So I just read this book on history of games called “Blood, Sweat and Pixels” and was fascinated by the chapter on The Witcher 3 and mostly how the team put in so much thought and care in every single side quest. And seems that there are a lot of moral decision to be made on each adventure. So I finally decided to give it a try. Got any advice for me?
PLAY GWENT. The minigame became somewhat notorious because it’s really good - you can spend dozens of hours travelling the world and just playing cards.
I have done literally zero Gwent quests after the first match and even googled one time how to remove quests because they were annoying in the journal (you can’t)
Yooo, Triple Triad anyone?
I mean do you really have to suggest him that? He’s gonna get hooked like we all did
In any case W3 gwent is actually kinda crap in terms of balance but that just means you can own them super hard at some point
Is it common for people to save scum or is that blasphemy?
It’s your game you do as you please. I would definitely save scum
I only save scummed the Gwent tournament as it’s a one-shot type deal. The rest of the game there was no need as it autosaves frequently and there is basically no consequences to losing a game of Gwent to a rando
If I have played someone a bunch or am on a quest then definitely. Otherwise I try to keep it like live cards. Remember you can always cheat IRL too! It’s up to you if/when/where
I’ve literally got a save file prepped where I rushed getting to B&W before doing literally anything else so I can play the whole games’s Gwent with the Skellige deck when I decide to play it again. You don’t get enough time with it and it’s such a fun deck!
I didn’t finish the game because I am still playing gwent haha it’s that good. I would look up which cards you can only get from quests because you can’t get them afterwards. Just look up a mapping for quests to cards (no spoilers of course). I am on mobile and can’t find one currently
Oils are reusable so don’t try to ration them. I didn’t use them for the first quarter of the game because I didn’t know that. There are a lot of fights that would have been much easier.
With the real good tips here!
I felt so dumb when I realized
You’re kidding me‽
Aaaaaaaaaa
Put the baby in the oven
Just trust me on this bro
You’ll know when the time is right
I don’t trust you…
That’s a thing everyone needs to find out for themselves.
A note on brewing potions: You only need the herbs the first time you brew any particular potion, after you’ve brewed it once it will get restocked automatically when you meditate.
How did I not know this
I spent so much time not using the healing potion because I thought it’s so super rare when do I finally get a second one??? lol
If the combat is frustrating, turn the difficulty down. There will still be a learning curve, but it’ll be the difference between surviving and having to do an hour of work again because you forgot to quick save and get slapped by a foglet.
Interesting. I found the game to be basically boring without the extended difficulties.
The combat is just generally unintuitive. Which early in the game is frustrating. And if you’re like me and spend weeks between sessions you can forget all the timing and buttons you need to press.
Yeah I think I tried like 4 controller layouts on the steam deck before settling on one.
I’ve heard of people setting up the right track pad to use as a movable area zoom, so you could actually read the tiny text. You try setting that up?
I didn’t have an issue reading small text on the Deck.
I will say that I found the experience of playing Witcher on the deck to be an absolute pleasure.
I had to get kinda squinty with some of the herbs and plant descriptions.
ABC:
Always
Be
Cfancying a round of Gwent
If you wish to keep your sanity through the entire game, I suggest only doing the really big side quests and ignoring the majority of the others. The game is fucking huge, and it can easily become repetitive doing everything.
The sidequests are fucking great though. Didn’t play all, but those I did could be main quests in a different game. I had to skip some because there is just stupid amount of them and I was overleveling fast.
Don’t do map completition though - trying to do all is truly insanity
As a general rule of thumb, if it has dialogue, it’s going to be pretty good, and surprisingly so a lot of the time. The Witcher 3 is still unmatched for quality and quantity of side quests.
This wasn’t a particularly good open world game even for its time, so I’d say ignoring the map markers completely is often smart.
This is very true, especially around mid game.
There are significantly more quests than you need to advance levels and eventually you get level 30+ having done all the side quests and there will be several unfinished missions for recommend level 7-20 that become worthless unless the story/character behind it interests you.
Definitely grind early missions as they are basically tutorials and also give you lore on all the factions, don’t worry too much about gold as you will rarely be able to buy weapons better than what you find.
By mid game you’ll have tons of access to loot for selling and will probably be more interested in spending money on refining/upgrading items than buying mediocre armor and weapons.
The bombs and oils are great if you keep them upgraded
Never sell ingredients you don’t have a billion of, you can buy a potion to redistribute your levels and switching from magic/physical build to late game Alchemist is really strong and fun and changes up play style.
I would say do every actual sidequest but don’t bother clearing the map of all question marks. Hunting for Witcher school gear is also just mostly cosmetic and optional, but they’re the coolest armors and swords.
Also, if you’re not playing on the lowest difficulty, read the infos in your journal regarding the creatures and prepare accordingly.
You don’t lie, trying to clear every question mark is what killed it for me back when. I think I stopped on the islands somewhere. And every time I pick it back up, the question marks kill it for me again. 😂
Same, the map is just overwhelming.
I spent like 4 years playing with my best friend. We were having a beer in the evening he watched me play Witcher on death March, i tried to do everything. It was the best way to play the game i think. Took us 4 years though.
Red Baron is the best questline imo
Don’t chase all the markers on your map, most of them are crap and you’ll burn out.
So much this. If I never see another Smuggler’s Cache again it would still be too soon!
Tell your friends and family that you love them but you won’t see them for a while
I’m nearly finishing up The Witcher 2. Judging from the discussions, I’m afraid of starting Witcher 3 because I have other backlog of games I have to finish as soon as possible.
you got deadlines or something?
We all have a final deadline for finishing our backlog and experiencing as much as we can in this world.
I hope it’s not coming up soon as I haven’t made much progress!
Bought games from years ago I have to finish. Waste of money if I don’t complete them but I keep buying new ones.
First, stop buying games (*1)
Second, consider reading about the sunken costs fallacy, e.g. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=how+to+overcome+sunk+cost+fallacy
(*1) there’s piracy xdd
That’s why I am not buying new ones until I finish the others.
Edit: also, I do take the high seas. But only games coming from greedy devs who don’t deserve my money.
In the first region in the midst of the first small village two neighbors are arguing. They are not giving a quest, they just talk to each other and listening gives such an insight in how war can turn people against each other that have been living peacfully and been friends for years.
Do the side quests and take your time with the dialogue. Some of these stories are impactful, mostly sad and worth your time. If you are told that you should talk to people to find out more about your contract, do it. Some of these quests can be done with only talking to one person but you want to get the information from everyone and especially their side of the story.
Do not look up the outcome of decisions. Make your decisions and live with them at least at your first playthrough. Most decisions have impact and seeing the outcome unfold makes this game special and yes often there is no “good choice” - that’s war for you.
Last: Buy every Gwent card you can get your hands on and play with everyone you can. If you can’t win just come back later with better cards and obliterate them - it will feel goooood!
The DLC’s are a must.
Try out difficulty settings - there is a sweet spot for most people somewhere but what it will be for you no one can know, but it would be a shame if you play through the game not having found the difficulty that fits you best because you “always play on <insert difficulty>”.
Have fun, I wish I could play this game for the first time again.
I completely disagree with the top comment. Dont worry about the main game.
I advocate that you go in with the mindset that you are a part of an old and important guild, and that the main story is just an extension of your every day job of being a Witcher. The “side quests” are unbelievably good. So good that half of them have better stories than entire video games and series. I didn’t bother with the main story (only in parts, organically). I just wandered the country side and “did the job of a Witcher”. There is sooooooooo much to this game. Also, get the DLC’s.
One word of warning however. The power scaling is somewhat broken. If you over-level before moving forward, the game can get pretty boring only because the enemies become trivially easy to beat.
edit: Also, try and bang anything with eyes.
Don’t try to go for both main romance options, the outcome isn’t worth it. Better to do two playthroughs if you really want to know.
Don’t try to romance Ciri.
/s
I mean it’s definitely an ending worth seeing. So 3 playthroughs. And then all the other variable ending stuff. Let’s face it we all YouTubed the other endings after our second playthrough.
If you have the patience for it, try playing on a much harder difficulty. The medium and low difficulty levels don’t provide the same weight. Many systems in the game are unnecessary at lower difficulty levels but higher difficulty forces you to engage in them to get the extra edge over certain encounters.
Higher difficulties force you to engage in potion brewing, reading up on enemies, and making genuinely tough choices morally in order to keep Geralt alive. Lower difficulties remove all the tension from these systems.
Also as another user mentioned, don’t skip any dialogue and engage in the side quests/contracts as they give a lot of unique flavor and nuance to the world and story.
This, this game isnt about fighting, it’s about prepping, it’s about researching your prey and knowing what you need to get the edge on it before you go in, brewing the potions you need and knowing what to hit it with
Oh yeah, I really wish I had played on a higher difficulty for this reason. Especially because one of the most immersive and thematically cool parts of the game for me was the main story section near the end of act 1 where you have to make a blade oil to fight a >!werewolf!< . (Vague wording to minimise spoilers in my main comment.) I really liked this because it made me reflect on what it means to be a Witcher — how the knowledge might be more important than the mutations and the magic.
An additional point to the prepping is that being open-world means that you can potentially go to areas or take on challenges far beyond the “intended” level. On lower difficulties, I didn’t feel sufficiently punished for being audacious in that way, and I think the potential for punishment is part of the fun of the audacity. Especially when getting destroyed like this isn’t the game “fuck you for even trying”, but rather a “try exploring some more, find some new recipes and come back later (or just read the bestiary and find out that you already have the item you need)”
Just an FYI, Lemmy supports spoiler tags
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I’ve done two full playthroughs of the game (plus dlc), one on the standard difficulty and one on hard. I can confirm that many of the game’s systems are rendered unnecessary by the easier difficulty. I really enjoyed my second playthrough and would definitely recommend.
However, if you don’t think you’ll enjoy that (having to plan and work for every advantage to be able to succeed) I would wholeheartedly endorse the easier levels. The story and quest design alone are worth the price of admission! Side quests in this game make many other games main story pale in comparison.
Don’t skip the dialogue, even if you use subtitles and are a fast reader. It sometimes switches from one sentence at a time to whole chunks of dialogue and action getting skipped. Plus, the voice acting is superb, and the physical reactions of characters can convey a lot of emotion.
Apart from White Orchard, you shouldn’t need to complete all side quests in your area before moving on. Particularly with witcher gear, it’s sometimes expected to need to come back at a later time when you’re more powerful.
Others may disagree, but I don’t bother dismantling gear and weapons. I find it simpler to just sell things and buy materials I need from vendors.
There’s nothing worth finding in the seas around skellege.
I cannot up vote this enough. If you need smugglers caches then go for it. Otherwise that’s just a headache.
