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[Franziska]

Finished the game & HoS. Game had me hooked throughout, but the (main) ending.

(Spoilers for the Witcher 2, 3 Main)

Spoiler

felt like a copout. Ciri lives inspite of sacrificing herself? Really felt like the only choice you made was choosing between Radovid, Dijkstra and Roche, and the romances. At one point I was actually expecting another arc finding Avallach because the bossfight against Imlerith was so simple. Nothing quite like the dragon or the choice with Letho.

Hearts of Stone,

Spoiler

OTOH was a ride. Once again it felt like your choice didn't matter, because all characters were royal whoresons. But it didn't magic in Olgierd's liberation and everything felt adequately explained. Plus racing against the timer and finding the aard-able wall was a lot more fun than dodge, HS/Igni/Dodge

Gameplay was definitely a step up but the plot was disappointing after TW2.

 

[Stormus]

On my second playthrough and have a question. If I romance both Yen and Triss and get the scenario where you get tired up, does that mean in Blood & Wine I can't get Yen back?

 

[Sai]

Double dipped on the Xbox One version since if was on sale.

Will likely triple dip on the PC version one day.

On my second playthrough and have a question. If I romance both Yen and Triss and get the scenario where you get tired up, does that mean in Blood & Wine I can't get Yen back?

That's right.

 

[endlessflood]

(Spoilers for the Witcher 2, 3 Main)

Spoiler

felt like a copout. Ciri lives inspite of sacrificing herself? Really felt like the only choice you made was choosing between Radovid, Dijkstra and Roche, and the romances. At one point I was actually expecting another arc finding Avallach because the bossfight against Imlerith was so simple. Nothing quite like the dragon or the choice with Letho.

Spoilers for all Witcher 3 endings:

Spoiler

There are three endings for Ciri. She dies in one of them. She lives in the other two.

Ultimately your major story choices boil down to these:

Ciri's fate (dead, a Witcher, or Empress)
The world's fate (conquered by Nilfgaard, North ruled by Radovid, North ruled by Dijkstra)
Skellige's fate (ruled by Hjalmar, ruled by Cerys, ruled by Svanrige)
Geralt's fate (with Yen, with Triss, alone)

 

[Ivory Samoan]

On my second playthrough and have a question. If I romance both Yen and Triss and get the scenario where you get tired up, does that mean in Blood & Wine I can't get Yen back?

I literally went back 10 or so hours on saves to avoid this scenario: I had forgotten about the 'no-going-back' nature of the ménage à trois eventuation :/

 

[LordCiego]

I,m on mobile so this will be short, but one year and 120 hours latter I have finished the game and both expansions. Got these endings

Spoiler

Ciri becomes the ruler and both sisters survive in B&W. Just finishing B&W and seeing Yennefer at your house, knowing that you achieved your promise and that both can live life as they want it's a great feeling after 3 games

This is the kind of game that gives you a feeling of emptiness once you have finished it after playing all the saga during all this years. Top 5 game ever for me.

 

[Munki]

On my second playthrough and have a question. If I romance both Yen and Triss and get the scenario where you get tired up, does that mean in Blood & Wine I can't get Yen back?

Sadly she's gone. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

Spoiler

Not all bad though, Ciri will be the one who will visit you at Corvo Blanco if you do mack both Yen and Triss.

 

[Raptor]

So if I didnt get the cards on that party where you are with Trissin Vegelbud or something, I cant get them now at all?

God damn it.

 

[Dantis]

Sadly she's gone. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

Spoiler

Not all bad though, Ciri will be the one who will visit you at Corvo Blanco if you do mack both Yen and Triss.

WHAT

This is much better.

 

[Sai]

WHAT

This is much better.

Spoiler

If Ciri doesn't return, you're stuck with Dandelion though.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Spoiler

If Ciri doesn't return, you're stuck with Dandelion though.

No shit? That makes me want to make some very different choices.

Spoiler

Dandelion

would be goddamn glorious in Corvo Bianco.

 

[Franziska]

+1 to

Spoiler

Dandy

in Corvo Bianco.

Main Spoiler

Spoiler

Having other endings where Ciri dies doesn't make her magically surviving feel any less bullshit though. Also yeah, the Skellige ruler is your choice, Had completely forgotten about that.

#teamYen and all that, but

Spoiler

Not being allowed to tell her path4lyfe was also annoying. I'm guessing the only way to do it would be to not romance either Triss or Yen.

So if I didnt get the cards on that party where you are with Trissin Vegelbud or something, I cant get them now at all?

God damn it.

I believe I lost a few more cards because I sidelined gwent until the very late game.

Spoiler

Killed Lugos, Dijkstra, Never saw the opportunity with Lambert

Doing Blood and Wine rn. Won't post spoilers for them but the Paperchase and Equine Phantoms quests are AMAZING.

 

[pseudocaesar]

Is there really a 3rd option for the barons quest line. I read that if you do three whispering hillock before the ladies of the wood you get an even better ending. Is that true? If so what is required to achieve it? I have completed the quest with keira so the ladies of the wood is now an active quest, haven't read the book yet though. Is it too late to get this ending or?

 

[Joohanh]

Oh my god this game is amazing. I mean, I really liked Assassins of Kings as well, but in the end it didn't really grow on me all that much. This game is just so powerful in all facets that I find myself basically trying to optimize my every day to cram in as many playing hours as I can.

I'm at what I assume to be pretty late in the main story, and have completed a bit from the Hearts of Stone storyline. It's a very welcome and rare feeling to simply not want the game to end. Most of this has to do with the writing - the feeling is very similar to those times of being so enamored with a book you almost wish the world in it were real. CDPR is to be commended to the highest degree for such adept storytelling.

There's a lot of specific things to write about, and of course stuff that over time has become a bit tedious, like the "examine using your witcher senses" -mechanic, but what matters most is the experience of a wondrously vivid world. I've played a lot of WRPG's, but I simply cannot think of any other game that would come close to this.

E: I feel like a piece of shit for paying 25 euros for the GOTY edition

 

[StickSoldier]

Hey guys, first time in here, but I am in desperate need of assistance so that I can continue my play through.. Hopefully.. I am having a hell of a time with technical issues.

I don't want to go in too long of a story of the issue, but basically I am having a reoccurring problem that is causing my game screen to freeze, while still being able to actually hear the game running and move around. I have encountered this issue since I first purchased it on Steam, but unknowingly, I worked on trying to fix the problem myself for too many hours and was unable to refund the game. So I have dragged my feet through mud to get a lot of hours in, about 100 hours at this point but I've had to restart and save my game like a thousand times because of this. And that might be me being generous. Several of those have been spent trying to fix the fucking game itself, I should mention.

Unfortunately, I've reached a point where I can't bear it anymore as now it seems to be happening every 5 minutes and I cant figure out what to do. I have looked through countless forums and threads but have not found a remedy to this particular problem, so now I am resorting to asking myself. Does anyone know or heard of this issue and ways to fix it that may lead me into a direction that will cure this ridiculous nonsense, or am I going to have to put the sweet prince Geralt away for good?

 

[Rex_DX]

Never heard of this issue and it sounds infuriating. Sounds like a GPU issue but I'm no expert. The only advice I can give is to ask in the "I need a new PC" thread as there are some technically brilliant people in there who have helped me in the past.

Also a set of your specs and if this is only occurring with The Witcher 3 or other games as well would maybe allow more guidance.

Best of luck!

 

[sackboy2197]

Like Rex_DX said, it sounds like the GPU is crashing. Have you oc'd the GPU? The game doesn't really work well with any kind of oc, even if it's stable for everything else.

 

[LurkerPrime]

I can't think of what would cause the screen to freeze, but allow the game to continue running; I guess GPU sounds most likely, as the others say.

If it's happening outside of TW3, TechSupportGAF could give you a hand diagnosing the problem.

 

[Coreda]

I don't want to go in too long of a story of the issue, but basically I am having a reoccurring problem that is causing my game screen to freeze, while still being able to actually hear the game running and move around.

Not sure if it's any help but the only crash issues I've experienced were due to not running with a custom GPU fan profile during the game (for increased air at higher utilization). My Nvidia GPU would occasionally crash without it enabled. After a few driver and game updates I didn't continue experiencing it though.

 

[StickSoldier]

Thanks for the replies yall, just got a chance to look at the thread. Once I get back from work I'm going to tinker with a couple of things and see if I can't maybe figure something out. I didn't really think of the GPU being the issue though, thought it was something more along with the game having a bug. I did notice, however, that when my game encounters the problem, everything on my 2nd monitor completely freezes as well, until I can hear sound in the game again...

I'll update as soon as I figure out something, good or bad, but I appreciate all the ideas.

 

[StickSoldier]

Well a bit of an update: I tried a couple of general updates, downloading GeForce Experience and optimizing the game, and some other minor tweaks but still saw the crashing happen quite often.

I went ahead and downloaded MSI AfterBurner, made a custom fan curve. Instantly I noticed a huge decrease in the amount of crashing that was taking place. I went almost 2-3 hours without having a single crash, then again another hour or so to see it crash again. Seems like my GPU was getting to 71+ °C pretty quickly, which is about the temperature I would notice the game crash. A minor adjustment to this to get the GPU below 70 °C seemed to do the trick, at least making it playable again and give me a case of anger from these random crashes.

I have a GTX 660 TI by the way, but I'm curious.. What are considered high temps anyways? And how about fan speed %? I don't want to blow up the GPU by trying to do this.

It does still crash every so often, so it doesn't seem to completely cure the issue, but at least it's a starting point to be able to play consistently without having to restart the fucking game 50+ times in 30 minutes. Thanks for the info guys. Hopefully I can continue to make progress.

 

[Coreda]

Seems like my GPU was getting to 71+ °C pretty quickly, which is about the temperature I would notice the game crash. A minor adjustment to this to get the GPU below 70 °C seemed to do the trick, at least making it playable again and give me a case of anger from these random crashes.

I have a GTX 660 TI by the way, but I'm curious.. What are considered high temps anyways? And how about fan speed %? I don't want to blow up the GPU by trying to do this.

70°C seems fine to me for load. You'd want to keep it under 80, the lower the better obviously. For fan speeds you can make it as fast as you can bear the sound of My GPU is a blower style so it generates a lot of noise at faster fan speeds so I adjusted the curves to ramp up more gradually but if you have a non-blower style fan or can put on headphones then it's not as much of an issue.

Might want to check for inside case dust as well. I've found it usually sheds a few degrees after cleaning.

 

[CHC]

Oh my god what am I doing here?

I literally spent the ENTIRE day yesterday playing this again. Already had like 350 hours played but I'm on my second game now.

First playthroigh I had never played even a single round of Gwent. Now, though.... I'm a veritable Gwent addict! Going for all the cards, and mannnnnn this is is good. It really makes the pacing of the game better overall, as well. Things seem a lot less single mindedly focused on combat when you break it up with a couple rounds here and there.

It still amazes me how captivating I find this game, even after I have 400 hours logged on Steam. It's such a damn masterpiece.

 

[Rex_DX]

Well a bit of an update: I tried a couple of general updates, downloading GeForce Experience and optimizing the game, and some other minor tweaks but still saw the crashing happen quite often.

I went ahead and downloaded MSI AfterBurner, made a custom fan curve. Instantly I noticed a huge decrease in the amount of crashing that was taking place. I went almost 2-3 hours without having a single crash, then again another hour or so to see it crash again. Seems like my GPU was getting to 71+ °C pretty quickly, which is about the temperature I would notice the game crash. A minor adjustment to this to get the GPU below 70 °C seemed to do the trick, at least making it playable again and give me a case of anger from these random crashes.

I have a GTX 660 TI by the way, but I'm curious.. What are considered high temps anyways? And how about fan speed %? I don't want to blow up the GPU by trying to do this.

It does still crash every so often, so it doesn't seem to completely cure the issue, but at least it's a starting point to be able to play consistently without having to restart the fucking game 50+ times in 30 minutes. Thanks for the info guys. Hopefully I can continue to make progress.

I did some research for you and found a thread on Toms Hardware documenting this issue. It turned out that the posters RAM stick was slightly unseated causing crashes in all his games and eventually leading to boot errors. It's kind of a long shot but I had a similar problem (not specifically with the
witcher) and reseating my RAM fixed it all.

Might be worth a shot.

 

[Charlouie Jonesman]

Started playing this over the weekend and I've got three minor questions.

1. So oils have pretty much unlimited use, right? Like, there's a counter that goes down after each hit, but you can reapply the oil as much as you want?

2. Sometimes Geralt kills the last dude among a group of enemies with a violent slow-mo attack. Is that some kind of special move you can actively trigger or just something that happens randomly because it looks cool?

3. I was able to increase the font-size of the inventory descriptions but is there a way to make the subtitles bigger as well? (On PS4.)

 

[Rex_DX]

1. Yes, oils have a counter that when depleted basically means the oil has been rubbed off the weapon. At this point you're free to apply it again for a fresh counter. This can be done infinitely I believe but if there is limited use I've never exhausted it. Meditation will restore them if that is the case.

2. The slow-mo finisher is not a special move but rather a randomly generated chance. It would seem that the chances are much higher when slaying the last enemy in a group but it can occur with any kill.

3. I play on PC so I'm not sure. The menus and settings of this game are pretty extensive and can be obtuse so make sure you've looked everywhere. Perhaps another PS4 player could be more helpful.

Happy witchering. You're in for one hell of a ride.

 

[Intheflorsh]

Can I just say how disappointed I am in the water at night after patch 1.20? It's a real downgrade that I'm surprised more are talking about. Posted a bit about it in the dedicated patch thread but after see Skellige water at night it drove it home.

Just look at the stark difference. I don't know what they were thinking. The daytime water looks mostly okay but the night reveals the changes. All shots taken at Ultra settings at the same time of day and condition (Left to right: 1AM/Rain, 1AM/Rain, 6PM/Clear IIRC).



The menu visible is due to sandboxing the 1.12 patch (since I didn't want it making any changes to the 1.21 install), which meant Afterburner couldn't detect the window so I used ShareX.

I'm just curious, did they ever fix/improve this?

 

[Coreda]

I'm just curious, did they ever fix/improve this?

It should be noted that milky colored shot seemed to be a random glitch in the end. For the other shots though it has remained the same. It was globally updated at the time for Blood & Wine (prior to its release) and in certain ways the water is a nice improvement but I do prefer the old appearance in Skellige at night and a couple places.

 

[CHC]

Man, I think Carnal Sins is one of the, if not THE, best sidequest in the game. Crazy level of detail and care put into it, and such a great sense of tension and urgency.

 

[demosthenes]

Man, I think Carnal Sins is one of the, if not THE, best sidequest in the game. Crazy level of detail and care put into it, and such a great sense of tension and urgency.

What was that one again?

 

[CHC]

What was that one again?

The murderer in Novigrad, involving Priscilla, the Doctor, and the Coroner.

 

[leng jai]

I legit just realised that the Emperor was voiced by Charles Dance. Might blown for a solid 10 minutes.

 

[mitchman]

The murderer in Novigrad, involving Priscilla, the Doctor, and the Coroner.

And most doesn't even find the real murderer

 

[Charlouie Jonesman]

Can weapons actually break to the point of being unusable or do they just get weaker? I'm not getting much cash to begin with and so far most of it gets spent on keeping my weapons in good shape. But if it's not all that important for regular encounters...

 

[CloudWolf]

The murderer in Novigrad, involving Priscilla, the Doctor, and the Coroner.

I love that quest, except for the ending...

Spoiler

Geralt and the game itself state that Hubert is a Higher Vampire. That doesn't make sense though because Higher Vampires in Witcher lore are completely different and much stronger, as evidenced by Blood & Wine.

 

[-Deimos]

I love that quest, except for the ending...

Spoiler

Geralt and the game itself state that Hubert is a Higher Vampire. That doesn't make sense though because Higher Vampires in Witcher lore are completely different and much stronger, as evidenced by Blood & Wine.

Spoiler

There's a lot of different classes of vampires. If they're intelligent and can speak, they're pretty much considered "higher".

 

[CHC]

Spoiler

There's a lot of different classes of vampires. If they're intelligent and can speak, they're pretty much considered "higher".

True, most are just those freak bat creatures lurking in caves and sewers.

 

[v1oz]

The nudity, sex and violence has been toned down from Witcher 2 Special Edition, right? I'm not imagining things?

The Witcher 2 was the first game I ever played with with such realistic graphic depictions of sex and blood filled brutality. But I'm glad cd projekt made the sequel more main stream by toning down certain aspects of the game which were likely to put people off.

 

[Coreda]

Can weapons actually break to the point of being unusable or do they just get weaker? I'm not getting much cash to begin with and so far most of it gets spent on keeping my weapons in good shape. But if it's not all that important for regular encounters...

It's been a while since I've had one that's been damaged to that degree so I can't recall, but they'll always be repairable, nothing is permanent. Best tip is just to loot everything and accumulate repair kits that way.

---

Have been playing around with ReShade (since it now has a nice in-game GUI) in an attempt to get better AA, just as a test. One issue that lingered was shimmering on textures like stone buildings while moving. A good example would be the Novigrad Gate bridge in Oxenfurt while facing the buildings. After forcing 16x anisotropic filtering via the Nvidia Profile Inspector I was surprised at the improvement. Had thought it would only improve textures on angles but it appears to help reduce shimmering when facing surfaces, too. Quite pleased with the image quality improvements and the performance hit isn't so bad: ≤2fps in most places when static/walking, with up to ~5fps while galloping, though I'm also using a slightly wider FoV.

The Seven Cats Inn with time frozen for more accuracy (open images in new tabs to compare):

Left: In-game AA + in-game sharpening (Low) / Right: ReShade (SMAA + LumaSharpen) with in-game AA and sharpening disabled.

Most noticeably with the ReShade tweaks edges are cleaner (including foliage) and textures are sharper thanks to LumaSharpen (the reason LumaSharpen is actually needed though is the overall blurriness without it). I have LumaSharpen set with a sharp_clamp value of 0.025 as I've found higher values while increasing sharpness also affect the AA and introduce jagged edges on some objects.

 

[Charlouie Jonesman]

I had the quest to visit the Bloody Baron's daughter, but decided to visit the swamp witches first because they were closer. At that point I had no idea that

Spoiler

their quest was connected to the Bloody Baron's and now it's all over

. Did I miss out on anything significant by not meeting the Baron's daughter in Oxenfurt first?

Also, pretty cool and extensive quest overall. Shame the audio completly glitched out during the witches part, which is appearently a common issue with this quest on PS4.

 

[Dr. Zombutler]

Shame the audio completly glitched out during the witches part, which is appearently a common issue with this quest on PS4.

I learned my lesson the hard way with the whispering tree quest. Keep them subtitles on at all times.

 

[Charlouie Jonesman]

I learned my lesson the hard way with the whispering tree quest. Keep them subtitles on at all times.

That's where it started for me. At first I thought "Well, I guess the tree is communicating telepathically." but afterwards I noticed a lot of other sounds missing as well and then I got to the witches...

 

[His Majesty]

More than a year after my second playthrough I am starting my third. Damn this game.

 

[vivftp]

Howdy all. I'm sure this has been asked before, but I felt it best to not read too much of the thread just yet to avoid potential spoilers. I've done my first playthrough and completed the main story along with all the secondary, witcher and treasure quests I had on my plate. I have a ton of points of interest still littered across the map, but I wanted to get some advice on the best way to handle my next steps. Do I ignore all my points of interest and just jump into NG+ cause they'll be there anyways? Do I ignore NG+ and jump straight to DLCs? I'm sitting at level 36 right now.

Also, I never really paid much attention to crafting gear up until this point so only now am I realizing there seem to be bugs related to mastercrafted gear. I want to get all mastercrafted feline gear but for boots, chest and trousers I can only get as far as superior and baseline feline gear for the gauntlets. I don't get the option for mastercrafted feline gear with Yoana at all at Crows Perch. Only griffin and ursine MC gear shows up as options. A quick search online indicates there doesn't seem to be a way around this, but I figured I'd ask here to be sure. Do I have to do NG+ and ensure I pick up the gear chests in a particular order?

Thanks for any help folks

 

[His Majesty]

Howdy all. I'm sure this has been asked before, but I felt it best to not read too much of the thread just yet to avoid potential spoilers. I've done my first playthrough and completed the main story along with all the secondary, witcher and treasure quests I had on my plate. I have a ton of points of interest still littered across the map, but I wanted to get some advice on the best way to handle my next steps. Do I ignore all my points of interest and just jump into NG+ cause they'll be there anyways? Do I ignore NG+ and jump straight to DLCs? I'm sitting at level 36 right now.

Also, I never really paid much attention to crafting gear up until this point so only now am I realizing there seem to be bugs related to mastercrafted gear. I want to get all mastercrafted feline gear but for boots, chest and trousers I can only get as far as superior and baseline feline gear for the gauntlets. I don't get the option for mastercrafted feline gear with Yoana at all at Crows Perch. Only griffin and ursine MC gear shows up as options. A quick search online indicates there doesn't seem to be a way around this, but I figured I'd ask here to be sure. Do I have to do NG+ and ensure I pick up the gear chests in a particular order?

Thanks for any help folks

Be aware that if you start NG+ now the level requirements for the DLC will also go up. I think Hearts of Stone is 60 and Blood & Wine is 65. So you'll be a long way off from starting the DLC. I also wouldn't bother doing all those points of interest. Leave some stuff for your second playthrough.

Haven't heard about the armour bug before so can't help you there.

 

[Munki]

Have any of you guys run into a bug where the Blacksmith (Gransmaster) in Toussaint is showing as a "Shopkeeper"?

Needless to say, I am currently unable to craft any Grandmaster gear...

 

[EatChildren]

Anybody else still playing this on PC, and using ini tweaks to increase the foliage draw distance? I have some questions about performance.

 

[Coreda]

Anybody else still playing this on PC, and using ini tweaks to increase the foliage draw distance? I have some questions about performance.

Not personally, but felt like mentioning there's a mod that adds this and other settings to the in-game menu sliders, extending the Low-Ultra to additionally include Supreme, Ultimate, and Extreme settings. The Images tab in the Nexus link displays how the values are configured in the affected ini files.

 

[Falcs]

So this may be a stupid question, but should I be playing this on PC?

I've sunk about 25 hours into it on PS4 Pro, and it's just dawned on me that maybe I'm missing out on mods.
I played Skyrim on PC with heaps of mods and I remember thinking to myself "How can anyone play this on console without mods. It's so much better on PC because of mods."
Am I missing a lot?

 

[His Majesty]

So this may be a stupid question, but should I be playing this on PC?

I've sunk about 25 hours into it on PS4 Pro, and it's just dawned on me that maybe I'm missing out on mods.
I played Skyrim on PC with heaps of mods and I remember thinking to myself "How can anyone play this on console without mods. It's so much better on PC because of mods."
Am I missing a lot?

The modding community is not as developed as Skyrim but you are certainly missing out in my opinion. There are some great graphical and QoL mods which really enhance the experience.

FriendlyHUD for example makes it completely viable to do a HUDless playthrough (gamechanger) and makes potion/oil/bomb management much less of a pain in the ass.

Another one I really like is the Preparations mod which allows you to see the world pass by while meditating instead of just a menu. I've also set it so that I can only brew potions or invest skill points at a campfire like in The Witcher 1.

Then there are other mods which display all your quest objectives on the world map, remove the weight limit, improve the loottable for creatures and make monster trophies useful. As you can see no huge mods like Skyrim has but in the end it all adds up for me. I'm certain I wouldn't be able to play The Witcher 3 on consoles anymore.