Still not bothered with bloody Gwent and probably never will.

Something I'd like to know more about is the Skills Tree / Character Build thing. Once I've leveled to 5 on an ability, is it worth keeping in my tree or will it not matter if I take it out?

I've just finished the first two games, breezed the books and am ready for my first Witcher 3 play through. Question for you folks: how do you keep engaged with these massive open world games to the end? (I'm a casual gamer at best, mostly Civilization and two or three older games a year). I love the idea of these huge games -- got really into Red Dead Redemption but after playing intensely for a two months my passion fizzled out and it remains two-thirds completed. Should I space it out, take breaks to play or do other things and return?

i prefer to just quit when i'm bored

i have quit so many open world games when i'm 30-50 hours in. it feels bad for a second, but then it feels really good

when i start to lose interest i try to get through the main storyline and ignore as much side content as i can - basically try to beat the game before i fully lose interest. glad it worked for me with witcher 3. many games (any asscreed game, rdr, gta) i don't end up making it.

yeah the answer is i don't. i played witcher 3 for 40 hours and then drifted away from it unfinished. same with most open world games. the main story has to be really tight to keep me going until the end and usually it isn't by necessity since it has to be compatible with long periods of player meandering and side questing

I just stop playing for long periods and come back to it later if I like it enough, parcel it out over a few years

About to fight the Wild Hunt at Kaer Morhen. Still so many question marks on the map. looking forward to exploring Toussaint

ah what the hell.. that's not the end... not the end at all?? fuck me

congratulations on reaching the end of intro

now you can finally unlock the final skill trees!

listen - i refuse to believe that ANYONE has ever beaten the witcher 3

I was a bit worried I'd bugged the game last night. There's a part of Novigrad where every time I walked through I'd get started on by these high-level witch hunters.

they prevented me from talking to Ciri in one key quest.

eventually I was forced to just fight all of them as they pulverised me and nicked my coin again and again and again. think I lost like 9 grand killing them all.

thankfully they didn't respawn and I could continue my quest.

incidentally, what difficulty level did you all play on? I went for Story and Sword, although I'm starting to wish I'd put the difficulty level up a bit.

I've started the game the Broken Bones level, because I played the first two games immediately prior so felt I had a good handle on the concepts. I also did it counterbalance some mods I used to eliminate annoyances like gear decay and thus makes things slightly easier.

I usually switch to the lower level if it takes me more than three tries on an encounter, though, since video game difficulty tends to frustrate me more than reward me, and I'm supposed to be having fun doing this. Too many childhood memories of SNES games where I threw down the controller ("this is bullshit!") after missing some platform jump and consequently abandoning a game for weeks.

The most annoying thing in this game is swimming and horse riding.

Drowning because Geralt becomes a straight-up idiot as soon as he puts his head underwater is super frustrating.
Also I hate some of these horse races where you fail as soon as you err slightly off the track, mostly because riding Roach is more like steering a particularly impertinent cow rather than a horse.

But on the bright side I'm onto the expansion packs and after a mammoth Sunday session got to experience Toussaint in all its Mediterranean sun-dappled glory. Such a nice break from the gloominess of Velen which of course is where a lot of the Hearts of Stone action takes place. Blood & Wine is seriously thrilling so far, HoS slightly less so but that's far from faint praise considering the high bar set by this game.

okay so the DLC stuff is perhaps better than the main game in many was. Hearts Of Stone started off as 'more of the same' but got genuinely creepy by the end. Blood and Wine is FANTASTIC in every way. Manages to mix camp high fantasy with some of the most unsettling moments in the whole game, and Toussaint is a wonderful area to explore.

Managed to get into a mutliple glitch scenario last night though. There's a quest I happened upon called 'Extreme Cosplay' that involves fighting a bunch of tough-as-nails 'living statues'. After dying a number of times, I was suddenly given a cut-scene that made out I'd won the fight. As soon as the cut-scene ended, the baddies (who I hadn't killed) just started whooping my arse, so I ran up some steps to get away from them, meditated to regain precious vitality and stock up on potions, and when I woke up I was outside the building with no way to get back in. I could see on the map on of the enemy NPCs was still in there, and she will be in there for the rest of time!

I’m tempted to buy this as it’s on sale in the Switch store, plus I’ve almost exhausted BotW and it seemed... similar-ish?

Can anyone tell me what the gameplay’s like? I like exploration-ing more than combat, and reputedly the world is massive in this?

Not bothered by the Switch graphics downgrade - I was more concerned that it’s going to be one of those games that’s interminable dialogue trees and overlong cutscenes - is that right/wrong?

thank god I don't have to learn how to play gwent. I was wtf'ing it.

it's great Chuck Tatum. yeah there's some combat but really it's about exploration too

This is proving to be the perfect quarantine activity. The world is so beautiful, much of the time playing it feels like taking a long walk in the sunny countryside. And there’s no chance of running out of content; I’m 25 hours into it and the number of question marks on my map of Velen still dwarfs the number of identified missions/locations.

its big

Jelly tbh. I'd love to re-experience the trilogy all over again as though for the first time.

i really wish you could pick flowers/herbs from the horse.

Absolutely, I started a two or three months ago and just now completed the first Novigrod visit. I've got a fair number of graphics mods installed and sometimes I just get a little stoned and go riding through the wine country on the east of the map, stop at the little houses, watch folks work and drink some wine from my inventory and just gallop through the scenery. Very peaceful.

TW1 is rough around the edges due to age and a relative lack of financial means at the time, but it really nails the Eastern European folksy atmosphere Sapkowski was going for in the first place and has a much more meaningful alchemy system. In some ways it's a more coherent experience than subsequent instalments, except perhaps for the second, which makes for an excellent self-contained story with some of the best narrative reactivity I've ever seen in a CRPG. So if you loved TW3, you definitely need to experience its predecessors as well.

I wish TW1 had the difficulty switching: I was frustrated with the precise clicks on Hard, so restarted with the regular difficulty. However, I leveled up quite a bit at some point due to grinding in the sewers and the rest of the game was far to easy: I was killing a swarm of drowners in one swing, don't think I even used potions. I literally ran out of places to put bronze talents.

TW1 is $1.49 on Steam?? and runs on my Mac? tempting.

That's more than tempting, c'mon!

alright. this will be my first Witcher. i'll direct bewilderment and complaints here.

Sounds good. Just keep in mind that it's a 13 year-old game put together by a then-novice Polish developer with a Gothic (the series, mind you) fetish. It's got plenty of soul, though.

but to be clear, though, it is not a souls-like game

Also, check out nexusmods if you are feeling adventurous, lots of mods to update TW1 graphics to something a little better, etc. Nice list here: https://www.pcgamer.com/witcher-1-mods/

Thanks all.

The game I'm currently finishing is the most polished, G-rated RPG I've ever played (Breath of the Wild) so this will definitely be different.

Heh, that it will.

Some of the throw-away lines and characters are so good and memorable. There's this one random peasant exclamation that cracks me up every time, something like "Sir! Why we're up to our noses in frights and horrors! Imps, samovilas, mamunes, flyin' drakes, pikes... oh, and BATS!" Just the way he spits out the word "BATS!" kills me.

Another time this run-of-the-mill unnamed merchant, using the same character model (wooden eyeglasses, etc) that many merchants use, unexpectedly provided such a genuinely warm and friendly interaction (all unique dialogue that I hadn't heard before from any other character) that I felt like I wanted to be friends with the voice actor. It's so impressive how they manage to create so many unique and believable characters, even for unnamed merchants and such who don't have more than three or four lines. Of course there are also the guys who just greet you with "What?" and say goodbye by grunting.

As consistent and impressive as the voice acting is in English, for my next playthrough – five years from now, maybe – I might just go for Polish with English subtitles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQVlT1qtr0w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-egGn5WYrk

heheheh

This is delightful.

Just got to the Beast and I'm getting destroyed. I've done all the local quests except for playing dice and fistfighting. I might have to grind some more just to keep myself alive in this fight, keeping Abigail alive seems impossible.

I got lucky with Aard and one-shotted the Beast. Given that I had to quicksave at the beginning of the fight, reload several times and get lucky to win I fear I'm missing something about combat, but anyway on to Chapter 2.

Love how the typical early town full of quests turned out to be sordid and corrupt. Whereas the Salamadra are just thieves and murderers, they're veritable innocents.

I always play with companions since my tactics is generally to get someone else to do initial damage while I spell long distance casts from a safe distance. I also like to taunt giants to lure them toward enemy camps and watch the chaos unfold

Oops wrong thread (skyrim)

Combat-wise, I found the learning curve quite steep at first. As with the overwhelming majority of CRPGs, however, it became a cake-walk once I got past the first half.

Oh and a word of advice: avoid walkthroughs and wikis while you're playing the game, but do check them out afterwards – there is much to miss out on, which is exactly as it should be!

2xp

I’ve neglected the main W3 story in favor of side quests, contracts, and exploration and, somehow, I’ve arrived at Kaer Morhen (recommended level: 19) at level 31. Might have to bump the difficulty up to Death March from Broken Bones so I don’t stroll through the rest of the game. OTOH, I suppose outmatching everyone is appropriate considering Geralt is a literally legendary warrior at this point, after several novels and two games worth of fighting…

yeah I never felt any real guilt about being overclocked while playing. the fights aren't really the star of the game

After spending like 40+ hours in this game, I just today finally found out about how quest recommended levels affect the XP you get from them (from what I understand, if a quest is 5+ levels below your own level, you get basically no XP from it). I had been so confused to be getting like 2xp for completing lower-level quests!

And yeah, I also don't mind being completely OP in all the fights. I'm in it for the story maaaan, and the scenery.

xpost WAHT

If you want to spruce up the combat, I heard the Ghost and Enhanced Edition mods are worth checking out.

I killed a bunch of wyverns in that godawful swamp and got a sword with a name, cool

Gotta love a game in which the post-quest journal entry is "in some way, I've learned too much"

This situation with Alvin is bad. Triss is probably going to lobotomize him and Shani is dangerously naive to think he's just a kid.

Love how after chapter 2 the swamp is filled with EVEN MORE monsters. I just wanted to be a hero, why is everything getting worse?

So I had no idea that when I left the middle portion of the game (fish god etc) that I was entering one long, scripted series of encounters with no chance to forage for potion ingredients. I never really thought about what I had, I just brewed and foraged as I needed, so no stocks to fall back on. I think I'll get through it but this seems unnecessarily stressful.