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.
No advice really, just wanted to say I absolutely love the game and have played through provably 6-7 times now. Very addicting and is especially comforting to play in the winter, with all the beautiful scenery and sounds.
Mod the living shit out of it, if you are on PC. The vanilla gameplay is very outdated and boring at this point. There are mods that make crafting and gameplay much more challenging and interesting. The vanilla crafting system is absolute dogshit.
The story is incredible though. Characters are awesome.
Oh I saw a video of this game and it looks really fun! It's basically Gmod Prop Hunt with added modes and mechanics, this genre is a little saturated which is probably why it's not got a lot of players for how cool it is. Hopefully that changes
I honestly haven’t played any other games like this; I didn’t realize this was a common genre. I caught Witch It! in beta several years ago and it’s the only game of its type I’ve seen.
It's not super common, but it's been around in an essentially free form through Garry's Mod for a very very long time, so most people have had their fill of it there or in modes within other games. Roblox also has one, even Call of Duty Cold War had a prop hunt mode, so it's a lot harder for paid standalone games to make a dent, but this one does a lot more than just strict prop hunt, I think it deserves more population
One of my favorite modes of this game is “Mobification.” Basically, every time a witch is defeated, they turn into a hunter. So as you lose witches, you also gain more hunters and it gets harder to stay hidden. A very challenging game mode, but also very entertaining. And fun if you have witches that are really good at hiding. The more hunters, the easier it gets to find those sneaky witches!
Don’t assume what I know and don’t know. My life situation is the issue. I just built an OP PC for a rich friend and I’m sticking with my Steam Deck while I save up.
I try to get everyone to try playing on Death March, no fast travel.
I did my first playthrough like this. There’s so much to see in the world and so many paths to take. Fast travel is neat and all but you may miss out on so much. I took it a step further and also didn’t leave regions/nations until I completed the map. I found more incidental quests by taking a wrong turn or a shortcut over a hill than I did by following the main quests.
On Death March: It’s actually not hard at all and feels like how the gake should be played. What it actually does is forces you to look at the bestiary, learn or guess weaknesses and attack patterns then use potions, spells and pils to fight enemies. It actually feels like playing the witcher as lore accurately as possible. Going to the local herbalist, buying supplies, meditating then hunting down the enemies.
I disagree, it made the enemies become tedious damage sponges and currently making the game less enjoyable.
This isn’t a Souls game. Whatever difficulty setting is one/two below the hardest is an acceptable balance between completely wasting my time or challenging fun.
Interesting! I never really found the combat to be all that tedious or enemies too difficult so long as you kept up with alchemy, oils and gear upgrades.
Obviously, different strokes for different folks. There’s a reason one of the difficulties is story only.
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.
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.
Although this isn’t quite relevant before finishing the main game, be sure to pick up both the DLC once you’re finished.
Both DLCs are fantastic standalone stories, super rich in content they could even beat some full priced games. You could play the DLCs before finishing the main game (and there is an additional game mechanic introduced in Blood and Wine), but on a first run I would still recommend playing it after to not get distracted and take away the impact of the main story.
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.
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