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Pellisworth
Jun 20, 2005

Shinjobi posted:

Just started this game, and I can't help but laugh at myself.

Level 1, no ability points, still trying to figure out the game: I race back to town and meditate as soon as the sun sets. I ain't loving around with monsters at night.

Level 2, a couple of ability points invested, starting to tinker with stuff: gently caress the world, I will murder anything anywhere anytime.


That level up just changed so much.

Yeah the early game can be pretty tough until you get the hang of combat and figure things out, but the difficulty drops off a lot after early Velen.

You're in White Orchard, the tutorial zone. There's no reason not to thoroughly explore everything, there are 3-4 Places of Power which will permanently grant you ability points, plus each quest introduces you to different gameplay mechanics. It'll probably take you like 3-5 hours at least and you'll end up level 4ish. Then you're into Velen which is a loving huge open map with a wide level range of monsters and for most players it's the first big high point of the game, very atmospheric and the main quest there is fantastic.

Some newbie tips:

-Use all your alchemy stuff liberally, you don't need to recraft alchemy items, they're containers that refill whenever you meditate for the price of one unit of hard alcohol to refill everything. So go nuts, alchemy is cheaply and infinitely rechargeable.
-In combat, don't get greedy and stay mobile. Get in a couple sword attacks, use a bomb or Sign to apply CC, dodge or roll away. Rinse repeat.
-Feel free to sell everything you pick up and hoard crafting materials. The best gear is crafted and crafting materials don't weigh anything.
-Thoroughly explore dialogue options you'll learn a lot of cool background story and get important clues for Witcher sleuthing. The dialogue is one of the best parts of the game and you're really missing out if you're skipping through it.

Also, post your reactions to stuff and feel free to ask questions! There are a lot of posters who finished W3 a long time ago and are just lurking and enjoying the game vicariously. The game is 1) awesome and 2) loving huge, there is a solid 100 hours of content in the base game and there's virtually zero busywork grinding or fetch quests.

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Bicyclops
Aug 27, 2004

Pellisworth posted:


Some newbie tips:


The alchemy one is big, definitely wish I'd known it going in.

Also: Quen is a great buffer for learning enemy attack patterns. It basically lets you take one free blow without taking damage. The dodge is better than the roll for most smaller enemies. And whenever the game makes you get into a fistfight, use the counter-attack (hit block just as they're going into their swing). If you're playing Gwent, card draw (spies) is definitely the way to go. Once you get into alchemy a bit, I'd recommend buying Mandrake Cordial and Cherry Cordial every now and then.

And as a horrible completist: don't worry too much about missing content. If you absolutely plow through the main story, there will probably be a few side quests you'll miss here and there, but almost every quest you don't participate in feels more like "I made a certain choice in my file" than "I forget to scour the area to look for secrets." There aren't a hell of a lot of things that time out, so feel free to accumulate side quests and contracts and come back to them whenever you feel like. The game will give you a big, huge glaring alarm when you're passing the point of no return for most stuff so that you have an opportunity to sit back and do that.

Enjoy it. It's a ton of fun! :)

Ugato
Apr 9, 2009

We're not?
Another note on Alchemy: I think it's the hardest two difficulties that don't give you health on a rest? If you're on a difficulty where this happens, be sure to chug whatever potions you need to get back to full before resting. If you used 1 bomb it's the same cost as refilling every potion, decoction and bomb from 0. And, if you're not an alchemy buld, resting also clears your toxicity.

Sanzuo
May 7, 2007

This foglet kills me in two swings. I'm doing very little damage to it. How am I supposed to win this fight?

yo mamma a Horus
Apr 7, 2008

Nap Ghost
Recently beat the main story and Heart of Stone. God drat, what a great game this is!

Also little ciri is cool.

Air Skwirl
May 13, 2007

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.

Sanzuo posted:

This foglet kills me in two swings. I'm doing very little damage to it. How am I supposed to win this fight?

Make sure you're using necorphage oil, Aard will get rid of the ghost/clones, and when in doubt abuse Quen.

Alternatively, if you can, go do something else for a bit to level up.

Spiderdrake
May 12, 2001



Sanzuo posted:

This foglet kills me in two swings. I'm doing very little damage to it. How am I supposed to win this fight?
The named one was a bit of a difficulty spike for me too, keep in mind you can eat and swallow to heal up while he's goofing around and you'll have time to regen stamina for quen as well.

I took to it as more of a battle of attrition.

lazorexplosion
Mar 19, 2016

Always wait until it's done with its attacks before trying to swing at it, it either does one hit or two, so wait for it to appear, dodge twice, hit it until it disappears repeat. Put down a Yrden and hang out in it so it's slowed and you get more time to dodge and beat it down.

Also try dodging, then throw a dancing star bomb at it and then wail on it while it's trying to put itself out.

Watermelon Daiquiri
Jul 10, 2010
I TRIED TO BAIT THE TXPOL THREAD WITH THE WORLD'S WORST POSSIBLE TAKE AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS STUPID AVATAR.
Heh, for the quest where you have to kill a fork tail by baiting it with a sheep, it seems like you can just axii the thing into following you instead of having to chase it. Of course, it seemed to follow you once axii wore off, so it might just be a case of something that you never needed to bother to do in the first place.

RatHat
Dec 31, 2007

A tiny behatted rat👒🐀!

Watermelon Daiquiri posted:

Heh, for the quest where you have to kill a fork tail by baiting it with a sheep, it seems like you can just axii the thing into following you instead of having to chase it. Of course, it seemed to follow you once axii wore off, so it might just be a case of something that you never needed to bother to do in the first place.

Yeah I don't think you need axii. Lil' Bleater knows what's up.

Drunk Driver Dad
Feb 18, 2005
I think you can axii Princess too, but I didn't know that until after. Stupid piece of poo poo goat!

Fuzz
Jun 2, 2003

Avatar brought to you by the TG Sanity fund

Sanzuo posted:

This foglet kills me in two swings. I'm doing very little damage to it. How am I supposed to win this fight?

Get the Alternate version of Quen asap if you can. Will help you a lot in tight situations.

Drunk Driver Dad posted:

I think you can axii Princess too, but I didn't know that until after. Stupid piece of poo poo goat!

Awesome post/avatar combo.

Owl Inspector
Sep 14, 2011

yo mamma a Horus posted:

Recently beat the main story and Heart of Stone. God drat, what a great game this is!

Also little ciri is cool.

When I saw this for the first time it stood out to me how much she looks like she hates having to wear that dress. Nice detail about her character before you actually meet her.

Yikes A Zombie!
Jul 18, 2003

Finally decided to just turn Nvidia Hairworks off. It easily knocked 10-15 fps off when it was on, and wasn't that impressive.

Drunk Driver Dad
Feb 18, 2005
What is it with hair and witchers? I was playing Witcher 2 a bit and Geralt's hair kept going nuts. Not sure how to describe it but it kept bugging back and forth between "still" and "hair while moving/in the wind"

e: also game feels janky as gently caress with a keyboard. Much better once I got my DS4 working with it and rebound for most of the controls to be similar to W3.

Arc Hammer
Mar 4, 2013

Got any deathsticks?

Yikes A Zombie! posted:

Finally decided to just turn Nvidia Hairworks off. It easily knocked 10-15 fps off when it was on, and wasn't that impressive.

Get the mod which disables geralt's hair but keeps hairworks on everything else. His beard looks great with it as do wolves

Bicyclops
Aug 27, 2004

Drunk Driver Dad posted:

What is it with hair and witchers? I was playing Witcher 2 a bit and Geralt's hair kept going nuts. Not sure how to describe it but it kept bugging back and forth between "still" and "hair while moving/in the wind"

e: also game feels janky as gently caress with a keyboard. Much better once I got my DS4 working with it and rebound for most of the controls to be similar to W3.

If you have the right haircut and wear the glasses, it seems to screw with virtually everything. Anyone I meet who's carrying a bow, it clips back and forth between being on their shoulders and sort of being strapped to their butt while they're talking to me, it owns.

Fuzz
Jun 2, 2003

Avatar brought to you by the TG Sanity fund

Drunk Driver Dad posted:

What is it with hair and witchers? I was playing Witcher 2 a bit and Geralt's hair kept going nuts. Not sure how to describe it but it kept bugging back and forth between "still" and "hair while moving/in the wind"

e: also game feels janky as gently caress with a keyboard. Much better once I got my DS4 working with it and rebound for most of the controls to be similar to W3.

Get the combat mod that CDPR made themselves.

http://redkit.cdprojektred.com/?c=mod&m=show&p=77

Bust Rodd
Oct 21, 2008

by VideoGames
Playing it with a 360 Controller really opened up combat for me. Having Dodge/Roll so easily accessible really creates a more dynamic action game.

Arc Hammer
Mar 4, 2013

Got any deathsticks?
I tried that Turbo lighting mod out, and immediately uninstalled it the minute I walked inside a building. There's a reason that grim 'n gritty washed out lighting looks like rear end.

The Weather mod is excellent however.

Fuzz
Jun 2, 2003

Avatar brought to you by the TG Sanity fund
Yeah, the lighting mod is mainly for Toissant. Going back to, say, Skellige, with it I realize it's actually kinda meh and causes more problems than it solves. The default lighting is fine, for the most part, anyway.

Drunk Driver Dad
Feb 18, 2005

Fuzz posted:

Get the combat mod that CDPR made themselves.

http://redkit.cdprojektred.com/?c=mod&m=show&p=77

I have it.

Watermelon Daiquiri
Jul 10, 2010
I TRIED TO BAIT THE TXPOL THREAD WITH THE WORLD'S WORST POSSIBLE TAKE AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS STUPID AVATAR.
Hahaha, I put down w3 for a couple months due to FF15 coming out and playing through a couple other games. Coming back, I'm finishing up the skellige quests before I finish the main quest, and while coming back from the bear fight (incidentally much much much easier than any of the fist fights for some stupid reason) I run into some lady whose talking about some warriors path thing. I start to go through it, and I realize midway through when I'm failing to go anywhere in the platforming (due to whichever idiot decided that disabling jump during 'combat' was a great idea without any way to switch 'stances') I already went through this entire path lol. There really should've been an option to go "Oh, I was wondering what that shawl was for...". Though, to be perfectly honest I'm like 90% certain its sitting in my stash...

e: Ok, that's a different shawl, but still, it'd've been cooler to be able to get that preemptively. BTW, does anyone remember what the 'Skellige Shawl' (silk icon) is for? Can you populate your B&W villa with these obsolete quest items?

Heh, I already did the -entire- thing, cave out to the lighthouse/bay and all

Watermelon Daiquiri fucked around with this message at 07:01 on Feb 6, 2017

That DICK!
Sep 28, 2010

i always feel terrible anytime i come upon a bear. they're very slow to initiate combat and very slow in general, so 99% of the time geralt just rolls up on a bear and murders it before it even has a chance to defend itself, bonus points if the ignii glyph on the sword sets it on fire

Watermelon Daiquiri
Jul 10, 2010
I TRIED TO BAIT THE TXPOL THREAD WITH THE WORLD'S WORST POSSIBLE TAKE AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS STUPID AVATAR.
I'm on Reason of State, and I'm at the end of the bridge where radovid is behind a giant barricade with me, ves, and roche on the other. The quest objective is 'kill radovid' but nothing is happening and I can't figure out how to progress things-- roche and ves just greet you with one liners if you try to talk.


e. Great, now a level 50 invisible redanian soldier is attacking me... Ugh, these bugs need fixing.

Ves is gone now.

Watermelon Daiquiri fucked around with this message at 09:44 on Feb 6, 2017

Grem
Mar 29, 2004

It's how her species communicates

Go back on the bridge and make sure all the other enemies are killed.

Watermelon Daiquiri
Jul 10, 2010
I TRIED TO BAIT THE TXPOL THREAD WITH THE WORLD'S WORST POSSIBLE TAKE AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS STUPID AVATAR.

Grem posted:

Go back on the bridge and make sure all the other enemies are killed.

I did, that's how I ran into the invisible lvl 50 soldier (my geralt is 36), which I managed to kill. Nothing changed.

:psyduck: I found ves standing in front of a door up a flight of stairs halfway down the bridge...

And the only redanian soldier I've found is at the other end and is non-hostile (seems like a normal guard NPC that somehow got in) I think this is where the high level one comes from since I tried to attack it earlier.

Ugh, from reading the numerous other bug reports about this quest it seems its from some idiot designer who demands that people do the quest exactly how they envisioned it, and exactly the pace they envisioned it. Seriously, what's so hard about a location based trigger? Once geralt gets into the right area box, stop all ai (I assume they have interrupts that are external, otherwise flip a stop flag and wait for them to stop), collect the necessary garbage from the scripts, end them, despawn the extraneous npcs, then start-up the cutscene. It shouldn't have any issues unless you are playing fast and loose with pointers.

Watermelon Daiquiri fucked around with this message at 10:02 on Feb 6, 2017

MikeJF
Dec 20, 2003




I got that bug too and had to go back to the last autosave. Wouldn't trigger for me.

Watermelon Daiquiri
Jul 10, 2010
I TRIED TO BAIT THE TXPOL THREAD WITH THE WORLD'S WORST POSSIBLE TAKE AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS STUPID AVATAR.
Yeah, I had to go back to a checkpoint. On a different issue, the innkeeper at the crossroads is missing. The quest marker for his gwent card points to behind the counter but there is no one there, and he isn't in the building. Am I screwed out of his card and the passiflora gwent tourney (if not getting the baron's didn't do that already)

Also, it'd be nice if the banker would lend more than a pithy 100 gold. Sure, that'll get you a couple loaves of bread and water, maybe a hooker too, but its certainly not enough to fund a witcher's work <:mad:>

Watermelon Daiquiri fucked around with this message at 10:35 on Feb 6, 2017

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

TenaciousD posted:


I apologize in advance for the fact that I got a bit carried away. Sorry! I won't post them here, as the post became way too long, but I pasted them on pastebin:
http://pastebin.com/5B60uEqc

You seem like a nice dude who spent :10bux: to ask me questions, so I hope I didn't seem flippant. I can't answer any questions, and neither can anyone else, because we all signed an NDA. Everyone in the industry flexes them a little, but it's a bad bad habit to get into. Secondly, I don't even know who half these characters are. People got a bunch of leaks after one of our producers got phished, but those documents stolen were divorced from context- they contained a lot of information that was an idea someone had for, like, an hour or a couple of days. Things change a lot more in production than I think most people outside of the industry are aware of.

I will let you know that the little text chunk about "Ioverth's Curse" is an inside joke, not missing content.

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

Watermelon Daiquiri posted:

Ugh, from reading the numerous other bug reports about this quest it seems its from some idiot designer who demands that people do the quest exactly how they envisioned it, and exactly the pace they envisioned it. Seriously, what's so hard about a location based trigger? Once geralt gets into the right area box, stop all ai (I assume they have interrupts that are external, otherwise flip a stop flag and wait for them to stop), collect the necessary garbage from the scripts, end them, despawn the extraneous npcs, then start-up the cutscene. It shouldn't have any issues unless you are playing fast and loose with pointers.

a very experienced redkit user has suggestions

edit: not my quest, might be badly implemented or broken, I'm just lollin at how easy you make it all sound

TenaciousD
Feb 4, 2017

Comte de Saint-Germain posted:

You seem like a nice dude who spent :10bux: to ask me questions, so I hope I didn't seem flippant. I can't answer any questions, and neither can anyone else, because we all signed an NDA. Everyone in the industry flexes them a little, but it's a bad bad habit to get into. Secondly, I don't even know who half these characters are. People got a bunch of leaks after one of our producers got phished, but those documents stolen were divorced from context- they contained a lot of information that was an idea someone had for, like, an hour or a couple of days. Things change a lot more in production than I think most people outside of the industry are aware of.

I will let you know that the little text chunk about "Ioverth's Curse" is an inside joke, not missing content.

Do NDA's have expiration dates? :P

Thanks for the reply, and I appreciate the fact that you took a look at them, even if you can't answer. Respect, Witcher.

I do wish that things had turned out differently for that chunk of the plot. It sounded really interesting.

Was the inside joke referring to the patches for the quests with Roche, the reason being that they were so buggy was because they were "cursed" by Iorveth?

TenaciousD fucked around with this message at 11:47 on Feb 6, 2017

Ugato
Apr 9, 2009

We're not?

Comte de Saint-Germain posted:

a very experienced redkit user has suggestions

edit: not my quest, might be badly implemented or broken, I'm just lollin at how easy you make it all sound

From a basic standpoint and the experience of doing minimal programming, it's incredibly hard to program something where every factor is incorporated. That's why QA is always necessary. And there are steps involved for "how do I not make this entirely skippable in an unrealistic way" which, to me, is exactly what location triggers irrespective of the guards being alive or not would do. If it were solely positional then you could theoretically just race to the trigger point and all the guards would simply evaporate as a cutscene happens.

I had a bug on this quest initially and it was annoying for sure. But there are a lot of factors that go into making any game - especially one with as much happening in it as this one.

Watermelon Daiquiri
Jul 10, 2010
I TRIED TO BAIT THE TXPOL THREAD WITH THE WORLD'S WORST POSSIBLE TAKE AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS STUPID AVATAR.

Comte de Saint-Germain posted:

a very experienced redkit user has suggestions

edit: not my quest, might be badly implemented or broken, I'm just lollin at how easy you make it all sound

:rolleyes: I'm just letting out frustration

But the idea would be that geralt is just so darn persistent about getting to radovid that he doesn't care about fighting the guards. If people want to fight them, great let them! if not, then once they got to the trigger point the guards wouldn't matter anyways

Watermelon Daiquiri fucked around with this message at 12:32 on Feb 6, 2017

Yates
Jan 29, 2010

He was just 17...




I'm not sure where I picked them up, I think it was in Hearts of Stone, but you get some rear end Ears and I wore them all the way through to the end. It was pretty great to get into these serious cut scenes were the fate of worlds is being discussed and there is Geralt with his stupid ears. I was waiting for somebody to make mention of them or rip them off but nobody said anything. Too bad.

Palpek
Dec 27, 2008


Do you feel it, Zach?
My coffee warned me about it.


Those ears should become floppy after you get the bad ending.

Yikes A Zombie!
Jul 18, 2003

Bust Rodd posted:

Playing it with a 360 Controller really opened up combat for me. Having Dodge/Roll so easily accessible really creates a more dynamic action game.

Definitely. I usually play the game over Steam Link with a 360 controller. When I do play with keyboard and mouse I feel gimped.

Fuzz
Jun 2, 2003

Avatar brought to you by the TG Sanity fund
It's such BS that you have to choose between the rear end ears and a unique Gwent card, and can't get both.

WhiskeyWhiskers
Oct 14, 2013

Fuzz posted:

It's such BS that you have to choose between the rear end ears and a unique Gwent card, and can't get both.

You don't. There's no card for that.

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Hopper
Dec 28, 2004

BOOING! BOOING!
Grimey Drawer

Comte de Saint-Germain posted:

You seem like a nice dude who spent :10bux: to ask me questions, so I hope I didn't seem flippant. I can't answer any questions, and neither can anyone else, because we all signed an NDA. Everyone in the industry flexes them a little, but it's a bad bad habit to get into. Secondly, I don't even know who half these characters are. People got a bunch of leaks after one of our producers got phished, but those documents stolen were divorced from context- they contained a lot of information that was an idea someone had for, like, an hour or a couple of days. Things change a lot more in production than I think most people outside of the industry are aware of.

I will let you know that the little text chunk about "Ioverth's Curse" is an inside joke, not missing content.

Just out of curiosity, as I have no background whatsoever in gaming, I am just wondering WHY they make people sign NDAs that prevent them from talking about things like left out content for a game after the project has ended, and the game has been published. Especially when it is the end of a series, knowing there won't be a game that might use the content. I guess I just can't imagine what use that kind of knowledge would be to outside parties, aside from fans interested in what could have been (and then write long list of questions about it hehe).

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