DA Fan gives TW3 a shot: Text Based Let's Play

Ea some more. Find another horse drawing. Something happens. Witcher sense. Grab some more muchrooms. This feels like Inquisition, the first time, all over again, where I'm gathering resources with no knowledge of what I'm going to do with them.

Go up. Neat! That ledge I thought I'd be able to jump to actually had a point.

Ya know, I think I'm with Geralt. All this portal business can get one killed.

A golem! Haha for some reason I expected stone. that loot was lame. But I have managed to start using dodge roll. I am not seeing the usefulness of yrden

Ok, having just played it, that is the neutral path because Geralt opts not to get involved between two "political" factions.

Baaahahahaha! I hated that quest. There was one drawing that I ended up going to YouTube to help me find, because I just couldn't figure out where the damn thing was my first time through. Good luck 

Wow, Kiera is using this giant barrier to get us through this ice magic. I like this complicated functional magical scenario a lot.

Edit add: by the way, so much for realism? If I can repair my sword DURING battle?

Argh why the exploding--- oh. They did tell me the pisionous gas was flammable didn't they

Riiight. Kiera had a a massive book on the very topic that would come up in her back pocket. Totally believable. Haha.

I feel like Kiera is coming onto me. Fainting trope sigh.

And then she also had a huge medal medallion in the same pocket. And came onto me some more. Why even. Curious about what Triss and Yennifer like so much, Miss Sorceress? Want to "ride the Bull"?

Ugh a riddle. I'll just run around lighting them up an see f I accidentally get it.... 5 wraiths later I did.

How far off of you from Novigrad?

I'm level 6, I'm in Valen, and talking to Kiera was part of finding Ciri. It just seemed to turn into more because Kiera is a needy sorceress. But even if I ignore her magical lamp quest, I have to go track down some witches in a bog and talk to the Baron before I get my next big clue about where to go. So, no idea, does that info tell you?

Gileadan

She already gave me the lantern with no intentions of taking it back. I think she'd prefer me to do her quest and return her magic phone though. she made out that it was a rare magical item.

What do you mean by good? Cheaper? capable of doing more?

I've explored a lot of stuff and gotten a lot of schematics. Is there tiers of materals? or does a schematic only make one kind of thing? right now, my shirt is 50 defense, 18 defence pants, 14 defense gloves that look stupid (like boxing gloves) and I think 13 defense shoes. My axe does 35-55 and I dont' think I've found a new silver sword at all. I think it's the one I started with...

See, this is why I wanted to do a Text Only Let's play. A couple of newbies have shared splatters of their Dragon Age fun and it was enjoyable to see them go through a first time. ^^

The schematics are only for a very specific thing, and there's no actual tiers of materials but the materials needed to craft whatever piece of gear you want are listed in the crafting window when you select the item you'd want. It lists the materials, how many are needed and how many you already have.

I'd recommend eventually seeking out one of the Witcher set schematics, which include pieces for all armor slots, both a steel and silver sword (+ a crossbow for the Feline and Ursine sets). All of the Witcher gear sets also have 4 tiers of them (5 if playing Blood & Wine): basic, enhanced, superior, mastercrafted, (grandmaster). Once you've crafted the basic, let's say Wolf set that has a level requirement of 14, you can easily get by using that armor and the weapons until you're level 21, which is the requirement for being able to equip the enhanced Wolf set gear. You'll always need the previous version of these armor pieces/weapons as one of the materials to be able to craft the next, so you can't for instance just skip over the rest and just immediately craft mastercrafted Ursine gear. You need the basic ones first to craft the enhanced, the enhanced to craft the superior etc.

If you haven't picked up something already just by playing, some merchants sell treasure maps that start a treasure hunt quest for the schematics. You basically don't need any other weapons or armor once you have the Witcher set you'd like to use, as long as you remember to get the schematics for and craft the upgraded versions as you level. I know for a fact that the basic Griffin set is quite easily obtainable and craftable while you're still in Velen, but it'll still be a while before you can get at even the base versions of the other sets.

Not a spoiler, just to show you the visual progression of one of the gear sets (Wolf):



*grandmaster not pictured

I just had a different opinion of Witcher Neutrality. I thought the neutrality was more related to NOT picking sides and focusing on completion of contracts. So, if my contract is ambiguous about what kind of monster I might be killing, but I'm to FIX the problem nonetheless...it doesn't matter if it's a werewolf, a witch, or some Squirrel elves, a contract is a contract. THAT is what seems like neutrality to me.

But apparently it means that if I find out the monster is part of an important political faction, I should turn my back on the contract and leave it unfinished. That seems...weird. 

So, I can't play again until maybe Thursday, or may even until Feb 4th. I'm a traveling medical person, so I have to drive to California and that takes a while. Then my first week of 10 hour work days...


But I've hit a disinterested patch as of this morning. I think the problem is the companions/romance I am so very used to after 12 PTs of Dragon Age.

at the start, I had my Witcher Mentor and I liked him okay. he talked about politics and Witcher stuff and I approve wholeheartedly of this method of getting into character and world by interacting with someone that is the same as you and seeing how they do what they do.

Then there was a bit of a gap with no companion but newness was there to fill the silence.

Kiera then becomes my battle companion and she's.. trying to get in my pants, albeit useful in battle, but that hurt her character. One, the flirting is very bad. "You're intriguing. Someday we may get intimate." "Oh my, I've fainted into your arms." Like, geez, how about I just bend you over in this damn cave and get it over with. Or maybe she sucked from the get go, her codex is "spoiled pampered ex-King's sorceress who made poor political choices and now grumpily helps local villagers." She's kind of whiney and, amusingly, Geralt even says so when he isn't giving her the "I'm going to screw you" eyes.

And I'm on the fence on whether I should just play as Geralt or play as me-as-geralt. I wouldn't screw Kiera for all of the above reasons but Geralt makes interested noises whether I want him to or not. I have no control over his dialogue at moments I consider important. So now I'm like... Should I sex Kiera because Geralt the Character would? Should I romance Yennifer because Geralt the Character sold his soul for her? Because I have no chance to have a personal-to-me relationship with anyone as far as I can tell.

On another note, I feel like I'm just chasing from one point to the next point... I miss having a home base where I can hang out. I guess this "constant chase" feeling is apt to the title "The Wild Hunt".

Geralt's clothes are ugly and now I have to learn how to schematic/craft to fix that.

Don't worry. I will make myself play the rest of TW3.

The distinction for me isn't between doing the contract and not doing it, but what (if anything) to tell the officer later. If my only options in talking to the officer are (a) lying, or ( giving him an excuse to start a pogrom against elves who had nothing do with the whole thing, I'd prefer not to tell him anything at all. It isn't OOC for Geralt to anticipate that the officer might overreact - he's seen racial strife between humans and elves break out in both of the previous games.

There may not be literal party members, but there's a pretty impressive list of memorable NPC's that you'll spend quite a bit of time with. You just need to advance the main quest lines more and you'll start coming across them. For instance, the Bloody Baron quest line introduces quite a few that have far, far more involved and interesting stories than just your random villager that's posted a notice about monster X terrorizing village Y. The titular Bloody Baron, for example is in my opinion one of the best characters in the game. A phase of the main quest more often than not also results in branching quest lines that might be technically optional, but provide a ton of the meat and flavor to the major NPC's involved. Once you get to Novigrad, almost everything you do will be heavily connected to Geralt's friends or other past acquaintances. There is also a lot more variety to the quests awaiting you, it's not just get contract -> use witcher senses to track monster to it's lair -> kill it and collect reward.

Spoiler of an example of a type of quest you get in Novigrad:





Not to get too heavily into spoiler territory, but Kiera isn't even trying to be subtle in throwing herself at Geralt. Thinking her flirting is over the top and bad is pretty much the intended reaction if you ask me, and there's a reason for it. Oh, and once you eventually meet back up with Yen, you'll have plenty of dialogue and quests that will flesh out their relationship regardless of whether or not you choose to pursue her in a romantic sense. Now, as a thing I personally don't like all that much, you'll pretty much have to decide whether you want to romance Triss or Yennefer before you meet Yen again. So if you end up liking Triss (she's grown into quite a different character from who she was in 1 & 2, IMO) and going down her romance path, you'll be locked in before you have a chance to really compare the two. You could try to pursue the Triss romance and then also Yen once you get to Skellige, but there are...consequences for trying to have your cake and eat it too. Consequences that Geralt can't smooth talk his way out of. So basically the point at which you have to choose will be almost 100% based on whether or not you like specifically Triss enough to confirm that's who you want Geralt to end up together with before even meeting back up with Yen and doing most of the content where she takes center stage. If you're not a huge fan of Triss, then there's no problem. Just treat her as a friend and don't go out of your way to proclaim Geralt's undying love for her, wait for Yen. They both have their list of pros and cons, but both are quite genuine in their love for Geralt.