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

i recently started on this too. i had tried the first one at the time and hated it so i mentally wrote the series off since. but i saw and got so many recommendations for 3 that i had to get it in the end and yeah it is exceptional. movement still nearly as clunky as i remember it from 1 tho.

i finished the tutorial area and just started on the next area. it's so huge, and i love that the side quests and stuff are well written and interesting. i haven't really delved into gwent at all. is it the kind of thing that gives advantages or just a bit of fun on the side? should i worry about it now or can i go back to it later?

Worry about it now because you'll need the special cards from certain characters (like the Baron) that will disappear and you'll never catch up with the quality level of cards NPCs have in Skellige or Novigrad.

it's also just fun. it's a p nicely designed game and quick to play a match

don't worry about the vastness, just enjoy the fact that even the smallest side quest is going to be pure quality, and there are hundreds of hours of enjoyment in that thing. I actually think the story of Hearts Of Stone is better than the base game, it really is wonderful....

due to this year of shittiness i've actually kept blood and wine back for as long as possible, first reason being so that i have a guaranteed excellent thing to enjoy in christmas holidays, and second reason being that i'm gonna be fucking sad when i have no more of this to play.

fuck gwent if it doesn't appeal, i never played it even once.

this is the best game.

well i played it once, but after that i never played it again.

must try the expansion packs, though i still haven't finished the original, i'm too addicted to randomly grinding my way around the question marks. there's nothing i love more than a huge bandit camp.

I love how the bandits never learn how dumb it is to attack you, even the last guy is always there confidently shouting abuse at you as you stride menacingly over the severed limbs of all his friends, deflecting crossbow bolts back at him

fuck gwent if it doesn't appeal, i never played it even once.

this is the best game.

― Bein' Sean Bean (LocalGarda), Thursday, November 17, 2016 4:40 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

cosign all of this

I love how the bandits never learn how dumb it is to attack you, even the last guy is always there confidently shouting abuse at you as you stride menacingly over the severed limbs of all his friends, deflecting crossbow bolts back at him

there's a lovely bandit beach down south somewhere, like about 100 of the fuckers around some boat. sort of like a club tropicana for bandits except instead of drinking in speedos you maim and burn them all with bombs and igni.

it's like south west as far as i recall.

I just finished Blood & Wine, which pretty much gives you a whole new game world to explore, which has the added bonus of being like a fever-dream version of 14th Century Provence

and i'm back.

i played a couple hours last night, bumped up to LVL6, and kept dying during the Bloody Baron mission where you have to keep the torches lit while the Pellar completes his spooky chants. i was getting to the point where i was saying "oh come on! come on!" in annoying little kid voice, out loud, after every loss, so i went to bed. in the cold light of the morning i realized that i probably should have adjusted my Sign skills so that they're more effective against Wraiths, who were just tearing me apart. Also I leveled up and didn't even take the time to pick a new skill or do anything else. Negronis. I had a few and it affected my decisionmaking. I'm sorry The Witcher III.

anyway i had a great time getting back into it after however long it had been since i moved on. this time i anticipate sticking with it a lot longer.

i tried to get into gwent when i re-engaged last night. i don't think it's going to happen. about 5 tutorial screens in i just kind of gave up. an hour later i mustered the will to challenge a shopkeeper to a game. i bet 2 crowns. 5 minutes later, still on the first screen, trying to figure out which faction and leader to go with i forfeited

spectre oil on your sword, and use yrden for the wraiths. that should speed it up!
from what i remember it's almost like a mandatory test that battle, in that it teaches you to look at the bestiary properly and use oils.

everyone mostly playing this on the default difficulty?

difficulty level for these kind of games depends on how much you are going to do side quest/extras. i figure they have to balance them for ppl going m/l straight thru the main quest with only occasional diversions. that means that if you do all of the extra stuff and get to the main quest last, also my approach, then you over-level. it is worth the initial extra challenge to crank the difficulty a level and have the game not be a cakewalk later imo.

been playing on normal and it's been pretty good but starting to get easy - thought about making it more difficult now (i'm at around lvl 10)

yeah, normal is pretty easy -- i think the kotaku guide recommended playing it on one level harder, saying that it got a little too easy in the late stages

phew - thanks jamiesummerz, that did the trick.

i was stuck in an incredibly annoying save situation where i somehow saved it about 2 seconds before the battle triggered, leaving me enough time to pause the game and adjust the loadout, skills, and repair my sword, but not enough time to save the game again afterward. as a result i had to do annoying inventory stuff every single time i died, which was like 15 times. on top of that, last night my ps4 installed a big upgrade to the game, and when i started it up this morning it had a handy mandatory tutorial for the inventory screen which i had to skip through every single time i reloaded.

but it's over. now i'm going to wander around and do some treasure hunting and alchemy and crafting and chill

i was stuck in an incredibly annoying save situation where i somehow saved it about 2 seconds before the battle triggered

similar situation compelled me to post this, the only time i ever got close to throwing the controller, swearing at the television in the middle of the night

I SIGNED UP FOR A GWENT TOURNAMENT NOT FISTS OF FURY AGHHHHHHHHG

― ﷽ (diamonddave85), Saturday, January 23, 2016 10:48 PM (nine months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

an invitation from keira metz

geralt and keira's journey to the elven mage's lair had forged a tight bond between them, the kind harrowing life-or-death experiences forge between soldiers at war or students during exam week. and so when it was all over keira invited geralt to stop by her hut sometimes, in a way that suggested she did mean for an afternoon of tea and crumpets.

i'm assuming this means she wants to play gwent. i'm afraid to go because i've only really played gwent once, and i had no idea what i was doing and didn't even finish.

ah, youth

Complete edition is $25 on Amazon today (I ordered it)

I started this last night and I'm kind of overwhelmed but after months of playing Fallout IV this looks (visually) SO MUCH BETTER

yeah when i started fallout iv that kinda ended it for me - it just looked so dead compared to the witcher.

as mentioned the sound is amazing too if you can hook it up to something nice.

i was also overwhelmed at first, and i was a bit confused by the story, having never played the previous entries in the series. but after about 4-5 hours it really settles into a satisfying groove that hasn't let up since. and geralt is a great videogame character. to continue the Fallout4 abuse, geralt is on a different level than the generic fallout character person with the terrible voice acting that you're forced to inhabit.

Fallout has some decent scenery but the character design is so ugly and primitive compared to something like this or Uncharted.

I read some background on the story and mythology of the first two games before playing. I'm more overwhelmed by gameplay stuff but I'm sure it will get more natural.

i never found the story stuff bothersome - i never played the other games. it kinda pieces it together.

the gameplay is definitely a bit intense at first, like all the tools and items etc feels a bit overwhelming but you can kinda ignore any parts that seem tedious. it's complex enough some of it, i mean for a videogame like that i play to escape from a world where i need to solve complicated problems.

i mean obv choose your own path but i funnelled most of my resources into igni and fast sword attacks and then kept upgrading bombs. there's a spell called dragon's breath that makes your bombs and igni cause these huge mushroom clouds, increasing in severity as you power up. just throwing this out there in case that appeals.

i'm still pretty early on, i think - LVL 14, and i've been wandering around doing novigrad-related quests for the past couple hours - but i still haven't really gotten into the crafting stuff yet. crafting, so far, seems like kind of a waste of time because the stuff i find out on quests are always better than even the best crafting option for my level. i'm guessing as crafting becomes more important toward the end game? kind of ditto with alchemy, although it least that's useful for creating enemy-specific potions and stuff.

yeah that's my experience of crafting too. if you grind around the place you end up finding way better weapons.

good to know! i won't waste too much time thinking about it now, then.

the only other issue i've had as i play through is just trying to figure out which quests to take on. i'm trying to take on the main quests when i'm relatively close to their recommended level so i don't end up overleveling and breezing through the main storyline. but as i take that approach, it ends up having a similar effect on the secondary quests - right now i have a bunch of LVL 7-10 quests that i haven't done, and now i'm way too leveled up for them to offer any satisfying challenge.

i dunno, it's not a big deal, and i'm still managing to fit in a lot of sidequests when i'm still close to the appropriate level, but i'm starting to get FOMO as i steer Roach around the landscape.

i think it's so big that that's maybe inevitable. i did go back and clean up a lot of quests even if i got like 1 xp for doing them because i was so far levelled up.

i still haven't finished the first game tho - i am like level 25 or maybe more but got sidetracked by question marks.

crafting is important for the witcher gear but pointless otherwise. alchemy is great tho, they did a terrific job making potions and oils etc easy to use and relevant. one of the big successes of the game vs the genre standard imo.

i am at level 20, and was out on skellige doing the main story and just decided to go back to velen and investigate question marks, and mop up some witcher contracts

being overpowered in some confrontations can be boring, but i'm using it as a way to try out different patterns of attack/parrying

haven't decided on a "build" really. yrden appeals to my sensibilities but igni seems most practical

for a while i was heavily relying on quen - before battle and during. but now i hit it before and then igni throughout. igni is crazy good esp against human opponents.

yeah it's the best - the mind control is v powerful too but mostly igni plus dragon breath plus bombs and you can take down anything.

might have said this already but one of the tips said to block against humans and dodge v monsters but i never found that to be true - dodge against everything imo.

cluster bombs and underpowered idiot bandits are a very fun combination in the late game ime

sold my copy of this after "finishing" - didn't bother with all the ?'s in the water. loved it but don't see coming back to replay it. an actual rpg witcher wd be dope

Still too caught up in Skyrim to give this the time it requires

so my geralt told triss he loved her bc a) i barely know anything about yenn and b) she's a hot redhead. i'm pretty fine w/ the decision but i do wonder how much story i'm going to miss out by foreclosing on yenn? the way he leaves triss makes it seem like his story with her is over for the game... so maybe that was a short-sighted decision on my part?

no

you won't get less of anything overall, just different.

Yeah but the Yenn love runs deep.

There's a good little moment on a mountain.

there'll be terrible pornography regardless, follow your heart/index finger

Yenn is a total bitch, Triss definitely the right choice. I had planned on Triss but i think the signposting of that specific moment where you have to tell her you love her maybe wasn't clear enough to me, so i missed it and ended up without either of them! ah well, i still got a great ending. being a good dad is far more important in the process of getting a good ending than who you end up seeing terrible porn of.

that almost imperceptible nod when you suggest a game of gwent #justwitcherthings

i'm in skellige and up to level 20 and i feel like the end of the game is rapidly approaching. i still have a bunch of quests i could backtrack to finish but probably won't... i out-leveled a ton of stuff, esp among the contracts. what level does this go upto? 30?