True. You can still get mauled by a group of foes because one good hit (or combo) can easily take away half your health. I recently died to a group of drowned dead, and it's been close several times against low-level bandits. This is good, as it's always a challenge if you mess up or get unlucky. And although it's tempting to call the game unbalanced because most things are easy even on death march, it kinda isn't because we can easily die as well. It's sort of odd. Dodging is essential, though, and even more so against a group of foes.

Looking at the various options in the skill trees, however, there are so many that are quite frankly very OP. Have actually never used decoctions in my 2.5 playthroughs so far (the high toxicity threw me off), but some of them seem outright broken. And with only 3 skill points into Acquired Tolerance (available in the first 'row'), you can chug down 2 or even 3 decoctions. I imagine it's fairly easy to become nigh on unkillable, even on Death March. It almost feels like that already (group overpowerement aside), with only usage of dodging, quen and food mid-combat.

But I do really like the combat in this game. It's fun to dodge around, get in a swing or two, and then dodge some more. Need to act quickly on the spot. Can quickly end up dead if several foes jump on you at the same time.

I used two decoctions to kill elementals that were 7 levels above me. (yes, I could easily handle 2 with 245 allowed toxicity). And I used one to deal with a certain intermediate boss that started hitting really hard in phase two. In that case it was a decoction that gave me auto quen so I didn't get the full combos.

This is strange. In a lair deep underground -- and it's raining heavily.

I've seen that before. Must be a bug, or at least you can view it as a cave water dripping. Would be more weird if it started snowing in there :)

Last edited by Shmerl on 28 January 2020 at 6:25 pm UTC

Yes, it must be a bug. Some droplets here and there would be fitting, but not pouring rain like that. Moving around, there were also dividing lines in some areas. So it could be pouring down in a rectangle, and then nothing outside it. Surely a bug.



Came across a 6-part documentary/interview series about the Witcher games: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNZkTk5gLuo
A couple years old so perhaps it is well known, but I hadn't seen it before and found it interesting. Lots of developers and other employees speaking about the process.

However, skip episode 4 and 5 if you haven't completed the game yet. Some big-ish spoilers there (which the videos warn about beforehand).

I wasn't aware the company was in such colossal problems during development of Witcher 2. They mentioned the financial crisis and that probably played its part. Certainly glad they got through it, and both Witcher 2 and 3 saw the light of day.

Last edited by Pangaea on 28 January 2020 at 9:58 pm UTC

I have NO idea what happened but I logged into this game recently (thanks Netflix) and it performs sooooo much better now. The stutter only occurs when initially loading an area and then it's gone. Previously I would run around and every so often hit some stutter.

This has enabled my Witcher addiction again. Time to Finish this game once and for all.

I'm unsure who to thank for this performance boost whether it be the 5.5 rc (at the time) kernels, mesa, newer proton/dxvk, or the upgrade from the 2700X to the 3950X.

For my part it worked pretty well.. But I have stuttering/tearing issues lately. I'm wondering if it as to do with Nvidia 440 driver... Annoying when I consider that it ran so well, couple of weeks ago. I tried Gamemode, setting the CPU governor with cpufreq, In-game Vsync, in-game max fps, Full Composition Pipeline, reverting Proton version, lowering the graphics settings... any of these combinations... I'm at a loss. Any idea? Did I miss something? With a GTX 1660 Super, I should be able to run it maxed out. Something feels wrong.

Last edited by Mohandevir on 29 January 2020 at 2:39 pm UTC

Quoting: MohandevirFor my part it worked pretty well.. But I have stuttering/tearing issues lately. I'm wondering if it as to do with Nvidia 440 driver...

I think the smoothness is entirely due to the Steam shader cache downloads. I had a whole bunch of stutter when the driver updated to 440.48.02 from the graphics-drivers PPA. Which was a bit odd since that is the Vulkan beta. I don't think this is a common driver version and the Steam shader cache wasn't really complete (or there at all), leading to stutter.

Quoting: Ehvis

Quoting: MohandevirFor my part it worked pretty well.. But I have stuttering/tearing issues lately. I'm wondering if it as to do with Nvidia 440 driver...

I think the smoothness is entirely due to the Steam shader cache downloads. I had a whole bunch of stutter when the driver updated to 440.48.02 from the graphics-drivers PPA. Which was a bit odd since that is the Vulkan beta. I don't think this is a common driver version and the Steam shader cache wasn't really complete (or there at all), leading to stutter.

I'm used to that kind of stutter... It goes away over time, but after 10hours of gameplay, it shouldn't be still there... I don't think so, at least... Oh well, I will try with conservative settings (Very High) and see if it goes away. Sure thing, without Full Composition pipeline, there is tearing all over the place and in-game VSync doesn't change that one bit.

Last edited by Mohandevir on 29 January 2020 at 3:23 pm UTC

Have anybody tried out the Ghost Mode overhaul mod?
I read a long review of it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/witcher/comments/7yaezw/an_indepth_review_of_the_ghost_mode_gameplay/

It has been updated since then, though, so not sure how relevant some of those criticism are.

I like the general idea of it, but are quite strongly opposed to some of them. Mainly removing the weightlessness of monster parts, and the increased meta-gaming requirements due to removing the "safe" threshold of 5 levels without getting XP punished.

If anybody have tried it, I'd love to hear what you thought.