The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt: Official Thread

Such an incredible game. My current (2nd) play-through is over 200 hours now. I'm about 80% though the main quest, finished Hearts of Stone, and am in the middle of Blood & Wine - no idea how much more I have left in B&W. So... I still have a good ways to go - this play-through may end up over 250 hours before I'm done.

Haven't had time to play in over a week - need to get back into it this weekend!
 
Yeah I have 230some hours logged now. I am at the end of NG+ B&W now and stalling because I don't want it to be over. Ha. I have HoS to do though so I can go back and play that one. I only unlocked enough to get the rune word guy accessible. Hopefully cyberpunk 2077 will be as good of a game. They set a pretty high bar with TW3 though. But if anyone can make a good cyberpunk game I bet they can.
 
I am about 3.5 hours in right now and so far I can't get over how clunky these controls feel. I feel as though most of the challenge of this game comes from just poor controls. Does it get better?
 
I am about 3.5 hours in right now and so far I can't get over how clunky these controls feel. I feel as though most of the challenge of this game comes from just poor controls. Does it get better?

Not really. I mean, your signs and sword techniques can gain new abilities and powers, but the controls stay mostly static.
Worth trying - in the options menu, there's an option to turn on an alternate movement control. It's snappier and feels a bit closer to most other 3rd person action games. Geralt always interacts with his environment in a slightly clunky way. That's one of the few knocks on the game.
 
Would you recommend steam controller or xbox

Go with the Xbox controller. It's still more standard across the board. The Steam controller's button placements are awkward for games that still use face buttons, too.
 
Someone that suggested turning on alternate movement helped a little so thanks. Gonna try Xbox controller soon
 
Would you recommend steam controller or xbox
I use a PS3 controller set up to mimic an Xbox controller. I played through the first one and part of the second with mouse/keyboard, then switched over to a controller in the second. I haven't touched a mouse/keyboard since.
 
Been playing everyday for a few hours the last week or two. Games like this just suck up so much time...and I'm not even crazy like half of you guys out there who have hundreds of hours into the game. I love the gameplay but I find that this game for me is just like Skyrim. I can never decide where to put my frekking skill points, or what armor to choose...etc. I spend hours on YouTube looking at guide builds and still cannot choose. I guess its all up to preference but I like using everything! Oils and potions not so much but I heard that's what makes Geralt OP! I'm currently level 17 and have been using Griffin gear and swords. Think I might go for the wolf armor, but feline is cool for the fast attack and bonus...BUT Ursine armor looks frekkin bad ass so I don't know what to pick. I still have 14 skill points unused because I can't decide where to put them..and the lamest thing is that I have 2 clearance potions!! I'm an RPG horder!
 
The easiest (and arguably most effective) upgrades in the Witcher 3 are to your signs. In particular, Aard can knock down all but a handful of boss-level enemies. Once down, they're available for an immediate instakill. Igni doesn't hurt a ton by itself, but it initiates burning damage which chips away at many enemies in otherwise long battles. Quen lets you take damage for free and can be repeated over and over to get hit but not hurt. Axii can change your dialogue options, stun enemies, and even turn them against one another. Combined with mutagens, all of the signs can become insanely strong.
The basic attack skills are worth boosting, too. Boosted to +5 and combined with a mutagen you can more than double your attack damage. I'd prioritize them lower than the signs, but they're still worthwhile.
The general items are okay, although they don't really stack like the other abilities can. Early on they're nice, though.
I barely touched the potion stuff. I was never much of a fan of potions. They require a bit too much preparation for my tastes. It always felt like outside of a monster hunt you usually just stumble upon most battles.
 
Anyone know of any good increased difficulty mods? Also looking for something that reduces experienced gained or removes experience from side quests. I'm the kind of player that likes to do everything in the game but finds Witcher 3 to be too easy so it kind of ruins the experience. But I do really enjoy the game, I have 705 hours played.
 
Would you recommend steam controller or xbox

I played through the game exclusively on a Steam Controller via Steam Link on my TV and loved it. 185 hours. Once you get used to the Steam Controller the touch pads are acutally effective for quick movements/camera changes. Kind of sad I'm done with the game, might have to do another play through. I haven't bothered with any other single player games since completing it in August. I will give Deus Ex a shot soon though.
 
I keep thinking I am going to find some Witcher gear diagrams in my wife's nightstand. ;)

In other news.. I finished B&W finally.. I have a couple more ? areas to pillage in Toussaint but that's about it. What a great expansion.. wow! I might finish HoS now just for grins.
 

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Man I am loving Witcher 3. When I started a month back I noticed I had a save from the very beginning exactly one year prior where I started and never even got to the first village due to real life issues. Man I have been playing the heck out of this lately. I love B&W - so much brighter and seemingly vibrant. I'm level 40 and still have to meet avalloch to prepare for the main quest battle but I finished Heart of Stone. I also really love gwent, so much better than the dice in 2. The only mod I have added is allowing bigger gwent bets. Seemed to low to be stuck at 10. Ideally I would have preferred vendors be able to play for however much they have on hand minus say 100.
 
You can eventually make heftier bets in the Blood & Wine areas.

I finally uninstalled the game this weekend. I've done all there is to do and I can't see myself ever having the patience to make a NG+ run. What a great game, though. It's easily the best game I've played in the last 2 hardware generations and it's top 5 all-time.
 
It is a top one for me too. It's sort of as perfect a RPG-light as I have seen. Crafting isn't really that useful. You make the Witcher gear and your pots/oils once. There is no real advancement of yourself just getting access to the right NPC.

Other than that this game just rocks I can't believe they aren't doing another one.
 
Blood and Wine is the RPG of 2016 for me unless Final Fantasy 15 really bowls me over.
 
Had a blast last night doing a quest called Paperchase. Geralt goes into a bank and wants to make a withdrawl. They have on record he is "dead". The forms he must get from Windows 1 to the records office back to window 1 - hillarious. Especially the irate customer who gets pissy he cuts in line and Geralt goes "Don't really give a shit" and then they fight lol. awesome awesome quest.
 
I have played 33 hours and am still in Velen running around doing side quests and monster contracts! The amount of content in this game is staggering, and more amazingly it doesn't feel repetitive yet.
 
I agree. I am avoiding going to the ship with Avalloch to fight the wild hunt and just running around doing blood and wine. I am level 46 so far and since I made it so you can play gwent for up to 100K a hand I outfitted my house with everything. Nice to have a centralized place to do everything.

I really don't want to finish simply because this thing is so awesome.
 
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For those playing the main game - don't delay going to Skellige in favor of the Novigrad city quests. You'll find that once you get there you'll be over-leveled and none of the quests will give you much XP or items of worth. I made this mistake and wish I had gone much earlier.
 
So go to Skellige first skipping Novigrad altogether? Or just do the main quest arch in Novigrad?
 
So go to Skellige first skipping Novigrad altogether? Or just do the main quest arch in Novigrad?

Proceed with main questline in Novigrad, but when the main plot suggests that you need to go to Skellige at some point - go immediately if you're around the correct level the game suggests.
There are a lot of additional quests in Novigrad ( like the Dandelion ones) that you can go back to at will when you're close to suggested level.
In my playthrough I did literally every single quest available in Novigrad/Velen before going to Skellige and ended up being like 7 levels higher than all the Skellige quests. I was getting single digit XP for all of the missions and the gear I was finding wasn't even worth looking at because it was so much worse than what I'd already gotten elsewhere.
 
You are right about Skellige - I did the same thing and other than some neat quests I didn't get anything useful out of it because I was to high level.
 
You guys are really making me want to pick this up again. I haven't played it in probably a year, just kind of got bored with it for some reason. One thing I struggle with in games like this is all the dialogue. I feel like I spend more time reading/listening than playing which annoys me, so I end up clicking through it all. Do you guys listen to ALL of it?
 
You guys are really making me want to pick this up again. I haven't played it in probably a year, just kind of got bored with it for some reason. One thing I struggle with in games like this is all the dialogue. I feel like I spend more time reading/listening than playing which annoys me, so I end up clicking through it all. Do you guys listen to ALL of it?

Lol no, I click through a bunch as well. If I'm into the character or specific storyline then yes, I'll listen. . . to an extent. For the most part though, with my second play through, I click through everything , don't care anymore, at least with the main story. I already know what happened. I just want to kill, upgrade and get better shit.

Only certain scenes that were absolutely amazing I'll watch all the way through.

If it's your first play through , I'd say at least follow the main story line as best as you can.
 
Lol no, I click through a bunch as well. If I'm into the character or specific storyline then yes, I'll listen. . . to an extent. For the most part though, with my second play through, I click through everything , don't care anymore, at least with the main story. I already know what happened. I just want to kill, upgrade and get better shit.

Only certain scenes that were absolutely amazing I'll watch all the way through.

If it's your first play through , I'd say at least follow the main story line as best as you can.

As far as I remember it's basically just.. where is what's her face? Oh this guy might know, but to get info from him I have to do all this stuff. Ok new lead brought me to this guy, but to get info from him I have to do all this stuff. Rinse and repeat.

I liked the part with those witch/hag/bird whatever creatures though, I paid attention to that lol.
 
As far as I remember it's basically just.. where is what's her face? Oh this guy might know, but to get info from him I have to do all this stuff. Ok new lead brought me to this guy, but to get info from him I have to do all this stuff. Rinse and repeat.

That is very much Witcher Contracts. The main storyline is very good, the secondary storylines are pretty good, and the Witcher Contract stuff is good, but if you're trying to burn through all the Contracts to try and level up then the stories will get repetitive quickly -- I now skip through them as well.

And I "read" all the books but basically never actually read any of them.
 
I'm trying to play Witcher 3 and it's alright but the number of side quests is a bit overwhelming, I'm only like level 5 (maybe) and, according to Steam, I've played for almost 15 hours, I'm going to have to follow advice here to see if I can't improve things.
 
I'm trying to play Witcher 3 and it's alright but the number of side quests is a bit overwhelming, I'm only like level 5 (maybe) and, according to Steam, I've played for almost 15 hours, I'm going to have to follow advice here to see if I can't improve things.

What advice are you looking for? There's the main story, certainly, but obviously a boatload of sidequests that you can get involved with. Even the smallest seeming sidequest can have an amazing story with it, with incredible cutscenes and dialogue. Just play to have fun, and go where the adventure takes you. Try not to stress about anything, and just do what entertains you. That's the glory of this game.
 
You guys are really making me want to pick this up again. I haven't played it in probably a year, just kind of got bored with it for some reason. One thing I struggle with in games like this is all the dialogue. I feel like I spend more time reading/listening than playing which annoys me, so I end up clicking through it all. Do you guys listen to ALL of it?

Hell yea I listen to all of it! This game has top-tier voice acting, and the story and dialogue is just so awesome. I can't imagine skipping it.
 
For those playing the main game - don't delay going to Skellige in favor of the Novigrad city quests. You'll find that once you get there you'll be over-leveled and none of the quests will give you much XP or items of worth. I made this mistake and wish I had gone much earlier.

They have enemy scaling now as an option, so this should not be a concern anymore.
 
I finally got wrapped up in this game for the past week, ~42 hours into it and I'm not sure if I'm 50% through yet; I think I played it for 10 hours yesterday. I decided to tackle quests that were close to my level and that really helped me progress, I have tons of question marks on the map but I'm not going to worry about that; I'll get involved with whatever I come across.

I just read above about going to Skellige so I think I'll go ahead and do that since I have one quest out there (Hammond, I think I need to find); I was concerned about my level, but if that's not an issue then I'm going since the quest I have says I can do it. As for the levels, the boxing quests displayed a much higher level but I was able to complete them while one of my treasure quests displays a low level but has some kind of tree monster in a cave that whoops me, not to mention the cave has a gas in it that drains my health.

As for performance, I'm running on a GTX 1080 at 1440p and the game is running great. I've found that I don't need anti-aliasing and I've disabled some other features that don't affect visual quality (like motion blur) and the game seems to mostly run around 80 FPS +/- 20 FPS; it rarely drops to 60FPS and often jumps to 90 or 100 FPS. It only seems to stutter within 10 seconds of loading the game, other than that, smooth sailing. Guess that's what I get for playing a +1-year-old game.
 
just a word of caution - o.m.g. ust finished my first play through and am feeling lost and hopeless. nothing else in my library has or will come close to what i just experienced for the past hundred hours or so. CDPR really outdid themselves. wow.
 
Started playing again and I'm loving it this time around. Don't know why I didn't get hooked before.

One thing that's helped me enjoy it is that now I only fast travel if there aren't any ?'s between myself and the location of the quest.

TRYING to listen to more dialogue but I really just don't have patience for it.
 
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