The Witcher 3: Anticipation

The Game Room
42

Well, you can, sort of. You can buy the 90 crown doodad, then sell junk to get your 90 back. But, yeah, no bartering. Cash up front.

What does sign intensity do exactly ? I mean, for Aard and Igni that’s easy to guess (more chance to stun, more damage and burnination respectively) but what about Quen or Yrden ? Quen only lasts one hit regardless, right ?

Speaking of which, you can buy saddlebags to increase your carried weight even further.

Here’s my biggest tip : don’t sell your starting armour. In fact, don’t sell loot tagged “Witcher” in general, period. Crafting regular items only uses base component, but Witcher stuff seems to often require the previous “tier” of witcher stuff as an ingredient.

Don’t skimp on runes for your gear OTOH. There’s a ton of them out there, and you can destroy a socketed rune at a blacksmith if you find a shinier one.

Don’t sell mutagens : there’s a million alchemy recipes to turn a mess of low quality mutagens into a bigger one. Named mutagens can also be used to make special potions called decoctions with varying but usually pretty powerful effects.

Speaking of which : Alchemy is pretty neat this time around : you only ever need to make a thing once. It’ll give you a potion or bomb with N uses. Those uses are all refilled whenever you meditate, provided you have at least one strong alcohol in your inventory which will be consumed in the process. Just the one, for all your alchemical shit. Beer doesn’t work, but alcohest and rye vodka do. Those are plentiful, if you ever run out every tavern has a bunch.
Which means : unlike in Skyrim, or Dragon Age, or Witcher 2 you don’t have to compulsively harvest every last flower out there !

Similarly, oils are only crafted once, they’re forever and you can apply them infinity times, no need to meditate or anything. To balance it out, they don’t seem to last very long. So ABO. Always be oiling.

43

Now you tell me, after last night I sold my starter Witcher sword.

Ah, well. I actually had an checkpoint autosave right before I hit the weapons guy so no real harm done. Good to know, thanks.

44

Too late. I sold off the Kaer Mourn armor in the first town. The other stuff I’ve retained, but I think it’s pretty shitty of them to screw us like that without any warning.

45

Selling the sword is fine (at least so far sword schematics don’t seem to require the previous one - but I’m only partway through the second zone). But armour, boots, gloves etc… you really want to keep.

ETA : you can buy back the armour if you can find the guy you sold it to - that’s what I had to do. But it costs a mint :).

46

Am I to understand that the Hunting Trousers, Hunting Boots and Hunting gloves are also essential Witcher gear?

47

Okay, it turns out that the Kaer Moren armor only makes armor that is not superior to what I already have. Does it get used for something else later on? Otherwise, if it’s not a chain of upgrades, but one upgrade available, then we are probably not really screwed if we didn’t keep these items.

48

No, they’re generic junk. Witcher gear has a green background in the inventory (and there’s WITCHER written in green under the name of the item as well, as opposed to COMMON, MAGIC, RELIC etc…)

Not sure, I have yet to get around to finding the next schematic (I know where it is, I just had other shit to do :o). In the meantime, better safe than sorry, right ?

49

There are other upgrade chains, but I think the original armor only upgrades once.
The ursine armor upgrades at least once as well.

50

Yeah, I just got schematics for “improved Cat pants” that requires regular Cat pants.
They’re pants from the Cat school of Witchers, not pants literally made out of cats. One hopes. Then again I just followed the semi-friendly ghost of a miscarried foetus to try and find its sister, so bets are so fucking off they’re in low orbit by now :).

51

Yeah, I went through the magical fetus storyline as well. Grim, yet absurd.

I seem to have hit my stride more, what with going ahead and doing all the quests I know to be within my range and going back to town to see what I can smith now that’s slightly better, making sure to check whether I’m high enough level to use the goods before I hit the button.

Still grinding away at Veren. I know that the Witchers are mostly supposed to fight monsters, not people, and are obliged to ask for pay because otherwise they’re taken for granted. But I’ve been mostly wandering around providing my bandit-thrashing and villiage-reclaiming services for free. If I see a question mark or lone building or cluster of buildings on the map, I mark it and walk over there to see if anybody needs an ass-whipping. Geralt’s life is an unending slaughter of assholes whose views on how to treat their fellow human beings did not accord with his.

Often there is an unresolvable dilemma about which motherfuckers are the motherfuckeriest. Generally Nilfgard is the bad guy, but some of those downtrodden peasants go to town on their own moms, too.

52

I did some experimentation…I think sign intensity on quen provides a chance that the protection isn’t removed…at least, there were times when I’d get clipped by a wolf or drowner and still had the protection going.

And the 2nd tier of quen? Put all 3 points in it and slot it - it’s just too damn good. Immunity to attacks, no stamina drain AND being healed? Turns some of the tougher fights into jokes.

53

I can’t seem to get these secondary sign powers to work. I thought it said I need to hold down Q, but that doesn’t work and the internal Tutorial doesn’t explain even that much.

54

Do you have the required character upgrade slotted as well? Because “hold q” is what works for quen.

55

Where do I get a Gwent deck?

I played that first guy at the first inn you come to but then when I went to play my second game in another inn it said I had no cards but about four which I had bought.

Not sure how to get a deck for this.

56

I don’t get the question. The guy who tells you about Gwent gives you the basic deck. You do have to “rebuild” it, by picking the cards you want to play with, but that is the prelude to every game of Gwent, so… Bug, maybe ? Else check the game menu, in the middle of all the regular options you should now have a Deck Builder item, which lets you build your decks outside of a match.

57

After 20-odd hours, I’m giving the game a solid “B”. Looks nice, I like the general world building (and like that there’s actually weather), combat is fun if somewhat repetitive (roll behind, whack whack whack, roll behind whack whack whack) and the conversations are usually interesting even if the voice acting can be uneven (the children are terrible). Most of the major characters are interesting enough to want to talk to them. I like that monster levels aren’t dynamic so you can bump into things that eat you in two bites. The character progression system is good.

The “open world” nature is really more “follow the linear main plot and pick up ? marks along the way”. The quests largely boil down to “Hold down your M2 and examine/follow the red glowies”. Crafting feels like a mess and I’m a walking hardware store of twine, wire, wood, leather scraps, cloth, bits of metal, paper, etc not to mention the flower shop I keep in my pocket. Merchant sold recipes don’t say what level the gear is for so I’ve no idea if I should drop 65 gold on them or not. Looting 50,000 sacks and boxes with one spool of string in each is tedious. As I said, combat is fairly repetitive and I don’t see it changing up much beyond getting more use out of signs as I level them up.

It’s a well done world but actually playing the game hasn’t really hooked me. I play it for an hour or two then feel done for the night. I can see the quality behind it but it’s not a world I feel myself lost in.

58

By the time you’re level 12 or so, you’re pretty much past looting boxes. I’m a walking bank thanks to the money made from selling the rare swords/armour found in ?s, witcher contracts and quest rewards. Also compulsive gwent playing with everybody all the time because Magic the Gathering taught me that I need the cards. ALL THE CARDS !
So I sold all the flowers and twine and hardly pick any anymore (I only bother looting the big chests) - rare monster bits are my only bottleneck. When I want a sword or a potion done, I just go to the relevant shop and buy the parts I need. I buy every recipe, map and schematic I see. It’s not fiscally responsible, but what else am I gonna do with 10,000 beardcoins ?

59

I thought it was just me but apparently the last patch broke the ability to spam “E” to loot boxes and grab whatever is in them. Now I have to either hit the space bar or else actually highlight and click the single object in the box. That’s annoying.

Also object targeting is flaky in general. I’ve lit or extinguished about a million candles in my attempts to loot the boxes under them :rolleyes:

60

I had a problem for a while where I thought I was just not going to be able to carry all my crafting componenets, and I was too weighed down to be able to loot with abandon. I figured out what I was actually being held down by the crap in the last tab – rope ladders, skins of various types. Most of the crafting components weren’t burdening me that much. Right now I’m swimming in money, but I loot just about everything anyway.

I have not played Gwent much. I’m not good at that sort of thing. I mean, presumably if I gather a badass deck I don’t have to be good at it, but eh.

I just finished the first Feline school armor set. It’s nice. I’ve got a leather vest over a t-shirt, the sleeves rolled up there – presumably a couple of packs of Lucky Strikes in there. Not a biker bar in sight, unfortunately.

I did figure out the deal with having to actually slot my second-tier abilities. I guess the 1st tier abilities just work without slots, though you can slot them if you want to apply mutagens to mod them.

Anyone figured out what the deal is with the question mark in Lurch? There must be an entrance to an under ground tunnel, but I can’t find it. Also, the same thing at the Elven Ruins with the White Lady.

61

the Elven Ruins thing is tied to a main line quest. At one point in your search for Ciri a sorceress will take you down a big underground dungeon there. At the end of that dungeon there’ll be a T intersection, right goes to the surface (opening a cave entrance in the overworld), left goes to a side-dungeon where you’ll find a power node and a hidden cache of goods hidden behind an Aard-able wall. Also stuff for a mini-quest for the sorceress, which opens up further questing for her.
If you already have done that quest but missed that side path, the cave entrance is near the water’s edge to the… west I think ? It’s a bit of a ways away from the elven ruins proper, anyway.

Not sure what or where Lurch is though.