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So I just read this book on history of games called "Blood, Sweat and Pixels" and was fascinated by the chapter on The Witcher 3 and mostly how the team put in so much thought and care in every single side quest. And seems that there are a lot of moral decision to be made on each adventure. So I finally decided to give it a try. Got any advice for me?
Ignore the advice you saw in this thread, except for the one about trying the DLCs, and enjoy the game however you wanna play it. Romance both options if you want, be a terrible dad if you're so inclined, etc. Have fun, it's your first playthrough so enjoy it unspoiled ane cherish it, you will love it and go for a 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and maybe even more runs and you can minmax things later on in these runs.
The only thing I'd say you shouldn't do is skip the dialogue and cutscenes, and sidequests. This game has a very well-crafted story (which is the main attraction) and that goes also for the sidequests so enjoy them fully.
Okay as little Gwent as possible. Otherwise you will get hooked on it until you burn out and stop playing the game entirely because you've forgotten all the storyline and mechanics.
Quen and side step a lot during combat. Focus on getting sets of armor and weapons because they are better than whatever weird ass stuff you throw together from loot. So that means you’ll have to visit armorers a lot. Do not ignore Gwent. It can be fun. Pick one girl and do not romance them both. Make sure you make Ciri as happy as possible. A lot of quests are about choosing the lesser evil. So basically you’re setup to make a bad choice no matter what. Which makes it interesting honestly. This game is really interesting and rich in story. Explore everything. Have fun.
Don't repeatedly kill the cows in the first village so that you can sell their drops for coins. You can do it once... maybe twice....
Good thing to remember about builds. Geralt is a sword fighter first and a magic user 18th. Be good at slicey.
Don't romance them both.
In the first region in the midst of the first small village two neighbors are arguing. They are not giving a quest, they just talk to each other and listening gives such an insight in how war can turn people against each other that have been living peacfully and been friends for years.
Do the side quests and take your time with the dialogue. Some of these stories are impactful, mostly sad and worth your time. If you are told that you should talk to people to find out more about your contract, do it. Some of these quests can be done with only talking to one person but you want to get the information from everyone and especially their side of the story.
Do not look up the outcome of decisions. Make your decisions and live with them at least at your first playthrough. Most decisions have impact and seeing the outcome unfold makes this game special and yes often there is no "good choice" - that's war for you.
Last: Buy every Gwent card you can get your hands on and play with everyone you can. If you can't win just come back later with better cards and obliterate them - it will feel goooood!
The DLC's are a must.
Try out difficulty settings - there is a sweet spot for most people somewhere but what it will be for you no one can know, but it would be a shame if you play through the game not having found the difficulty that fits you best because you "always play on ".
Have fun, I wish I could play this game for the first time again.
Keep Quen up, roll about, hit stuff.
There's a couple of enemies where this doesn't work, but it should get you through the trickier combat sections.
Don't forget the DLC, and for all the praise Blood and Wine got because of it's size, don't sleep on Hearts of Stone - it's the most memorable part of the game for me.
ABC:
Always
Be
Cfancying a round of Gwent
PLAY GWENT. The minigame became somewhat notorious because it's really good - you can spend dozens of hours travelling the world and just playing cards.
I have done literally zero Gwent quests after the first match and even googled one time how to remove quests because they were annoying in the journal (you can't)
Put the baby in the oven
Just trust me on this bro
You'll know when the time is right
Oils are reusable so don’t try to ration them. I didn’t use them for the first quarter of the game because I didn’t know that. There are a lot of fights that would have been much easier.
You're kidding me‽
Aaaaaaaaaa
As for mods:
The Witcher 3 HD Reworked Project Arguably one of the best reworks ever.
They just drive home the "cold wilderness" vibe.
Then Better Combat Enhanced Because that's one of the main critque points of this game.
And some more
And for DLC, i was especially impressed with "Blood and Wine" sidequests.
About helping sane monsters
There will be a point where your actions will be judged.
Would you recommend playing without mods first?
I would say it's entirely up to you. Though, experience with games like Gothic 3 (don't even start without the Community Patch and a visual glitch fix dor trees and the sea) led me to mod first, personally. If you dig a bit deeper, there are LOD fixes (buildings from distance) for Whiterun, for example. Btw, the bumpmapping shader of reshade works especially nice for Witcher 3' roads.
Tell your friends and family that you love them but you won't see them for a while
A note on brewing potions: You only need the herbs the first time you brew any particular potion, after you've brewed it once it will get restocked automatically when you meditate.
Take your time with the combat tutorial - Understand the difference between a dodge roll, a sidestep, a parry and blocking.
Other than that, have fun!
And in general: Dodge monsters, parry humanoids. Many of the monsters have attacks that are too large or erratic to reliably parry, but you can abuse the hell out of the I-frames from dodging. But soldiers go down much faster when you parry them.
Don't chase all the markers on your map, most of them are crap and you'll burn out.
If you do every sidequest you will be massively overleveled.
If you go to an area where “you are not supposed to go yet” you’ll be massively under leveled.
I’ve heard there are mods that just even everything out so you can play the game at your own pace.
Play with a controller. Makes the slippery-ass controls feel way more natural.
If the combat is frustrating, turn the difficulty down. There will still be a learning curve, but it’ll be the difference between surviving and having to do an hour of work again because you forgot to quick save and get slapped by a foglet.
Don't try to go for both main romance options, the outcome isn't worth it. Better to do two playthroughs if you really want to know.
If you wish to keep your sanity through the entire game, I suggest only doing the really big side quests and ignoring the majority of the others. The game is fucking huge, and it can easily become repetitive doing everything.
The sidequests are fucking great though. Didn't play all, but those I did could be main quests in a different game. I had to skip some because there is just stupid amount of them and I was overleveling fast.
Don't do map completition though - trying to do all is truly insanity
If you have the patience for it, try playing on a much harder difficulty. The medium and low difficulty levels don't provide the same weight. Many systems in the game are unnecessary at lower difficulty levels but higher difficulty forces you to engage in them to get the extra edge over certain encounters.
Higher difficulties force you to engage in potion brewing, reading up on enemies, and making genuinely tough choices morally in order to keep Geralt alive. Lower difficulties remove all the tension from these systems.
Also as another user mentioned, don't skip any dialogue and engage in the side quests/contracts as they give a lot of unique flavor and nuance to the world and story.
This, this game isnt about fighting, it's about prepping, it's about researching your prey and knowing what you need to get the edge on it before you go in, brewing the potions you need and knowing what to hit it with
As other folk said, definitely do get the DLCs. There’s a whole other game in there.
It’s been a while since I last played, and this game IS a masterpiece, no doubt about that, but the one of the first sections can be rough. Iirc it’s gloomy af, there’s some hard monsters in some quests that can be demotivating and the combat/mechanics takes some getting used to which makes the previous point worse. Just know that the game opens up and there’s a whole world out there.
There are tons of side quests which are great, so you should do those but also don’t feel like you need to do all of them. It can be easy to get side tracked and then lose steam and quit on the main story.
Especially because like I said the DLCs are amazing. They are also quite self contained so it’s like a breath of fresh air
Enjoy this amazing game. I’m jealous of you
Don't skip the dialogue, even if you use subtitles and are a fast reader. It sometimes switches from one sentence at a time to whole chunks of dialogue and action getting skipped. Plus, the voice acting is superb, and the physical reactions of characters can convey a lot of emotion.
Apart from White Orchard, you shouldn't need to complete all side quests in your area before moving on. Particularly with witcher gear, it's sometimes expected to need to come back at a later time when you're more powerful.
Others may disagree, but I don't bother dismantling gear and weapons. I find it simpler to just sell things and buy materials I need from vendors.
I completely disagree with the top comment. Dont worry about the main game.
I advocate that you go in with the mindset that you are a part of an old and important guild, and that the main story is just an extension of your every day job of being a Witcher. The "side quests" are unbelievably good. So good that half of them have better stories than entire video games and series. I didn't bother with the main story (only in parts, organically). I just wandered the country side and "did the job of a Witcher". There is sooooooooo much to this game. Also, get the DLC's.
One word of warning however. The power scaling is somewhat broken. If you over-level before moving forward, the game can get pretty boring only because the enemies become trivially easy to beat.
edit: Also, try and bang anything with eyes.
Do the side quests before the main quest as some of the side quests get locked off when you compete main quests.
First few hours can seem slow with the early map not being the most exciting, but if you make it through the huge world opens up and things start getting much more exciting.
When I played I printed out a side quest list to try to experience as much of the game a possible and checked off ones I completed. Side quests are amazing and better than the main quest as opposed to being the usual fetch quest with a weak or no story.
Crafting armor is 100 percent superior to found and bought armor. But if you don't like crafting, the found and bought stuff will get you through. Also don't sell or dump old crafted armor pieces, you need them to craft the next tier up.
Are the games in book order or does it not matter?
The games are a sequle, CDPR got the rights to make a game based on the IP in the early 2000s and just did their own thing.
W1 was a bit rough, plot wise it tried to incorporate a lot of the existing world but played the amnesia card so everyone had to explain shit to Geralt (and by extension the player).
W2 is a direct follow up to W1 and put CDPR on the world stage by being the high water mark for graphics requirements around 2010. Still a very good game, a bit on rails for modern standards, but still fantastic for how it handles branching paths.
W3 + DLC won all the awards in their respective release years for a reason, they are magnificent and with CDPR spending 15 years in the IP they make tons of call backs to the books without the players feeling like they are missing something if you didnt read them.
There are 2 (ok... 4) TV shows.
The netflix shows starring Henry Cavil, king of the nerds, (who is being recast by the least hot hemsworth because netlfix pissed off the books biggest fan) and what ever that second one was that we dont talk about (There is also an anime, which is pretty good) and the Hexer, a made-for-TV low budget show that loosly follows the plot of the early books, it in polish and I dont think it was ever dubbed (I managed to find it with subtitles years ago).
I know this is more than you asked for but, enjoy the games, enjoy the books, be aware of the fan opinions of the shows.
Roll around on the ground a lot during combat. Works wonders.
There is a setting for an alternative character control mode. Use it, the regular one is dogshit.
The level difference between Geralt and enemies is very important. A difference of +/- 4 can make fights ridiculously trivial or a one-hit KO. Same goes for jobs' recommended difficulty.
Getting swarmed by level 50 sewer rats is not fun.