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 <insert difficulty>”.
Have fun, I wish I could play this game for the first time again.
they actually sorted that out pretty nicely with updates. the pace is quite even since they published the next-Gen rework. the problem with being under-leveled still persists though.
I mean it’s definitely an ending worth seeing. So 3 playthroughs. And then all the other variable ending stuff. Let’s face it we all YouTubed the other endings after our second playthrough.
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.
If I have played someone a bunch or am on a quest then definitely. Otherwise I try to keep it like live cards. Remember you can always cheat IRL too! It’s up to you if/when/where
I only save scummed the Gwent tournament as it’s a one-shot type deal. The rest of the game there was no need as it autosaves frequently and there is basically no consequences to losing a game of Gwent to a rando
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)
I’ve literally got a save file prepped where I rushed getting to B&W before doing literally anything else so I can play the whole games’s Gwent with the Skellige deck when I decide to play it again. You don’t get enough time with it and it’s such a fun deck!
I didn’t finish the game because I am still playing gwent haha it’s that good. I would look up which cards you can only get from quests because you can’t get them afterwards. Just look up a mapping for quests to cards (no spoilers of course). I am on mobile and can’t find one currently
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.
I corrected my comment. I was talking about a fully open source version. This version does have online, and I’m sure some QoL, but I feel like you were thinking I was talking about the actual Jagex game. :)
I’ve worked a few times on similar projects, but I haven’t read into anything about how it works so don’t take my word as fact, but my assumption is that it’s rewritten from scratch so no code from Jagex is being used
In a forum talking about the new pricing someone else mentioned this as an alternative to a premium account. I keep meaning to give it a look at some point.
No not use any DLC equipment. While the combat in the game is far from perfect, using the viper gear (I think that’s what it’s called) ruins it further.
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.
The combat is just generally unintuitive. Which early in the game is frustrating. And if you’re like me and spend weeks between sessions you can forget all the timing and buttons you need to press.
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
Oh yeah, I really wish I had played on a higher difficulty for this reason. Especially because one of the most immersive and thematically cool parts of the game for me was the main story section near the end of act 1 where you have to make a blade oil to fight a >!werewolf!< . (Vague wording to minimise spoilers in my main comment.) I really liked this because it made me reflect on what it means to be a Witcher — how the knowledge might be more important than the mutations and the magic.
An additional point to the prepping is that being open-world means that you can potentially go to areas or take on challenges far beyond the “intended” level. On lower difficulties, I didn’t feel sufficiently punished for being audacious in that way, and I think the potential for punishment is part of the fun of the audacity. Especially when getting destroyed like this isn’t the game “fuck you for even trying”, but rather a “try exploring some more, find some new recipes and come back later (or just read the bestiary and find out that you already have the item you need)”
I’ve done two full playthroughs of the game (plus dlc), one on the standard difficulty and one on hard. I can confirm that many of the game’s systems are rendered unnecessary by the easier difficulty. I really enjoyed my second playthrough and would definitely recommend.
However, if you don’t think you’ll enjoy that (having to plan and work for every advantage to be able to succeed) I would wholeheartedly endorse the easier levels. The story and quest design alone are worth the price of admission! Side quests in this game make many other games main story pale in comparison.
Yeah, don’t get too hyped up. It’s really just a pretty average open world RPG. Playing Gwent is probably the best part, and even that isn’t nearly as good as Pazaak.
lemmy.world
Aktywne