4443

let me sing you a Limerick

…

[spoiler]Lambert, Lambert, what a prick!

So true !
I just arrived at Kaer Mohen and by the middle of the quest with Lambert, I was hoping for an option to shove my fist in his face, fellow witcher of the school of the wolf or not.
[/spoiler]

4444

my relationship with Yennefer is not going that well.

…

she teleported me into a lake

4445

Me and Yen are <3

4446

Thanks for this explanation. I was getting slaughtered by Jenny-o-the-woods, but with this knowledge, I’ve been getting to her to half health and one time 1/8th health before she kills me. At least for the last few hours. I know I’ll break through eventually. I just need the right combination of being careful and being aggressive. Not a bad way to spend the weekend. Your mission, Witcher, if you choose to accept it: Kill Jenny-o-the-woods.

4447

Jenny-o-the-Woods stands out as a particularly tough contract at the time.

4448

Enhanced Thunderbolt really helped me with that one.

4449

Reason of State spoilers

WHY Dijkstra, why. The writing in this has been stellar up until this moment, Dijkstra just being willing to kill Roche/Ves/Thaler/Geralt is too implausible, not to mention unnecessary…if it had to happen, I at least wish I could dispatch him nonlethaly…god dammit CDP

This is the first issue I have with the game, writing-wise…apart from absence of
characters spoiler

Saskia, which also disappointed me quite a bit, my favourite character from Witcher 2.

4450

I just finished the game and while I think the story lost traction a little bit once I started going to Skeliege it picked back up towards the end again. I have a lot of quests I didn’t do. I kind of stopped visiting the notice boards and only occasionally did side quests once I was over level 20.

I’m not sure what I should do next. I can continue my current game to complete the quests I missed, start a new game on hardest and try to make sure I do the quests I missed, or wait until the rest of the free DLC comes out and then start a new game.

I don’t think my opinions vary too much from what most people have said here. The writing and quests are what holds the game together, along with a beautiful world to explore. The combat is good, but after a certain point most fights can be approached the same way - at least with a combat / Quen focused skill set on the 2nd hardest difficulty. Don’t get surrounded is the big key to success because a group can beat you down. I wonder if Quen is the easy button since it provides a way to heal without limits during combat.

For all the different items to use in / before combat - oils, potions, etc…, I found I could just ignore a lot of it. If I knew what I would be fighting ahead of time I would apply the right oil, or drink a potion but during combat I just stuck to the potions that helps stamina replenish and thunderbolt. I’d open inventory to drink a healing potion. This meant a lot of potions didn’t really get used. Maybe hardest difficulty requires smarter potion use.

Crafting was more of a distraction than anything else. I think it could have been improved with some slight changes. First, it would have been nice if after you travelled by plants it somehow marked on the map where they were located for future harvesting. That way the player wouldn’t feel the need to go around picking up everything. If you get a recipe that requires some plants you’ve already seen, just look at the map to go harvest them.

It was very rare that crafting equipment was worth while and as a whole the equipment wasn’t that exciting. It also would have been nice if some of the stats were explained better - like armor penetration. Many times I didn’t feel I had the info to evaluate what the better weapon was.

Despite the individual weaknesses the game has, the strengths more than make up for it. I hope they continue to work on it and improve the areas that bring it down.

4451

I killed Jenny’o-the-woods. And I’m also finding exploration much more satisfying in Velen with those unexplored POI markers turned off. I wasn’t sure which side of that particular debate I would land on, but I’m really enjoying just looking at the map and find little places that might be interesting. Just now, I was clearing this pirate camp, and after killing the leader and looting the obvious barrels lying around, I was about to move on, but then I spotted a Witcher symbol on a wall when using the Witcher sense. When I examined it, Geralt said “Hmmm, maybe I ought to look around”. So I did. One more round, trying to find something, and I found a chest! With my first crafting recipe for Witcher Gear! Yay.

Now, it’s true, if I had found the right vendor who would have sold the Witcher Gear quests that lead to this place, that would have been one “quest” way to find this place, but the way I found it organically was kind of neat, and it felt great. Kudos to all the people upthread who recommended turning off the POI markers.

4452

Yeah, for me, turning off the question marks makes it a very different game, in terms of exploration, and much more “my style” than chasing down question marks.

4453

Fallout 4 doesn’t look like a big generational leap over FO3 and Vegas. I wonder if the next Elder Scrolls is far enough out that we could get more of a step up there. I really hope W3 pushes everyone else to raise their games. In my humble opinion though, they just can’t do it. I have a feeling CDPR is like the Google of Northern Europe and all the smartest people in Poland want to work there. I don’t think that’s true of Bethesda or Bioware.

4454

A question for king nee, regarding the exploration thing.

Did you do the quest, “monster slayer”?

I just discovered it purely from wandering around randomly after beating the main story, and coming upon an unmarked location.

Assuming you did this quest, how did you come upon it?

4455

Was discussing this with Morton and peacedog elsewhere.

My own thought is this: it will be crazy nuts if Bethesda tries to do what the Witcher 3 does, with regards to writing and quest scoping. I just don’t think they have the writing chops to do it, frankly.

So, my own hope is this, that Bethesda decides to incorporate a lot of the “survival” mods that sprang up for all the TES and Fallout games. That they make it a built-in feature of the game that your character has to worry about shelter, food, water, sleep, and wellness. Add that and you get emergent storytelling and you don’t need to be as narrative-heavy as Witcher 3 is.

4456

Yes! I noticed this. Initially I had problems with human camps because of the archers. I thought about getting that talent that lets you parry arrows but instead just started paying attention to positioning. If you just keep an enemy or a solid piece of the environment between you and the archer(s) you will never get hit. And in the process of doing this I noticed that there is actually a ton of friendly fire. Enemy arrows seem to do a lot more damage than the baseline Witcher crossbow.

4457

I would think I have done it but I don’t remember the name, the only way to be sure is if I search through the mess that is the completed quests list.

Earlier in the thread I mentioned that the game had a few “unreferenced” actual quests to come upon but I was proven wrong as my example was indeed part of another quest. Since then, while clearing random Skellige question marks, I came upon “Iron Maiden”, which I found rather entertaining and AFAIK it was only referenced by a question mark from elsewhere

EDIT

Searched the log and didn’t find it so I looked it up and got an approximate location for it, that particular map had a single question mark quest left uncleared so I assumed it was that where I’d find “Monster Slayer”, but nope, just another monster nest. I did eventually find the quest and can confirm that for me it seems to be completely unreferenced, it didn’t have a question mark AND it had a little bit more going for it than the usual not so hidden chests and the like.

4458

Roll to the archers and kill them first, that is always my plan.

4459

Hum, after playing (a lot) more, I am starting to sour somewhat on the experience. I still think it is a great game, close to masterpiece but it’s like having the best shoes in the world and having 2 pebbles in them (and obviously not being to remove them). They are still great, but man these pebbles are SO frustrating and end up colouring the whole experience.
All personal thoughts and experiences obviously, others may not be bothered nearly as much or disagree :). It’s just … SOOOO close to perfection but then … those F### pebbles! Having said that, it remains a great game. I think it was RPS that called it a “flawed masterpiece”. I was not sure what they meant at the time but my experience feels like that at the moment.

It is mainly due to 2-3 things in my case, they all break my immersion so badly, which is the biggest crime for this game given the quality of the world and the storytelling:

  • playing K+M, at times Geralt’s movements drive me nuts. Either when in tight corners or near small ledges or anything to do with entering/leaving water i.e. what you would expect to be “corner cases” and I am finding the experience awful and jarring. He gets stuck on small obstacles for no reason, throws himself 6 feet away instead of just entering water, cannot apparently climb DOWN ledges (or I am missing a magic button press?), stumbles across rubble on the ground. OTOH, in flat open spaces, he rocks. It’s as if there are a series of animation missing.

  • the loot progression/management is just poor IMHO. If I do a 2nd playthrough, I will have to impose a house rule about not using any witcher gear. The other really annoying thing is coming across the exact same “relic” item for the 5th time or so (or finding relics everywhere after a certain level for that matter). It’s like somebody started producing cheap Chinese import knockoffs and a container got washed up on the shores. Also, after a while, I feel as if there is no real stat progression. Oh great, yet another sword. Does +5% to critical damage and +10 base damage. BORING. I would much prefer to have 1/5 of the number of items but make them a lot more meaningful. It’s also jarring in a world so consistent and well realised to have so much “relic” stuff lying around. Yeah, I’m sure your grandpa who was a peasant had a tomb full of relics. And his friend and cousin and brother too.

RELIC

So, just before the Kaer Morhen battle, the guy in Skellige gives me that legendary sword that’s been in his family for generations and is apparently the best thing since sliced bread. Well, it turns out to be just shit compared not only to my witcher gear but pretty much any sword found for the past 15 hours.

  • that F#### inventory. I don’t even. The 3rd game and they still have not learned a single thing.
4460

I still think the loot is an ignorable problem, whereas things like inventory (doesn’t bother me) and movement are the pebbles in your analogy.

With a busy week, I’m having trouble compelling myself to play. There are so many quests and places to explore that I give up and procrastinate. This is the biggest problem with the weak combat: even though it’s enjoyable to go through the motions, it’s not pulling me through the game. With a game like Dark Souls II or Arkham City, the levels and story are an excuse to fight things over and over. The Witcher 2 was shorter so I didn’t need that.

4461

Yeah, I’ve found a bunch of them so far like that, generally by exploring sections of the map which look like there is something there on the actual map graphic.

4462

I just try and use the walk key more, it’s tempting to have him run everywhere but it would be interesting to spend a day in your own life just trying to run everywhere and see how many accidents you have but yeah it could be much better.

Don’t care about the loot at all in fact I forget until my inventory gets full then I have to deal with it and go ooh look a slightly better sword and move on.