The Witcher Thread

[Lulu]

So.... Gwent.... Gwent is Fun.

Unfortunately that Fun is cut short because pretty much every NPC's Deck is Better than yours and you have to have to blindly run up and down the open world looking for Traders and Merchants that may or may not have any cards to sell.

Just like in any game that has a "Pick up X amount of So & So" The Witcher has a nifty lil book that tells you how many cards are left in each Region.... but thats it.

It doesn't tell you where they are in any specific detail or who might have them...

Theres a few Side Quests that steer you torwards Gwent Playing NPCs only but thats when the bullshit starts since they all have like End Game Decks.

BTW... Spy Cards are OP !!! if you have 3 more cards than the opponent... you basically win.

Now... where was I again... was looking for Ciri... in order to find Ciri I had to find some witch, in order to find that Witch I had to find Johnny... and so on. LoL.... Fetch Quest Over Kill in this Game.

Edit 1:LoL.... Theres some sort of audio glitch in Novigrad..... the game keeps playing the same soundtrack on loop... even when I play Gwent.

Edit 2: Fixed It.... just had to to complete the quest that triggered the music in the 1st place.

Edit 3: was playing Gwent against some merchant... right before I was about to curb stomp his ass in the last round... Boom !!! The Power Goes Out.

Anyway I just arrived in Skellige.... This game cheats harder than Dark Souls... they charged me 1000 Crowns to continue a quest.... but this wasn't a side quest, this is the main Quest.

Why is this game so incessant on Bleeding my Money Dry ?
1) Equipment wears out and requires money to fix.
2) loot costs an arm and a leg to buy but when you sell it you only get pennys back.
3) and quests constantly force you to drain your resources.
4) Even Dismantling Junk Costs money.

LoL... hell... even Guards rob you after they beat your ass for looting Resources only you can use.... and for whatever reason they're always 5 Levels ahead of you or more.

Anyway... I need to find me a Griffin.... I'm only one feather away from upgrading my Griffin Armor and nobody's selling Griffin Feathers.

 

[Lulu]

LoL... I broke one of the Side Quests...

Looks like All My Spelunking has caused The Lord Of Undvik side quest to Glitch Out and now its essentially Uncompletable. See what happens when you go exploring ?

 

[Gungansmustdie]

So.... Gwent.... Gwent is Fun.

No one remembers dice poker

 

[Lulu]

No one remembers dice poker

LoL... I don't even know what that is.

 

[Gungansmustdie]

LoL... I don't even know what that is.

Dice Poker was what Geralt played in the first two Witcher games, Gwent Before Gwent.

 

[Lulu]

Dice Poker was what Geralt played in the first two Witcher games, Gwent Before Gwent.

LoL... I never played the first two.... although I'd imagine they have WAAAAAAAAAY better pacing than the Wild Hunt.

I generally don't play Minigames in regular games unless the Game forces me to like in Bioshock...

But I must say Gwent is really something Special.

 

[Gungansmustdie]

LoL... I never played the first two.... although I'd imagine they have WAAAAAAAAAY better pacing than the Wild Hunt.

I generally don't play Minigames in regular games unless the Game forces me to like in Bioshock...

But I must say Gwent is really something Special.

You should really check them out. There on sale on steam right now for super cheap. 1, is $1.50, and 2, is $3

 

[Lulu]

You should really check them out. There on sale on steam right now for super cheap. 1, is $1.50, and 2, is $3

Tempting as that is.... They are not on wishlist so I can't buy'em....

And to be frank with you I don't think I would want them even if they were Free. I' ve just about had with Critically Acclaimed RPGs that are praised for being Unique and Amazing only to have to deal with the same Old Grind All RPGs are known for.

I'l buy whatever RPG Super Giant Games makes because they understand the scope of their mechanics and pace their game's accordingly with Respect to whoever happens to be playing their games is not just trying to kill time. Bastion and Transistor haven't failed me so maybe I could just Pyre.

Other than that.... if its not on the list then its not getting one cent from me.... its a very short list, only 2 Games are on it.

 

[Lulu]

Looks like That Quest that glitched out wasn't as broken as I thought it was... After running around aimlessly I bumped into Folan & Hjalmar just by chance.

From there the Cutscene did the rest and I completed the quest.

Also.... I've tracked down and completed every single Question Mark in Novigrad & Velen.... there were like 120 of them. Now I gotta repeat the entire Process all over again for the 103 Question Marks in Skellige.

On the plus side.... hunting down those Question Marks has cause me to jump from Level 25 to 29..... doing regular Side Quests & Main Quests barely gave me anything.

LoL... I don't think you're supposed to be at level 30 before you find Ciri.... everytime I get rail roaded back into completing the Main Quest.... I just one shot Everything.... which I guess is my reward for 1000 Shotting an Ancient Leshen & Archgriffin that were 12 Levels ahead of me.... shout outs to Quen... it works.

 

[just_me]

LoL... I don't think you're supposed to be at level 30 before you find Ciri.... everytime I get rail roaded back into completing the Main Quest.... I just one shot Everything.... which I guess is my reward for 1000 Shotting an Ancient Leshen & Archgriffin that were 12 Levels ahead of me.... shout outs to Quen... it works

Well you can see the suggested Level in your quest log and the suggested range is ±6. It's pretty hard not to be overleveled by the End of Act I, given the way it's constructed. The Skellige and Novigrad Questlines have more or less the same Level requirements and both yield enough XP to bump you to those Levels. Unless you ignore all side content, you will be overleveled for one Questline, if you completed the other.

Sooner or later you will fall back in line with the Main Quest requirements though. Act I of the game already contains like 80% of all the side content and you XP rewards are greatly reduced, if your level is too high for a given quest. They are a lot more generous compared to the vanilla release though, where you got 0 XP for quests not within your Level range. Obviously this was not the most popular design choice so they changed it to a token 5XP per step and now it's 10%… I think. Still means you will “loose out” on several thousand XP from the main quest, if your Level is too high, thus reducing the gap over time.

Also as far as I remember it's a waste of time to kill enemies with a red skull icon. Enemies above your range receive a stat buff (8xHealth, 6xDmg and 3xResistance afaik), but XP rewards are actually reduced… not sure if they changed this with a Patch though. But basically it's a tedious kill for lower/equivalent rewards.

 

[Lulu]

Well you can see the suggested Level in your quest log and the suggested range is ±6. It's pretty hard not to be overleveled by the End of Act I, given the way it's constructed. The Skellige and Novigrad Questlines have more or less the same Level requirements and both yield enough XP to bump you to those Levels. Unless you ignore all side content, you will be overleveled for one Questline, if you completed the other.

Sooner or later you will fall back in line with the Main Quest requirements though. Act I of the game already contains like 80% of all the side content and you XP rewards are greatly reduced, if your level is too high for a given quest. They are a lot more generous compared to the vanilla release though, where you got 0 XP for quests not within your Level range. Obviously this was not the most popular design choice so they changed it to a token 5XP per step and now it's 10%… I think. Still means you will “loose out” on several thousand XP from the main quest, if your Level is too high, thus reducing the gap over time.

Also as far as I remember it's a waste of time to kill enemies with a red skull icon. Enemies above your range receive a stat buff (8xHealth, 6xDmg and 3xResistance afaik), but XP rewards are actually reduced… not sure if they changed this with a Patch though. But basically it's a tedious kill for lower/equivalent rewards.

LoL.... imagine how much better this game would be if they just got rid of this whole "RPGs must have levels" convention. For a game with so much content its got very little Value.

Oh well.... you know whats the shitty part about Skellige.... a bunch of the Question Marks are underwater.... CDPR must think they've created the best Sailing and Swimming Mechanics in the world because they have no shame about cramming this map to grills with underwater loot.

 

[just_me]

Oh well.... you know whats the shitty part about Skellige.... a bunch of the Question Marks are underwater.... CDPR must think they've created the best Sailing and Swimming Mechanics in the world because they have no shame about cramming this map to grills with underwater loot.

I collected every single Gwent Card on each of my 4 playthroughs… the one thing I couldn't do was getting to all Points of Interest in Skellige. It's just trash loot that you 100% won't need and even have a hard time selling (since most Merchs have so little money). You will get overburdened and if you do, you have to port back to a harbor/town, but since there are usually no quick travel points (with ships anyway) close to your last location, you have to take a ship and sail all the way back. So I decided to live with the question marks in the Water XD

And I'd agree that they should have dropped most of the cRPGish mechanics in favor of a more Action-Adventure based progression system for instance. The system is terribly shallow anyway and the skill trees are probably the least interesting I've ever encountered. It's almost exclusively passives a good chunk with very limited utility. But even with the fairly limited options they royally screwed up the difficulty curve, since you could just get way too many passive bonuses especially with Alchemy. That's quite the feat actually lol

 

[Lulu]

I collected every single Gwent Card on each of my 4 playthroughs… the one thing I couldn't do was getting to all Points of Interest in Skellige. It's just trash loot that you 100% won't need and even have a hard time selling (since most Merchs have so little money). You will get overburdened and if you do, you have to port back to a harbor/town, but since there are usually no quick travel points (with ships anyway) close to your last location, you have to take a ship and sail all the way back. So I decided to live with the question marks in the Water XD

And I'd agree that they should have dropped most of the cRPGish mechanics in favor of a more Action-Adventure based progression system for instance. The system is terribly shallow anyway and the skill trees are probably the least interesting I've ever encountered. It's almost exclusively passives a good chunk with very limited utility. But even with the fairly limited options they royally screwed up the difficulty cure, since you could just get way too many passive bonuses especially with Alchemy. That's quite the feat actually lol

LoL. Yeah I gave up on Skellife a few hours ago too....I did all the Side Quests and Witcher Contracts and Treasure hunts so thats more than enough I guess.

Only thing left in my Quest log other than the main Quest is the DLC stuff.... I don't know when I should start with those. I don't want to accidentally trigger The End of The Game before I do the DLC.

Its funny how the main quest caught up to my level so quickly after finding Ciri.... in less than 2 hours I went from being overleveled to being just balanced. If I didn't know better I'd say it seems like Theres some shady level scaling at play.

 

[Lulu]

Too Late.... finished it by Accident.


Oh well... atleast its Finally Over.

So how about the DLC ?

Is it just as long and Grindy ?

 

[Lulu]

Finished the Heart Stone DLC... it wasn't bad.... unlike the Rest of the Game its actually well paced since you don't have to stop and do a bunch of unrelated side quests and and question marks.... Speaking Of Which....

I managed to cleared all 100 Question Marks in Skelliga in one long tedious night.... the only hilight was getting murdered by a Level 48 Arch Griffin..... Damn Son of Bitch does 60% with each hit.

Anyway with Velen, Novigrad & Skelliga cleared of Question Marks.... its time to repeat the entire process again in Toussaint. oh joy.

 

[Lulu]

Oh My God... Finally !!! Its Finally Over.

Did all the Side Quests....

Found all the question marks in Toussaint....

Now theres just the Blood & Wine Main Quest... and I'm done with this Time Sucking Game.

 

[Tyaren]

@Lulu, do video games actually bring you any joy? It sounds like everything's a chore to you and you can't wait for the moment that you are finally done.

 

[Lulu]

@Lulu, do video games actually bring you any joy? It sounds like everything's a chore to you and you can't wait for the moment that you are finally done.

LoL... I never leave a job half finished.

And yeah I get plenty of joy from Video Games... its just that playing two or three RPGs back to back these past few months has sapped all the joy out of me.... that plus sucking at SFV isn't helping.

But fear not, soon I'l be gabbing on about how much I'm enjoying Doom & Hitman.

Can't wait to play those.

 

[Gungansmustdie]

LoL... I never leave a job half finished.

And yeah I get plenty of joy from Video Games... its just that playing two or three RPGs back to back these past few months has sapped all the joy out of me.... that plus sucking at SFV isn't helping.

But fear not, soon I'l be gabbing on about how much I'm enjoying Doom & Hitman.

Can't wait to play those.

Which Hitman? The newest one sucked hard

 

[Lulu]

Which Hitman? The newest one sucked hard

I liked Absolution and since you think the latest one sucked hard then I think I might enjoy it even more.

Seems like my tastes are opposite to everyone elses.