5483

I believe the second DLC is going to be $20, but I can’t recall where I read that off the top of my head. Twice as expensive for more than twice the content, or something something.

5484

The second dlc is $20, so if that also gets a 15% discount buying both separately will cost $25.50. The season passis $25, so not much savings.

5485

I suppose some folks might just like the sense of “ownership” - not having to pull out the credit card twice, just one and done, now both expansions are owned and no more hassle, so that might be another reason one would get the pass over buying them one at a time. For me, $8.50 was a great price so I have it, ironically I probably won’t get to it until closer to when the next expansion drops, which of course will make me hesitate and wait for said expansion, so I should have just held off on HoS and grabbed the season pass at some point down the road. Ah well. Who knows what will happen? No one, says Kruppe.

5486

'Kruppe knows the sad dilemma, yes indeed, of sad befuddled Master. Twice sad? Nay, thrice sad! Four times sad – ah, how usage of the dread word culminates! Cease now, Sir Kruppe, lest we find ourselves weeping without surcease!

5487

Here’s a question for those of you ahead of me in the game. I’m going to word this carefully, and I’m looking for general generically worded answers, not spoilers.

When I finished two of the quests in Velen, I got a hand-drawn cutscene after each, showing the aftermath of certain quests.

Surprisingly, this never happened when I wrapped up big quest lines in Novigrad. Is it because there aren’t any hand-drawn cutscenes for those storylines in Novigrad, or is it because I might have missed something? For example, there were some quests involving Gwent cards, but since I don’t play Gwent I never approached those quests. As a result, there’s a certain dwarf friend that stands constantly in Novigrad waiting for me to get some Gwent cards for him.

5488

Not all quest chains have those cutscenes.

5489

You’ll want to do that quest. But don’t worry, no need to dirty your hands by playing cards. You can use much more refined methods, such as mugging, burglary, etc.

Actually you’re set up perfectly for it, unlike Gwent players. Because for them, the quest should be over in 30 seconds and it’s very jarring when it isn’t. (Here’s how it should go. Z: “I need to find some Gwent cards to complete a set, that I can then sell for a trivial amount of money to a mysterious buyer.” G: “How about you just sell me all the cards you already have, for that amount”. Z: “It’s a deal”). AARGH, just thinking about the quest makes me angry.

5490

And I finally finished this tonight just shy of level 35 at 171 hours. Just in time for the first expansion.

5491

I was a gwent player and did that quest! (and you still can get the cards in the end :P)

5492

The time has come, the triggercut said, to talk of many things. Of mods and HUDs and scripting merges, of cabbages and kings.

OK, maybe not so much with the cabbages.

At any rate, I’ve been fooling with mods all weekend long for the game, getting to know what different ones do, and how easy or difficult they are to install. And I have tips and recommendations.

First of all, my system is a i5 2500K with 16gb RAM and a 970 gtx video card. That’s my reference when I say “I’m not getting a performance hit with these.”

On to the mods.

The first one is one that I think is pretty damned essential for UI, and that’s Friendly HUD. Friendly HUD does a lot of the things that a HUD mod should do with the graphical readouts and displays that are on your screen. It’s also pressure sensitive, so you can have it no show your minimap at all, but when you hold down the map key it will. Same with current quest objectives. It’s very, very nice.

And oh yeah, it’s got one of the coolest immersion mods in the game build into it: real time meditation. That’s not really a good description. You don’t meditate in real time. But what does happen is that instead of you just watching a graphic representation of time passing in a menu window, instead with this you hold down a key (or d-pad) and Geralt sits down and you can watch clouds and stars and the sun and moon wheel across the sky. It’s like a do-it-yourself Witcher Koyaanisqatsi! It’s SO COOL.

It can be a little bit of work setting up the config files for the hotkeys. It took me about 15 minutes to copy and paste everything from the supplied reference files. It’s worth it, I think.

And Friendly HUD is a great mod. But it isn’t the greatest.

The greatest might be the Ultimate Lighting Mod, or ULM. The person who made it helped a bunch of other folks fix and adapt their lighting mods. What he eventually did was make ULM, and ULM allows you to set the game for any one of 118 lighting pre-sets. Some are taken from in-game settings, others are from fan-made mods. The general consensus–and I agree–is that setting 118, which is the Super Turbo Lighting Mod (a fan creation) with the fix in it is the way to go. It makes the game look stunning, frankly, like the way it looked in some of the E3 trailers.

But…if you’re going to use ULM and Friendly HUD together, you’re going to have to use the Witcher Script Merging Tool. It sounds scary and dangerous, but in actuality it’s a snap to use, and Gopher has a great tutorial here.

Some other mods I love: the dirty camera lens cleaner is magnificent. I hate the fake water smears and water spots on the “lens” that the game uses. Lens cleaner scrubs that off, while still giving you raindrop and mud-throwing hags effects.

I also like the More Blood mod. It’s weird to me that there’s no blood on the ground in fights. This fixes that, without being stupidly gory, either.

One other one I like, but it doesn’t seem to be currently working with the new patch, is a mod called Face Them. When that’s fixed up, it has Geralt casually turn from time to time to acknowledge the speech or noise cues from NPCs and animals.

Finally, I’m playing with a couple of different FOV mods to see which one works best. I’ll report back.

5493

I’ve playing yesterday and today again, as warm up for the coming expansion. I’m at a total of 133 hours played!

I did two new dlc quests (the cat witcher and the Skellige’s most wanted), both fine missions, I also did find by chance a third undiscovered quest from the base game in Kaer Morhen about the Witcher’s forge, I finished two already started side quests from the base game situated in Skellige (one of them was bugged before, they fixed it), I did the new wolf treasure hunt which is a 7-part quest so lots of places to explore, and I finished it finally completing the “Collect’em all” quest of getting all the Gwent cards, though I had to use a guide to know what innkeepers I had missed.

Add some exploring, some crafting and trading in the side, and that was almost 6 hours of witchering.

5494

I had a pretty marathon session yesterday too. Well, marathon for me, I ended up playing over 4 hours this weekend. My hours total went above 100 hours, and I finished most of the main quest chains in Skellige.

Now I just have to do the Last Wish and I’ll be ready to move on from Skellige. I feel a little sad. Skellige definitely had the best scenery in the game, and I really love the people. All the children are really awesome, and the animations of people going about their daily lives were really endearing. I’m going to miss this place. Of course, being Level 23, I’m too low level for most of the Witcher Contracts in Skellige, so I suppose I’ll be back one day.

5495

It’s going to be difficult to come back to this combat system tomorrow. I won’t even be able to transform into a semi-truck and ram someone into a wall.

5496

As much as I love Skellige, there is another location you are about to go in that I liked even more, scenery-wise…

5497

Downloading HoS.

5498

I’m already hooking up with Shani.

5499

Heh, the first thing I did was to attack the side quests, instead of starting the main mission. I’m 6000 gold poorer! These arab craftsmen are expensive.

5500

According to Galaxy I have the patch and DLC installed, so I should be good to go - if I can trust it.

5501

Out on Steam too.

5502

I’ll probably just play the DLC with my completed save game. I have some areas I can explore too and quests I didn’t finish. I don’t know if I should start a new game and focus on different skills, or do a new game+.

Did they do any rebalancing? If I start a new game and plan on doing a lot of exploring and side quests, should the difficulty be and the hardest level to try and minimize over leveling?