As for the sound - it's likely a hardware problem. Hopefully once you'll get a new motherboard, it won't happen again.

Quoting: ShmerlAs for the sound - it's likely a hardware problem. Hopefully once you'll get a new motherboard, it won't happen again.

It's very similar to this report: https://forum.manjaro.org/t/solved-crackling-sound/113943
Except I can't get it working, and despite following the steps mentioned there, restarting pulseaudio does not work with that command. Well, it's running according to htop. But when running the status commands mentioned, I'm told

Start request repeated too quickly.
Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Failed to start Sound Service.

Then something about
pulseaudio.socket: Failed with result 'service-start-limit-hit'.
[pulseaudio] bluez5-util.c: GetManagedObjects() failed: org.freedesktop. (with a long error message about did not receive a reply)
[pulseaudio] pid.c: Daemon already running.

However, the odd thing (to me) is that everything else works sound-wise. I've not had this crackling issue in any other games or when playing music or videos. It has only happened in the Witcher 3.


It's not a major issue because I can just restart the game and that sorts it out, but it's annoying when it happens in long cutscenes or during tough fights.


If it really is a hardware problem and not drivers or settings, then I can only cross my fingers it will be fixed when I buy a new computer at some undefined point in the future.

As an aside, a proper rake seller could make a fortune in Velen. Broken rakes in every other house and container it seems :D


Edit: I've not tried level scaling either. I dislike options like that in general, as it often makes leveling up futile. I prefer that enemies are at the level the developers intended. But if things get easy towards the end of the game, when we're basically overleveled against everything, maybe I will try it out. We'll see... For now I'm enjoying the 'normal' Death March. Crowds are definitely the worst and has been when I've been closest to dying (got the archgriffin, woot).

Gaining less XP throughout should mean the overleveling thing isn't as big of a problem, though. There is a 80% modifier on Death March, vs 90% for Blood and broken bones. Doesn't sound like much, but it should add up (or not, heh) for main quest rewards.

Last edited by Pangaea on 19 January 2020 at 3:00 pm UTC

I recently started noticing a number of games having issues with crackling sound on my system. In my case it seems to be Firefox's fault, as it only happens if I leave Firefox running in the background & closing Firefox fixes it.

It's not the first time I've run into issues with leaving Firefox running in the background either: some time ago games using Esync started crashing regularly on my system with "eventfd: Too many open files" (despite the limit being increased to 1048576), and that turned out to be Firefox's fault too.

Quoting: adamhmI recently started noticing a number of games having issues with crackling sound on my system. In my case it seems to be Firefox's fault, as it only happens if I leave Firefox running in the background & closing Firefox fixes it.

It's not the first time I've run into issues with leaving Firefox running in the background either: some time ago games using Esync started crashing regularly on my system with "eventfd: Too many open files" (despite the limit being increased to 1048576), and that turned out to be Firefox's fault too.

Had the same thing. It stopped when I changed the default sampling rate for Pulseaudio to 48000.

I suspect it also depends on the CPU. On weaker systems pulseaudio starves for CPU more.

Nice little bugfix mod to improve immersion: https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/3927

Quoting: adamhmI recently started noticing a number of games having issues with crackling sound on my system. In my case it seems to be Firefox's fault, as it only happens if I leave Firefox running in the background & closing Firefox fixes it.

It's not the first time I've run into issues with leaving Firefox running in the background either: some time ago games using Esync started crashing regularly on my system with "eventfd: Too many open files" (despite the limit being increased to 1048576), and that turned out to be Firefox's fault too.

Very interesting (and it's good to see you over here). Usually I have Firefox open when I play games, so it's easy to check something if I want, or take small pauses. Firefox (etc) in one workspace, and the game in the other. Today I tried with nothing else open, only the game. Not 100% conclusive, but I did play for many hours without any hick-ups. Eventually the sound started crackling again, but I reckon it took much longer than usual.

Will try to play some other days with Firefox closed as well, and see if today's experience persists. Thanks for the tip in any case :)

Is there a mod that only puts icons for the various merchants and blacksmiths+armourers on the map?

I often forget what's where, which is a massive pain when I need to craft new gear, or try to offload another load of weapons and armour. Really annoying that most of them only show when Geralt is close enough to spit on the stores :(

I've seen some mod that shows all marks on the maps, but I'm not using it. I use the wiki to look up general location if I can't find it :)

Last edited by Shmerl on 22 January 2020 at 2:25 am UTC