The Witcher 2 Catch-All

The only part of the combat I've struggled with so far was early on when I didn't quite grasp the system yet (and had no levels), and the 'boss' fights which have required some cheese tactics. I like the thematic aspects of preparing ahead of time. If I'm not sure what to expect, a Rook and a Swallow are fine, otherwise I'll tailor things to my target. In a pinch oils can be applied without having to meditate. A few points in alchemy to improve potion duration is useful, and the double bomb damage perk has been huge.

As far as prep goes, I think the intent is that you not hoard potions and prep yourself whenever you think there may be a scrap - that's tough to get used to as so many games are easy enough on the player to allow you to get through while hoarding potions the whole time. So far I haven't had any inventory woes. Money is tight, but given that they let you walk into any house and just lift everything you can get your hands on, there is some balance to it.

Actually the fact that you can steal everything in plain sight is interesting - in a world where so much is "gritty" and "realistic" it doesn't quite fit in. But then again I feel like it was one of the few concessions to the player that the devs made. They know most players are going to go through everyone's pockets anyway, so why make them go through the motions of picking the lock, waiting for the NPC to turn their back, etc.? Just get on with the petty theft, already. Witchers need lots of twine!

The thing with 'crime' is that you need a game system to handle it, and TW2 only handles crime so far as guards attacking you if you've got a sword out in town. Within TW2, I think if they didn't want stealing they just wouldn't have had the items to take, but with the new crafting system, in addition to the alchemy they needed a source of reagents. Overall I think in a lot of cases loot is just an RPG 'thing', that gets included without thinking it through fully and about what it's meant to be adding to the game (for example, would Elder Scrolls be any less of a game if you couldn't loot forks and spoons?).

I'm having trouble with the Loredo boss fight. A walled-off hostage sequence and a cutscene prevented me from doing any potion gulping to prepare myself. My Geralt feels very under-powered entering this battle. The key seems to be avoiding his force push which just does killer damage. But man o man, I'm just chipping off slivers of health every time I hit him.

Was mildly liking the game (in a sense that I expected the game to slowly grow on me) up until this point. Now I'll try it on Easy and see if I can get through. If not, then I think mojo for Witcher 2 is completely dry.

Thanks to the awesomeness of Tuffalobuffalo, I was given this and I've been holding on to it until I finish Batman, but I'm not sure how much more I can hold out. I really, really, really want to start playing this soon.

I remember ages ago there was something about missable things in the prologue... can anyone refresh my memory before I start jumping in and missing things. Also, as a newbie, should I start on Dark mode, or am I just asking for my ass to be handed to me? I'm pretty decent at most games I play and jumped into the hardest mode of Batman when I started, so not sure if that helps.

Just start playing Witcher 2 after picking it up in the steam sale. I'm very early in (finished prologue barely into chapter 1) and I have one question... is crafting gear upgrades a requirement or can better gear be obtained throught the game via loot? I am grabbing all the mats I can.. since its early i don't have a ton of gold, but I see a lot of vendors with patterns/forumlae which I can make... I'm ok with spending time hunting down mats for better armor.. but is there a lot of drops as well? If the primary way to upgrade is crafting I'll do it if I have to, but I'm much more interested in moving through the story and killing what I can vs. pouring through vendors seeing what patterns I can make and what mats I have and trying to figure out if the crafted gear is better than current gear, etc.

kuddles: I think those are pretty fair criticisms, and that's coming from someone who wants to have this game's babies. For me, the setting and story was just enjoyable enough to make me overlook its flaws.

BlackSabre: You'll participate in a siege very early in the game, and I think there are a couple of easily overlooked things there; I think one was an item, and one was just a cool Easter egg.

Carlbear95: Some of the best stuff in the game is craftable. You can also buy some very good items outright, but they're pretty expensive. A few of them require materials that are pretty hard to find, and there's one in chapter three that's just ridiculous. It requires multiple rare items that have to be acquired in previous chapters, and I just don't see how anyone goes into ch.3 with the correct items in their inventory/storage. I never was able to make that one, but here's a screenshot I took of a really nice late-game armor set that was perfectly reasonable to make. I ran into an error in saving it to Steam, and I don't know of other hosting services that would let me put it up at full resolution:

IMAGE(http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d133/Salvaje1/2012-08-12_00001.jpg)

Maclintok wrote:

I'm having trouble with the Loredo boss fight. A walled-off hostage sequence and a cutscene prevented me from doing any potion gulping to prepare myself. My Geralt feels very under-powered entering this battle. The key seems to be avoiding his force push which just does killer damage. But man o man, I'm just chipping off slivers of health every time I hit him.

Was mildly liking the game (in a sense that I expected the game to slowly grow on me) up until this point. Now I'll try it on Easy and see if I can get through. If not, then I think mojo for Witcher 2 is completely dry.

The key there is dodging, and using daggers to interrupt him and bring down his force field, but to be honest I ended up turning it down.

MrDeVil909 wrote:
Maclintok wrote:

I'm having trouble with the Loredo boss fight. A walled-off hostage sequence and a cutscene prevented me from doing any potion gulping to prepare myself. My Geralt feels very under-powered entering this battle. The key seems to be avoiding his force push which just does killer damage. But man o man, I'm just chipping off slivers of health every time I hit him.

Was mildly liking the game (in a sense that I expected the game to slowly grow on me) up until this point. Now I'll try it on Easy and see if I can get through. If not, then I think mojo for Witcher 2 is completely dry.

The key there is dodging, and using daggers to interrupt him and bring down his force field, but to be honest I ended up turning it down.

30 Grapeshot Bombs or so was my solution. You'll probably have to go back a save or two.

My solution was the dodge around like a maniac, shield myself, and then dodge roll around to his back and do a heavy sword strike to his butt. Took a couple tries, and about 10 times more dodging than swinging, but I liked the challenge of that fight as opposed to say...the Kayren fight, which was meh.

Yeah, I didn't have any potions or bombs or anything for Loredo either. He is indeed tough. I just rolled like a crazy person and whacked him in the back with heavy sword attacks when possible. I was coming off a Dark Souls run, so I was okay with losing to him (relatively consequence-free) a few times. Once you pick up the patterns it's not so bad.

They quickly nerfed Loredo with the first patch because of all the whiners. At least he's not as hard as he was at release.

Clemenstation wrote:

Yeah, I didn't have any potions or bombs or anything for Loredo either. He is indeed tough. I just rolled like a crazy person and whacked him in the back with heavy sword attacks when possible. I was coming off a Dark Souls run, so I was okay with losing to him (relatively consequence-free) a few times. Once you pick up the patterns it's not so bad.

You sound like my kind of man Clem. I'm convinced the extra dodge distance skill was low-key the best spent skill point in that game.

Squee9 wrote:
Clemenstation wrote:

Yeah, I didn't have any potions or bombs or anything for Loredo either. He is indeed tough. I just rolled like a crazy person and whacked him in the back with heavy sword attacks when possible. I was coming off a Dark Souls run, so I was okay with losing to him (relatively consequence-free) a few times. Once you pick up the patterns it's not so bad.

You sound like my kind of man Clem. I'm convinced the extra dodge distance skill was low-key the best spent skill point in that game.

If you think that's badass, try spending TWO points on dodge!

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

They quickly nerfed Loredo with the first patch because of all the whiners. At least he's not as hard as he was at release. :)

Spoiler:

Is saying Loredo instead of Letho some kind of anti-spoiler?

kyrieee wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:

They quickly nerfed Loredo with the first patch because of all the whiners. At least he's not as hard as he was at release. :)

Spoiler:

Is saying Loredo instead of Letho some kind of anti-spoiler?

Spoiler:

Ha! I thought there was something weird about the name Loredo. I was thinking of Letho. It's been awhile.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
kyrieee wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:

They quickly nerfed Loredo with the first patch because of all the whiners. At least he's not as hard as he was at release. :)

Spoiler:

Is saying Loredo instead of Letho some kind of anti-spoiler?

Spoiler:

Ha! I thought there was something weird about the name Loredo. I was thinking of Letho. It's been awhile.

Haha, I was sitting here trying to figure out what plot point I missed.

If there's one thing the Kayran fight is there to teach you it's that the Yrden sign can be super useful in a boss fight.

kyrieee wrote:
Spoiler:

Is saying Loredo instead of Letho some kind of anti-spoiler?

Hah, right. Letho. I got my bald guys with L names mixed up.

I fired this up to see if my new GPUs could handle ubersampling. They definitely can get 30-60 FPS, but I'll probably turn it off to get a steady 60 FPS.

[quote=imbiginjapan][quote=tuffalobuffalo]

kyrieee wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:

They quickly nerfed Loredo with the first patch because of all the whiners. At least he's not as hard as he was at release. :)

Spoiler:

Is saying Loredo instead of Letho some kind of anti-spoiler?

That was a nerfed version? Sheesh, I spent a good 30-40 minutes reloading the saved game to beat him. Annoying because once you get to him you really don't have an opportunity to drink potions which I think would have made it a little more manageable. Had to beat him without the benefit of potions, altars, or wep enhancements.

Not pleasant.

I might be wrong. I could have sworn they balanced it a bit in a patch, but I can't find which one I was thinking of. I did find that one of the patches apparently nerfed my defeat-Letho method:

An exploit in the fight against Letho has been eliminated. Previously, this foe could be killed by casting bombs in quick succession.

Yeah, I didn't like that boss fight. I think there were some people that found it easy because of their play styles, but it did not jive with me at all. I'm pretty sure most people just used exploits like bombs, knives, or the barrel roll method.

Edit: Removed the quoted stuff

The barrel roll method (I'm assuming this is the dodge five times to set up a slash at his back once in a while method) worked for me.

However, the barrel roll method doesn't make me feel like much of a badass Witcher. It's fun to be challenged, but there was obviously no chance of standing toe to toe with him for longer than half a second. I like the dodge, but I want to sword-mage fight someone, not audition for Cirque de Soleil.

Carlbear95 wrote:

That was a nerfed version? Sheesh, I spent a good 30-40 minutes reloading the saved game to beat him. Annoying because once you get to him you really don't have an opportunity to drink potions which I think would have made it a little more manageable. Had to beat him without the benefit of potions, altars, or wep enhancements.

Not pleasant.

Yeah the vanilla version was a lot harder, but the problem is really the game not teaching you how to fight well.

Yeah, there definitely were wonky design decisions. The Letho fight being one of them.

So I got this all installed last night and just started it up very quickly to take a quick look as I still promised myself I'm not starting it till I finish Batman AC. I watched the intro and yeah, it's incredibly well done. Overly gruesome, but still well done. Looking forward to playing it even more now. May have to just bum-rush batman so I can start this!

BlackSabre wrote:

...bum-rush batman...

o.O

See I knew that would get some sort of reaction as soon as I hit post comment.

The act of attacking someone or something (usually by a group)with the reckless abandon and fervor of one who has nothing to loose.

So I was kinda saying to just finish it with reckless abandon without too much care for all the other non story stuff

Carlbear95 wrote:

That was a nerfed version? Sheesh, I spent a good 30-40 minutes reloading the saved game to beat him. Annoying because once you get to him you really don't have an opportunity to drink potions which I think would have made it a little more manageable. Had to beat him without the benefit of potions, altars, or wep enhancements.

Not pleasant.

Don't feel bad. I spent about twice that amount. I'm not sure how I actually beat him... Can you change the difficulty mid-game in this game? The only other game I've ever done that with was Dragon Age 2. I'll let you take 1 guess what boss that was for.

Warriorpoet897 wrote:
Carlbear95 wrote:

That was a nerfed version? Sheesh, I spent a good 30-40 minutes reloading the saved game to beat him. Annoying because once you get to him you really don't have an opportunity to drink potions which I think would have made it a little more manageable. Had to beat him without the benefit of potions, altars, or wep enhancements.

Not pleasant.

Don't feel bad. I spent about twice that amount. I'm not sure how I actually beat him... Can you change the difficulty mid-game in this game? The only other game I've ever done that with was Dragon Age 2. I'll let you take 1 guess what boss that was for.

Err, Act 2 rock-golem thingy?

Maclintok wrote:
Warriorpoet897 wrote:
Carlbear95 wrote:

That was a nerfed version? Sheesh, I spent a good 30-40 minutes reloading the saved game to beat him. Annoying because once you get to him you really don't have an opportunity to drink potions which I think would have made it a little more manageable. Had to beat him without the benefit of potions, altars, or wep enhancements.

Not pleasant.

Don't feel bad. I spent about twice that amount. I'm not sure how I actually beat him... Can you change the difficulty mid-game in this game? The only other game I've ever done that with was Dragon Age 2. I'll let you take 1 guess what boss that was for.

Err, Act 2 rock-golem thingy?

I forgot about that guy. You just made me a liar. Yep, the rock golem thing, but also the Arishok. Man that game was unbalanced.