Support NeoGAF

[Castor Krieg]

For those wandering: 10 minutes of Chapter 2 of

Spoiler

Saskia's route

is already way better than its counterpart. Be sure to play the game at least two times.

 

[zlatko]

Ugh. So I can't get the best weapon in the game because you need an endriga queen pheremone from Act 1 to create it. :/ I woulda had one if not for the game's shitty weight system that makes everything weigh 3000lbs so I was constantly selling shit not needed in formulas anymore.

Is there a way I could cheat the game by messing with my in game files to put one into my inventory? I'm not PC techy, but I imagine that's possible right/

 

[Ikuu]

People need to stop posting spoilers without marking what they're talking about.

 

[EternalGamer]

What is the difference between "Damage from Signs" and "Sign Intensity"? Does the first affect Igni only, and the second things like Quen, Axi, etc.?

I'm not 100% certain on this, but I remember there is a journal entry in game that explains it. I believe that sign intensity will improve things like the duration of the sign or the other effects it has. Whereas damage is solely about how much HP a sign takes off. Obviously something like Quen doesn't do damage, so it wouldn't benefit from that.

 

[toastyToast]

Question (or two, or three): I'm thinking about buying the Dragon Scale Armor in chapter two, will I regret it? It'll cost me pretty much all my money. I've only done a couple of the storyline quests and all the sidequests so far. Will I have enough time to take advantage of it? If not will I make a substantial amount of money between this one and the next?

I'm starting to miss seeing Geralt's head.

 

[Hulud]

I played and loved Demon's Souls, I know what "hard but fair" is.

Spoiler

On normal, the fight with Letho is not fair. His Aard sends me flying across the room and his bombs take almost 1/4 of my health+stunning me, while my Aard barely makes him stumble and he's still be able to riposte when I try to hit him during his split-second long stumble animation. My stun bombs don't seem to do anything except make pretty fireworks and the poison on my blade never activates like it does on regular mobs. I can never do the running face-stab or pirouette moves to close the distance when I really need to because the context sensitive move selector is so random. Oh, and when I finally bitched out and turned it to easy, the game lets me beat him in one long combo. He never tried to block or use Quen at all. It's like his AI was turned off completely. Insulting.

The AI/fighting system is bad. It looks flashy, animates well for the most part, but is busted as fuck when it comes right down to it. The combat feels like it wants to be Demon's Souls so much but the designer just wasn't quite able to pull it off.

I still have fun in outdoor battles where I have room to dodge around and set traps, though.

Good thing the rest of the game makes up for the busted combat. This is still the best game I've played all year and one of my top RPGs of all time so far.
Sorry for venting all over y'all's faces.

 

[NIN90]

Ugh. So I can't get the best weapon in the game because you need an endriga queen pheremone from Act 1 to create it. :/ I woulda had one if not for the game's shitty weight system that makes everything weigh 3000lbs so I was constantly selling shit not needed in formulas anymore.

Is there a way I could cheat the game by messing with my in game files to put one into my inventory? I'm not PC techy, but I imagine that's possible right/

Get the "Zero weight for crafting items" mod from here: http://www.mediafire.com/?roqagzzha96z2

 

[Varna]

I wondered about something in chapter 1

Spoiler

After the Kayren fight you can take Triss to the Elven Bath and have sex. After that you can tell her to stay with him or go. If you ask Triss to stay with you she asks if they should leave Roche and all those problems behind. You can say yes or no. I said no, I have to fix them but if you said yes would the game actually take a change at that point or when Roche shows up would it just be one of those "nah, you gotta do this no matter what you said" kind of things? It's hard to tell if the choices you make are actually making a difference or if it's like Dragon Age 2 where no matter what you do, it ends up the same. Don't fully spoil it though, just say if it does change much or not because I only just got to that part!

That depends

Spoiler

How does Roche react to you if you say yes

?

I choose

Spoiler

yes, and when he came in to the fountain he had quiet a bit to say about my decision

. Ultimately I think you do end up doing the same thing I believe, but the context behind it way different.

 

[Mohonky]

I think I've officially given up on 'Normal' difficulty. The combat just seems to clunky for it to work. Found myself in a battle with 6 elves, all of whom blocked attacks. I could easily dodge them but I never had a chance to attack, when I did, I got carved up. Parrying was useless as I would run out of vigor from the first two attacks then just get stabbed in the back by another enemy. So I couldn't block, all I could do was roll around, then when I tried to attack, another enemy would start their attack and I'd end up in the same situation.

Combat works fine when it's one or two larger enemies but any more than 2 and I just never feel like I'm equipped with any real abilities to deal with them. Avoiding them is never a problem with Quen, roll etc but there's simply no way of getting in any attacks without being immediately pummelled as a result.

 

[Druz]

Anyone else wearing Legendary witcher Raven's Armor and two unique swords from Witcher 1? I"m a bossish.

 

[Varna]

I think I've officially given up on 'Normal' difficulty. The combat just seems to clunky for it to work. Found myself in a battle with 6 elves, all of whom blocked attacks. I could easily dodge them but I never had a chance to attack, when I did, I got carved up. Parrying was useless as I would run out of vigor from the first two attacks then just get stabbed in the back by another enemy. So I couldn't block, all I could do was roll around, then when I tried to attack, another enemy would start their attack and I'd end up in the same situation.

Combat works fine when it's one or two larger enemies but any more than 2 and I just never feel like I'm equipped with any real abilities to deal with them. Avoiding them is never a problem with Quen, roll etc but there's simply no way of getting in any attacks without being immediately pummelled as a result.

Traps? Stun bombs? Mind Trick? You have plenty of starting abilities to deal with groups.

 

[Echoplx]

Anyone else wearing Legendary witcher Raven's Armor and two unique swords from Witcher 1? I"m a bossish.

You won't feel so boss when you find better armor and weapons in chapter 1

 

[Varna]

You won't feel so boss when you find better armor and weapons in chapter 1

You find a better sword in the prologue too...

 

[Deleted member 17706]

Man, with all this talk about (end of chapter 1 spoiler)

Spoiler

Letho

being really hard, I expected to get my ass handed to me a few times, but I completely destroyed him on normal without even using any potions. Keeping Quen up and tossing a few well timed bombs before going in with the sword was more than enough to beat him down.

 

[Mohonky]

Traps? Stun bombs? Mind Trick? You have plenty of starting abilities to deal with groups.

Not if you've become stuck in a situation where the last save immediately starts you in a fight immediately to start and you have no bombs, traps, etc as I had. I was stuck at one fight

Spoiler

Mileena mission where the elves ambush you

and I had no bombs or traps available, the second it loaded, I and a bunch of Nekkers and 6 Elves immediately on top of me, nothing I could do. No potions on at the time because I wasn't expecting to immediately get caught up in battle.

Though I'm also having a problem where when I goto meditate, I make a Samun or whatever it is bomb, press create, says item is created but then it never appears in my inventory. Had the same problem when I made a potion. It never appeared in my inventory either?

 

[Varna]

Man, with all this talk about (end of chapter 1 spoiler)

Spoiler

Letho

being really hard, I expected to get my ass handed to me a few times, but I completely destroyed him on normal without even using any potions. Keeping Quen up and tossing a few well timed bombs before going in with the sword was more than enough to beat him down.

You know, I tried to setup an elaborate strategy when I had seen how powerful he was. But ultimately what worked for me was just rushing him. Aard, two quick hits, block, two hits, roll away and let vigor regenerate and repeat. Tawny Owl potion worked wonders for this too.

This was on hard mode.

Forgot who posted about the cutscene afterwards, but it also did not rub me the right way. I hate these kind of jrpg post boss battle cutscenes... they are just awful because they completely disconnect the gameplay from the story.

Spoiler

Should have been two slightly different scenes... one were he just quickly knocks you away and one were you are defeated

.

 

[teh_pwn]

Since I will be playing the game on and off during the coming week, I hope someone can alleviate my current fears; how big is this game in its scope? I get the feeling that there won't be many more areas to explore other than;

1. The prologue areas
2. Flotsam and the surrounding forest (which is small)
3. Another town plus a surrounding area (sort of like 2)
4. The endgame

Am I right, or am I (hopefully) wrong?

That's correct.

Game's main quests are about 1/4 to 1/3 the length of the first one. However it is way more polished that the first one, and less tedious collection quests.

Hoping there's a 3rd one next year. Their engine is very scalable both for PCs (throw in some DX11 features) and next gen consoles. They should be able to crank out a couple of more games within the next few years. At least I hope.

 

[Van Buren]

I'm loving how meaty the side quests are, with consequences of their own. They're just as entertaining as the main quests, and are not just an xp or gold grind. I loved the Witcher for its refreshing take on morality and choices and consequences, but CDPR has to be commended for how they've handled the sidequests in the sequel. Contract quests have a puzzle-solving element to them, and side quests can influence the dispositions of certain important characters towards you.

For instance, I'm in a swordfighting arena side quest in the second chapter, and I threw the fight (the fact that I can even do this is noteworthy considering the state of today's WRPGs), and this had consequences I would never have imagined.

This game requires at least two playthroughs to fully appreciate the effort that went into it.

Man, with all this talk about (end of chapter 1 spoiler)

Spoiler

Letho

being really hard, I expected to get my ass handed to me a few times, but I completely destroyed him on normal without even using any potions. Keeping Quen up and tossing a few well timed bombs before going in with the sword was more than enough to beat him down.

Spoiler

That boss fight is one of the highlights of the game so far for me, since in many ways, it felt like a mirror match between two extraordinary opponents. There's just something about the whole setup of that encounter - Witcher Vs Witcher - that appeals to me. Regarding the actual fight though, I thought it was easier than the Kayran fight on hard, since Letho's patterns were easier to predict and avoid. I also took the knife throwing talent, and used that with bombs and traps. Needless to say, his shield lasted for mere seconds each time, if that.

 

[Animator]

I played and loved Demon's Souls, I know what "hard but fair" is.

Spoiler

On normal, the fight with Letho is not fair. His Aard sends me flying across the room and his bombs take almost 1/4 of my health+stunning me, while my Aard barely makes him stumble and he's still be able to riposte when I try to hit him during his split-second long stumble animation. My stun bombs don't seem to do anything except make pretty fireworks and the poison on my blade never activates like it does on regular mobs. I can never do the running face-stab or pirouette moves to close the distance when I really need to because the context sensitive move selector is so random. Oh, and when I finally bitched out and turned it to easy, the game lets me beat him in one long combo. He never tried to block or use Quen at all. It's like his AI was turned off completely. Insulting.

The AI/fighting system is bad. It looks flashy, animates well for the most part, but is busted as fuck when it comes right down to it. The combat feels like it wants to be Demon's Souls so much but the designer just wasn't quite able to pull it off.

I still have fun in outdoor battles where I have room to dodge around and set traps, though.

Good thing the rest of the game makes up for the busted combat. This is still the best game I've played all year and one of my top RPGs of all time so far.
Sorry for venting all over y'all's faces.

Maybe if you realize you have the trap spell you wont have as much trouble. He is the easiest boss in the game next to kayran.

 

[Druz]

You find a better sword in the prologue too...

Not sure what you mean, looked everywhere no sword quite beat one of the two named swords from my saved data.

 

[Varna]

Not sure what you mean, looked everywhere no sword quite beat one of the two named swords from my saved data.

There is a temerian sword in the area were you encounter the first drowner... It has 10-15 attack. I believe that's better then the import sword.

 

[BeeDog]

Anyone else having major problems with the Launcher? I had to reinstall my game, so naturally I want to redownload all the available DLC (mainly my preorder DLC and the Troll Trouble quest). The thing is, the Launcher keeps redownloading the DLC continuously, and it goes slooooowly, then it either hangs up or does some other stupid random shit I can't describe, but in the end, it simply won't recognize the download whatsoever. Is this related to server issues on their end, or is there something I can do on my end?

 

[Vasilisk 2038]

I played and loved Demon's Souls, I know what "hard but fair" is.

Spoiler

On normal, the fight with Letho is not fair. His Aard sends me flying across the room and his bombs take almost 1/4 of my health+stunning me, while my Aard barely makes him stumble and he's still be able to riposte when I try to hit him during his split-second long stumble animation. My stun bombs don't seem to do anything except make pretty fireworks and the poison on my blade never activates like it does on regular mobs. I can never do the running face-stab or pirouette moves to close the distance when I really need to because the context sensitive move selector is so random. Oh, and when I finally bitched out and turned it to easy, the game lets me beat him in one long combo. He never tried to block or use Quen at all. It's like his AI was turned off completely. Insulting.

The AI/fighting system is bad. It looks flashy, animates well for the most part, but is busted as fuck when it comes right down to it. The combat feels like it wants to be Demon's Souls so much but the designer just wasn't quite able to pull it off.

I still have fun in outdoor battles where I have room to dodge around and set traps, though.

Good thing the rest of the game makes up for the busted combat. This is still the best game I've played all year and one of my top RPGs of all time so far.
Sorry for venting all over y'all's faces.

Ehmm.. I currently beat that boss in Hard a few hours ago, and

Spoiler

the Aard sign make wonders in him, it just first put his Quen down, and then roll -> Aard to stun + 2 Strong attacks -> Bail Out -> repeat and profit

. I died around 5 times until I got it, but it's by far a "easy fight", fighting multiple mobs is harder, IMO.

EDIT And by the way, but some of the boss fights in Demon's Souls are far more cheap that the fights in The Witcher 2

 

[Darklord]

How do I kill

Spoiler

Lethos in charper 1. I can't seem to even hurt him.

 

[Varna]

EDIT And by the way, but some of the boss fights in Demon's Souls are far more cheap that the fights in The Witcher 2

Yup. Let's not forget DS was also a pretty janky game at times too.

 

[Varna]

How do I kill

Spoiler

Lethos in charper 1. I can't seem to even hurt him.

Follow my advice... Attack twice as soon as the fight starts, aard, attack again, block, attack, roll away and wait for vigor to regenerate. Stay at medium distance so he doesn't start throwing bombs at you. Repeat.

 

[Spookie]

Man this game has some golden one liners (semi spoiler?):

Spoiler

"Ah my favourite type of magic - Lesbomancy."

I nearly died when I heard that.

 

[Darklord]

Follow my advice... Attack twice as soon as the fight starts, aard, attack again, block, attack, roll away and wait for vigor to regenerate. Stay at medium distance so he doesn't start throwing bombs at you. Repeat.

Oh. I didn't see the talk about him. Thanks.

 

[Salaadin]

Last week, I was experiencing black like box artifacts in game and thought it was game related so I shot CDPR an email asking if they could help. I didnt get a reply that day so I tinkered around some more and found out that the game just didnt like my GPU overclock. Removing that got rid of all issues. It runs perfectly.

Anyways, I just received this response from CDPR regarding my email and thought Id share it since it has some links and info in it:

First of all, let me apologize that the game you bought doesn't work 100% as you expected. We did our best to avoid such a situation, but apparently our efforts were not enough. This is an important lesson for us, and we can easily relate to how bad you can feel owning a game that isn't fully functional. Please be sure that next time, we will plan and execute things differently, to minimize any possible problems.

As for today, we cannot answer your e-mail specifically. Our tech support team is nearly 20 strong, but we're getting too many questions to answer them all as quickly as we would like. Therefore, we decided to send you this non-personalized message in order to pass along some information that may be helpful.

The most important thing for now is to help people start the game at all. We are still seeing comments and receiving e-mails from people who cannot run it.
Here you can find FAQ answering the most frequent activation / installation problems.
http://www.en.thewitcher.com/support/faq/
And here you can find a .pdf manual explaining step by step how to install and activate the game.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12872539/thewitcher/pdf/Installation_and_activation.pdf
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12872539/thewitcher/pdf/Registration_and_DLC.pdf
If these don't help, and you still have problems launching our game, please write our special tech support line at: help2start@thewitcher.com. We will get back to you as quickly as we can to help you start the game. We have proven and reliable solutions that are applicable to 90% of these cases.

If you have problems of a different nature (performance, compatibility, DLC download, game registration, etc), we kindly ask you to remain patient. We are working on solid solutions for most of these problems in our patch 1.1, which you can expect next week. We will inform you actual availability date of the patch in a separate e-mail.

Meanwhile, we can provide some tips and advice on the most common issues:
http://www.en.thewitcher.com/community/entry/26/

Once again, we are really sorry for inconveniencing you. We did our best to avoid problems with our release. Unfortunately, the nature of the PC platform, with nearly countless different system and hardware configurations, makes this task extremely difficult. In any case, we assure you, that next week, the majority of problems will be solved.

Best regards,

Adam Badowski
CDProjekt RED
The Witcher 2
Project Director

Apologies all around and more confirmation of next weeks patch. Im glad theyre acknowledging the issues and getting some fixes out.

 

[Sir Garbageman]

For those wandering: 10 minutes of Chapter 2 of

Spoiler

Saskia's route

is already way better than its counterpart. Be sure to play the game at least two times.

Awesome. I was planning on playing through it a second time already. Just started Ch. 2.

 

[Varna]

For those wandering: 10 minutes of Chapter 2 of

Spoiler

Saskia's route

is already way better than its counterpart. Be sure to play the game at least two times.

Is the start to chapter 2 decided by who you decide to help out?

 

[Vlodril]

I think people that have trouble with groups arent specced a certain way or they expect to go into 6 enemies and chop them to pieces. You need tactics as it should be.

 

[Darklord]

Follow my advice... Attack twice as soon as the fight starts, aard, attack again, block, attack, roll away and wait for vigor to regenerate. Stay at medium distance so he doesn't start throwing bombs at you. Repeat.

Yeah, I just get my arse kicked that way. Even at the start of the fight he blocks it most times. At medium distance he keeps using the fire sign and aard which throws me right back. I tried using the trap sign but it only works about 1/3 of the time. The rest of the game has been piss easy compared to this fight.

 

[Vasilisk 2038]

I think people that have trouble with groups arent specced a certain way or they expect to go into 6 enemies and chop them to pieces. You need tactics as it should be.

Yeah, exactly my thoughts, the first feeling the game gave me was "this isn't a hack'n slash, if you're surrounded and you don't act carefully, you're dead". And for example, I remember how I "danced" with the Endrega Queens, waiting for an opening in order to attack them.

 

[Vlodril]

The endrega queen was my favorite encounter actually. I tried a couple of times to go face to face and it kicked my ass. So i set up three conf traps and three freezer traps and lead her too them. When she hit the freezers i used daggers then bombs. Felt like a witcher. Awesome.

 

[Draft]

How do you blow up Nekker nests?

Has anyone successfully registered their game? I'm on the GOG version. Every time I try to retrieve my Witcher.com password it says an email has been sent, but no email arrives!

 

[Echoplx]

How do you blow up Nekker nests?

Has anyone successfully registered their game? I'm on the GOG version. Every time I try to retrieve my Witcher.com password it says an email has been sent, but no email arrives!

grapeshot bombs, stand next to the nest and an option should come up to destroy it.

No, the whole witcher community is down I think.

 

[Erudite]

grapeshot bombs, stand next to the nest and an option should come up to destroy it.

Just to clarify a little more, you can get the recipe for Grapeshot bombs from Cedric in Lobiden.

 

[knitoe]

I got 3 talent points and I can't use it anywhere. Is my character bugged. I am deep in chapter 2.

 

[zlatko]

Just completed the game on normal doing every sidequest possible on the routes I took and only missed one side quest that I was aware of.

Clocked in 43 hours. Took my time and really enjoyed the game.

Before I start a new story, which I'm going to do an insane run on, what do I do so it won't get rid of my old saves? Going through the game in this run I felt like I basically had only one save slot I was in charge of, and the game kept a bunch of other auto saves stacked up just in case when I would go to load.

When you start a new game will it have its own set of save and auto saves?

 

[Ikuu]

Go to My Documents/Witcher 2/Saves and just make a new folder and stick all the saves in it.

 

[mambadragon]

I preordered on Steam but didn't get to really play at all (and that was for about 45 mins last night) and I have a few questions.

Are most playing with m+kb or controller? I started playing with m+kb and was doing terribly, then tried controller and did a lot better but am annoyed by the lack of hot keys (like I couldn't find how to sheath sword, switch to silver sword, etc) and managing the UI was just annoying. I'm going to give m+kb another try and am hoping ill have better luck if I map Q and E to my mouse side buttons.

I'm not getting how the combat works? It's certainly not like Witcher 1, and I'm not understanding the timing (I tried playing it like Batman AA but frankly the combat doesn't seem as refined). Is there anywhere in the game to practice the combat timing, cause I just don't get it.

 

[Ikuu]

It's not like The Witcher at all, you just need to learn when you can attack and when you need to move out of the way/block. Run Witcher 2, select Video and Languages and then Input Settings and you can see all the hotkeys, and change them if you want.

 

[Dog Problems]

Is the start to chapter 2 decided by who you decide to help out?

Yes.

 

[NIN90]

I preordered on Steam but didn't get to really play at all (and that was for about 45 mins last night) and I have a few questions.

Are most playing with m+kb or controller? I started playing with m+kb and was doing terribly, then tried controller and did a lot better but am annoyed by the lack of hot keys (like I couldn't find how to sheath sword, switch to silver sword, etc) and managing the UI was just annoying. I'm going to give m+kb another try and am hoping ill have better luck if I map Q and E to my mouse side buttons.

I'm not getting how the combat works? It's certainly not like Witcher 1, and I'm not understanding the timing (I tried playing it like Batman AA but frankly the combat doesn't seem as refined). Is there anywhere in the game to practice the combat timing, cause I just don't get it.

Try to get into your foe's back and try to isolate enemies from the group with Yrden and Aard.

 

[Draft]

grapeshot bombs, stand next to the nest and an option should come up to destroy it.

No, the whole witcher community is down I think.

There's no way to get the DLC/patches without registering?

 

[GhostRidah]

Later in the game it has been taking a lot longer to access map/inventory and loading areas =/

 

[knitoe]

I got 3 talent points and I can't use it anywhere. Is my character bugged. I am deep in chapter 2.

Looks like, on Normal difficulty, you can spend points anytime. Changing to Hard, you need to mediate before you can use the talent points. Why they even bother to do this.

 

[Exuro]

Later in the game it has been taking a lot longer to access map/inventory and loading areas =/

Yeah I started a new playthrough and it takes minutes to open the main menu. I'm wondering if that has to do with the number of saves that I have.

EDIT: Jeeze my save folder is 2 gigs. Is there any way to tell what you final game save is? I'd like to remove most of these autosaves. I have a save file that isn't labeled. I'm assuming that's the final save?

 

[raphier]

Yeah I started a new playthrough and it takes minutes to open the main menu. I'm wondering if that has to do with the number of saves that I have.

I had that problem with the first game (16gig). took ages to open the main menu