Witcher 2 potion length is the shit! I made it the cornerstone of my mod setup because I didn’t like any of the other alchemy mods - and I really wanted to play as an alchemist this time around. I opted for the enhanced preset which sets the base potion durations to 10/12/15 minutes for most potions. Toxicity also goes down much slower than before so I changed the priority for my talents. This mod + Auto Apply Oils make alchemy very fun to play.
Rest of my mods look like this:
Witcher 2 potion length (enhanced presetn, food not changed)
Always full EXP for quests
Auto Apply Oils
Fair Trade 2.0 (thinking of replacing it with something that allows me to set the money that vendors have)
Map Quest Objectives (simply amazing)
Realistic Trophies
Toxicity Clean Face and Screen (no more like like a zombie!)
Turbo Lighting (absolutely insane, get this mod if you plan on replaying the game)
I am an alchemist focus myself. It generally works well, but it seems like half the talents are broken/useless. Pretty sure it will not be something i recommend for someone purely looking for power.
Always full EXP for quests sounds horribly unbalanced unless the amount of XP needed also increases.
Super Turbo Lighning Mod I tried but always went back to vanilla. It makes interiors look much worse, and is just terribly unbalanced in many ToDs and locations. Plus it worsens skybox and makes sun look like a white orb from time to time.
There is however new version in the works that might improve/fix some of its issues.
Which talents do you think are broken? As for pure power, you’re right. However, you can just slot in the first two tiers of light attack from the combat tree and get to like 90% of full combat spec’s power easily. With lots of other bonuses from alchemy tree on top. Personally I don’t even care about power in W3 though. I’ve already finished the game on DM when it first came out so I’m actually playing on Sword and Bones or whatever the second hardest difficulty is called. And Alchemy feels like a nice roleplaying spec + with increased potion length you get lots of utility that’s available to you most of the time. Having oils auto apply is also a huge boon.
It’s not that bad. This mod simply fixes the gray XP quests - essentially allows you to tackle quests in whatever order you wish without having to worry about overleveling some. Also, I’d add here that Witcher 3 isn’t a well balanced game…not even close. And getting to the point where you unlock all skill slots can easily take 100 hours so this helps a bit with the early game slog when you’re trying to fit in 3-4 talents + 2 general skills into your setup.
Indoor areas are a bit dark, true. I actually thought about using Cat in the Towerful of Mice quest yesterday, lol. I don’t know what ToD stands for - something from HoS or B&W?
Well the game is balanced in a way where every player ends up usually at around level 33-36 by the end, depending on how many sidequests are done. So completionists get almost no XP for lower level sidequests being done to avoid overlevelling. I would expect getting full XP for all quests, completionist would have to end up quite significantly higher than intended, making the game quite a bit easier. But obviously to each their own.
Yeah I meant Time of Day. From my experience STLM mod looks cool in some areas (Novigrad, Swamps) but destroys atmosphere in others (White Orchard, Kaer Morhen, large parts of Velen etc). I found vanilla much more consistent. I am curious about the upcoming version though, would be nice if it could become improvement across the board.
It’s amazing how well this game holds up even on second pass. At least Velen + Novigrad, I never really liked Skellige in the first place. I’m going through the quests that I’ve seen before and I find myself letting the scenes fully unfold instead of skipping through them. Writing, direction, voice overs - head and shoulders above the rest. Once again I’m wondering when, if ever, this game will be surpassed in this.
And the game looks so gorgeous with that lighting mod. Novigrad looked good before but now it’s absolutely jaw dropping.
I’ve had the Witcher 3 for a while. I played it for an awards evaluation last year, and I really liked it, but the poor performance on my computer (10-15 FPS) kept me from playing beyond the first area. Now that I’ve upgraded to a 1080, I’ve found time to play it again. But I’ve decided to play Death March difficulty both for the trophies but also as I find having the systems push back on me makes me engage a bit more at times. This is taking quite a bit of extra time on some fights though. Especially the Griffin fight took me at least 10-15 goes, but it felt pretty nice to finally take him out.
I’ve moved onto Novograd and met the Bloody Butcher. My main quest is marked as target level 5 but based partially on the above, I haven’t been doing all the sidequests and I’m just short of level 3. Do I need to be worried? Will Death March stay challenging or get easier as I increase in levels?
Death March reduces experience to 80% and scales pretty well unless you do all of the ? markers. Then you start to out-level the content and gets a bit too easy.
I used a mod and lowered the experience even more to keep it challenging.
Link is attached.
Its easy to configure and you can adjust to your taste. I went with and additional 20% reduction.
How can anyone dislike Skellige? It is not possible.
Anyway, [quote=“Syzygy, post:6714, topic:71667, full:true”]
I’ve had the Witcher 3 for a while. I played it for an awards evaluation last year, and I really liked it, but the poor performance on my computer (10-15 FPS) kept me from playing beyond the first area. Now that I’ve upgraded to a 1080, I’ve found time to play it again. But I’ve decided to play Death March difficulty both for the trophies but also as I find having the systems push back on me makes me engage a bit more at times. This is taking quite a bit of extra time on some fights though. Especially the Griffin fight took me at least 10-15 goes, but it felt pretty nice to finally take him out.
I’ve moved onto Novograd and met the Bloody Butcher. My main quest is marked as target level 5 but based partially on the above, I haven’t been doing all the sidequests and I’m just short of level 3. Do I need to be worried? Will Death March stay challenging or get easier as I increase in levels?
[/quote]
Regarding combat, make sure to use all the tools you have. On my second playthrough I played also on Death March and was able to kill him on first try, with few close calls:
But thanks to quen sign and some potions, it was ok.
Regarding levels, don’t stress about them too much. You can do quests that are even 5 or 6 levels higher, they will just be a bit harder. There is a quest in Novigrad regarding dumplings to get master smith, and I did that when I was about ten levels lower and it was still doable without much issue. But make sure to do all the quests you can, because they are all interesting and enjoyable.
The game does get easier as you go along, since you unlock more and more abilities and combat options. But that’s also why it remains consistently entertaining, I still enjoy taking down groups of bandits even after 550 hours played.
And congrats on the 1080. Make sure to play at setting where you can get undroppable 60fps.
I think I spent 10 minutes last night just staring at the screen when it was decision time in one of the short DLC quests (Cat and Wolf) that they added sometime after release (first time I saw this quest). Just…wow.
I’m on my first playthrough, but I’m also finding myself agonizing over almost many of the dialogue decisions. I haven’t had too much time to play, so I’m only in Novigrad, so far, although I did many of the side quest in Velen. But I’m really enjoying the game, and it seems to only get better as I progress. It’s easily one of the best games I’ve ever played, and I can definitely see myself returning to it in a year or two.
As the game is originally balanced, you’d be grossly under-leveled for the DLC before finishing the main quest. That might not be an issue with the XP mod you’re using. But even so, Blood & Wine has callbacks to decisions you’ve made during the main quest. Would be a real shame to lose those, or have them trigger using some kind of default world state.
So do them in this order: main quest, Hearts of Stone, Blood & Wine.
The one other thing worth noting: I found that the difficulty of monsters to my level was much greater in the expansions than the regular game. As if the CDPR folks said “Maybe we made mobs of a similar level a little too easy in the late game in TW3, so…”
Last night I saw that Witcher 3 complete edition was on sale for $25 on Xbox Live. So I went to Amazon, traded in my old copy of Witcher 3, and got that credit, and mailed it this morning. And with that credit on Amazon, I can get more Xbox Live currency and get Witcher 3 complete, right? Well, I just realized that… HOLY SHIT, Witcher 3 complete edition is a separate game. The save game doesn’t transfer over. So yeah, it’s a good deal, but I’d have to start the game over from the beginning. I love the idea of that, since I loved the game so much, but I don’t think I have that kind of time.
Sigh. I’m an idiot. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this last night.
I suppose it’s possible that a second playthrough of the Witcher 3 wouldn’t take as long, and I could be done in 3 months instead of 6 months. But that’s still 3 months of playing nothing else. Maybe next year. I think I’ll skip this year’s sale after all. It’s too soon since I played it through the first time.
I just turned 40 this year. My memory is not great. :P And yes, that is what shook my recollection this morning, the discussion we had upthread. I just didn’t remember last night when I came up with this plan when I saw the sale.
Still, like I said upthread, double up on achievements! Yay! But yeah, no way. I don’t have the time, and it’s too soon since I last played it.
