The Witcher 3 Pre-Expansion Thread

[TheHeroOfTime]

I've finally finished the Baron family questline and I can honestly say this is probably the best quest I've played through in a long, long time, in any game. It was a self-contained, well-written, very atmospheric story full of great characters (the Baron is indeed a bro) that felt entirely satisfying all the way through.

Spoiler

I transferred the Mother's soul into the mare, hoping this has cool consequences later on. The furies/crones were so awesome, from their design to their voices, to their dialogue, to the eerie theme music.

Very impressive stuff indeed. For all the little flaws the game has, this kind of stuff makes it completely worth it.

How did you found Baron's wife? It's the last part that i must complete but i can't find evidences. I tried coming back to the dead horses, searching if i can find some spoor but it didnt work. I'll try to ask NPC or in secondary missions later.

------------------

Ciri is lovely, WOTY (Waifu of the year)

 

[bonescraper]

The first witcher gear after the Viper swords is level 15 (cat school stuff)

No. There's a complete level 8 Griffin School set (armor + swords).

 

[Rivmusique]

Can we see their cards?

 

[Gerrard]

Fucking Gothic nostalgiafags I swear to god.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

For those in need of some sweet 8-ish level or around gear - in wester-most Velen there is a small keep called 'Lonesome Rock' or something to that effect when translated, north-west of the Baron's castle, where the land ends.

It's guarded by a 14 lvl monster that is quite easy. There are two ways to get into the keep and even if you can't beat the monster it will not get you get inside. The place is part of the 'Griffins School' quest.

 

[Cyberarmy]

But keep in mind that Griffin set is for sign users. Snake school seems to favor light armor, quick attack and bleeding effect while Ursa screams heavy metal.

 

[J_C]

I will tell you this guys, if I disappear from the Codex in the following days, I have slit my wrist because of this fucking shitty UI in this game. Why do I have to smash the fucking Esc 6 times until I can finally exit the shop or inventory or whatever menu. And I have to do this each and every time I use a shopkeeper or want to equip something. The game has the worst UI in the whole series. The game is great but this shit really testing my nerves.

Dude. You open inventory with "I" and you close it instantly with "I". You open journal with "J" and you close it instantly with "J". Same with map and everything else. You're welcome.

I know, but hitting esc should still close everything, because that's how it is intuitive. It is burned into my muscle memory. Esc=close.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

But keep in mind that Griffin set is for sign users. Snake school seems to favor light armor, quick attack and bleeding effect while Ursa screams heavy metal.

Yes, but the Griffin is not the only stuff worth notice that is stashed there.

 

[zeroprometheus]

I understand the point about the POI marks; however I left them on since the real problem isn't POI it's the missing FOG OF WAR! With POI turned off and the somewhat sameness of the geography I'll end up just retracing my steps over and over again not ever really being sure if I've covered the same piece of land once or twice before. This will just add another meaningless bag of gameplay time to the already frustrating MMO parts of the game. So I left POI markers on and its easy enough to find the hidden POIs and quests between the those. Also, they really dropped the ball on user made map markers and notes. There are high level enemies, like a few draconids in the southwest of the map that I'll have to save for later but will likely not remember to fight because I already scoured that geography for quests.

This really seems like two games fused into each other. One, a decent and at times brilliant, single player, semi-linear, lore heavy monster hunting escapade; the other, and meandering and confusing MMO grind, with little to no reward other than finding interesting monsters.

Actually the biggest letdown besides controls/UI is the level progression. The mutagens were interestingly revamped and I look forward to mixing and matching to pump up abilities; however, the actual skill trees are banal and uninteresting. They were better in the past games. Combat is also a mixed bag because of this.

A few questions. Right now I'm slowly creeping up on my weight limit because of all the misc. crafting exotica. What can I safely sell and get rid of? Diagrams sometimes ask for some pretty unpredictable parts so I'm way too OCD to drop anything that isn't junk or weapons/armor. Why is CDPR making a habit of adding basic essentials like storage well after release, because I'm sure it's coming.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

Why is CDPR making a habit of adding basic essentials like storage well after release, because I'm sure it's coming.

Just buy bigger bags for the horse. You and your horse are the storage.

 

[PhantasmaNL]

Good point on the POI markers and missing fow. I also set the POI markers ON again for the same reason, as a reminder of what i already explored on the bloody large map. Since they basically only show filler content anyway im fine with that. Optimal situation of course would have had a functional fow system.

 

[Zeriel]

I've finally finished the Baron family questline and I can honestly say this is probably the best quest I've played through in a long, long time, in any game. It was a self-contained, well-written, very atmospheric story full of great characters (the Baron is indeed a bro) that felt entirely satisfying all the way through.

Spoiler

I transferred the Mother's soul into the mare, hoping this has cool consequences later on. The furies/crones were so awesome, from their design to their voices, to their dialogue, to the eerie theme music.

Very impressive stuff indeed. For all the little flaws the game has, this kind of stuff makes it completely worth it.

Wait, what the fuck? I thought I saw all choices in this questline, never saw that.

Only out comes I saw were

Spoiler

If you let the spirit into the horse, then Anna gets cursed to be a water hag, you lift the curse only for her to die, OR you kill the spirit and Anna doesn't get cursed but is instead insane and the Baron takes her off somewhere

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

I've finally finished the Baron family questline and I can honestly say this is probably the best quest I've played through in a long, long time, in any game. It was a self-contained, well-written, very atmospheric story full of great characters (the Baron is indeed a bro) that felt entirely satisfying all the way through.

Spoiler

I transferred the Mother's soul into the mare, hoping this has cool consequences later on. The furies/crones were so awesome, from their design to their voices, to their dialogue, to the eerie theme music.

Very impressive stuff indeed. For all the little flaws the game has, this kind of stuff makes it completely worth it.

Wait, what the fuck? I thought I saw all choices in this questline, never saw that.

Only out comes I saw were

Spoiler

If you let the spirit into the horse, then Anna gets cursed to be a water hag, you lift the curse only for her to die, OR you kill the spirit and Anna doesn't get cursed but is instead insane and the Baron takes her off somewhere

Spoiler

Mother=Spirit, you are talking about the same thing. The spirit is the mother of the crones.

 

[Zeriel]

I've finally finished the Baron family questline and I can honestly say this is probably the best quest I've played through in a long, long time, in any game. It was a self-contained, well-written, very atmospheric story full of great characters (the Baron is indeed a bro) that felt entirely satisfying all the way through.

Spoiler

I transferred the Mother's soul into the mare, hoping this has cool consequences later on. The furies/crones were so awesome, from their design to their voices, to their dialogue, to the eerie theme music.

Very impressive stuff indeed. For all the little flaws the game has, this kind of stuff makes it completely worth it.

Wait, what the fuck? I thought I saw all choices in this questline, never saw that.

Only out comes I saw were

Spoiler

If you let the spirit into the horse, then Anna gets cursed to be a water hag, you lift the curse only for her to die, OR you kill the spirit and Anna doesn't get cursed but is instead insane and the Baron takes her off somewhere

Spoiler

Mother=Spirit, you are talking about the same thing. The spirit is the mother of the crones.

Spoiler

Oh, thought he meant Anna when he said Mother.

And yeah, I was hoping something interesting would happen as a result of that choice, but nothing seemed to, so I decided not to go that route. It just seemed like the get-boned route.

 

[Perkel]

1. The main problem is the world design: it's just quantity instead of quality. 15 years ago Piranha Bytes was able to craft a game world where you could recognize places based on their geography. This is no longer the case. You can recognize castles, villages and certain structure but everything else is a blur. They overcrowded the world with useless roads, foliage and boring fields.

Actually that is not the case for me. Sure in wilderness i sometimes use map but since i don't use minimap and fast travel i learned most of the roads so far.

I learned a lot by looking for landmarks. For example hanging tree in velen is one. Baron castle is second one.

This is the thing with TW3. Whole game feels like it was designed. Like nothing was created with some generation tool like Skyrim where you are in woods and you have no fucking clue where you are because there are same trees, rocks, landmass type everywhere.

Same with buildings most of them are unique. Nothing like in copy paste skyrim. So just going to some place you can get clue where you are because you will know if you have seen it or not.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

To respond to the rest of your post, no, I don't want everyone in town to give Geralt a blowjob. I want them to fear and revile him. I want them to react to him in a way that reflects who he is said to be, and in the same way they do in the books. I don't feel like W3 captures this. Yes, some peasants go screaming when you come near them, and you can intimidate some random bandits with your witcher's medallion, and yes, most characters superificially "revile" Geralt. But these things just feel like props put there as an afterthought. Dude X might fear Geralt to the death, but he'll still ask you to escort his daughter to the village next door. Gal Y might revile Geralt, but she'll still help you out in any way you could possibly want for after a few formalities of "oh no you're a witcher why should I trust you" "because I'm here to help blah blah" "oh ok". It never really poses an obstacle or makes me feel like being a witcher limits me in any way from doing what normalfag NPCs can, or a stereotypical RPG protag can.

I don't know if you experienced any of what I'm saying. You should ask yourself whether this game actually made you feel like Geralt. Maybe it did. It didn't, for me.

Witchers in the setting are trusted to do the job they are payed for.

Geralt never raped anyone, isn't going around slaughtering people for no reason and doesn't drink the blood of the living. They hate him in the same way people in america hated the blacks for so many years, yet they still let them shine their shoes and pick their cotton. People need him to do the job he does, but people hate him merely for what his is.

Now, idividuals whom he affects DO hate/get pissed off at him. The baron for example knew that he killed his men, he just valued finding his wife and daughter more than killing Geralt.

Yey, it did a good job of making me feel like Geralt.

 

[Bleed the Man]

I have to say, although I like the game a lot and the storyfaggotry is still strong in this one, I'm kinda pissed at the open world nature of the game, and I'm getting more pissed as I progress and see more of the world.

Arriving to Oxenfurt, second biggest city in the Velen, and that the only quests that I've found there (outside the Baron quest that lead me there) were from the tabloid of contracts, and all of them lead me outside the city was infuriating. I understand that, due to the story and cinematic focus of The Witcher games, quests can't be so numerous to not have a lot of empty settlements spread through the massive landscape and lots and lots of non interactive NPCs, but seeing the second biggest city of the area recieve a similar treatment? It pissed me off greatly.

I don't think it harms the strong points of the game, but I don't believe it adds anything of value either and detracts a bit from the core experience that the game offers. Point is, if this would have maintained the HUB structure + 1/2 wilderness areas per HUB as the previous did, nothing would have been lost.

Character progression is also awful, I believe The Witcher 2 was nowhere near as bad as this one.

Anyway, the important bits are as good or better than ever were, writing in particular. I never considered CD Projekt good at writing characters outside of the Roche/Iorveth/Letho trifecta, but shit, in this game there's tons of memorable characters, with quite a bit of depth. Even Geralt, whose characterization never really felt quite "right" before, is a lot more compelling now.

 

[cvv]

Good point on the POI markers and missing fow. I also set the POI markers ON again for the same reason, as a reminder of what i already explored on the bloody large map. Since they basically only show filler content anyway im fine with that. Optimal situation of course would have had a functional fow system.

This, turned the POIs back on too. Without the map fog and the minimap being so small it's just impossible to hunt down all the shit.

 

[WhiteGuts]

Hmm right now I only found (bought) the documents to unlock the Cat School treasure hunt. Where do I find the Griffin stuff ?

 

[ManjuShri]

Hmm right now I only found (bought) the documents to unlock the Cat School treasure hunt. Where do I find the Griffin stuff ?

http://www.gosunoob.com/witcher-3/witcher-armor-griffin-school-gear/
http://www.gosunoob.com/witcher-3/enhanced-griffin-gear/

Right now I'm slowly creeping up on my weight limit because of all the misc. crafting exotica. What can I safely sell and get rid of? Diagrams sometimes ask for some pretty unpredictable parts so I'm way too OCD to drop anything that isn't junk or weapons/armor. Why is CDPR making a habit of adding basic essentials like storage well after release, because I'm sure it's coming.

Buy the Zerrakanian saddle bag in the Putrid Grove in Novigrad for 900 gold to increase the weight limit by 100.

 

[Astral Rag]

 

[Brayko]

If you hated Witcher / Witcher 2, you won't like this game.

Wrong, this game has very little in common with The Witcher 2. Much closer to Witcher 1/ Gothic 2 with it's own style. After 5 hours I think that's what Piranha Bytes wanted to do with Gothic 3, but failed.

If I cave in and decide to purchase this game and you are lying I will hunt you down.

 

[SumDrunkGuy]

How do I bone the herbalist chick Tomira? Shes got a nice fat ass and is shoving it in my face everytime I walk into her house. The woman is practically begging for it.

 

[Brayko]

Oh yeah another thing. How are the sex scenes anyway? Are they mostly Biowarian intimacy romantic crap or do they raise the stakes and go raw sport fucking?

 

[Nyast]

If you hated Witcher / Witcher 2, you won't like this game.

Wrong, this game has very little in common with The Witcher 2. Much closer to Witcher 1/ Gothic 2 with it's own style. After 5 hours I think that's what Piranha Bytes wanted to do with Gothic 3, but failed.

If I cave in and decide to purchase this game and you are lying I will hunt you down.

Yay ! Let's go Wild baby ! A wild hunt...