Topic: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt thread

The quest, In The Heart Of The Woods, with the ancient Leshen in Skellige is ace. Proper gave me the creeps.

-Takes Cookie-

You're welcome @Ralizah! I know I had a lot of gold but I don't quite remember having 13,000's worth of the stuff... Though it was nearly 4 years ago now 😂

I also wore that mask for ages for the same childish reason of thinking Geralt looked pretty cool!

I'm also getting severely tempted by all the posts here to put Dark Souls II on hold (again even though I just did) and start this up instead. Trying the first ten minutes the other day didn't help sate my curiousity... only made it worse

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy And I'm only 40 hours in. Still have a bunch of stuff to do in Novigrad. I'm gonna be a millionaire by the end of the game. There's just no reason to buy most things. Best equipment is found in dungeons and points of interest. Active shield and food take care of healing. You find most of the stuff needed for alchemy and, once you've made something, you don't seem to need to make it again. What else is there?

I actually temporarily hung up the saddle at around 40 hours for Dragon Quest XI S and 60 hours for Fire Emblem: Three Houses (really need to get back to that), so I think 40 - 60 hours is about my limit for focusing on one game. Unless it's really special. I blitzed SMT IV: Apocalypse in 3 weeks over 105 hours. THAT was an experience.

Why not give ol' Geraldo of Rivera a spin for a while, eh? You'll appreciate DS3 more when you come back to it with fresher eyes.

You've got the DLC's too @Ralizah so either you'll be Scrooge Mc'Duck-ing in an ocean of gold coins by then or maybe there'll be some actual worthwhile tat to buy.

... Fuuuudge you've swayed me.

I'll start it up and join the Geralt train after I mop up the last two of the four great souls (which I should get tomorrow) so I'm at a nice cutting off point in DS2 when it starts to get more linear

You can write the User Review for Witcher 3 though

I seem to be the opposite to everyone here, and often running low on gold. Maybe it's because I'll always try to buy new diagrams and slightly better equipment at every opportunity.

Recently it took a while just for me to get enough to pay the fare to go to Skellige.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Good luck! I struggled to get back into the game, especially straight after playing a SoulsBorne game.

Started this up about two hours ago on the swords and story(?) setting

Combat is going to take some used to, especially after switching midway between Dark Souls 2. I keep trying to press circle to roll in combat

Everything else is going relatively smoothly though.

• I reached level 2 & put both points (Got the place of power point too) in upping Axii.
• Fought the Wraith in White Orchard's cemetary after a few tries.
• Met the healer and gave her some swallow to try and heal the girl attacked by the Griffin.
• Found the hunter, killed some wild dogs and then found the Griffin nest.

For "Precious Cargo" with the Merchant who's actually a northern soilder... I let him go with the medicine. Spent a good five minutes weighing up the options.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy At the start, when the griffin is attacking the merchant, did you take his money?

I don't know how much you remember about this game, but if you want to play Gwent, buy the card from the innkeeper ASAP.

I vaguely remember the town not liking me by the end of this intro when I first played this... So we'll see if that can change or not.

I have about 90 gold? I bought every Gwent card I could so far but luckily I found better gear and sold the starting stuff.

The two quests I've done so far paid decently enough for the intro so I'm not super strapped for cash... Though I kinda am still.

I don't remember Roach being quite so unweildy though...

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Don't say I didn't try and warn you!

Lol you did @JohnnyShoulder and I keep pressing circle to try to roll... Damn muscle memory! 😂

And I'm actually remembering a decent amount @Ralizah. Before seeing the screenshots you posted a few weeks back I could've told you absolutely nothing about the witcher 3 other then I'd played it and thought it was solid but not world shattering.

The screenshots brought back a few memories... The three hours I've put into it today though has made quite a bit come back to me.

Like I remembered the Nilfgaard camp layout in White Orchid quite clearly and that stupidly tiny dock you have to stop at before climbing up the steps

Last post was almost a week ago! Wow how time flies!

• I completed White Orchard. Before fighting the Griffin I did all the points of interest and side quests. I took the money from the griffin job cus I was still poor as hell. I also took the money for the noonwraith at the well
• Met Charles Dance/Emperor of Nilfgaard. Channeling Tywin Lannister and having a blast with his snark and contempt I bowed and wore the first outfit
• In Velen I found a guy left at the river to be killed by drowners I saved him
• Got the travel writ/pass for 50 coins I love mind control
• Went to Novigrad and unlocked a few travel points for later... Ending up doing the first mission there. Luckily there was only 3 Witch Hunters and a Drowner throughout it or I would've been toast!
• Headed back to Velen, went after the witch That turned out to be an old friend of Geralt's. I remember that darn cave! I was weirdly having more trouble with the foglets and drowners here then the golem, gargoyle or the Wild Hunt

Oh and I played a bunch of Gwent. How do all these damn peasants have barely food to eat, but have a bunch of ultra rare playing cards?!?! Still beat those motherploughers though with my 3 commando bros and twin catapaults for stupid high scores

-EDIT-

Just did a Towerful Of Mice. I disbelieved the lord's daughter, and it turned out she was a plague maiden and not just a lost soul/spirit.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Sound like you're having fun with this. I did rather enjoy those witch quests, she's fun and nice to be around.

As for me, I'm really liking Skellige so far. It's got a different feel to the previous areas, and the people seem more friendly here.

Also had an interesting side quest with someone who suspected that Jarl Udalryk had a curse upon him, and wanted to free him from it. I decided to fully go along with her plan for lifting the curse.

Edit: That Towerful Of Mice outcome was better than mine. I naively believed her story and ended up freeing the plague maiden. She still killed her lover, and now she's free to wreck havoc elsewhere. That was the point of the game where I realised that my kind and trusting nature is going to cause problems in this harsh game world.

I like Kiera too @crimsontadpoles

Skellige has a pretty primal feel to it, I remember liking the journey there in particular

As for "A Towerful of Mice" That's actually what I did the first time around! I didn't remember the quest at all, thinking I'd actually missed this the first time I played this ages back til I just read what happened to you. Subconsciously I guess I did though!

It's a pretty atmospheric quest too which I like, especially playing it at night both ingame and out of the game!

Kiera would be more likable if she wasn't incredibly cavalier about the prospect of putting chemical weapons into the hands of a madman.

She was Geralt's first lover in my playthrough, though, so I can't hate her too much.

I really like how the game's narrative logic subverts the expectations I hold after having played so many RPGs where decisions don't matter. You have to think through possibilities, because things can and will go disastrously if you naively believe people and expect things to work out for the best. At the same time, the same can happen if you choose not to trust certain people when they tell you not to do certain particular things.

@Ralizah Yeah it is one of the best games I've played at hiding which is the 'best' decision. You could be making what you think will be the nicest outcome, but ends up turning out horribly wrong for someone involved.

Oh dear... Things went horribly sour in The Witcher 3

I reported in to Kiera about the previous "Towerful of Mice" quest before following up with the quest to help find the items that a merchant was supposed to be bringing her

Really big spoilers in the following tags

... On the other hand I utterly clobbered some guy in Gwent!

Bah... damn you and your light grey, medium grey, dark grey and such and such moral choices Witcher 3!

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Aww, poor Kiera. I took her up on her offer (she still puts Geralt to sleep afterwards), and, during the confrontation, managed to talk her into going to Kaer Morhen instead. The woman is probably in need of a moral compass. On the other hand, she likely doesn't realize just how awful chemical warfare can be, and it's not unusual for persecution and/or poverty to really wear people down to the nub. Of course, I wasn't going to let her do the unthinkable, so I'm glad the game didn't force me to go the violent route. I probably shouldn't have cheated on Yennefer, but, at that point, I hardly knew the character (getting to know her better in Skellige now, since she's a huge part of the story). I was actually really close to getting Geralt to confess his feelings to Triss in Novigrad, but certain events transpire, and it just didn't... feel right.

LOL The more I talk, the more this game sounds like some trashy romantic drama.

It kinda is @Ralizah as everyone wants to jump Geralt's bones. Especially in the previous games apparently

Triss' voice, or rather her american accent, bothers me actually.

Everyone else is unashamedly British who isn't Nilfgaardian. Yen... Might be American but she hides it well. Geralt has a weird non accent (but like he's been eating gravel all his life)

But Triss is american and I'm not sure there's any story reason why... Slightly puzzling

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy I try not to pay attention to details like that (accents and names) in fantasy media. Either fantasy is PAINFULLY well-thought-out (AKA Tolkien) and every detail is intentional and has a historical and social context to it, or else it just feels like a slap-dash analogy for things in real life, to some degree. TW3, as well-constructed as it is, is still definitely the latter.

It's one reason I prefer near-future, grounded Sci-Fi, personally. Social and historical context for the past is a matter of experience for your own society and research for the societies of others, so you just have to mix and match elements that already exist to paint a portrait of a future time. No need for reams of fictional histories to get things right.

Geralt is a really transparent hetero male power fantasy. He's tough and cool and has scars and is feared by the townsfolk. As you point out, the dude sounds like he gargles gravel every morning before breakfast. Lesser men bow before him. Women everywhere want him.