So I fired it up again today to test out some camera mods and what not. God damn. This glorious beauty will never get old.
I talked to those two you mentioned, and yeah, the attention to detail is fascinating. There’s also a lot of places where there’s alternate dialogues to account for different game states (if you visited a certain place or not, if you’re wearing a certain outfit or not, etc), and it’s usually seamless. It’s so much better than nearly everything else that it feels like CDPR is on a whole different level.
fucking toadman
Well, I’m able to get toadman to half health, but Golden Oriole does absolutely nothing about his poison.
Shit’s the first time I have systematically ragequit in this game.
Re: Golden Oriole, has to be Superior (not enhanced or regular) and then the poison heals you.
Hmm, Elhokar. I wonder if i can find a save and record a video of me beating toad (if i still have a save i can revert to)… Once I started using Igni he pretty much died a horrible toady death because Igni would stun lock him for a second. The key is just learning how to dodge his crap, which, to be fair, was the majority of the battle. At first i kept trying either to … uh … magic trap him (can’t remember the sign name offhand) and pig… toad stick him, to no success, and was getting very frustrated, until i noticed Igni was just massacring his health.
It’s Yrden, and I used Igni in that fight as well and it worked fine.
I’m at level 9. Tonight I cleared out Reardon Manor, stood guard at the Forefather’s Eve ritual, tracked down the pellar’s father, and found time to play gwent and do a little diving for treasure.
I turned off the Active Quest info beneath the minimap so now I have to refer to my quest journal more often and read the map more carefully. Much better!
Editer
6332
As an example of why I’m going to play this again (and I’ll be vague to avoid spoilers), I finished the quest where there’s a disagreement between brothers and got a seemingly positive ending. But something didn’t feel quite right, so I reloaded the previous checkpoint and made a different decision. And things played out in a very interesting manner, particularly having seen the alternative. So I have a feeling that it’s not going to be completely repetitive to replay the game if I make some different choices.
Meanwhile, I’m 20 hours into Blood and Wine and, having focused on the Gwent deck and the quests I was in danger of outleveling, I still haven’t even done the first quest after examining the bodies that got me to Toussaint. :)
jsnell
6333
So, let’s talk Gwent. The Skellige deck: garbage or trash?
The berserker power is far too weak given the cost. You need weak unit cards + single use case special cards in the same deck in the hopes that you’ll draw just the right proportion to combo and give a result that’s still no better than just using normal unit cards. In the best case 4 cards (3 units, one Maerdrom) will give you 24 strength. That’s trivially achievable with strength 6 units with no special power, which are plentiful. The worst case for the berserkers on the other hand is absolutely miserable , while the worst case for the strength 6 units is that you draw them instead of a better card.
The other main theme of the deck are the units that boost each other. Again you need to draw the right combo, but it’s simpler than with the berserkers. If you load up with all 3 types of these units, chances are you’re getting a full set of at least 1-2 types. The real problem is that they are easy to counter if you play them early. Scorch will always target those units, since they’ll be boosted to an absurdly high value. And weather is always a potential issue if you don’t get the last play.
The card recycling abilities really limited. It’s like one scout unit and a weak medic (+ the single scouting hero, and single medic hero). Especially since Skellige depends so much on easily breakable combos, the opponents will mostly be able to outstall Skellige and get the last plays. You’re entirely depending on being able to scarecrow the opponent’s scouts.
Light warships and Cerys both suffer from the same problem as the monster faction. Sure, you get a lot of strength on the board in one go. But if any of the extra cards came from your hand, the opponent now has a tempo advantage.
The Skellige faction special power is a total crapshoot. I’ve actually had multiple occasions where one of the two cards I get from the discard to start the 4th round has the scorch special power, and kills my other card. Or worse yet, once it killed both cards. But the unit with the built-in scorch is probably the best card in the whole deck, so playing things safe and leaving it out is problematic.
Clearly the designers knew that nobody would actually want to play with these cards, and used the story to design around that :-) And at least the strength 0 bird is a pretty cool card.
I’ve had some success with Igni too, and I’ve since stopped bothering with Quen because he almost one hits me whether I have it on or not. My issue is when he tonguefucks me when it seems like I should’ve dodged it based on my location, which leaves me with barely any health, and I become so focused on not dying that he gets me again.
Might just drop the difficulty from BaBB for the fight.
You shouldn’t have been bothering with Quen at all in the first place.
Quen has saved my life in every single fight up to now. I can’t imagine why I wouldn’t bother.
I don’t ever quen i roll around like a drunken monkey and crit the fuck out of the back of their necks.
Because–as you’ve found–certain monsters kind of laugh at certain signs, and that’s especially apparent in HoS.
Quen is like the delicious candy shell that Mr. Toad gets to bust open with one hit when fighting him. Yrden built up will let you roll in, smack him 2-3 times while stunned, and roll out without getting crushed for it, because he’s particularly susceptible to it.
robc04
6339
OK, so you meant for that battle don’t use quen. Quen is awesome in a lot of fights.
My 2nd play through I was all alchemy and bombs maxed out, so toad was easier that way for me.
Feels like I need a video card to enjoy the game fully, as around 30 fps doesn’t seem to cut it. (770gtx on a i73930K)
Still put a few hours into it, but think I’ll wait until I buy a new GPU sometime in the autumn.
“And Geralt sailed back over a year
and in and out of weeks
and through a day
and into the night of his very own room
where he found his supper waiting for him
and it was still hot.”
Heh im perfectly happy with the way my 770 performs in witcher. Guess our wallets and expectations differ :p
