If say the only thing I'm still trying to get a hold of are the defensive actions. Parrying and riposte are very hard, I can't seem to get the timing just right... And then take an axe to the face... Again.

Superlate reply, but in unmodded Witcher 3, I'd say that just sidestepping is a good tactic. Keep slightly moving, and enemies have a hard time hitting you. Not played for months now, but think it's on Ctrl or possibly Alt, plus movement. Parrying is a bit harder timing-wise, and like Shmerl said, it doesn't work on two-handers because they have too much power. Bigger enemies can't be parried either, and iirc, nor the jump attack of drowners.

In addition to the Ghost mode mod, which is excellent and stays faithful to the base gameplay, I tried out one that added more life to the world, in that more enemies would spawn here and there, particularly at night. Looking over my mods folder, it must have been called Random Encounters Reworked. Lots of customisation options. It was hard to get the balance right, because at times poor Geralt would kill one mini-boss enemy after the other. But overall it was nice to get some more action in the world once many of the missions were completed.

Anyway, it's a fantastic game without mods too, and I hope you enjoyed the journey :)

Thanks! I installed a few basic QOL mods (GUI clean up). Other than that I was playing mostly unmodded.

I completed the Bloody Barron quest line before getting bored and moving on to a different game. I think I burned out a bit playing all three in a row, lol.

I'll definitely be back, the series is one of the best "epic" RPGs series I've played.

Playing all three in a row is probably a bit much, yeah :D But I hope you will return to the game at some point in the future. It's an excellent game with a very strong story.

Did anyone try the new version (4.0)? It's supposedly using DX12, so it would need vkd3d-proton.

Last edited by Shmerl on 14 Dec 2022 at 12:46 am UTC

The game crashes on startup with Wine 8.0-rc1 + vkd3d-proton.

On steam now directs to a the REDLauncher (don't have to sign up), then also asks in game if you want to share data with cd project red.
Have the choice to launch with either DX11 or 12, DX12 needed for RT FSR etc, from what I can see.

I didn't see the launcher, but I simply adjusted my script that starts the game to use DX12 variant of witcher3.exe (there are two now, the new one is located under bin/x64_dx12 in the game directory.

So far it's not working.

Last edited by Shmerl on 14 Dec 2022 at 7:31 am UTC

i am able to launch the next gen version and get to the bathtub intro which renders fine.
but as soon as i would be able to control geralt the game hangs and then crashes.

My setup:

nobara linux (GE's Fedora Spin)
gog version installed and launched with heroic launcher (dx12 set as default)
proton ge 7.42
vega 56

if you want me to test something or need further details just let me know

Yes, that's my experience too. The intro in Kaer Morhen works, but the game crashes as soon as it ends or you interrupt it.

The error I see is like this:

Assertion failed: !status, file dlls/winevulkan/loader_thunks.c, line 3145

I'm using Wine 8.0-rc1 + vkd3d-proton. Not sure where exactly to report the bug. May be we can try vkd3d-proton bug tracker.

I'll retest it a bit later with more fresh build of vkd3d-proton and will open a bug.

Last edited by Shmerl on 14 Dec 2022 at 8:33 am UTC

You can add your details here: https://github.com/HansKristian-Work/vkd3d-proton/issues/1338

It's working now, but I noticed that performance is pretty bad. Especially GPU isn't fully utilized which is obviously impacting the result.

Last edited by Shmerl on 15 Dec 2022 at 6:45 am UTC

Wow, performance of DX11 version for this update is so much better! I'd say avoid DX12 one unless they fix this stuff. It's a problem with the game, not with Wine or vkd3d-proton.

Last edited by Shmerl on 15 Dec 2022 at 7:14 am UTC

Wow, performance of DX11 version for this update is so much better! I'd say avoid DX12 one unless they fix this stuff. It's a problem with the game, not with Wine or vkd3d-proton.

Had a little check on the old YT to find some reasonable numbers. For those that actually tested identical settings, DX11 seemed maybe 2% faster on average, but with much lower dips. So at least on Windows there doesn't appear to be a huge reason to play on DX11.

The old version seems to easily have 50% higher fps at the same settings. However, detail is clearly higher in the updated version, so that's not really a fair comparison. It does show that you're probably better off with the old version on Steam Deck unless you really want that larger text.

Had a little check on the old YT to find some reasonable numbers. For those that actually tested identical settings, DX11 seemed maybe 2% faster on average, but with much lower dips. So at least on Windows there doesn't appear to be a huge reason to play on DX11.

For me it's not about just dips. DX12 version is hugely slower becasue it doesn't saturate the GPU. I think it's more apparent on high end GPUs though.

I.e. in DX12 mode I don't get 100% GPU load, while I get it for DX11 mode. I think their DX12 version is not properly parallelized.

Last edited by Shmerl on 16 Dec 2022 at 3:32 am UTC

I think their DX12 version is not properly parallelized.

It's not. There are some YT vids that show it peaks only in one or two cores. Another consequence of D3D11on12 I suppose.