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

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.

Finished. My favorite part of the game was a random dwarf in Vizima who let out a frustrated "fuck" as he walked by.

I just got out of the prologue and made it to Vizima. I'm level 4 (recommended level 4) and I feel like I dicked around for waaaay longer than necessary in the first area.

general consensus is that dicking around in White Orchard is recommended. Some suggest completing all the side-quests before moving on. I didn't, but going slow in this game is a lot more rewarding than trying to speed through it

I've just got out of White Orchard too. I do get the urge to go and visit all the ? everywhere rather than following the main quest.

One q

is it better to sell all the random swords etc you get, or break them down? Or just stash everything? (haven't put anything in a stash yet)

Level scaling makes loot stupidly meaningless for the most part, including unique swords and armour.

Did you guys play the DLC packs? Better than the main quest in many respects!

Hearts of Stone is the series’ highlight imo.

Finished the main story a few days ago, and working through HoS now. I loathed those rich-kid hipster bandit-soldiers on sight and can't wait to whirly-blade through the whole pack of them. Except for Poos Peepuhs lady, she's cool.

I don't even loot anymore, even after installing a "no junk loot" mod; I get enough money from side quests and contracts, and don't really buy anything anyway. In the first Witcher, since I leveled up too much in the sewers on normal difficulty, I was powerful enough that I rarely needed anything other than a Swallow, so had tons of useless plants.

downloading Witcher 2

Restarted Witcher 3 and I'm really enjoying it. Just about to go and see the Baron which is about where I stopped a couple of years ago. Not getting too hung up on doing all the quests this time round is helping

One of the biggest annoyances in the entire game is having to repeatedly haul ass all the way from the fast travel marker at the front gate of Crow's Perch all the way up the hill into the main courtyard because they didn't just put the fast travel marker at the top of the hill to begin with! It wouldn't be so bad, but a number of missions entail going back there, so it gets tiresome.

That and accidentally lighting/extinguishing candles when you meant to loot a container next to them.

(one too many "all the way" in there)

I felt really bad about accidentally putting out someone's Aga.

So I can run Witcher 2 on my MacBook Pro ... at 1024x768 ... the screen only goes blank once every few minutes or so, and I can read small text (like objectives under the minimap) if I lean close to the screen ... I'll see how long I can deal with this, might just play Witcher 3 on my Switch.

One of the biggest annoyances in the entire game is having to repeatedly haul ass all the way from the fast travel marker at the front gate of Crow's Perch all the way up the hill into the main courtyard because they didn't just put the fast travel marker at the top of the hill to begin with! It wouldn't be so bad, but a number of missions entail going back there, so it gets tiresome.

That and accidentally lighting/extinguishing candles when you meant to loot a container next to them.

― Dan I., Monday, April 20, 2020 8:13 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm. it's really annoying, especially when you over hear the same bit of monologue over and over again

Okay, there is another bit of bystander npc "dialogue" that I love and will never get sick of no matter how often I hear it: when you run into someone, sometimes they will let out a big, nasally, Francophonic "HONNNH!" and it kills me every time