The Witcher catch-all

Luggage wrote:
Spoiler:

The vampire's brother is in the inn during daytime hours.

I also didn't like making that choice, but ultimately went with Triss. It's ultimatly the choice whether gifted kids get to be kids or their innocence is sacrificed for a potential greater good. Whomever you don't choose will be a little pissy going forward, but help you in later acts nonetheless. In how far the decision influences Alvin's own storyline, I can't say.

Spoiler:

I had decided that I was going to help Shani since I know she's in the second game- I think I heard she's even more important(?). But last night I spoke to Triss and told her why I decided to help the Scoia'tael in the bank robbery. Her response was that Geralt was some was letting his emotions get in his way from neutrality, and how this has always been a feature of Geralt she respected. I don't know, since the beginning of the game I've been suspicious of her actions but something about that interaction made me wonder if she's not more on my side that I had previously thought. It'd be easy to side with Shani who, other than being perfect, doesn't seem to have any reasons not to side with her.

demonbox wrote:
Spoiler:

I had decided that I was going to help Shani since I know she's in the second game- I think I heard she's even more important(?).

It's a good thing you posted, because Shani isn't actually in the second game.

Edit: This isn't really a spoiler. She makes no appearance in The Witcher 2, regardless of whether or not you choose her in the first game. I don't think the omission was ever explained, either. By the devs, I mean.

Satisfying evening of combat tonight. I went back to the swamp to talk to the druids, and ran into a couple of groups that were worthy of not skipping. There were a large contingent of Ghouls and drowners and at least one Cemetaur. Also, right near that group was the giant wolf and her companions. Between the two groups (most of the fights just being combining to all one engagement) I died a half dozen times. It was what I needed, another good kick in the hindquarters from the game to help me appreciate it. Also, I made it to the druids were I have a few side quests I can attend to.

demonbox wrote:

Satisfying evening of combat tonight. I went back to the swamp to talk to the druids, and ran into a couple of groups that were worthy of not skipping. There were a large contingent of Ghouls and drowners and at least one Cemetaur. Also, right near that group was the giant wolf and her companions. Between the two groups (most of the fights just being combining to all one engagement) I died a half dozen times. It was what I needed, another good kick in the hindquarters from the game to help me appreciate it. Also, I made it to the druids were I have a few side quests I can attend to.

Nice!

That game had some very refreshing difficulty spikes in it. I remember wandering by one of those damn plants in the swamp and thinking it was a pushover like those dumb plants from the farmer's backyard in the prologue. Three thorn shots, and 75% of my health bar later, I was high tailing it out of their to escape the drowners who were about to pin me up against that plant for good.

You can eventually kill the plants, or just run by them like I ended up doing, but it was a nice reminder that Geralt isn't super powered, he's just really good at what he does, and occasionally hopped up on steroids.

Luggage wrote:

Just finished the game. Chapter 4 took me 7 hours. Chapter 5 plus epilogue about the same. In the end, my completist run took me roughly 59 hours.

This depresses me as again I wonder if I'll ever finish the game. It's still great and I honestly wish I had time to play it more often. However, I'm 52 hours in and still in Chapter 3 (though I believe I am at the point where I believe I trip Chapter 4).

Spoiler:

Active quests are that I have to find Angus and I have to decide between Shani Vs Triss.

I'm still enjoying the game. Also, though, I'm afraid this game is going to take me 80 hours.

demonbox wrote:
Luggage wrote:

Just finished the game. Chapter 4 took me 7 hours. Chapter 5 plus epilogue about the same. In the end, my completist run took me roughly 59 hours.

This depresses me as again I wonder if I'll ever finish the game. It's still great and I honestly wish I had time to play it more often. However, I'm 52 hours in and still in Chapter 3 (though I believe I am at the point where I believe I trip Chapter 4).

Spoiler:

Active quests are that I have to find Angus and I have to decide between Shani Vs Triss.

I'm still enjoying the game. Also, though, I'm afraid this game is going to take me 80 hours.

It took me 52 hours, but I'm a medium level completionist. I hope you manage to finish. The ending cutscene is awesome!

demonbox wrote:
Luggage wrote:

Just finished the game. Chapter 4 took me 7 hours. Chapter 5 plus epilogue about the same. In the end, my completist run took me roughly 59 hours.

This depresses me as again I wonder if I'll ever finish the game. It's still great and I honestly wish I had time to play it more often. However, I'm 52 hours in and still in Chapter 3 (though I believe I am at the point where I believe I trip Chapter 4).

Spoiler:

Active quests are that I have to find Angus and I have to decide between Shani Vs Triss.

I'm still enjoying the game. Also, though, I'm afraid this game is going to take me 80 hours.

There definitely are quests, fights and story lines in chapters 4 and 5 as well as the epilogue you don't want to miss. You've earned them by now, so go get them!

50+ hours? Dang. I finished the game, including 90% of the sidequests in 37 hours.

Yeah, I don't even know why it takes so long. It's not like I'm just running into a literal (virtual) wall for 10 hours or anything. To be fair, I'd guess at least 6 of those hours total are from gambling. When I was struggling to make ends meet (gold can be tight early on) I would play and if I lost a hand I would reload the save to play again. Six hours may be a bit of a stretch for a guess, but I did spend a long time doing this.

But it's mostly not even that I'm lost or anything (though I don't know where Angus is exactly).

I'm not sure what my problem is.

Outside of a corrupted file save (I wish I hadn't even typed that, though I do worry from time to time) I don't see any reason why I wouldn't finish. I mean, I've got the next several months clear.

Don't make it a job, just keep it installed and nibble away at it. Every time you load it up, just try to get something accomplished, and maybe it'll end up in a long play session where you do a load of it.

demonbox wrote:
Luggage wrote:

Just finished the game. Chapter 4 took me 7 hours. Chapter 5 plus epilogue about the same. In the end, my completist run took me roughly 59 hours.

This depresses me as again I wonder if I'll ever finish the game. It's still great and I honestly wish I had time to play it more often. However, I'm 52 hours in and still in Chapter 3 (though I believe I am at the point where I believe I trip Chapter 4).

Spoiler:

Active quests are that I have to find Angus and I have to decide between Shani Vs Triss.

I'm still enjoying the game. Also, though, I'm afraid this game is going to take me 80 hours.

So I'm at 54 hours now, I got a nice couple of hours to play tonight. The funny thing is that I still haven't made the choice in the spoiler I posted- haven't had to choose between two friendly NPCs. What surprises me about this game is just how deep the side quests sometimes are. Currently

Spoiler:

I just found the guard who is doing something akin to spy work with the big time merchant. His troops are supposed to support me at midnight in the sewers I think- I got the quest update, saved, and quit. Still a great game just really surprised I wasn't as done with chapter 3 as I believed.

Finally finished this up, returning to it after a year away. Picking up about 1/2 through chapter 3, it went a lot faster for me than the first half. I'm so glad I was able to finish it!

demonbox wrote:

I'm 52 hours in and still in Chapter 3 (though I believe I am at the point where I believe I trip Chapter 4).

Spoiler:

Active quests are that I have to find Angus and I have to decide between Shani Vs Triss.

So the Angus quest and couple of others ended up being deeper than I expected. Turns out I was only 3 hours off. Now at 55 hours and got the message that I can't go to the next chapter until

Spoiler:

I make a choice about this Alvin kid. The additional time did me good though, in terms of making a decision. Even though I really don't want to piss either lady off, which is why I waited so long, that Alvin kid is crazy and powerful and has been weird throughout the game. Going to figure out how tell Shani she, sadly, has to back off.

Also, set up a meeting with Declan and the scoia'tael though I feel that I might be making a huge mistake.

Also, man this game has layered gradations in story telling. There's so many inner-related and non-related storylines in place. The game isn't always successful at making this not seem thin and gamey, but when it works it really works. Also, there's so much of it.

57 hours into the game, I can confirm there is a chapter 4.

demonbox wrote:

57 hours into the game, I can confirm there is a chapter 4.

Glad you've stuck with it and seem to be enjoying it! You're so close to finishing!

demonbox wrote:

57 hours into the game, I can confirm there is a chapter 4.

So what choices did you go with regarding Alvin and the bank incident?

I chose

Spoiler:

to help the elves. Also, I chose Triss. Also I gave her a ring. How does Shani rescue you from Princess Adda if you chose her? Also, does Triss get pissed if you keep sleeping around? She seemed a little ticked that I almost got a kiss from Adda, so I would imagine she won't be happy about what I did to the bride-to-be's little sister.

I would love to get back to this game, but the stupid ending boss fight in Chapter 1 keep ruining me.

Spoiler:

I leave the townsfolk behind, telling them that if they hurt the town witch, I will make them pay, then I get my butt kicked by the ghost dog from hell.

Any tips?

Get the aard skill that does knockdown, that's really the key to making that fight fair. There's a savegame editor around if you just want to get on with things.

Scratched wrote:

Get the aard skill that does knockdown, that's really the key to making that fight fair. There's a savegame editor around if you just want to get on with things.

This. With Aard upgraded enough you can stun the boss and then insta-kill it.

Atras wrote:

I would love to get back to this game, but the stupid ending boss fight in Chapter 1 keep ruining me.

Spoiler:

I leave the townsfolk behind, telling them that if they hurt the town witch, I will make them pay, then I get my butt kicked by the ghost dog from hell.

Any tips?

Aard, as mentioned, is helpful - but more than that use your potions - Blizzard especially. The Witcher is different than most RPGs..... the game is balanced around you quaffing potions with regularity, and can be really tough if you don't.

With a couple of months away from both of them, I think I might actually like the original Witcher better than the second one...still trying to figure it out. They're both phenomenal, but I kind of missed the uber dark tone of the first one in the second one. Also some of the choices seemed a little more organically integrated into the plot in the first one.

They're certainly different. I think TW2 works well as a sequel though, it keeps the focus of the game, and then they've taken what they learned from TW1, what they couldn't do in the Aurora engine (from NWN for crying out loud) and made exactly what they wanted. I can appreciate sequels which are just more of what people like, but I can also appreciate overhuals when they're not completely turning the series on it's head.

Specter oil is a great help for that fight, I believe it doubles your damage against that type of enemy.

Yeah, you should have the oil after a quest line. Make sure you use it.

IIRC, between spectre oil, blizzard, swallow and group style I don't remember it being too tough.

Atras wrote:

I would love to get back to this game, but the stupid ending boss fight in Chapter 1 keep ruining me.

Spoiler:

I leave the townsfolk behind, telling them that if they hurt the town witch, I will make them pay, then I get my butt kicked by the ghost dog from hell.

Any tips?

I did this over, and over, and over, and over again. Potions, as mentioned, is what helped me to finally get over that hump. That and luck.

TW1 is coming to mac. On steam, right now.

Apparently 350,000 people bought it on steam, and if you're one of them you've already got it for mac as it's steamplay (one license for PC+mac).

The shield sign is also handy for most boss fights. For many fights you can shield yourself, run in, do some damage, run away until you can shield yourself again. It's boring and it doesn't work all the time, but it's better than dying 100 times.

I'm about 4.5 hours into my first playthrough, and I'm really liking it so far. This has to be one of the most original-feeling RPGs I've ever played, at least of the sword-and-sorcery variety. I'm about 10 hours in to DA:O, and while it's a great game, it's about as predictable as cliched fantasy as one can find. The Witcher doesn't feel that way at all, and I really like the change of pace. It seems like there are a lot of systems to learn and deal with, but I'm getting used to them.

I love that the village feels like a real village. Usually they're just a few houses together with people inside, but the first town feels like a town. Yeah, the combat is wonky and the controls are pretty loose, but overall I can get past that.

Two questions:
1) Is there anything I can do about the screen shaking when I'm running? I like OTS mode best but the screen bouncing while jogging gets tiresome after a while.
2) Any must-have mods, convenience, graphics, or otherwise? I like the game well enough now, but if there's anything ubiquitous that people know about and use, that would be appreciated.

I'm reading this thread page by page backward, and there's a lot of good info (and some spoilers, but I don't know what any of them mean yet).

(Side note: Being a Michael Moorcock/Elric fanboy I'm a tad annoyed by the... generous overlap of the character concept, but still plan on reading some of the associated fiction.)