[Mentalist]

Apt, on 14 September 2015 - 04:45 PM, said:

If you've done a lot of side quests/contract before you play through the main story you'll end up around level 40ish. I think I was level 43 by the end.

Really looking forward to the DLC. I'm frankly more excited about Witcher DLC than even Fallout 4 and Just Cause 3.

Not worried about over-leveling in this game, b/c i'm still not great @ combat. Also, skill system's kinda limited, so it's not like TW1 where you could max out most skills and become a total murder machine. The limited number of slots mean I won't ever be a "true" superman. I mean, at this point my incentive to level is just to be able to put on higher-tier gear. And so far, I've had it preeety balanced-at least in Skellige, where I was doing stuff recommended for high 20s and finding random gear that was about equal with my tier 2 Griffin swords. (not really considering any non-witcher armour, b/c very few have any "monster damage" stats). Most monster fights were challenging, but doable- the monster in the "Lost Son" contract was a pretty spectacular fight, as was the tower quest on An Skellige.

When I forged tier 3 (excellent) Witcher swords, though, I had to sell off all my "backup" relic weapons, since they immediately became obsolete. I'll have a look-see how future loot stacks up, esp since my list of things to wrap up includes finishing both Master smith + armorer quests, giving me access to Master gear.

[Maark Abbott]

Dadding, on 14 September 2015 - 01:17 PM, said:

Maark, on 14 September 2015 - 07:20 AM, said:

So, I tried to finish up 2. What's the deal with the tower at the end? The dragon just seems to stick her head in and one-shot me. Or are you supposed to keep running until you hit the top?

Yeah, you can't seriously damage her until you hit the very top. Just try to avoid the dragon fire until you get there.

Righto. I might pop back and look at it after I finish up with Thief.

[Mentalist]

Yeah, as others said, running up the tower is one big QTE, basically. Until you get to the top, your goal is to avoid flames.

I may have gone a bit overboard Las night, wrapping up loose ends in Velen/Novigrad. Interesting note: pushing main quest post-Skellige auto-fails Lambert's quest. It has to be completed first. Did so, though L. wasn't too happy. Also, grabbed my "Old Friend's" card. Figured it'd be this one. Nice nod to TW1.

-I'm also annoyed that I seem to be poster child for DLC-related bugs. This time it's the bonus contract/quest "Where the Cat and Wolf play", which hasn't appeared on the notice boards. Le sigh.

Anyhow, finally fought a Leshy. Moderately impressive, though elementals remains the toughest opponents.

Played High Stakes Gwent tourney. First guy took 3 tries, b/c I accidentally wiped out my own 20 pt strong artillery piece on the first try, and didn't draw any spy cards the second time. Second game I had a comfortable lead, and the next two were walkovers. Protip: monster decks are incredibly vulnerable to Frost, since they're 90% infantry-based. Once again, mild regrets about Geralt's new commitment to monogamy.

Scoured the countryside for Witcher gear plans. I think I'm missing a Wolf map, but I found the Mastercrafted swords plans on my own, while travelling and getting distracted by popups on t map. At this point, only 2 Masters' quests to finish (and I already chopped the Griffin), and a few contracts to hand in, and then I'm off to KM!

[Morgoth]

Monster decks become a cakewalk once you get that destroy strongest melee creature card too. Have several healers and decoys, play the card on repeat.

It's a shame that the whole tournament thing is so underwhelming. After that I had a deck of gods, but no one to play. I could easily draw the entire deck playing as Northern Realms or Nilfgaard.

[Hetan]

Gwent seems like a good game at the beginning, but it has no depth. It's cute when people say things like they made this whole RPG around the card game but the real triumph here is the side quests. Give me this game with the ability to make my own character and it's still the second-best RPG that was ever made in my opinion. Fallout 3, the Ink Spots, mostly true open-world, it's going to take something pretty fucking special to beat that but this game with character creation might have a sniff.

ETA: It's Mal/Bill btw, ban me if you can

This post has been edited by Hetan: 16 September 2015 - 08:08 AM

[Morgoth]

Still, I think Gwent is by far the best version of an ingame game, if you know what I mean. I guess they just really got the hooks in that part of me that spent too much money on MTG.

[Mentalist]

Been dealing with a freak cold this weekend, which left me essentially homebound for most of it. Did a lot of reading and gaming.

Ran through the Kaer Morhern content. Got the band back together and went past the "warning, no going back" point.

The battle was freaking spectacular, may need to do it again, since I played late last night. Got a bit stuck on dueling the mace and shield dude, and after 2 close failures yesterday, I realized it was 2 AM,

Anyhow, I decided to be proud and ignore Emhyr. (Actually, I save-scummed that. After trying talking to him, I reloaded and ignored him. I wonder if this affected

Spoiler

Vesimir dying

Anyhow, rolling with it. Hit lvl 30 only now, my stash is bursting w/ master-crafted Witcher gear for lvl 34, while i'm still rocking (mostly) the Excellent Griffon kit.

Story done got real good fast.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 23 September 2015 - 01:32 PM

[Mentalist]

Hit credits last night Round 2:30 AM. Wow.

Got the "personal good" ending, though apparently I cut it real close to the other one, with some of my choices. Happy bliss times with Yen, very much in line w/ Sapkowski's "something ends, something begins" short story that was entirely fan service,

Gonna HAVE to go back, b/c I dawdled on the Dijkstra decision (I decided to postpone it till after I'm done. That didn't work), and also, since I got a bit too into it and wanted to power through to the end, I went to the final showdown still rocking my Excellent kit, althoug at this point I was lvl 34 and ought to have upgraded to Master-lvl gear. Made Kalandir fight a bit of a struggle (but Eredin was done on 2nd try comfortably--once I switched from Igni to Aard, that sucka was done)

Having finished the game, I then went online to read about other endings. And found out about the whole Dijkstra thing. I really dunno if there's a good choice there, but doing nothing is horrible, too. Sigh, this will haunt me.

Probably gonna do a re-run of the end on the weekend or smth. May then turn the question marks back on to see how much stuff I missed, I still got 2 lvl 30+ contracts in my to-do list.

Another bugged quest: after the battle, back in Novigrad, I suddenly got the "soldier statue" quest prompt to speak w/ T'riss. Did that, went through the motions, and then all of a sudden the whole thing just freezes. T'riss just stands there, I can speak to her, but no dialogue options, and then she shows up again in Skellige, but the quest, naturally, stays active and unsolved. This brings the total of unsolved bugs to 4. Not bad at all for such a huge game.

All things being said, though: holy shit, what an awesome game from start to finish. Game of the decade, hands down.

I need a replay on higher difficulty, but i'm severely tempted to wait till January when the second major DLC is out. I'll check out Heart of Stone once it's available in 3 weeks or so, but don't expect I'll start a new game for it.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 23 September 2015 - 03:38 PM

[i3ridgeburner]

Spoiler

Vesemir's dead no matter what you do - surely that was obvious?

[Morgoth]

i3ridgeburner, on 29 September 2015 - 05:50 AM, said:

's dead no matter what you do - surely that was obvious?

Spoilers are still a thing.

[i3ridgeburner]

alright but if that's the case why is wossname's rambling about it not a spoiler? Because s/he's uncertain about it? If so, we can all get around the admittedly unimpressive consequences of spoilers by expressing uncertainty about positions we hold and frankly know to be true. Surely we can't operate like that and call ourselves adults?

[i3ridgeburner]

if I've not been clear, let me put it to you this way: If I had said

Spoiler

" I thought Vesemir died no matter what choice you made, can anybody clear this up for me?"

is that still a spoiler?

Funnily enough, I don't think it is.

edit: but fair enough, the original statement was in spoiler tags. I just have a hard time giving a squirt of piss about spoilers so it doesn't occur to me to protect people from them. Mea culpa, for what it's worth

This post has been edited by Imperial Historian: 29 September 2015 - 11:40 AM

[Morgoth]

Right, I was going to respond, but no, let's just keep it at that. You don't like it but we use spoiler tags. Good.

I am quite curious about the two expansions. Do anyone know what the second is supposed to be about?

[Maark Abbott]

Morgoth, on 02 October 2015 - 05:58 AM, said:

Right, I was going to respond, but no, let's just keep it at that. You don't like it but we use spoiler tags. Good.

I am quite curious about the two expansions. Do anyone know what the second is supposed to be about?

One can only presume it's about Geralt.

Jokes aside, no clue. Yet to play the game. Once I'm done with F4 I aim to rectify that, or perhaps when there's a GOTY edition out.

[Mentalist]

Morgoth, on 02 October 2015 - 05:58 AM, said:

Right, I was going to respond, but no, let's just keep it at that. You don't like it but we use spoiler tags. Good.

I am quite curious about the two expansions. Do anyone know what the second is supposed to be about?

It's supposed to add a new region on the World Map-Toussaint, which is a southern duchy that's a Nilfgaard protectorate. Supposedly a proto-Provence, all troubadours and knightly chivalry, but "hiding a bloody secret".

Don't ask me how it'd slot into the main story, since it probably won't.

I've decided to wait untill Hearts of Stone comes out prior to replaying the end of my current playthrough. Works out well, since my time at home is mostly consumed either by work, or by Malaz re-read, where I'm currently on MT, which is the point where I started forgetting details, so I read everything with increased interest.

[Mentalist]

Path 1.10 is out.

dodging feels smoother. A bunch of quest bugs got fixed (I also auto-failed a few quests that didn't trigger for me properly before, go figure)

STILL no fix for "Fool's Gold" DLC. sigh.

unfortunately, "Hearts of Stone" won't be out until right after my long weekend.

If I have any free time this weekend, gonna try to wrap up my Gwent collection.

[Mentalist]

Dipped my toe into "Hearts of Stone" DLC yest. Took a while, since apparently patch 1.10 didn't install properly, so had to uninstall and then re-install and re-patch the main game before installing.

Basically, the DLC expands the Novigrad map. The north-eastern corner that previously had stuff in it but was bordered off by the "end of the world. Here there be dragons" message is now available to travel. It's inhabited by lvl 30+ mobs, moderately dangerous. Worst are "Red Knights", which are the new "Bandit Camps" critters-it appears these are the Order of the Flaming Rose grunts, but they're automatically hostile, prompting a bit of WTF from me. Ah well.

There's a couple of new optional quests. All the new stuff is colour-coded in the quest-log.

Since I was only exploring, no impressions on the actual "story" of the DLC as of yet.

More general observation: patch 1:10 seems to have tweaked horse physics again. Roach jumps a lot less barriers now, meaning, he gets stuck more at road forks. Sigh.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 17 January 2018 - 03:31 AM

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

I'm planning on not touching This game again until both dlc's come out. I beat it on the default difficulty, so once all content is out I am bumping up difficulty to max and doing a ng+ and hitting the dlc during that run through. As big as the second dlc is supposed to be, I want to make sure I am not totally burnt out on the game when it comes out.

[Mentalist]

Messed around a bit more with HoS (still no main quest stuff)
-there's a new type of craftsman, an Enchanter/glyphwright. Helping him took most of my money. And I still haven't even unlocked Master level stuff. You need a total of about 30k for the privilege of buying all kinds of runes. I'm reminded of all the insane grinding I had to do for Dark Armour in TW2.

-Also, speaking of grind: I'm still short 2 troll stomachs I need to max out a few oils.

-one of the Hidden treasure tasks had me fight a giant spider. His model is no different from all the others, but his attacks and HP are like those of a giant Aracha. I was seriously annoyed and actually came close to dying. This hasn't happened for many hours.

[Mentalist]

Had a solid night of HoS.
-I now know why the "Bandits" are Order soldiers.

- I fought the first boss in the main line. Silly Shani, telling me it's immune to fire. IT'S NOT!!!!

Got 2 main quests now, both require digging for info.

Not sure about the main "villain". HE still seems quite likeable.