-Rogue5- said:
I was hoping someone would say that... and then elaborate... I have no idea how to make bombs and potions; the alchemy stuff is totally bumming me out. I thought I needed to read books to get spells, but I can't find "the bomb" book or the "health potion" book and the books that I do find are fairly expensive and seemingly useless. Same with gear -- the only upgrade I've found is a new vest for 5000 oren, and I only have 1200 and it too me the first 2 chapters to get that much.
You get the most XP in the Witcher via quests and grinding is really pointless since the game is fairly easy without grinding.
As far as alchemy goes: In order to make bombs and oils you need those respective skills. I believe they're under the intelligence skill set, but I don't entirely recall.
Oils are extremely useful (most of them make you do double damage to a specific type of enemy and last a full day). Until you can make them try to use the generic grindstones that you can buy (or find). I don't remember what they all were called, but Diamond Dust was the most powerful that I remember, it makes your weapon do an extra 40% damage).
Honestly, even though I got the bomb making skill and had tons of bombs I went through the entire game without ever using one.
You should have the recipe for Swallow (the health regen potion) by default. In order to create potions you need an alchemical base (strong alcohol) and the different ingredients. The best way to get ingredients is to harvest the random plants you come across on your travels. You can also get them by looting the monsters you kill.
Books and scrolls are very important. You can't collect ingredients from monsters and plants that you don't know anything about yet. You can also learn new recipes for potions, oils and bombs from books and scrolls. Reading books to fill in the encyclopedia helps a great deal. Try to read as many books as you can.
Don't worry too much about equipment. It's not important. There are only two armor upgrades and like 2 or 3 sword upgrades through the entire game. You can modify your swords with extra attributes if you find rune stones and/or meteorites by taking them to a blacksmith.
I wasn't a really big fan of the interface for upgrading and it confused me the first time I did it. Basically, there are 3 colors of upgrade stones (red, yellow and blue) and you can upgrade your sword with any combination of up to three stones (i.e. 3 red, 2 red and 1 blue, 1 blue 1 red 1 yellow, etc.). When you're upgrading your sword it'll show the standard shop interface, but it;ll show a bunch of different swords. Each one is a possible combination you can make using the stones you have in your inventory. You 'buy' the combination that you want just like any other purchase and then your sword is upgraded. It's a really strange way of doing it and I can't help but wonder if it was somehow a limitation of the engine or if they ran out of time and/or resources to make a proper upgrading interface.
One last thing to point out that seems obvious but I didn't realize until chapter three: in your quest log the ones with the stars next to them are available. I spent a long time in chapter two trying to complete side quests that I couldn't because I didn't realize that. Don't make the same mistake I did!
[Edit]
Sinatar said:
You're going to pass a game that fits your description of what you like about WRPG's completely, you're going to pass on this game when it's 7 freaking dollars.
You are a crazy person. Get away from me, you probably smell funny.
Sorry, it just doesn't seem to stack up compared to the other RPGs I've played in the presentation department. Presentation is a pretty big deal in RPGs to me since the dialogue, world and story, rather than the action, are the highlights of the genre.
