Haha, in that case I found it, but wasn't sure what the hell it was. Turns out they've even managed to make the recent changes list into a diabolical mess. Well done, I guess *shrug*

Looks like there is more activity, but I'd never be able to use something that awful.

Admittedly I don't like that so many of the links on the official wiki (okay, they stole that thing too I see, at least the image up top) simply go to category pages, it's much better with actual pages, but overall the normal mediawiki setup is much easier to use, both for readers and editors. And speaking more on the moderator/admin side, it's usually pretty straightforward to get new extensions onto wikis, and manage the whole thing.

Ah well, this was quite an aside. Will fire up the game now :P

I'd be intrigued to hear what combat is like in the expansions without doing it in NG+ btw (I know you haven't gotten that far yet). I'm actually finding it pretty darn tough in places. Combat against a horde of bandits and whatnot is far from easy (I could liberally use igni of course, but prefer not to), and it feels like an actual fight. Loads of dodging, and each enemy probably takes at least 10 hits (and if they have shields.... gah!). It's definitely a lot of fun, but it's also easy to get overwhelmed if they corner you and pin you down. It's actually fairly common that I need to fix the sword during combat because it becomes dulled. That's how long I spend on several of these encounters.

Some of the views in this game is to die for. Very picturesque.


ACO developers are close to merging geometry shaders support. Testing their repo, shows some performance gains for TW3!

Sapphire Pulse RX 5700 XT
2560x1440

llvm: ~80 fps


aco (as RADV_PERFTEST='aco,cswave32,gewave32'): ~82 fps


Last edited by Shmerl on 14 Jan 2020 at 10:03 pm UTC

Some of the views in this game is to die for. Very picturesque.

Sometimes I feel like a tourist when playing this game, constantly taking screenshots of all the places I visit.


Views are amazing indeed. Another fun activity is decoding all the inscriptions on various signs, travel marks, posters and etc.

I uncooked some files before using Wine and ModKit. Some details here.

And thanks for contributing to the Wiki! Looks like a lot of contributors deserted to Fandom these days. I actually wanted to make a Witcher wiki page about extracting music, but didn't get to it yet.

For what it's worth I have updated all the grandmaster legendary pages. Armor and damage values depend on level requirements of the gear, which again depends on what level players ended the first playthrough at (+30 levels in NG+ iirc), but the rest of the information should be correct, such as effects (crit chance, etc).

Actually surprised most of those articles hadn't been edited for 3-4 years, but I suppose hardly anybody have actually played NG+ all the way through (or none of them are wiki contributors).

Well, damn. It is done :)

Stupid hard at the end, but eventually the game failed to repeatedly one-shot me. Perhaps it's a NG+ thing since everything hits harder and has a ton of health.

Rather a good game, this <3

Congrats! So you finished even the expansions?

Yeah, have played the whole lot now. Main story x2 (NG+) and then the expansions once. A wonderful journey.

Think I preferred the main story best, but Blood and Wine was really good too.

Although the NG+ experience overall was good, I do suspect that some fights were unbalanced and got terribly hard. Everything has more life and hits harder, but we don't gain any more health (not sure when that occurred, but it topped out at some point). Geralt hits harder with more levels too, but can't really keep up. At least that was my impression. However, for normal fights this means it's a lot of fun, because they last long and requires lots of dodging and moving around. Blood and Wine offers plenty of challenge in that regard.

One thing I found a bit frustrating, however, is that the top level Witcher gear (grandmaster legendary) fairly quickly is outpaced in damage and armour by random gear you find, because that gear has higher level requirements (roughly following your own level). I stuck with the Griffin gear I had crafted, but could have gotten maybe 100 extra damage from random swords instead (but ofc those lack the more special bonus effects from Witcher gear, both individual and from the set itself).

Edit: Wow, I spent 178 hours. Not sure if that counts both times through the main story or just the last. I always am 'slow' in these games, because it's so fun to explore and talk to everybody, and I'm a loot whore, but that's quite a lot of hours! :D

Another edit for an example sword. This is the only I had in inventory, but you can see the difference. Others I've sold are probably better, though.


Last edited by Pangaea on 16 Jan 2020 at 7:20 pm UTC

And I hope Wikia won't eventually assassinate all Gamepedia wikis and "steal" the content. That takeover was such horrible, terrible news :(

Well fuck. Came across this: https://help.gamepedia.com/Wiki_Crossover_Project

The Witcher wiki shouldn't be in risk for now as it has loads of traffic and activity, but it's clear as day that in time they would prefer to assassinate all Gamepedia wikis and move them over to Wikia. Absolutely terrible news, and shows why this hostile takeover was so fucking bad. Perhaps it explains why certain staffers over at Gamepedia have appeared a bit cranky too. Can't be easy to swallow this.

:(

This is a major character in the Hearts of Stone expansion, so people who haven't played it may not want to read the actual article. The first time I saw him in-game, the similarity to David Beckham jumped out of the screen and slapped me in the face. It's uncanny, particularly these two pictures. I find it very hard to believe CDPR were not inspired by him when designing this character, maybe even using that picture from Wikipedia.



Last edited by Pangaea on 17 Jan 2020 at 2:34 pm UTC

And I hope Wikia won't eventually assassinate all Gamepedia wikis and "steal" the content. That takeover was such horrible, terrible news :(

Well fuck. Came across this: https://help.gamepedia.com/Wiki_Crossover_Project

The Witcher wiki shouldn't be in risk for now as it has loads of traffic and activity, but it's clear as day that in time they would prefer to assassinate all Gamepedia wikis and move them over to Wikia. Absolutely terrible news, and shows why this hostile takeover was so fucking bad. Perhaps it explains why certain staffers over at Gamepedia have appeared a bit cranky too. Can't be easy to swallow this.

:(

Oh, that's annoying. I noticed that big contributors who actually worked for Curse like Gamewidow stopped editing. I wonder if their bosses told them to stop, to see if it would help pushing things to Fandom...

As for above, the similarity is obvious, but unless CDPR said so, it's hard to say what the intent was.

Not followed that closely, but perhaps your theory is right and it's kind of a slow death now, until they finally pull the trigger. Certainly bad news if game widow has largely stopped editing her own "child".

The intent with the pictures is about as obvious as it can get, and perhaps if somebody but me made the edit it would have been allowed to stand. It's allowed on other wikis and on this one for similarly un-confirmed easter eggs and various cultural, contemporary and location references. But whatever. No idea what I've done, but it's been a recurring theme for a long while, so although my personality means I want to contribute for the common good, this stuff happening over and over and over again very quickly drains my enthusiasm out, and with it my will to contribute.

Although the Witcher wiki is very good ofc, as I look through things and try to find information, there are actually many things that could have been improved as well, and new things created. But with the likely result of everything getting wiped out again, I'm not even going to bother trying. Which is just as well I suppose, if the whole wiki itself may get terminated in 6 months or however long it takes for their new overlords to pull the trigger.

What do you do when you have played maybe the best game released in the last decade two times?

You go again!




Oddly difficult to find concrete information about the various difficulty levels, but I found the same info two places, so hopefully this is correct. Death March has 80% of the normal XP, enemies have +80% health/vitality, and do +230% damage (holy shit!!!!). This is compared with sword and broken bones, where it's 90% XP, +20% vitality, and +130% damage. So almost twice as much damage. Rough!

But think I want to try it out. And build my Geralt differently. In the previous playthroughs I basically built him as a sign user (didn't know what I was doing), but ended up not really utilising signs. Re-spec? Meh, screw that.

Now I'd like to put much more emphasis into alchemy (I haven't touched those skills yet), much less on signs, and probably a bit more into combat -- depending on how much I can pick up. Axii is a must for dialogue options, and should perhaps still invest a bit into Quen. It's vital, simple as.

This has been the previous build, if you can tell what the icons mean. Yeah... I didn't know mutations added a few more skill slots, and never noticed it. Shows how often I checked out that tab, heh.


Previously I went fully into the Griffin gear; now I'd like to try out the Cat school (light armour). Kinda wonder if it will actually play different too, or if the gear difference (light, medium, heavy) is just about stats. Unsure about what general skills to pick, but I suppose both Rage management and Focus isn't the best combo.

Hopefully I can get back into the swing of things, despite finishing the story a few days ago. Thankfully it's been maybe 9 months since I played the beginning last time, so I don't know all that by heart.

I hope the aptly named Death March (I'll die a lot!) won't be horribly frustrating, but we shall see. Enemies with that much more health and hitting almost twice as hard (easy to get one-hit killed I imagine) sounds like a gruesome combo. And cat gear has less damage reduction too. Yikes.

I switched to max difficulty now too (I'll see how it goes). And my current character build (first playthrough still) is focused on sword skills. I added just Griffin School techniques and improved Axii, since I like unlocking extra options in dialogs, Jedi style :)

Last edited by Shmerl on 18 Jan 2020 at 11:38 pm UTC

Although the Witcher wiki is very good ofc, as I look through things and try to find information, there are actually many things that could have been improved as well, and new things created. But with the likely result of everything getting wiped out again, I'm not even going to bother trying. Which is just as well I suppose, if the whole wiki itself may get terminated in 6 months or however long it takes for their new overlords to pull the trigger.

I don't remember such things happening to my edits, and usually Game Widow is very helpful. Not sure what was going on there, but possibly they have additional polices when you mention real people without solid source. Which makes sense I suppose, because it can have legal implications.

I recommend you to stick to the Wiki, especially if you plan another playthrough. It needs good contributors! Active contributions will actually help avoiding it being merged into the Fandom one.

Last edited by Shmerl on 19 Jan 2020 at 12:32 am UTC

There are certainly things that can be done, like fill out most quest pages with more info, and more minor but very useful stuff like mention what the difficulties actually do, and big stuff like writing guides of sorts, or at least explain mechanics a bit more. However, often when I try to contribute with stuff like this, it just get reverted, which means I wasted a lot of time first figuring stuff or finding the info elsewhere, and then making the actual edits. It's not much fun. It has mostly been on other wikis in fairness, but it's frustrating every time. Including a major crash on the Pillars of Eternity wiki, which caused me to resign as a wiki guardian. No idea how many hours I put in, probably several hundreds, but not sure if anything is left there now. Maybe some of the Cargo stuff (a database system basically).


Forgot how slow it was to level up in the beginning. Played quite a few hours, and only just made it to level 3. The Death March experience has been positively surprising so far. Haven't died a single time (and the start is often tricky in all the Witcher games). Has been close a couple of times when surrounded by ghouls and wolves, however. Definitely notice that all enemies hit harder, and have a fair bit more health. Fun so far, though. It's mostly the "bosses" I'm worried about.

Fun to start with blank sheets again too, with no oils or potions or anything. Coupled with Death March, combat has been challenging, but fun. But I do look forward to getting some more levels under my belt, so I'm able to go into the Combat and Alchemy tree (only have Queen explosion and the Axii dialogue so far -- the latter kind of a waste, but meh, I like to get it early).

Some of the alchemy skills actually look really cool and useful, so that may be something for you to look into as well. What level are you now?

The crackling sound keeps happening every now and then. I never did find a solution to it. Hopefully the current trend will continue, with it being possible to play several hours between each time. Need to restart the game when it happens. If anybody have tips, though, I'd be glad to try and get it sorted. Maybe it's pulseaudio or something acting up? Haven't gotten it in any other games I play, though :-/

I'll probably try signs / alchemy focused playthrough next time :) Currently level 22 and still in Skellige. Feels like explored quite a lot, and leveled above Skellige expected quests. So higher difficulty is actually helpful here.

Another option I didn't try yet is monster level scaling. Right now it's disabled (default).

Last edited by Shmerl on 19 Jan 2020 at 12:53 am UTC