The Witcher 3 Pre-Expansion Thread

[Eirikur]

The way I understood that concept back when I was reading books(skill I lost), is it wasnt about staying out of choosing sides in the conflict. It was more about keeping emotions out of equation when making decision, specially hate

I think it's part of it, but a small part overall. It basically just comes from this somewhat popularized quote: "To be neutral is not to be indifferent and insensitive. You don't have to kill the emotions within you. You just have to kill your hatred." Geralt says it to Ciri in the first part of Blood of Elves, if I remember correctly. The majority of the 'neutrality-related concepts' has more to do with whether or not to choose a side, though. Just as in the games, Geralt attempts to maintain neutrality and stay out of conflicts, but he's consistently drawn into them. In the fifth book (oh I actually read five, not four), Baptism of Fire, he concludes that neutrality is contemptible. It's probably due to how he starts out as a solitary man on the Witcher path, but then eventually accepts his greater destiny, takes responsibility for Ciri, forms more relationships, etc.

 

[Perkel]

There are some good mods on nexus. Like removing leveled gear, improving combat mechanics etc.

ehhh probably will do full playtrough in next few days. This time i will do every quest there is instead of following mostly main quest.

 

[Jinn]

I'd be very interested to know which one's you're specifically using, Perkel.

 

[Ivan]

I can't run this shit as well as I'd like. Stopped right after finishing Novigrad (getting Zolton his fucking pokemon cards)

 

[Idiott]

patch time apparently
6.4 gigs on steam
yay

Galaxy wants to download 17 gb patch. What the fuck do they put in these?

 

[Alienman]

Galaxy wants to download 17 gb patch. What the fuck do they put in these?

High res pictures of Siri nude, you just need to find them!

 

[Eirikur]

"Allahu Akhbar... It makes no sense!"

 

[Tytus]

High res pictures of Siri nude, you just need to find them!

Picture of Siri, nude.

Spoiler

I hope the game has pictures of Ciri too, though.

 

[Carrion]

I put the game on hold for two months because the soldier statuette quest bugged out for me (a quest which, again, worked perfectly until the 1.07 patch broke it), as I wanted to do everything on my completionist playthrough and CDPR said that they'd fix it. Guess what, the bug's still there. It seems the patch actually fixed precious few things and again introduced a fuckload of new issues. It's cool that you're constantly adding new stuff to your game, but how about sometimes releasing a fucking patch that is actually a patch?

I also decided to romance both Triss and Yennefer, and now Triss has two new lines of dialogue, the first one being about how great it is that they're back together even though she thought it would be over, and the second one being about how much it hurts that their thing actually is over now that Geralt's with Yennefer. The writing on these lines is total shit too, really awkward compared to CDPR's typical stuff, and clearly targeted towards the most fucked-up parts of the fan base, i.e. the ones that could write a 50-page study on how travelling between worlds affects the smell of Ciri's sweat. I think it's really cool that they actually went as far as recording completely new dialogue for a patch, but this is pretty damn terrible.

At least you get four quick slots for consumables this time, which is an improvement even though it's a pity you still only have two bomb slots.

 

[Eirikur]

I put the game on hold for two months because the soldier statuette quest bugged out for me (a quest which, again, worked perfectly until the 1.07 patch broke it), as I wanted to do everything on my completionist playthrough and CDPR said that they'd fix it.

Is the bug that you can't ask Triss to lift the enchantment before she leaves Novigrad? If so you can resolve the quest when you encounter her again later in the game, regardless of whether you romanced her or not. In any case it seems a bit dramatic to put the game on hold for two months because of that quest, since it's a completely independent, tiny standalone quest without any significant reward. The cutscene was amusing, but it's on YouTube.

 

[Paul_cz]

In any case it seems a bit dramatic to put the game on hold for two months because of that quest,

OCD man, OCD.

 

[Carrion]

Is the bug that you can't ask Triss to lift the enchantment before she leaves Novigrad?

I'm doing it at the later stage of the game, during Final Preparations. From what I've gathered the quest should still work alright if you do it all before Triss leaves Novigrad for the first time. Before 1.07 it worked without any issues whichever way you did it.

In any case it seems a bit dramatic to put the game on hold for two months because of that quest, since it's a completely independent, tiny standalone quest without any significant reward.

Of course, but I had already finished the game twice and just wanted to do one pretty thorough run in preparation for the expansions and NG+. By that point I had already run into a number of quest bugs in the 1.07 version, some of which were fixed later on with the 1.08 patch that I also waited patiently, so I didn't want that one little quest a couple of hours before the end to ruin it after having managed to navigate the jungle of broken quests flawlessly almost until the very end, especially after CDPR said that a bug fix was on the way. Back then I thought patch 1.09 would be surely released in a week or two, but of course it ended up being much, much longer so I just dropped the playthrough for the time being and played other games instead.

Also, it's just so much more satisfying to look at the journal when there are no secondary quests or failed quests in sight, just the main quests and an endless list of completed ones. So yeah, definitely OCD.

 

[Perkel]

I'd be very interested to know which one's you're specifically using, Perkel.

remove level restriction
http://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/m...r3/ajax/moddescription/?id=350&preview=&pUp=1

but for 1.10 is bugged right now. You need to manually modify script file (easy thing in comment on nexus)

 

[Jinn]

Thanks for the response, Perkel!

Would you say that tends to make the game easier in the long-run, or simply more rewarding with the challenge still intact?

 

[Perkel]

Thanks for the response, Perkel!

Would you say that tends to make the game easier in the long-run, or simply more rewarding with the challenge still intact?

You can go anywhere and challenge anyone with this mod. Difference here is that you need to find first proper gear to tackle harder enemies.

It is as hard as you want as enemies aren't scaled to your level. So you can go for harder bosses with less skills or stay and poke drowners with uber gear.

 

[Starwars]

It's kinda surprising that, in a series filled with so many interesting characters, they managed to make Ciri (hugely important character, and playable) a complete bore. I don't know what it is. The looks don't work for me, the voice doesn't work for me and the whole "strong woman in man-dominated world" falls flat on its face. She's just completely uninteresting in every way whatsoever.

HOWEVER, this is all based on the earlier parts of the game so maybe (hopefully) this changes later on.

 

[Carrion]

You can blame Sapkowski for that. I never really disliked Ciri's personality, I actually quite like it except for some parts here and there, but her basically taking over Geralt as the main character and being The Chosen One on half-a-dozen different levels was a terrible decision. I think CDPR did a good job with her all things considered, but there's only so much you can do with a character like that.

I disagree on the "strong woman" part. She's ridiculously lethal with a sword, sure, but she hardly has the confidence or determination of someone like Yennefer or any of the other sorceresses. I won't spoil the game for you, though.

Finally managed to see all the endings, and I've got to say that

Spoiler

the Empress ending is the best, by far. For the whole game all the "good" decisions regarding Ciri have been about letting her become more independent and capable of making her own decisions, and the ending is the culimation of that, her finally growing out of the role of Geralt's daughter and choosing what she wants for herself. It's also the most satisfying ending when it comes to tying up loose ends and achieving some kind of closure: you get to see Dandelion and Zoltan for one last time in the story as well as hear what happened to Priscilla, and there's also lots of smaller stuff like being accepted in White Orchard again, getting to meet or talk about various characters you've met earlier in the game, catching glimpses of Voorhis and ambassador Var Attre etc. The other endings just feel like they forgot about these characters altogether since there are no ending slides about them or anything, even though I really like the epilogues themselves.

The "good ending", i.e. the Witcher one, is fine too in the sense that you can finally achieve something Geralt's been wanting since the beginning of the saga, making it sort of a fan(tasy) ending, but it just leaves a bit too many questions unanswered and has some parts that aren't all that plausible (like no one managing to connect the dots after seeing an ashen-haired female witcher, especially if Emhyr's still ruling Nilfgaard). It's just a bit too convenient, even if it's also a pretty logical way to end the series.

 

[Starwars]

She's ridiculously lethal with a sword, sure, but she hardly has the confidence or determination of someone like Yennefer or any of the other sorceresses.

Hm, perhaps that is what annoys me. If that is by design, then I understand what they're going for at least (though the character still annoys me).

 

[Perkel]

Disagree.

In books Ciri is important and takes much of narrative but she wasn't "chosen one". Morale of books literally is that destiny doesn't exist and your actions make your journey.

 

[Carrion]

In books Ciri is important and takes much of narrative but she wasn't "chosen one".

Tied to Geralt not one but two times over by the Law of Surprise, is mentioned in a prophecy, possesses unique powers related to saving/destroying the world (aside from being a source and a female witcher and a princess), is the heiress to an empire, a kingdom and several lesser titles on the Continent, is pursued by several rulers, different groups of mages, the Wild Hunt... You could say that some of this was just a weird coincidence, even total hogwash (like the parts about Ithlinne's Prophecy). You could argue that in some ways she could be seen as kind of an anti-Chosen One, wanting to carve her own path while everyone else wants something else from her. Still, there's no way around the fact that Ciri is Special in a ton of different ways, and saying that she's "important" is an understatement considering the whole saga revolves around her.

Morale of books literally is that destiny doesn't exist and your actions make your journey.

Haven't read the last book since I'm still waiting for a proper translation. Can't say I'd agree on that based on the earlier books, though.

 

[Perkel]

Tied to Geralt not one but two times over by the Law of Surprise, is mentioned in a prophecy, possesses unique powers related to saving/destroying the world (aside from being a source and a female witcher and a princess), is the heiress to an empire, a kingdom and several lesser titles on the Continent, is pursued by several rulers, different groups of mages, the Wild Hunt... You could say that some of this was just a weird coincidence, even total hogwash (like the parts about Ithlinne's Prophecy). You could argue that in some ways she could be seen as kind of an anti-Chosen One, wanting to carve her own path while everyone else wants something else from her. Still, there's no way around the fact that Ciri is Special in a ton of different ways, and saying that she's "important" is an understatement considering the whole saga revolves around her.


Haven't read the last book since I'm still waiting for a proper translation. Can't say I'd agree on that based on the earlier books, though.

When she was at Vysygota hut in wilds whole point about destiny was brought up by her and summed up.
Witcher books ends like that where all that destiny leads to nowhere.
Shit and piss like Ciri said that is the only destiny one can have.

 

[Eirikur]

I just read the comic "A Matter of Conscience", which is available as downloadable content for The Witcher 3 on GOG. It seems to canonize certain decisions from W2:

• Geralt chose Iorveth's path
• Henselt was defeated in the siege of Vergen, but was not killed
  
• Geralt chose to rescue Triss rather than break the spell on Saskia
• Geralt allowed Saskia to live, despite her still being under the influence of the spell

 

[Tytus]

 

[Jinn]

I agree with every slap except Gothic.

 

[Starwars]

Slowly making my way through this game. Decided to wrap up Skellige, left a fair (I think at least) bunch of side content behind. Didn't really find that place interesting, except for the Jarl storylines (which were OK). I guess there's something to be said for a fuckload of content, I'm finding it pretty easy to just skip some of it, and I like that some seemingly pretty big storylines ARE skippable. But, on the other hand, a lot of it is just a bore.

Still got like 8 levels to go before hitting the DLC recommended level.