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Witcher III: Blood and Wine - May 10 Preview Info

Anbec7

Member
So I'm sure this has been asked but is this only open for new game+?
Or are most people starting a new game for this expansion?
Is this after the main story?
I played the Witcher 3 some time ago and would like to go back now that there is a sale on the PSN
 

Woorloog

Banned
So I'm sure this has been asked but is this only open for new game+?
Or are most people starting a new game for this expansion?
Is this after the main story?
I played the Witcher 3 some time ago and would like to go back now that there is a sale on the PSN

Side-story, unrelated to main story and you can play it at any time though you should be about lvl 35.

You can start new character for the DLC only with appropriate level and gear (as you can with HoS).
 

Exentryk

Member
Any info on possible combat/difficulty rebalance? I've read some rumors a while ago (I think it was posted on wcc) that listed them, along with many other rumored features that ended up being true once the B&W trailer was released.

No. It sounded like the BaW monsters might be difficult, and I'm sure the devs will balance difficulty accordingly after HoS since a lot of users complained the bosses were too difficult in that.
 
Any info on possible combat/difficulty rebalance? I've read some rumors a while ago (I think it was posted on wcc) that listed them, along with many other rumored features that ended up being true once the B&W trailer was released.

The only thing I've read regarding combat, is that the B&W enemies should be based more on learning patterns, like Dark Souls. The Caretaker was a good fight, so I'm hopeful that's the case, as I dislike just giving enemies tons of health, regardless of the game.
 

Jamiaro

Member
This thread almost makes me want to continue Witcher 3... I had just reached the Baron but lost interest then. Has collected dust for 5 months now.
 

hydruxo

Member
This thread almost makes me want to continue Witcher 3... I had just reached the Baron but lost interest then. Has collected dust for 5 months now.

The story only gets better from there. Bloody Baron is one of the best questlines in any RPG I've ever played. I think you should give the game another shot.
 

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
This thread almost makes me want to continue Witcher 3... I had just reached the Baron but lost interest then. Has collected dust for 5 months now.

I eventually stopped playing after ~30 hours as I inadvertently broke Dirty Funds and none of the fixes CDPR implemented were of any help. In my case, I looted the chest and found the letter afterwards, but because I'd already "completed" the quest, the letter didn't add itself to my inventory, which resulted in the quest becoming stuck on "Read the letter". The quest log being in a buggered state eventually grew too annoying to ignore and so I figured I'd just start anew come the final DLC release.
 

Jamiaro

Member
You should keep going but if you lost interest that early in then game may not be for you.

The story only gets better from there. Bloody Baron is one of the best questlines in any RPG I've ever played. I think you should give the game another shot.

I eventually stopped playing after ~30 hours as I inadvertently broke Dirty Funds and none of the fixes CDPR implemented were of any help. In my case, I looted the chest and found the letter afterwards, but because I'd already "completed" the quest, the letter didn't add itself to my inventory, which resulted in the quest becoming stuck on "Read the letter". The quest log being in a buggered state eventually grew too annoying to ignore and so I figured I'd just start anew come the final DLC release.

I played the game for about 20 hours without actually going to see the Baron. The game is excellent with its atmosphere and side-quests, but the combat and the card-game which makes no sense to me were propably too much.

Perhaps I should try to mitigate that by playing with easy-difficulty to trivialize the combat and skip Gwent alltogether.
 
This thread almost makes me want to continue Witcher 3... I had just reached the Baron but lost interest then. Has collected dust for 5 months now.

Wow, the exact same place I stopped.

Everybody hyped the hell out of that quest and I just wasn't that impressed, kinda took the wind out of the sails after that.
 
I played the game for about 20 hours without actually going to see the Baron. The game is excellent with its atmosphere and side-quests, but the combat and the card-game which makes no sense to me were propably too much.

Perhaps I should try to mitigate that by playing with easy-difficulty to trivialize the combat and skip Gwent alltogether.

Gwent is the star of the game for me but you could skip it and not miss anything. If you like the atmosphere and side stuff keep going, it only gets better.
 
No. It sounded like the BaW monsters might be difficult, and I'm sure the devs will balance difficulty accordingly after HoS since a lot of users complained the bosses were too difficult in that.

Lol, poor CDPR.

In the base game, everyone complained that the game was too easy. Which was true. I switched to the highest difficulty around level 20, but still managed to become to OP for everything. So with HoS they listened and made the game harder. And then people complained because now it was too hard for them. Honestly I hope CDPR continue with the difficulty that HoS had. If you find it too difficult, just lower the difficulty. I lowered my difficulty to the second highest because HoS was indeed somewhat tough. Even set it to normal for one of the bosses. If they make BaW as easy as the base game it will be a snoozefest. At level 30 and onwards with mastercrafted gear and good mutagen use, Geralt is really powerful.
 
Perhaps I should try to mitigate that by playing with easy-difficulty to trivialize the combat and skip Gwent alltogether.

I did exactly this. Played on the easiest difficulty and basically was able to ignore most of the combat systems and barely touched Gwent.
 
Lol, poor CDPR.

In the base game, everyone complained that the game was too easy. Which was true. I switched to the highest difficulty around level 20, but still managed to become to OP for everything. So with HoS they listened and made the game harder. And then people complained because now it was too hard for them. Honestly I hope CDPR continue with the difficulty that HoS had. If you find it too difficult, just lower the difficulty. I lowered my difficulty to the second highest because HoS was indeed somewhat tough. Even set it to normal for one of the bosses. If they make BaW as easy as the base game it will be a snoozefest. At level 30 and onwards with mastercrafted gear and good mutagen use, Geralt is really powerful.

I thought HoS was still pretty easy on Death March. I only tied twice, against the
Caretaker and Olgierd's ghosts because I didn't realise you could kill them one by one.

Ain't I hardcore. :p

From what I've heard, the same combat philosophies from HoS will apply in B&W, so expect it to be just as difficult, if not more so. They've also said that there will be more combat in Toussaint than in HoS, because they wanted to shake it up a bit, as well as showing off all of the new monsters they've added. Something I don't think people realise, is that the devs really like games like Dark Souls. Most of the gameplay leads enjoy difficult games, and TW2 was brutally difficult on Hard in v1.0. The made it a bit easier in the EE though.

I did exactly this. Played on the easiest difficulty and basically was able to ignore most of the combat systems and barely touched Gwent.

Why though? Gwent is fun. It's better than dice-poker from TW1 and TW2, for sure.
 

BriGuy

Member
I gave the PS4 game away after the godawful swamp section. I rebought the game on Steam yesterday, and 60fps and the colorblind witcher senses have made it feel like a completely different game. It was headache-inducing when I first played it, and you don't know hell until you've tried following a red cloud of smoke over a lush green background when you can barely differentiate the two colors.
 
I thought HoS was still pretty easy on Death March. I only tied twice, against the
Caretaker and Olgierd's ghosts because I didn't realise you could kill them one by one.

Ain't I hardcore. :p

From what I've heard, the same combat philosophies from HoS will apply in B&W, so expect it to be just as difficult, if not more. They've also said taht there will be more combat in Toussaint than in HoS, as they wanted to shake it up a bit, as well as showing off all of the new monsters they've added.

That's nice to hear :)

And yeah that's impressive. I didn't think they first boss you mentioned was particularly difficult, but I definitely had problems with the second one you mentioned. The final phase of that boss would instant-kill me every time, hehe. Probably got me a good ten-or-so times before I bested it.
 

ValfarHL

Member
I gave the PS4 game away after the godawful swamp section. I rebought the game on Steam yesterday, and 60fps and the colorblind witcher senses have made it feel like a completely different game. It was headache-inducing when I first played it, and you don't know hell until you've tried following a red cloud of smoke over a lush green background when you can barely differentiate the two colors.

Haha, I'm sorry for laughing at this. :(

I stopped months ago just before going to Skellige in the main game. Been playing it again this week, and I'm having a blast. Probably gonna finish the main game and expansions this time.
 
I gave the PS4 game away after the godawful swamp section. I rebought the game on Steam yesterday, and 60fps and the colorblind witcher senses have made it feel like a completely different game. It was headache-inducing when I first played it, and you don't know hell until you've tried following a red cloud of smoke over a lush green background when you can barely differentiate the two colors.

If the last time you played was around launch be sure to change the movement mode to "alternate" in the options. Makes Gerry much more responsive.
 
I played the game for about 20 hours without actually going to see the Baron. The game is excellent with its atmosphere and side-quests, but the combat and the card-game which makes no sense to me were propably too much.

Perhaps I should try to mitigate that by playing with easy-difficulty to trivialize the combat and skip Gwent alltogether.

Skip Gwent!? Why in the world would you want to do that? Probably the best mini game in a RPG that I've ever experienced. I didn't understand it myself as first, but by playing a few rounds I was able to get the gist of it.

May I ask what you don't understand about it? You need to buy cards from innkeepers and merchants to strengthen your starter deck. Once you have a decent deck, defeating various people will grant you even better cards at no cost.

Don't play all your cards in the first round. Save your best ones for the second (or third round if your opponent beats you on the first one). I stuck with the Northern Realms deck throughout the entire game and was able to steamroll anyone who played me.
 

Soriku

Junior Member
HoS bosses weren't that bad if you had alternate Yrden. On Death March I'm not sure how I would've killed the Toad otherwise, and maybe Olgierd (real and nightmare). Otherwise the Caretaker had easy to dodge moves and leaves himself open for attacks, then the Wraith was really simple when you rush to blast the painting with Igni, and just required some time to defeat.

I thought HoS had some of the best bosses so hopefully B&W is good too.
 

Davide

Member
Blood and Wine reminds me of what Assassin's Creed Brotherhood was to II...although this is probably going to be way better.
 
That's nice to hear :)

And yeah that's impressive. I didn't think they first boss you mentioned was particularly difficult, but I definitely had problems with the second one you mentioned. The final phase of that boss would instant-kill me every time, hehe. Probably got me a good ten-or-so times before I bested it.

It was mainly because he hit like a tank on DM.
The Caretaker's health regen ability was also damn annoying. ;p His spade is cool as fuck though. I keep it in my inventory and use it from time to time, just like Olgierd's Sword.

Both Olgierd and his ghost are pretty easy, you just have to parry their blows. All of them can be parried, even the big launch jump thing he does. Parry them three times, he'll become staggered, and there's a big opportunity to do some damage.

The main thing that go me was that I kept on casting Aard Sweep, which made all the other ghosts aggro. Turns out just whacking them one-by-one with a sword worked best.
 
Lol, poor CDPR.

In the base game, everyone complained that the game was too easy. Which was true. I switched to the highest difficulty around level 20, but still managed to become to OP for everything. So with HoS they listened and made the game harder. And then people complained because now it was too hard for them. Honestly I hope CDPR continue with the difficulty that HoS had. If you find it too difficult, just lower the difficulty. I lowered my difficulty to the second highest because HoS was indeed somewhat tough. Even set it to normal for one of the bosses. If they make BaW as easy as the base game it will be a snoozefest. At level 30 and onwards with mastercrafted gear and good mutagen use, Geralt is really powerful.

I thought the HoS bosses were a lot of fun.

Sure I died a lot,but it only made the victory sweeter.
 

Exentryk

Member
Blood and Wine menu screen:

g6tLxa9.jpg
 

Chris1

Member
HoS was fine except for the last boss, that was bullshit.

The Toad, Spider etc wasn't particularly easy but not too hard either, I feel like they had a good difficulty balance.
 
I thought the HoS bosses were a lot of fun.

Sure I died a lot,but it only made the victory sweeter.

It's funny, with every boss fight now I switch between the different signs to figure out their weakness.

Like with the toad boss in HoS
second shooty lightning yrden sign absolutely wrecks his shit

The real fun is fighting them all together tho :p

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrIeQRD0f_k

Doesn't look all that fun to abuse a broken ass system and overpower the enemy in 4-5 hits.
 
HoS was fine except for the last boss, that was bullshit.

The Toad, Spider etc wasn't particularly easy but not too hard either, I feel like they had a good difficulty balance.

Yep, they went a bit too far in the two Olgierd fights. In both I needed 3-4 more tries than desirable. But overall I liked HoS difficulty, Witcher 3 endgame was a weak point in comparison, difficulty-wise.
 
Gave in and got the physical version(even though I have the season pass), so I could get the gwent cards. Tried to get it through witcher store a while back but it looks like they sold out. It's alright, I'll just give it to a friend, I guess :p

So hyped for it *^*
 
Omg no! What have they done to my beloved cat gear?

It's a trivial thing but so far this is my only disappointment so far. Mastercrafted cat gear looks fantastic, but this is one hell of a downgrade. All others (except for Griffin, of course) look better. I hate it when I want to use some gear for stat reasons and different gear for aesthetic reasons. This bear armor looks really badass but putting heavy armor on Geralt is like putting mayonnaise on chocolate.

More like Grand-master Assassins Creed cat gear.
 

Davide

Member
I'm torn right now between completing every side quest I have left before Blood and Wine and starting a new game plus...but it's such a huge game.
 

bati

Member
I'll be starting a fresh game for sure, only finished it once soon after it was released. I look forward to experiencing it again with all the bugfixes and UI improvements.

Maybe playing alchemy spec won't be such a pain in the ass now, lol.
 
I'm torn right now between completing every side quest I have left before Blood and Wine and starting a new game plus...but it's such a huge game.
if you want to do a newgame+ at some point, you may want to consider waiting until after B&W since you've already waited this game.

one fun thing about a ng+ is that you can really sort of 'prepare' cool looking armor for the main story... i tried a ng+ and i never had to stop using my original game armor for quite a long time, so it was pretty cool do re-do cutscenes wearing the Bear school Ursine or Viper armour. I even switched armours based on 'context' (wore Bear in the colder No Man's Land; Cat or Viper in the city; that Skellige DLC armor in... Skellige ;p). Could be fun to wait and see all the new B&W armor and wear some of those for the all the early game cutscenes later.

i actually got about halfway through my last ng+ before i quit because i decided i wanted to try save it until all the expansion content was in and then after we got all the new items, features, etc... then go back and do one final ng+ after nothing more would be added to the game. (maybe going to wait until the ps4/neo or whatever too just to see if they do anything there to make the replay even more 'new').
 

Roussow

Member
Only thing I'm concerned with, I burned virtually all of my money on top tier runes for my swords by the end of Hearts of Stone. I'll probably be okay on that same save come Blood and Wine though right?
 
Only thing I'm concerned with, I burned virtually all of my money on top tier runes for my swords by the end of Hearts of Stone. I'll probably be okay on that same save come Blood and Wine though right?
Part of the reason I did the recent money glitch is that the main game and expansion exhausted all of my money supply.

Now I'm sitting at like 700k gold. Gonna pimp my Vineyard for the white wolf aaaaaaao aaaaaaoooooooo
 
Part of the reason I did the recent money glitch is that the main game and expansion exhausted all of my money supply.

Now I'm sitting at like 700k gold. Gonna pimp my Vineyard for the white wolf aaaaaaao aaaaaaoooooooo

What's the money glitch? I wasted all my money in runes too, and for nothing, I don't like most of them.
 
What's the money glitch? I wasted all my money in runes too, and for nothing, I don't like most of them.

I'm guessing the one in White Orchard. You deplete all of your money at the blacksmith by buying as many things as you can. You then aard a beehive until it's in close proximity in order for the bees to attack him. They'll eventually kill him and you can collect all of his inventory along with whatever coin you spent at his shop.

The beauty of this is you can duplicate this effect by meditating so the blacksmith will respawn again with a fresh inventory, the same amount of coin you gave him, and the beehive will kill him once more. Do it as many times as you want, but I recommend no more than four mediations at a time.

So if you spent 20,000 coin at his shop, meditated three times, you can loot four of his bodies that contain 20,000 coin each. I didn't go crazy with it. Only enough to cover the runewright and cosmetic upgrades for Geralt's house in Blood and Wine.

Watch this YouTube video to get a visual representation of it.

https://youtu.be/GHfSgt1LlJg
 
All I want to know is if my man Master Mirror is going to be in this expansion.

Master Mirror sounds like such a bad DC villain name.

I much prefer "The Man of Glass" or Gaunter O'Dimm.

That said I don't think
he's coming back after Geralt whooped his ass by outwitting him at his own game.
 
Im at about 20 hours in and just about to finish up Bloody Baron questline. Im pretty bad at the combat and havent done much Gwent but its an incredible game. Ill probably be on 200 hours before i reach Blood and Wine :
 

Ennosuke

Member
I finished the main game last year in August. Took me quite some time. So I had a break until last week, but then I bought the season pass. Playing Hearts of Stone now and finally get reminded why I love this game so much.

Hoping to finish it before Blood and Wine, but absolutely hyped.

Not a Fan of the Season pass concept, but what CD project did here, is brilliant.
 
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