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The Witcher III: Blood & Wine |OT| One last contract, one last plough

So I'm finding the (late game spoiler)
Detlaff fight pretty infuriating. There is one long distance attack that eats up half your life bar and there doesn't seem to be a reliable way to dodge it. The visual cues seem wholly arbitrary because the fucking birds or whatever fill up the entire screen. Not sure if there is a readability thing I'm missing here?

I ragequit twice until I found out the timing to dodge this attack quite reliably. It's possible. I kept my distance so the attack can be dodged as it flies towards you.

The rest of the fight is rather easy once you figure that timing out.
 
Is there a bug that steals my food and repair items with the new patch? I cannot remember eating all that food I hoarded and using almost all of my armor and weapon repair items. I mean, maybe I did use all that stuff, not sure...

CD project Red are destroying much of their goodwill with this game with how hard they make it to acquire all the gold needed for the armors.

I don't get it. This is so fucking disappointing

What? The company that's just released a super cheap 30+ hour expansion for last years game of the year is losing good will because there's no infinite money cheat?

If you actually play the game, loot items, finish quests etc it's quite easy to get money. Go and explore the world and pick up everything. Sell it. Aside from the fact you don't NEED every set of armour to play this game.
I just started the DLC ... what kind of sums are we talking here?

I was, in fact, glad that Hearts of Stone included a money sink with upgrading the laboratory equipment for the Eastern guy. I had around 100k in the bank by the end of the main game and money became almost meaningless and therefore less fun to acquire. I went into this DLC with more than 70k and even more money sinks are a good thing in my book.
 
Fuck...did anyone else have an issue with the starting the quest Big Feet to Fill after doing the Bovine contract? I try to talk to him for the quest and he won't let me.

I liked the Bovine quest and really wanted to follow up on it :/
 
I don't think people realise that you can craft the enriched dimeritium ingots and the infused slyzard hide for a fraction of the cost, instead of buying it from the merchants.

People complaining that the armour is difficult to obtain obviously didn't play TW2, where you had to find 3 items in each of the chapters. Miss one, and you wouldn't get the nice end-game armour. The only barrier to entry for the Grandmaster sets is the gold cost. A lot of people said that they had too much money, so CDPR gave us things to spend money on, now they're saying they don't have enough. You can't win, it seems. :P Toussaint is also packed to the brim with loot. You shouldn't have a problem if you sell all the stuff.

Anyway, playing the expansion actually makes me slightly sad.

I wish the entire game had been like this. Colourful, interesting environments! It's why I liked Murky Waters and Vergen so much in the earlier games. I appreciate the effort that was put into Velen, but it's so dull when compared to Toussaint or Skellige. I really wish they could have got the opportunity to do Dol Blathanna. Hopefully if a Witcher 2 remake happens, they can get to complete that idea. They could have done so many other cool places too, like Kovir or Zerrikania.

Toussaint's locations are used better than in the base game. There's a lot of "white space", in terms of environments in the base game, that only exist to look pretty. Novigrad has a bunch of areas that don't have any quests in them, and the woods near Bald Mountain were also quite underutilised. The same thing goes with a lot of Skellige's smaller islands.

I'm also really liking the new variations of existing monsters, like the Rotfiend with the spikes, or the Slyzards. Each region should have been like that, where they had unique monsters.
 
I'd wager that most people that played the game never crossed 20k. That amount can disappear in the DLC in 5 seconds

I think you can make 30K easily, if you do the smuggler caches in Skellige. It's boring as all hell, but incredibly lucrative.

The Runewright in HoS cost 30K, and I don't remember people anything saying about that, but then again, I might be forgetting.
 
I'd wager that most people that played the game never crossed 20k. That amount can disappear in the DLC in 5 seconds
Probably.

But I think players who put a lot of time into exploring, looting, side-questing and crafting instead of just beelining the game should be rewarded a bit as well by being able to obtain certain valuable (and useful) items.
 
People definitely complained about the Runesmith costs, I think in part because the reward for the investment didn't seem worth it. As far as having enough money in this expansion, if you do a lot of the treasure hunting quests and just sell things along the way it's really not difficult to afford one of the grandmaster sets and fully upgrading your vineyard. You'll of course have a much more difficult time crafting multiple grandmaster sets but I think that's kind of the point.
 
Also, the Manticore set should be attainable for anyone that beat the main game. All the mats are from vanilla Wild Hunt.

Anyway I like how a lot of the points of interest have been rolled into some kind of story, like the Witcher gear hunts all having their own backstory. Also Wine Wars saga and the Knight for Hire quest. It makes killing the random monsters not feel so random and adds periodic rewards
 
I think new enemies do a lot of damage, but they are not that tough themselves, so it is not as abrupt a spike as HoS. Just a matter of avoiding being hit for shorter encounters rather than some of the considerably long encounters of the previous expansion.

Okay, sounds reasonable.

Anyone here playing on PS4 finding a plethora of new bugs/game breaking glitches?
 
I've bought BaW yesterday and started it with... $600. Yeah it won't be enough I know.

Also, (1st hour spoiler)
will there be another bruxa fight?
first fights were placed so that you cannot prepare and I regret I did that one without prep. It was messy and could have been great. Same thing with
arena, but it wasn't from the trailer so it didn't feel that bad lol.

Anyone?
 
Also, the Manticore set should be attainable for anyone that beat the main game. All the mats are from vanilla Wild Hunt.

Anyway I like how a lot of the points of interest have been rolled into some kind of story, like the Witcher gear hunts all having their own backstory. Also Wine Wars saga and the Knight for Hire quest. It makes killing the random monsters not feel so random and adds periodic rewards

They started doing this with HoS, where almost of the POI there told one long story.

One of the reasons I want an EE is so that they can go back and go something like that with the base game. Not sure if it will happen though. Can't blame them if if doesn't happen either.
 

I fought an
Alp
when looking for one of
the Grandmaster items, in some ruined area.

There's another in cave for the Manticore armour
where Geralt hallucinates. You're meant to ignore these nude woman, but if you go closer, she'll turn into a Bruxa.
 
I think you can make 30K easily, if you do the smuggler caches in Skellige. It's boring as all hell, but incredibly lucrative.

The Runewright in HoS cost 30K, and I don't remember people anything saying about that, but then again, I might be forgetting.

The smuggler caches in Skellige are so awful though.

Step 1. Find a boat (easy)
Step 2. Sail forever since many caches are nowhere near a waypoint
Step 3. Fight banshees and drowners in the world's smallest boat or while wrestling with awful swimming controls
Step 4. Actually get the item after wrangling the swimming controls
Step 5. Repeat... maybe one more time because your inventory load will be maxed after one or two caches
Step 6. Get ripped off by the vendor

Not exactly a "listen a podcast and grind" routine.

The Runewright stuff got some cost complaints, but honestly a lot of people didn't bother with it since it was so expensive and as for myself I felt like the sockets were more important. Everyone of course wants the Witcher Grandmaster armor. I think you can easily afford one set, but collecting them all is the hassle. You could say "just get the one you want" but I WANT THEM ALL I HAVE ARMOR RACKS TO FILL AT HOME
 
So I just started playing W3. I have so much junk in my inventory that I am throwing it in my stash. is it better to sell this stuff, or break it down? I have analysis paralysis when it comes to all these random swords/armor and junk I keep finding.

How do I know what to do with that? is there a rule of thumb?
 
So I just started playing W3. I have so much junk in my inventory that I am throwing it in my stash. is it better to sell this stuff, or break it down? I have analysis paralysis when it comes to all these random swords/armor and junk I keep finding.

How do I know what to do with that? is there a rule of thumb?

Honestly, the rule of thumb is sell virtually every piece of armour or sword you come across. Unless it's better than your current items, obviously
 
They started doing this with HoS, where almost of the POI there told one long story.

One of the reasons I want an EE is so that they can go back and go something like that with the base game. Not sure if it will happen though. Can't blame them if if doesn't happen either.

Except in this one you complete a bunch of PoIs as part of the quests. Like, if you do a certain path through Wine Wars stuff, you end up doing about
15 PoIs.
I like that, even though it makes those quests feel pretty fetchy. It's neat that they all connect to one story and it takes you through a big chunk of the map with good incentive.

I still think there's too many PoIs that amount to "I went out here for something specific and died, here's my note and key", but there are some pretty great ones this time around and there's more variation in the types of PoIs themselves.
 
The smuggler caches in Skellige are so awful though.

Step 1. Find a boat (easy)
Step 2. Sail forever since many caches are nowhere near a waypoint
Step 3. Fight banshees and drowners in the world's smallest boat or while wrestling with awful swimming controls
Step 4. Actually get the item after wrangling the swimming controls
Step 5. Repeat... maybe one more time because your inventory load will be maxed after one or two caches
Step 6. Get ripped off by the vendor

Not exactly a "listen a podcast and grind" routine.

I definitely agree with this, and one of my wishes for the EE is for them to get rid of the caches all together. They don't make a lot of sense, in terms of story and in terms of the economy, as you can make so much money from them, for almost no effort.

The easiest way to do it is to use the decoction, I think it's the Fiend one, that gives you more carrying weight. Once you get overburdened, keep going. I only made 4 trips, but did like 25% of them each time. They're not far down, and you can use the Killer Whale potion if they are. The drowners and sirens are pretty easy to fight once you're in the water.

Except in this one you complete a bunch of PoIs as part of the quests. Like, if you do a certain path through Wine Wars stuff, you end up doing about
15 PoIs.
I like that, even though it makes those quests feel pretty fetchy. It's neat that they all connect to one story and it takes you through a big chunk of the map with good incentive.

I still think there's too many PoIs that amount to "I went out here for something specific and died, here's my note and key", but there are some pretty great ones this time around and there's more variation in the types of PoIs themselves.

Yeah, I also agree that there's too many of those. I haven't started the Wine Wars quest yet, but that's good to know.
 
Right! This has been staring at me from my Steam library since Day1 release - bought the main game plus dlc...time to start Witcher 3!
 
Honestly, the rule of thumb is sell virtually every piece of armour or sword you come across. Unless it's better than your current items, obviously

That is good to know! What about the other stuff? like Junk stuff that says you can sell it or deconstruct it? And the gold rings and stuff which it says you can sell for a lot.
 
Well this is annoying, can't play Blood & Wine, everytime I load up my last save and continue, the game crashes after a few seconds of walking and quests updates. Reinstalled everything and rebuilt database... Nada, still does it... Don't want to start fresh, I'll lose all my gear :(

EDIT: Thank God it seems to be sorted, it appeared my manual save file was corrupted. Previous checkpoint from heart of stone so far hasn't crashed I've now just got to Toussaint.
 
Everyone who wants money, go to these two circled places, kill everyone, sell their stuff.

RIRb.jpg
 
Fuck...did anyone else have an issue with the starting the quest Big Feet to Fill after doing the Bovine contract? I try to talk to him for the quest and he won't let me.

I liked the Bovine quest and really wanted to follow up on it :/

Quoting myself because I think I found out what glitched it. I went back to other places (Novigrad, Skellige) to exchange coins at the bank and compare some vendor prices. The save I had right before doing this lets me start the quest. Luckily in reloading from here I didn't lose much progress.

I'd recommend not venturing back to Velen, Skellige, etc. unless you're desperate for coin just in case, but it could be something else that caused it.
 
I keep telling myself to wait until the inevitable complete edition is released (probably towards the end of the year) but I'm struggling to hold out.

I haven't played the first expansion either as the goal was to go through from the very beginning on Death March on a fresh run and play through the entire lot via said CE.

This thread is making that impossible so I'm probably going to go ahead and buy both expansions on PSN and just do it that way. Summer's a quiet period and this would be a fitting use of my time. I adored the core game and there's a billion patches and cool updates that I didn't get to experience their benefits with either.

Time to tickle my pickle.
 
Does anyone know where I can finish the Wine Wars Vermentino quest if I accidentally went back to the auction first? (So the Third quest is no longer possible). Her location doesn't appear in my map
 
spent a bit of time today getting grandmaster diagrams. only got the wolven/manticore so far. i tried crafting the wolven set but i have no where near enough money. i had about 21,000 and ended up with 400 and 3/6 pieces. i really wanted to get the manticore set but unless i end up with about 90,000/100,000 by the time i finish the expansion then it'll be unlikely.

only quests i did were the one where you
pose for a painting and "paperchase". the painting didn't turn out like it was made out to be. kinda disappointing but hey now i have a ridiculous new painting for my home. as for the paperchase quest, quite funny running about trying to get the appropriate forms. a round of gwent included so even better. however the amount of money you get is pathetic which is only 200.
.

as for bugs, the game has been going pretty smooth for me. so far only the lock on system not working and my viper armor (not trousers/gauntlets/boots) turns red when put on display in geralts house.
 
is anyone else bothered by the FOV in this? i'm on PS4 and it just feels so low. this is the first i'm noticing it so not sure if it's exclusive to the expansion or it has been updated to the entire game as of 1.20.
 
Now that all the dlcs are out,i think it's time to start playing the game once and for all.
This game is gonna take a while to complete by the look of it.
I kinda want to play it in the hardest mode from the get-go,is it harder than W2?
 
Tried the euphoria mutagen, kind of crazy hitting for 5000 damage on fast attacks mixed with 10k heath due to the synergy from decoctions and tissue transmutation.

Just running out of skill points now.
 
couple ending discussion, questions

first one, so if you go after the 'happily ever after' ending or whatever, you can do that if you go to the orphanage but then still decide to go free Syanna after that before going to see the Unseen.... so, if you go see the Unseen, you can only get the tragic ending, right. so... is there any way to get that red vampire armor then if you do the happy ending?

anyone else find it hard to justify not going after Dettlaf? tricked or not, he still murdered so many people... instinctive or not, i can't imagine geralt sparing a forktail that killed so many people 'out of instinct' ... choosing to try spare him by bringing him syanna... part of me wants to haha just so that the Duchy is happier 'post-ending' but i can't get my head canon around gerald trying to spare someone who killed so many people.

oh, and i like the red vampire armor ;p so again curious if you can still get that even if you don't go find the unseen... my guess would be no since you don't get the key, unless of course the armor can be found during either path.
 
What would be better to use with Piercing Cold? Far Reaching Aard or Aard Sweep?

How do you guys not have money at this point? I'm sitting on 80,000 post house upgrades and I have a metric fuck ton of stuff to sell.
I have no idea how people have so much money. I've done a bunch of side quests and I barely buy anything but I only have about 5,000 and I've never had more than probably 10,000 at one time.

Edit: right after I posted this I realized that it's probably because I've hoarded so much shit thinking that I'll need the components to craft stuff at some point.
 
Well I just bought a second 980ti (cheaper now!) for SLI to get rock solid 60 fps at 4k... kind of anyway, for the most part is well off the 60fps but some times it takes a dive to 40fps (all on ultra, of course).

No regrets, it looks amazing! Is so beautiful!
 
Now that all the dlcs are out,i think it's time to start playing the game once and for all.
This game is gonna take a while to complete by the look of it.
I kinda want to play it in the hardest mode from the get-go,is it harder than W2?

It's only really hard at the start of the game. Once you get past the first few bosses, you'll have some legit gear and an understanding of where you're heading with your build and it becomes a lot easier.

That's if you're rolling and dodging anyway. If you treat it like a hack N slash then you'll die very quickly.
 
So, after 17h of doing main and secondary quest, I just got to the first "point of no return", it says some side quests won't be available after this. Am I really that far in, should I finish all the side quests now?
 
So, after 17h of doing main and secondary quest, I just got to the first "point of no return", it says some side quests won't be available after this. Am I really that far in, should I finish all the side quests now?

usually when that happens the side quests that fail are related to certain main characters. in the base game any quests involving triss/keira/lambert would fail if you got to a certain point. if you don't want to do all the side quests yet then see if you can find out exactly what ones will fail or think of any ones that might be in anyway related to the main quest.
 
I really don't think CDPR should be rewarding pack rats:

1) It's a boring mechanic- finding cool loot is great. However picking up every single sword and armor you find just makes Geralt into a junk collector.

2) The main game doesn't encourage the behavior. It's remarkably well balanced against not being a pack rat. If you are smart and selective about what you loot and sell then you still have all the money you need and don't have to deal with encumberance limits. Further there are extreme limits on the amount of money each merchant has which makes selling off your loot even harder.

The base game is basically bending over itself to provide negative feedback to pack ratting. But some people evidently can't help themselves and were complaining that they had 50,000 or so crowns and nothing to spend it on. So CDPR has caved and now supports this practice despite 100+ game hours of the game telling you that it isn't the proper way to play.

3) It couldn't be more lore inappropriate. Geralt is always poor and scraping to make ends meet. Sometimes he has trouble paying to have the holes in his jacket repaired. Witcher 2 establishes that some nobles will sell out an entire province for the sum of 50,000 crowns. It's crazy that in B&W Geralt is now expected to be rolling around with enough money to buy an entire Duchey.
 
Now that all the dlcs are out,i think it's time to start playing the game once and for all.
This game is gonna take a while to complete by the look of it.
I kinda want to play it in the hardest mode from the get-go,is it harder than W2?
The game starts out difficult, everything around you is deadly as f*ck. But the more you play, the easier it gets - something that I already noticed in TW2. I started out on the second-hardest difficulty but had to switch to Death March halfway through the game because the game became too easy.

So, the beginning at Death March difficulty should be pretty tough but once overcome, this difficulty is just right.
 
Jeeez another one. Why on earth would you want to do that? :) HoS is absolutely great! And has lower lvl requirements so if you leave it until after B&W, you will be overlevelled.

Because my local B&M store has the LE version for PS4 with Gwent cards and the shebang, but not the retail version of HoS, so I just wanted to get B&W retail while I can, and then do HoS after that :)
 
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