It won’t hurt you (in Velen or Novigrad anyway, not entirely sure about Skellige yet) except of course eventually you won’t get XP from those quests.
No real reason to leave the main story to the end in each area, though - both Velen and Novigrad are set up so that you can choose when to move on to the next area. There are no main story cutscenes in those areas that drag you to another area and cut you off from the previous one, as there sometimes are in Bioware games. (There kind of is in Skellige, but that’s initiated by you saying, “I want to take a ship to Skellige,” so it hardly comes as a surprise.)
In Velen you should at least go visit the Baron’s castle (Crow’s whatever) even if you don’t finish his storyline right away; it has some useful services and merchants.
Well, the only other thing that may hurt is that being over-leveled for a quest means the loot reward you get will be useless except as crafting components.
“As a reward Witcher, you may have this sword that’s been in my family for generations!”
“Uh, thanks. That’s about 200 damage less than the sword I found in a random chest along the way.”
I’m an outlier, I think, in that I am more interested in the stories than I am the challenge of the combat. I’ve never been one to play at the hardest difficulty. And one thing that I suspect (can’t know because I haven’t played enough) is that W3 may actually be very rewarding to me for that preference because the scripted stories are written well enough that they can be reward in themselves (as opposed to the only real “reward” for a quest being winning the combat.)
I’m definitely with you on that. In fact, I’ve been a little disappointed that some of the approaches to quest resolution that I thought were going to be entirely dialogue driven ended up with combat encounters.
Reemul
4426
Same here, I wont replay and love the storyline stuff and as it’s not loot dependant I just do what I fancy. Level 16 atm in Novigrad and doing anything really.
Timex
4427
Actually, the quest rewards tend to be leveled to your character, I believe.
Now, they’re generally always worse than stuff like witcher gear, and often worse than just Relic grade stuff you find randomly… but I believe they are actually scaled to your level when you complete the quest.
The reality is though, the rewards for doing the quests are all basically inconsequential.
The best stuff is witcher gear, generally… and the main reward for the quests is the experience of doing the quest. Not the XP points, but rather the actual experience of doing the quest, because they are all so well written and fun.
The best stuff is Witcher gear because it can be upgraded to stay the best throughout the game. That’s the armor set though, I found that swords could compete with the Witcher set swords depending on what kind of bonuses you like, I preferred bleeding as it had a great impact on some of the HP sponge monsters or fire for the long lasting CC.
I think one should decide to either go for Witcher gear or avoid it. Avoiding it will let your rewards and discoveries stay relevant into the late game. Using it will make you care little about what you find as it mostly becomes vendor material. At a certain point enemies are no longer a real threat so you don’t have to be decked out in the absolutely best gear available. The scavenger hunts have some of the best locations in the game, so I’d definitely never skip those but one could simply avoid crafting the Witcher stuff.
Zuwadza
4429
This bothers me way more than it should. Wow, thanks for the super important sword. I’m going to go vendor it for nothing now because it’s not even worth melting down for me, cya!
Approaching Velen. This is an insanely beautiful game. I am drunk on light.
One little problem with the Witcher equipment is that is clearly superior to the rest (which is normal, as you have to do several quests to get it) but it kills a bit the loot variety. And it doesn’t even that hard to get, several of the places were empty in my game or had just one decent level monster. Only in a pair of occasions there was something like a mini-boss protecting the treasure.
Quick question about the sign that’s looks like an hourglass. It’s supposed to be a trap for monsters. Wraiths are supposed to be vulnerable to it.
How does it work? Sometimes I lay it down, and the monster just goes right through it, no problems. Other times, the monster turns purple (does that mean it has been caught in the trap?). But even a purple monster doesn’t seem to stop for more than a second. Is it more vulnerable maybe? I see no red numbers coming off of it indicating any kind of damage.
Maybe the hourglass/trap sign isn’t effective unless you level it up first? Or maybe I’m using it wrong somehow? Maybe monsters are immune to it, and only people (like the Old Wither in the tutorial) are vulnerable to it?
olaf
4433
Specters/Wraiths become corporeal within the bounds of a Yrden trap. For Wraiths specifically I think they can not disappear within the bounds of the trap. For Noon/Dusk-wraiths it makes them hittable with your sword.
For other enemy types enemies become slowed within the bounds of the trap.
Spent 6 hours in Skellige tonight, on 1 of the side islands. Game is freaking huge. Got the plans and crafted my 2nd level Ursine armor (see pic). And just headed out on the quest with Umaaaaa! I am level 23 with 91 hours played so far.
I’m something like 40+ hours in and started to feel like I was really going super slow. Glad I’m not the only one taking my time.
For someone who isn’t able to play non-stop this really is the game that keeps on giving. It sort of blows my mind that I can already tell a second play through will be easily worth my time when I’m so obviously nowhere near the end of my first run.
Why are you wearing a skirt? :)
The 1st rank of the sign creates a circle. within this circle a) enemies are slowed down b) wraiths have to become/remain corporeal. This version does not deal any damages directly.
The 2nd ranks allows you to create a “sentry”, in addition to the circle, and this “sentry” does damage enemies. If you get to 4th rank (or maybe 3rd) the circle itself will damage enemies.
Turning purple is an indication of an enemy being slowed down (some, very few, are immune). If you have a low “sign intensity”, the effects may not be obvious.
For the wraiths, as mentioned by Olaf, what happens is that at some point in the fight, the wraith would turn incorporeal (“disappears” and hits hard and cannot be parried, basically impossible to fight in this state). Once they cross the boundaries of the cycle, they have to materialise and the effects I mentioned no longer apply. AFAIK, the only ways to force a ghost to materialise are Yrden or one of the bombs (but I keep hearing some reports it could be bugged?).
the way I use it vs. wraiths is to put the circle down then move within the boundaries (still inside the circle) in a way that will maximise the distance between you and the wraith. Once they cross the boundaries, game on. I usually do 2-3 hits max before having to stop (Geralt gets carried away) and reposition within the circle. The circle is quite small, so when you also have ot manage renewing it, chugging potions, parry etc it got a bit too much for me. The 1st noonwraith contract was my hardest fight so far, I was slightly under-leveled for it and had to restart a few times to get everything just right.
Agree with people, the loot balance (and swords in particular) is off. For the last 3-4 hours of playing, I’ve been finding “relic” swords and just selling them because the witcher swords are too good.
It’s not an easy problem to solve, they have so few parameters to adjust. How do they make the Witcher gear better while still making all the other loot interesting? Obviously they failed hard at this task but I don’t blame them.
The only way to balance this is to differentiate the loot such as this sword hits harder but that sword lets me leech health. When they put all those interesting effects into decoctions and oils, they had nothing left with which to differentiate loot.
Anyone else notice the friendly fire? I attacked a bandit camp, and they shot and killed one of their own in an attempt to hit me :-).
I also got help from a pack of wolfs while attacking another camp. They did most of the work, leaving me to clear the few survivors. Much appreciated, because I still have trouble fighting groups. Interestingly, fights can go very smoothly sometimes, but the next encounter might still be a complete disaster, making me think the smooth fights are luck rather then skill. However, tonight will be the first time I can play more then 40-odd minutes, so hopefully that will improve things!
Well I did have this armor on before as I was getting the Ursine upgrade plan I needed, and I thought it actually looked more like a skirt, lol.
I considered it his Batman armor, due to the obvious yellow belt. :p
They really did a great job in the Witcher’s castle. Also in the Witcher 1 version!
Kurina
4442
The loot could stand to be a little more interesting, but there are still a lot of fun non-Witcher weapons out there too. My favorite was a sword with a high chance to set things on fire, and it had slots for a couple runes. So, I threw on more fire runes for the sake of it. I loved it! I would skip using the cat potion for caves, because anything I seemed to touch with the sword would just burst into flames. It was pretty fun watching caves light up from that alone when fighting groups of enemies.
No doubt the loot could be improved, and in the end the Witcher swords seemed the best when upgraded, but there is still fun to have along the way before you get to that point. Hopefully with future updates and DLC, they can expand things further with gear and choices.
