Could you help me about the location of Julia btw? I've spent probably an hour looking through Farcorners trying to find her, to no avail. I've gone back to the caves and completed them, but would still be nice to see Julia.

Farcorners map on the wiki can be misleading. In fact, Farcorners stretches further than the map shows. You can find Julia's house here (black cursor). The hint - many cats around her house, as well as dead rats ;)


Cheers. Found the place now; I was indeed in the wrong place as I was counting on the map from the wiki being correct. Found her and her notes, but wasn't able to talk to her. Maybe because I had already done the caves. Tried to sleep a few times, hoping it would trigger the ability to talk to her, but nope. She mentioned something about "traps everywhere", though, which also fits with the D&D theme :)

You get it from her notes and talking to herself, that's what I meant above. I wasn't able to talk to her directly either. She seems to have lost her mind due to horrors she encountered in the caves.

I encounter one bug in TW3, probably related to Wine or may be dxvk or esync? Not sure. If I let the game run and leave computer idle, KDE timeout kicks in and it locks the desktop and later puts the monitor into sleep mode. After waking it up and unlocking, the game is still running, but the window is empty and you can't do anything with it. I need to kill the process and restart the game, which is somewhat annoying. Did anyone encounter such problem?

To work around it, I created a KDE activity, that never shuts down the screen, and switch to it when playing.

I experienced game freezing when monitor went black (power saving kicking in). When that happened I had to restart game. It's a bit obscure now as I haven't gotten around to actually playing game again to further note down that incident. I made a note and I only got as far as to note down one observation of that issue.
But I'm certain it's tied to monitor or power saving.

I've also experienced a issue, which I've mentioned before, where when I try to tab out of game it doesn't work. It used to be that Kwin would crash, I couldnt alt tab out then too, and even after ending game Kwin would need to be restarted. But I no longer have Kwin crash. Instead now I can't alt tab out of game even though the alt tab animations appear. But I found a temporary solution by changing to borderless fullscreen and that seems to have fixed it.

In other topic:
I read through links you shared in relation to script merging for mods. I continued on to other sources, but I don't understand. I installed Meld, and thought id find a "merge" option to merge for example two scripts, but there isn't any such to my knowledge. And also this is all I get up when I compare two files that both Friendly HUD and Meditation use: https://i.imgur.com/sWChR8T.png

I found this page by mod creator: https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?showtopic=3181644
So I want to ask if I've starting to grasp anything. In order for me to make Friendly HUD and Med to work I need to create a subfolder tree (in Mods directory of game): <Path To The Witcher 3>\Mods\modAAAAAAAAAA\content\scripts\game\player\
Then I need to find similar scripts that both mods use and merge them, whatever that entails, and then place those merged scripts in the appropriate folder in the merged mods directory that that I mentioned. Then when game runs, it will use those merged scripts which will result in no conflict?

I did this a while ago, but yes, something of the sort. Mods have priority, and higher priority overrides the lower ones. If several mods have conflicting files, in order to resolve it, you need to create a higher priority one that has conflicting files from all of those mods, merging them in the proper way.

For text files (scripts code), you can use any merge tool like Meld and such. Not sure how it's done for binary files. Supposedly you need to "uncook" them (i.e. unpack), figure out how to merge those resources, and cook them back in the higher priority mod.

I'm not an expert on this though. Feel free to ask here as well:
https://forums.cdprojektred.com/index.php?forums/mods-the-witcher-3.69/

I gave up on the merging business, but then it turned out it wasn't needed either, as I only run small mods, not mods that change widescaling stuff in the game. Being sorely frustrated with the horribly unbalanced fistfighting, I came across this mod, which I would recommend: https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/3703

It's actually still hard to win, not a walkover at least, and it feels much better balanced than in the vanilla game. It's an actual fight, instead of being knocked out after two hits. Pretty weird how lumbering slow Geralt is in these fights, but at least it's playable now. Got to the end of that whole quest sequence yesterday, which was pretty cool.

For Alt-tabbing, I prefer to use two workspaces instead. Usually works like a charm, and it does here too. Okay, sometimes the mouse cursor gets stunted and I can't move it to all parts of the screen after going back to the game. But that usually sorts itself out after some Escape / Inventory fickling. Though sometimes I need to restart the game as well. Same when the sound starts stuttering.

However, the crashes (CTD) have entirely disappeared when I downgraded from the 5.0 kernel to 4.18. Very pleased about that :)

I learned my lesson with previous games not to dwell into the minigames. Not my cup of tea. That cursor issue, it happens when you tab back to game? Because I believe I've experienced that too. Very easy to get around it.

For mods, I can't go on playing until I get all mod conflicts cleared. I feel so strongly about Friendly HUD's tracker being a better game design than minimap (in or outside of Witcher senses) for navigating the game.
I flash Witcher senses and the marker appears and shows me where I need to go. Note that marker fades away after brief duration, and you flash senses to get it to appear again.
https://i.imgur.com/5kyyRoU.png
I haven't found a way hide the potions with the mod, and I don't believe it's possible. Although it has vanished after combat sometimes.

Another mod I will try, but don't have hopes of making it to work is this weather mod:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtJVdouLQ3o

If CDPR gathered all the great mods and remade the game, I would gladly buy it again. Maybe with Vulkan this time around too.

I learned my lesson with previous games not to dwell into the minigames. Not my cup of tea. That cursor issue, it happens when you tab back to game? Because I believe I've experienced that too. Very easy to get around it.

In previous games I've done them because it was quick and easy (although I disliked the QTE in Witcher 2, at least it was easy), but in this game it's a pain, so I've used mods to make it tolerable. First playthrough I ignored them after a few attempts, but now on NG+ I've used mods instead. Gwent takes WAY too much time! But I'm also a completionist, so there is that :P

With a good deck now I sometimes play it properly, but against vendors and such I just hit "N" and win. I want to play the game, not some card kertuffle.

Yes, the cursor issue is when I go back into the game. I don't use Alt-Tab, but switch workspaces with Ctrl+Alt+Left (or Right) arrow. Most of the time it's fine, but sometimes it's like the square where I can move the mouse is much smaller than the actual game window.



Would be fantastic if they redid Witcher 1 in the TW3 engine. That game was so bloody marvellous. It was a proper PC game too, not all this consolitis stuff from TW2 and TW3 (it was probably worst in TW2 actually). Had so much fun with that game, and I have to admit I quite enjoy the nods in TW3 to it :)

I'm actually getting towards the last stretch of the main story again, this time on NG+. Apart from one specific sequence as Ciri (which was practically impossible), I'd say the game plays very well still, and isn't really unbalanced. Sure, enemies tend to take more hits to kill, but Geralt is for the most part more durable as well, although enemies certainly hit him harder too. Pack of wolves are still the most dangerous thing in the game, which feels pretty bonkers, but it is what it is.

Remains to see how the very end game turns out, it has some tough stuff, but think it's safe to recommend a NG+ playthrough.

I basically just stuck with my build, but what you can do on NG+ because skills points are raining from the sky, is to change stuff around depending on situations. Perhaps that was CDPR's intent. But I found it more realistic to play with what I had chosen, and stick to that, instead of making wholesale changes every five minutes.

Roach is still a complete moron and 9 times out of 10 it's faster to just run instead of trying to get him to cooperate, mind you.

It's probably more feasible to take on red skull foes on NG+, because you have better tools to manage incoming damage (especially a strong Quen), but if you do you'll be busy for a while. They take very little damage, almost absurdly so, but it's a challenge that can be fun to take on.

Once I'm through the main story again, I'll take on the expansions -- finally :)

I'm fine with the balancing of the game. I just need to adjust the HUD with the mods. Witcher 3 is a beautiful game and it's a shame to have your eyes focus on a minimap instead of straight ahead on the path you are going along. I chose a physical approach in my first playthrough, but I think I will change things for next one. The wolves...I use Whirl to protect against them.
You'll like the expansions :)

I didn't get to extensions yet, and I'm in my first playthrough. Are extensions recommended for NG+ only, or in general they are OK to play after the main storyline?

n previous games I've done them because it was quick and easy (although I disliked the QTE in Witcher 2, at least it was easy), but in this game it's a pain, so I've used mods to make it tolerable. First playthrough I ignored them after a few attempts, but now on NG+ I've used mods instead. Gwent takes WAY too much time! But I'm also a completionist, so there is that

With a good deck now I sometimes play it properly, but against vendors and such I just hit "N" and win. I want to play the game, not some card kertuffle.

I spent to much time with Dice in Witcher 1. So when Witcher 3 Gwent and Fights came around, I was determinded to go "NOPE!".

Yes, the cursor issue is when I go back into the game. I don't use Alt-Tab, but switch workspaces with Ctrl+Alt+Left (or Right) arrow. Most of the time it's fine, but sometimes it's like the square where I can move the mouse is much smaller than the actual game window.

I recall my cursor being locked to a position, I think upper left corner. When i tried to move the cursor severely limited to that small are. Then I pressed ESC to get game menu up and down and I think that did the trick.

Would be fantastic if they redid Witcher 1 in the TW3 engine. That game was so bloody marvellous. It was a proper PC game too, not all this consolitis stuff from TW2 and TW3 (it was probably worst in TW2 actually). Had so much fun with that game, and I have to admit I quite enjoy the nods in TW3 to it

That would be fantastic. They could use that opportunity to get their feet wet with Vulkan or soak it even more (assuming they are using Vulkan for Stadia and Switch port).

I didn't get to extensions yet, and I'm in my first playthrough. Are extensions recommended for NG+ only, or in general they are OK to play after the main storyline?

I continued on to Blood and Wine according to recommended level from the initial quest. I found it to be a little easy so I think it would be a better experience if you did the expansions with NG+. My Witcher skills weren't impressive and still I managed to pull through without to many deaths.

I'm playing on hard, so if it will get too easy, I'll bump the difficulty to death march :)

Oh then you should be fine. I played with Story and Sword difficulty, which is normal.

In first two Witcher games, I find "hard" the most enjoyable and balanced, while all others below it are too easy, especially towards the end of the game. That's why I chose "hard" for TW3 as well, and so far it looks similar in result to previous games.

I should have done the same :S:

EDIT:
With help from mod creator, this is how I got mods working without conflicts. I used linux native kdiff3 (didn't it realize there was for Linux). Found all the script files that both mods. For example both Friendly HUD & Meditation used r4player.ws. I compared the vanilla r4player.ws with HUDs and MEDs, merged and output the merge file to Path to Witcher 3/Mods/mod0000_MergedFiles/content/scripts/..insert_further directories according to structure of where file was.

I did that for all the files the two mods modified (like five or so), and then the game ran fine. But I did experience heavy stuttering, similar to when you first play a Proton game. I think it's because the game began using script files in mod0000_MergedFiles directory, instead of vanilla files, that it's the source of stuttering and it will go away after some playing? Was this the case for you guys as well when you loaded the game after resolving mod conflicts with merging?

And on subject of mods, I changed my mind about Friendly Meditation. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a great mod but I found the flickering that occurs, when you meditate, caused by shadows is not easy on my eyes. Am I alone in thinking that? (assuming you've tried Meditation mod)

Thanks for the edited details about mod conflicts. Don't have any conflicts on my end since I've gone with a small footprint (but actually quite a few mods, around 10), but it will surely be useful if I go with something more severe later.

Has the stuttering disappeared, now when you have played some more with it?

Have any of you tried the 1.2.2 build of DXVK, or don't drivers support it properly yet? I had issues when I tried 1.2.1 earlier, but maybe Nvidia is worse in this regard (don't know).

I didn't experience stuttering related to mods, so can't say. In friendly meditation, I don't set time flow too fast, so I didn't notice any flickering as well.

I'm updating my dxvk fairly often, simply building latest master branch. And Mesa a bit less frequently, only if there are some notable radv changes. I didn't notice any regressions, except one a while ago, that was caused by llvm bugs, but that was resolved by recent llvm updates (I build Mesa with recent llvm master snapshot, so regressions could creep in).

Your most welcome:) I removed the Meditation mod shortly after so I don't have the chance to figure it out. I'm pretty sure it wasn't caused by something serious as a bug or regression. In hindsight I think I know what caused it, or at least contributed to it, kernel upgrade/downgrade. Of course having the game use merged files probably did not help. For example one file that I merged pertained to Witcher senses, and so when I used senses it stuttered and froze. But this was for brief moment.

I upgraded kernel but in doing so I experienced issues. The one that led me to downgrade, temporarily as I had little plans to play, was slower boot time and in general just didn't feel as seamless as with kernel that came with the distribution (Kde Neon). I tried at least three of recent kernels but I ended up sticking to 4.20 for upgrade. Perhaps I need to do a more thorough testing to find the right one.
In any case, I noticed when kernel was changed that it was had a initial impact on the game. As if a cache of game files relating to game world had been expunged and was now being cached again. That brings up a question I want to ask: have any of you experienced that?

To your question about DXVK Pang, no I stick with the version Proton use.

Shot I took in Skellige. If there was ever a time for 4k monitor with great panel...it would be to experience places like this.

Spoiler, click me


Every time you change your kernel, your shader cache is invalidated, since it's based on the driver you are using. Cache are SPIR-V shaders complied into GPU machine code. And that's being reset, when your GPU kernel driver changes, to avoid some incompatibility issues. In case of Mesa, that also is reset when you have a different Mesa build. Shaders compilations can cause temporary stutters. Once they are chached - things should improve, considering you also have dxvk Vulkan pipeline cache built up.