just watched the first episode of the series best thing so far is this quote

“Evil is Evil. Lesser, greater, middling… Makes no difference. The degree is arbitary. The definition’s blurred. If I’m to choose between one evil and another… I’d rather not choose at all.”

👌
👌

Yeah, the series is definitely good, though is one of those where everything comes together... right at the moment for you to wait for season 2!

I did buy a nice collector set for Appetite for Destruction, and it came with a bluray Audio disk that has AMAZING sound. Now if I can figure out how to rip it to a FLAC...

You can probably rip it to WAV using ffmpeg (ffmpeg can read almost anything), and then encode to FLAC with regular flac encoder from Xiph flac package.

mpv also works as a nice frontend for ffmpeg.

Something like:

mpv --no-video --ao pcm --ao-pcm-file target.wav some_source

Though flac encoder is picky, you need to figure out how to generate a wav it can understand.

I'll have to give that a shot. I usually just rip CDs with Rhythmbox to ogg, because I'm lazy. :P

About CD ripping, I used to love Exact Audio Copy (EAC). Quickly found that link, but am not sure to what extent it still works, especially on Linux. I used it with Windows back then, but it was brilliant, and from lossless sites I visited at the time, it was *the* software to use. I used it for bootlegs of concert recordings, as it was a hobby at the time to collect concert recordings of my favourite bands. Anyway, if it still works, give it a shot.

Back then I made lossless to .shn, which is abandoned now I think, or at least not the version you want. Flac is better, and I should have converted heaps of recordings, but never did because it was a massive undertaking.

Anybody seen the first Witcher TV show season yet?

Thought it was pretty good, and couldn't for the life of me understand the people and reviews saying it was slow in the beginning. Limbs were flying every which way! But perhaps it was easier for me because I have read the books, so I knew the characters from beforehand. Probably harder if you don't know anything about it.

I see they re-wrote some things (not going to mention specifics as it would be spoilers), but it mostly worked out okay I think. Lots of stuff was dropped too, and I think they kinda jumped the gun with some dialogue, but no big deal. At least not yet. Naturally I'm worried the show will get the GoT treatment of full-on character assassination and butchery, but for now I think they did a good job and I'm intrigued to follow the next seasons.


Considering giving the game another swirl too. Have yet to play the expansions, and with a new computer on hold due to AMD driver issues/concerns, it's a little tempting to fire up the game again. Need to re-learn the mechanics, but that will hopefully be okay. Dodging (not diving away) is basically how combat works. Just pretend to be a boxer, always on the move. And use a mod for the actual boxing to make it fair, otherwise you want to put your fist through a wall.

Anybody seen the first Witcher TV show season yet?

I've seen it, and I agree it's pretty good, even if it doesn't follow the books perfectly.

Dodging (not diving away) is basically how combat works. Just pretend to be a boxer, always on the move. And use a mod for the actual boxing to make it fair, otherwise you want to put your fist through a wall.

I actually found fistighting to be too easy. Winning against even much tougher opponents works if you time your block right. Attacking after the block causes critical hits almost every time.

As for dodging, it's indeed better method than rolling, the later drains more stamina. With sword fights, using dodging you can pirouette around the opponent sometimes, and attack from the side or even from the back if you are fast enough. Monsters are usually faster so such tactic is less effective in general, except with slow ones like earth elementals and such. With them it works very well.

Have yet to play the expansions, and with a new computer on hold due to AMD driver issues/concerns, it's a little tempting to fire up the game again.

I'd say by now, there are no major issues remaining. So upgrade when you have an opportunity.

Last edited by Shmerl on 5 Jan 2020 at 8:52 am UTC

I don't trust that last line for now in general. Perhaps fine for Linux masterminds, but for noobish plebs like me any small issue would be a major headache, and I just don't want to blow lots of money on a not properly functioning computer. It wouldn't be just gaming that is affected afterall, but pretty much everything. So I will wait. Can't really spend that kinda money right now anyway, as my contract expired and I currently don't have another job lined up.

Fist fighting was a big problem for me, also after watching videos about the blocking move over and over. I'd often get it right, but one miss and half your health is gone. It's simply way too unfair to need 20+ hits to knock out an opponent, while they need 2 or at best 3. With the mod I used I still need more hits than they need, but it's more even. Like 20 vs 15 or something like that. Feels more like an actual fight too, and thus more fun.

I had a quick swirl yesterday, but it was basically at the very end of the main story, so I got my arse kicked. It's a mission where I get up against 10 armoured people or something, and I try to not use Igni since it's so overpowered, and died quite a few times.

The game seemed much more sluggish than last time I played it, which is a bit weird. But come to think of it, I probably need to update DXVK and suchlike. Played June 16th last, so am using whatever was 'modern' then.

Hopefully managed to upgrade DXVK to 1.5 correctly - I used the script from the gog forums. Hope it will run smoother than yesterday's trial.

Looked through some quests and inventory stuff, and see that I'm missing some gwent cards (I used a mod to cheat the game, as I don't like it one bit). According to the gwent book, I miss 3 cards in Velen and 1 card in Novigrad. Is it possible to know where I can find these cards, or would I have to ask every innkeep and whatnot in the entire world to unravel it?

If it's possible to complete the collection in the expansions, I don't have to bother with it now. Would be nice to complete it since I'm so close.

I'm missing a few too, but I collect them as it goes.

I've done for a while, but I've practically been through the game twice and am still missing some. Know I was ignoring it for a while since I didn't like it, but have no idea where I may have been in the game at the time, so little idea where to start 'searching'. Oh well. Hopefully will find them eventually. Presumably it's still possible, otherwise the mission would probably have failed.

I think there are some on-line guides which list every location, but if you don't remember where you already got the cards, you'd need to visit each one of them :)

As for AMD, it is running very stably for me with 5.5 kernel series, though I'm using release candidate. Out of the box distros will package that pretty soon once 5.5 will come out, so no need to wait specially for anything else. But good luck finding new contracts and eventually upgrading!

Last edited by Shmerl on 6 Jan 2020 at 12:36 am UTC

Thanks. Will have to bide my time for now I think, on both counts.


Played a little more yesterday, and came across some beautiful spots. A lone tree way up a mountain-side, so I needed to hug it :D



Somewhere near Kaer Morhen (found a few more quests there too).


I try to not use Igni since it's so overpowered, and died quite a few times.

I don't use Igni against people; it looks far too cruel.
(Chopping people in half is OK, though -- because it looks funny, more than anything else. Over the top fictional violence has always seemed to me to be a type of slapstick comedy; though with burning alive it's somehow different.)

I've finally been playing this over the xmas holiday. I started on Blood and Broken Bones, but switched to Death March in Novigrad because it all became so easy that I started tanking fights. I suppose this is kind of a problem with adding skills in a game like this. You get better at raining death on your enemies, but aside from going for one shot kills, the game can't really do much to make it more difficult later on.

I'm going to bump the difficulty too, since Blood and Broken Bones starts getting too easy.

Last edited by Shmerl on 7 Jan 2020 at 3:19 am UTC

Not noticed this before, but on Skellige there is a carving of sorts in the ground or mountainside that looks like a Viking longship. There are many real carvings of this sort in Norway, and given the plethora of game locations that are exact or very similar to Norwegian names, it looks like they took quite a bit of inspiration from Norway and probably Scandinavia.

Always cool to find stuff like this.


Done with the NG+ stomp through the main story. So much I would like to say and post screenshots of, but that is obviously out of the question for spoiler reasons. Such a good game though, with a mighty fine story.

Now finally onwards to the expansions, whatever they hold. Hope they last rather more than just a handful of hours.

A few small exceptions aside, I think it was perfectly fine to play on Sword and Broken Bones on New Game+. For the most part it seemed well-balanced to me. Don't recall now how it was in the first time through the game, if it was mighty easy (sounds like it from a few posts above), but that wasn't really the case here. If I got hit, that could easily be 50%+ of Geralt's life gone, and enemies do not go down to a swing or two. Very easy to die if you get surrounded when up against many foes, even 'easy' ones like nekkers, drowners and the like.

Combat would of course be much easier if I just Igni'ed everything, but I like swordplay more, I want to play as an actual witcher after all, and not a mageling. Quen is indispensable though, especially in harder fights, like in the latter sections of the game.

Skillwise NG+ is problematic, because you only have so many slots for skills, and soon you have them filled, so new levels don't really matter. Think I had 30-40 unspent skill points by the end of the main story, and of course Geralt will level more throughout the expansions (though I don't know how much). I was level 69 by the end, which was only a little overleveled compared with quest expectations.

Fun game, and I envy anybody who haven't played through it yet. You've got one hell of a ride ahead of you :)

Last edited by Pangaea on 8 Jan 2020 at 11:34 pm UTC

Skillwise NG+ is problematic, because you only have so many slots for skills, and soon you have them filled, so new levels don't really matter.

From what I've heard, expansions give an option to add more skill slots somehow (some mutation attribute).


UPDATE: see: https://witcher.gamepedia.com/Mutations

Last edited by Shmerl on 9 Jan 2020 at 1:37 am UTC

Skillwise NG+ is problematic, because you only have so many slots for skills, and soon you have them filled, so new levels don't really matter.

From what I've heard, expansions give an option to add more skill slots somehow (some mutation attribute).


UPDATE: see: https://witcher.gamepedia.com/Mutations

There is a quest in Blood and Wine to unlock them:

https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Turn_and_Face_the_Strange

What I like with an NG+ game is to be able to make a complete run with the Aerondight from my initial run. You may scale it even further. It's by far the strongest silver sword you may find. Even more when you add rune slots to it at Hearts of Stone's Runewright:

https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Aerondight

https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Runewright

Last edited by Mohandevir on 9 Jan 2020 at 1:54 pm UTC

Btw, better use the community Wiki: https://witcher.gamepedia.com

There is a whole story behind it (split from Wikia and etc.).

As for Aerondight, I've heard it's in the game (didn't get to it yet), but I was surprised it actually wasn't imported from TW2 save. I had it all the way from TW1, since it was given to Geralt by Lady of the Lake.

Last edited by Shmerl on 9 Jan 2020 at 3:00 pm UTC