Gaming The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

siw2007

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With the Witcher 3 coming out on switch just as I’m close to buying one I might buy it for a 2nd time for my 4th play through. Really hope it runs well, but not sure what to expect.
 

Irwin99

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Finished the game and all the DLC on the second hardest difficulty and now thinking of going for the platinum on Deathmarch. Should I do the New game plus or just start again with a new game? I've heard new game+ is even harder and although you keep all of your gear it's mostly pointless due to the up scaling of the enemies. I'm not really seeing much to recommend this but am I missing something that will make this a bit easier on the hardest difficulty? I'm hoping if i just focus on the main quest and a few side stories instead of doing absolutely everything that it might reduce the game length by half too.

Loved the DLC for very different reasons and enjoyed their stories far more than the main Ciri quest. To motivate myself to get the platinum I might pick the options I didn't choose the last time.
 

Art Vandelay

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Finished the game and all the DLC on the second hardest difficulty and now thinking of going for the platinum on Deathmarch. Should I do the New game plus or just start again with a new game? I've heard new game+ is even harder and although you keep all of your gear it's mostly pointless due to the up scaling of the enemies. I'm not really seeing much to recommend this but am I missing something that will make this a bit easier on the hardest difficulty? I'm hoping if i just focus on the main quest and a few side stories instead of doing absolutely everything that it might reduce the game length by half too.

Loved the DLC for very different reasons and enjoyed their stories far more than the main Ciri quest. To motivate myself to get the platinum I might pick the options I didn't choose the last time.
I found NG+ to be easier and I even turned on enemy scaling so even the lower levelled ones are always at least at your level. You take in all your high level potions, bombs and signs so although the enemies are higher level you're better equiped to deal with them. Your gear is fine for a while too, you don't have to desperately hunt for Witcher gear, I didn't even have to upgrade at all until well after I left White Orchard, I was still using Manticore gear and Aerondight because the bonuses were so good for me. If you have Aerondight from Blood and Wine then you shouldn't need to upgrade silver sword for ages either if you've been levelling it properly. I'm about to go to Skellige and it's still the best silver sword available.

I'd recommen NG+. It feels more like how it's supposed to be and you feel like a veteran Witcher from the start, but still have scope for progression.
 

Man of Leisure

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So I started trying to play this again. Still very early but do I need to be picking up all these damn herbs and plants? I assume they’ll be needed to make potions, but it’s kind of a drag. Would rather ditch the hoarding mentality that I had for games like Fallout and Skyrim.
 

One Night Only

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So I started trying to play this again. Still very early but do I need to be picking up all these damn herbs and plants? I assume they’ll be needed to make potions, but it’s kind of a drag. Would rather ditch the hoarding mentality that I had for games like Fallout and Skyrim.
Not really, you can use the skill tree however you want and rely on more combat skills anyway.

If there is anything you ever do need you can always go on the hunt for the plants then, some potions and decoctions make things a lot easier, but they aren't required to complete the game.
 

Irwin99

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So I started trying to play this again. Still very early but do I need to be picking up all these damn herbs and plants? I assume they’ll be needed to make potions, but it’s kind of a drag. Would rather ditch the hoarding mentality that I had for games like Fallout and Skyrim.
What difficulty are you playing on? You don't have to go too mad on the herbs but they do come in handy eventually. On the hardest difficulty oils and potions are essential but on normal difficulty it isn't too bad.

I just got the platinum for this and 100 % of the DLC (which are better stories than the main quest) and i'd say it's overall the best PS4 game I've played. I struggled to like the game in the first few 5 or 6 hours and then fell in love with it once you hit a few of the main quests in Velen.
 

Man of Leisure

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So I've been playing for a little bit now and so far, so good. But is this one of those games where you have to do everything in a certain order? I like to kinda roam around and go exploring and just kill shite as I come across them (what I mostly did in Skyrim), but I think since I went out of order it might have triggered a bug. I'm stuck at the part by the well with the noonwraith. Can't find the noonwraith entry in my bestiary nor can I examine the rope by the well. Already jumped in the well and got the stupid bracelet. Anyone else come across this problem?
 

Shane88

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So I've been playing for a little bit now and so far, so good. But is this one of those games where you have to do everything in a certain order? I like to kinda roam around and go exploring and just kill shite as I come across them (what I mostly did in Skyrim), but I think since I went out of order it might have triggered a bug. I'm stuck at the part by the well with the noonwraith. Can't find the noonwraith entry in my bestiary nor can I examine the rope by the well. Already jumped in the well and got the stupid bracelet. Anyone else come across this problem?
Jenny of the Woods? I vaguely remember that quest being buggy but it's not game-breaking. Quitting and reloading should fix it. I don't think you can sequence break the game anyway.

You can roam and do sidequests/contracts but sometimes you'll bump into stuff that you are far under-levelled for and it'll oneshot you.
 

Andersons Dietician

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So I've been playing for a little bit now and so far, so good. But is this one of those games where you have to do everything in a certain order? I like to kinda roam around and go exploring and just kill shite as I come across them (what I mostly did in Skyrim), but I think since I went out of order it might have triggered a bug. I'm stuck at the part by the well with the noonwraith. Can't find the noonwraith entry in my bestiary nor can I examine the rope by the well. Already jumped in the well and got the stupid bracelet. Anyone else come across this problem?
I remember vaguely having an issue with this as well but I can’t recall if it was just because I hadn’t pulled up the rope or something stupid. Have you searched the buildings and all that?
 

Redlambs

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So I've been playing for a little bit now and so far, so good. But is this one of those games where you have to do everything in a certain order? I like to kinda roam around and go exploring and just kill shite as I come across them (what I mostly did in Skyrim), but I think since I went out of order it might have triggered a bug. I'm stuck at the part by the well with the noonwraith. Can't find the noonwraith entry in my bestiary nor can I examine the rope by the well. Already jumped in the well and got the stupid bracelet. Anyone else come across this problem?
You can do things out of order, but keep in mind the game is incredibly badly balanced so you'll find yourself stupidly overpowered if you aren't careful. If you are on PC there's some pretty decent balancing mods which help, but can't entirely fix.
 

Man of Leisure

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FFS, finally figured out what I was doing wrong. I had my bestiary fully expanded so it wouldn't let me open/expand the specters genre on the bottom. Once I closed some other entries, it allowed me to scroll down and see the specters which included the devil by the well.

@Redlambs As long as it's overpowered, not underpowered. Being overpowered and walking around the world ready to feck with anything that comes my way is one of the greatest joys in my gaming life. :cool:

Which leads me to, should I explore/finish all the question marks on my map prior to laying the trap and fighting the griffin? I googled "map of witcher 3" and what came up, I didn't recognize. Couldn't even see White Orchard (where I'm currently at) in there. So am I correct in assuming that once I kill the griffin, other areas previously closed off, become open? If that's the case, am I allowed to still go exploring back in White Orchard or is that no longer available?
 

Redlambs

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@Redlambs As long as it's overpowered, not underpowered. Being overpowered and walking around the world ready to feck with anything that comes my way is one of the greatest joys in my gaming life. :cool:
Ahhh you are one of 'those'...

;) But yeah, the game gets way too easy and the combat isn't strong enough to carry that for me at least. But definitely no worries about it being too hard after level 10-15. On the plus side, the story and main missions (plus a lot of the sides) are great enough that you can at least make your way through them quickly if you do find yourself getting bored of the repetitive fights. Plus there's always gwent, which is the best thing in it gameplay wise for me.
 

Art Vandelay

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FFS, finally figured out what I was doing wrong. I had my bestiary fully expanded so it wouldn't let me open/expand the specters genre on the bottom. Once I closed some other entries, it allowed me to scroll down and see the specters which included the devil by the well.

@Redlambs As long as it's overpowered, not underpowered. Being overpowered and walking around the world ready to feck with anything that comes my way is one of the greatest joys in my gaming life. :cool:

Which leads me to, should I explore/finish all the question marks on my map prior to laying the trap and fighting the griffin? I googled "map of witcher 3" and what came up, I didn't recognize. Couldn't even see White Orchard (where I'm currently at) in there. So am I correct in assuming that once I kill the griffin, other areas previously closed off, become open? If that's the case, am I allowed to still go exploring back in White Orchard or is that no longer available?
Don't worry about under or over levelling. If you're under levelled then you're just not ready yet, if you're over levelled then you can turn on enemy scaling to have lower levelled enemies scale to your level.

Personally I'd clear that White Orchard map of question marks now, it will get you diagrams for Witcher gear which is the best kind of gear in the game, some treasure to sell and bonus points to spend on abilities at the sources of power. I'd get it done now before the griffin to save you ever having to come back there and it's stuff that will come in handy. Basically you're in the prologue, after White Orchard it's a whole different map that opens up. You'll see.

The only thing about the order of quests is that sometimes it can affect the story fairly drastically, such as causing certain characters to die if you haven't done other parts of the quest yet. Once the story starts opening up a lot of the quests start getting tied together. The problem is there's no real set order, it's all very organic. If you get a main quest and they mention side quests at the same time, it's probably best to do the side quests first. I've possibly explained this in a very confusing way.
 

Man of Leisure

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Cheers @Redlambs @Art Vandelay Still early on, but I think I'm really gonna like this game.

As for Gwent, it was kinda confusing in the beginning but I sorta got the hang of it now. I've bought all the cards from the lady at the White Orchard Inn. Also played against the scholar dude sitting there, but don't think I received a card from him after I beat him? My understanding was, once you beat someone at Gwent, they give you a card? Right now, I only have enough unit cards to play as the Northern Realms faction (that's what the lady at WOI was selling). Basically, you take your shitty cards and move them to the left side when you set it up right (before the game starts)?

My other question is how should I be setting up my skills? So far I've earned 5 ability points and spent them all on on fast attack, so I'm 5/5 on muscle memory atm. Should I be worried about diversifying these at some point? Or just stick to strengthening by fast attack combat skils? Also wtf are these mutagens all about? I have some in my inventory from killing some random shite, but I don't wanna waste them now on the right side of the skill tree thingy if they turn out to be something important later. Do the mutagens slowly decrease with use?
 

Art Vandelay

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Cheers @Redlambs @Art Vandelay Still early on, but I think I'm really gonna like this game.

As for Gwent, it was kinda confusing in the beginning but I sorta got the hang of it now. I've bought all the cards from the lady at the White Orchard Inn. Also played against the scholar dude sitting there, but don't think I received a card from him after I beat him? My understanding was, once you beat someone at Gwent, they give you a card? Right now, I only have enough unit cards to play as the Northern Realms faction (that's what the lady at WOI was selling). Basically, you take your shitty cards and move them to the left side when you set it up right (before the game starts)?

My other question is how should I be setting up my skills? So far I've earned 5 ability points and spent them all on on fast attack, so I'm 5/5 on muscle memory atm. Should I be worried about diversifying these at some point? Or just stick to strengthening by fast attack combat skils? Also wtf are these mutagens all about? I have some in my inventory from killing some random shite, but I don't wanna waste them now on the right side of the skill tree thingy if they turn out to be something important later. Do the mutagens slowly decrease with use?
It depends on how you want to play it, fast attacks are good to have, but you're also going to want to invest in your Witcher signs too, especially Quen but they are all fairly useful. Axii can be used in certain conversations if you have it upgraded. Just go with your gut, there are a lot of points and you can buy a potion to reset them later on. It's not too complicated once you get used to it.

Mutagens you can add to slots on your skill tree to add things like extra damage or mix together to make more powerful mutagens. I can't remember how to open the slots to add them into as I'm on new game + and unlocked them years ago. It's also fairly simple once you see how it works. It all looks more complicated than it actually is.
 

Fully Fledged

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So I've been playing for a little bit now and so far, so good. But is this one of those games where you have to do everything in a certain order? I like to kinda roam around and go exploring and just kill shite as I come across them (what I mostly did in Skyrim), but I think since I went out of order it might have triggered a bug. I'm stuck at the part by the well with the noonwraith. Can't find the noonwraith entry in my bestiary nor can I examine the rope by the well. Already jumped in the well and got the stupid bracelet. Anyone else come across this problem?
I did when played it on one of my later playthroughs and I ended up with the same problem. There's a letter you've got to read in one of the buildings and the noonwraith entry in the bestiary won't drop without it.
 

Andersons Dietician

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@Man of Leisure you should be able to challenge the barkeep at the White orchard if you haven’t scared her off from killing those dudes that get in your face. Basically at a certain point you’ll be able to challenge every vender or barkeep to a Gwent match for their rare cards. then later there are 2 quests to gain more rare cards but 1 of them I wouldn’t enter unless you have a decent deck already.

For the Northern realms you want the catapults that combine score and the flute guy boost but I think Nilfguardian is the best early access one because just load up on spy cards and the training dummy card. Bets one for sure is the monsters if you get the arachnids you pretty much just become unstoppable.
 

Man of Leisure

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So I'm level 12 now. I've ponied up for the Nilfgaardian armor which I bought from the quartermaster in Crow's Perch. I forget which swords I'm using, but they're a couple I found looting I think. Was using the Viper swords prior to that. My question is, what's the best way to get better armor and weapons? Should I craft them, buy them or just use what I find when I loot? Hesitant to buy stuff or use my runes/glyphs just to have some better shit pop up for free in a couple levels or as reward for completing a quest. If I do invest the money to buy or craft, I'd like my shit to last for a while. My fighting style is to get in your face and start swinging along with duck/roll. Very little magic is involved. Only spells I use are quen and the one that makes them dizzy. Very rarely I'll use the pentagram thingy when fighting wraiths.

TLDR, which armor and swords should I go for and when do they become available?
 

Man of Leisure

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Do you get the griffin school gear when you kill the griffin in White Orchard? Cos I didn't get shit except for its head hanging on Roach's saddle. :(
 

siw2007

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What level do you start getting witcher gear and who do I gotta kill?
Each of the three locations has a witcher school attached to it. For example, Velen has the Griffin set. To get them you will need to do a bit of exploring until you find one piece in order to get the treasure hunt quest which will then show you where the other pieces are. Of course these are only the manuscripts so you will need to craft them.

Witcher armour, unlike the basic armour can be upgraded. The upgraded version manuscripts are scattered across the game so you will come to that later.
 

Art Vandelay

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Do you get the griffin school gear when you kill the griffin in White Orchard? Cos I didn't get shit except for its head hanging on Roach's saddle. :(
You find diagrams to make them while exploring. You can find treasure maps or buy them from blacksmiths to find the locations of witcher gear. They are level gated and you can keep upgrading them. Check your treasure hunts in you quests menu, you might already have quests to go get some.
 

GhastlyHun

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Do you get the griffin school gear when you kill the griffin in White Orchard? Cos I didn't get shit except for its head hanging on Roach's saddle. :(
The unique stuff does not drop randomly in TW3. (Yes, there's named "relics" that drop randomly and with different levels, but those are not unique.)
Witcher gear is only obtained via crafting, and it's generally the only worthwhile stuff (apart from specialized power builds which do not need to concern you even on highest difficulty).
The different classes of witcher gear are tuned for different playstyles, according to the witcher schools they are associated with:

Obtainable early-ish in the game:
Cat: fast attacks + crits
Bear: heavy attacks + high defense
Griffin: Signs

Obtainable later:
Wolf: sword fighting + signs

Obtainable much later (in the addons, maybe even both from B&W):
Manticore: alchemy
Viper: i forget. Poison stuff I guess.

Cat or bear are for everyone relying mostly on sword fighting without much signs or alchemy.
 

Andersons Dietician

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So I'm level 12 now. I've ponied up for the Nilfgaardian armor which I bought from the quartermaster in Crow's Perch. I forget which swords I'm using, but they're a couple I found looting I think. Was using the Viper swords prior to that. My question is, what's the best way to get better armor and weapons? Should I craft them, buy them or just use what I find when I loot? Hesitant to buy stuff or use my runes/glyphs just to have some better shit pop up for free in a couple levels or as reward for completing a quest. If I do invest the money to buy or craft, I'd like my shit to last for a while. My fighting style is to get in your face and start swinging along with duck/roll. Very little magic is involved. Only spells I use are quen and the one that makes them dizzy. Very rarely I'll use the pentagram thingy when fighting wraiths.

TLDR, which armor and swords should I go for and when do they become available?
I’d look for the feline school stuff but I think that might be level 50. I think the deeper you go in the game you’ll figure out your style and see what works best for you. But most of the school gear is gotten by finding maps and doing quests. It’s worthwhile noting you can actually get better parts and mix and match but by having full sets of the Witcher gear you get bonuses. Which is what makes them better.
 

GhastlyHun

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I’d look for the feline school stuff but I think that might be level 50.
Nonono, cat/bear/griffin/wolf all start at level ~12-16, but can be upgraded multiple times so they are viable throughout the whole game.
(Also level 50 is not something players will routinely reach unless they play new game+)
 

Siorac

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Nonono, cat/bear/griffin/wolf all start at level ~12-16, but can be upgraded multiple times so they are viable throughout the whole game.
And more importantly, they are stylish throughout the whole game.
 

GhastlyHun

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Manticore is basically the studded vest from TW1, so I may be biased for nostalgic reasons ;)
 

Massive Spanner

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I feel this may be more spin offs than a Witcher 4 e.g. the Gwent game.

However, if they do make a Witcher 4 on next gen, it would be absolutely incredible.
Pretty sure CDPR said they're done with Geralt. I think The Witcher books have loads of side stories and mini stories so they have plenty of other material to work with.