Nothing about the RT shadows pop-in in forests. Would go and see if walking round Novigrad is any smoother but literally just got to Skellige :)
Also, Steam appears to be having a case of the Mondays.
I wish I could remember what happened now I’m closing in on the person I’ve been hunting all game. I’ve just done the ritual in Kaer Morhan and I’m wondering when the best time is to slip off and do the expansions. I’m worried that once I go and find significant plot person, the main story just rollocks along after that point, and I won’t have a natural break to go buy a vinyard.
Anyone got an opinion on the best times for the two expansions? I think I probably played both of them after the end of my first playthough of the main game, but can’t remember any of it :)
It’s hard to say what works for everyone, but there are some of the toughest fights I encountered in the game in the first expansion…so you’ll want to have a well-filled out skill tree and all the sword oils and potions recipes at hand that you can for it. It can maybe slot it just before the end of the main quest though, if you’re high enough level.
The payoff at the end of the second expansion feels to me like it only fits best after the main quest, as the last thing.
Agree completely. The end of the 2nd expansion is what I consider the true end of the game/series.
Blood and Wine takes place couple years after the main game, canonically. So it should be left for last.
Hearts of Stone can be done before the end of the game but I would also do it after.
Ditto. Both expansions after you’ve completed the main quest starting with Heart of Stone. Hopefully you get the bad ending AKA the best ending. But not only is it the best ending, it also makes for the smoothest transition into the DLC content.
I also recommend finishing the main game, do the 2nd DLC, then Blood and Wine. Blood and Wine feels like a different, brilliantly colored world. And the ending I got in B&W felt like a perfect ending; retiring in my manor with my favorite lady, sitting on a bench watching the sun go down.
Blood and Wine after the main game, for sure. But I’ll disagree with everyone else on Hearts of Stone. It makes the most sense to do it at the beginning of Act III, when you’ve returned to Novigrad.
No, that makes some sense to me, too.
I think with Hearts of Stone, the sweet spot to start it is after you’ve leveled up enough to have the oils and potions and skills to manage the fights, but maybe before the real snowball-downhill momentum of the main story’s final act really takes hold, perhaps.
Tee hee.
Do the Acts announce themselves with a title screen? Not sure which act I’m in.
They do not. You said you just did a ritual at KM, which means you’re still in Act II.
When you have an available mission called “Final Preparations”, you’re in Act III.
And more importantly, it’s prior to the start of that mission, or even better, sometime during that mission (which is made up of 4 parts), where Hearts of Stone fits best.
But do what Trig said and be ready. First fight is a doozy!
Edit to add, you could do it now if you wanted. You don’t have to wait until Final Preparations. For me personally, doing it then really seemed to fit. Just have your level and skills ready whenever you do.
Woah. 50 million? I guess frequent sales really work.
So they went from 15-18 million at the end of 2017 to about 50 million in the middle of 2023. Probably mostly sold at a discount. They’re not shy about being part of every major Xbox sale over the last few years, for instance.
Well, it probably helps that it’s extremely well-reviewed, and has a hit TV series to tie into. That+Sale= a lot of folks saying ‘sure, I’ll give that a try’.
And there are those that may have had the original but bought the GotY edition to get the expansions (like me). But that’s no different than a lot of games, I suppose. However, it does boost that ‘copies sold’ number.
How relevant is ‘copies sold’ for digital distribution? I always treat them with a bit of skepticism because it costs next to nothing to shell out digital copies. In the days of packaged products, the sell through numbers made more sense because we knew that someone was walking off with a physical product that cost a bunch in manufacturing, shipping, etc, and it wasn’t easy getting that out there. If you sold 100,000 boxes, wow! 100,000 digital downloads? Doesn’t have the same impact.
Am I off in thinking that way?
From the perspective of the people making the game, yeah, you’re off. The digital copy - when not on sale - costs the end user same as the physical copy, but as you say, it doesn’t have the overhead of the physical packaging, so the publisher gets a lot more money from it. In addition, a digital version is always “on the shelf”, unlike a physical copy, so catalog titles that have long tails are incredibly valuable. That’s one of the reasons you see games retain their full price (or a smaller price cut) these days - you get better sales placement with a bigger discount. So you can cut it by a lot for a temporary sale but make a heap because you’re getting better placement which means more sales.
Hey folks, GOG Galaxy tells me that my version of this game is 1.32. Do I need anything later than that if I don’t have a GTX 40xx card? I have a 3060 Ti.
I try to get Galaxy to update the game and it tells me it can’t do that right now* (I suspect Galaxy needs to update itself first, but I can’t seem to get it to do that).
*“try again later.”
EDIT: turns out the way to fix it is to tell Galaxy to “verify and repair” the installation.
Yes update 4 did a whole lot of stuff on the graphics side. Although given your gpu I recommend running it in Direct X 11 mode (you’ll still get higher res textures etc.) and not DX12 as your performance will tank even on equivalent graphics settings.
Thanks for the tip about DX 11!