The Witcher 1 Thread

[MountainWest]

Hard. I had some problems in the first chapter on hard = I died a couple of times (*gasp*)... but in the light of what others have said I think that can be contributed to a combination of suckiness and my hardcoded unwillingness to use potions. I'd say you're starting to become really overpowered halfway through chapter 2. With anything else than hard difficulty you'd probably be able to win most fights with your eyes closed by then.

 

[cardtrick]

Yeah, definitely hard. It's a reasonable level of challenge (unless you're just really kick-ass at games, you will definitely die from time to time), but more importantly it gives you the full game experience. Alchemy is required on hard, which is good because the alchemy system is pretty integral to the game experience (and really cool, anyway).

 

[aweigh]

Out of curiosity, can you change difficulty level in-game like in NWN?

 

[RK47]

nope.

 

[pug987]

I played the game in medium difficulty but I guess it would be better if I had just played at hard. I had some trouble beating the boss battle at the end of act 1 but everything from there on was a joke. In almost every other boss I hardly even needed to use potions.

Potions can make the difference. Just try this: Make it so that you max out the Igni sign as soon as possible and get the talents that give you extra endurance and lower the endurance cost of signs. Then gulp down Tawny Owl, Full Moon and Shallow and you won't even have to draw your sword. Just spam the Igni sign and every battle is over in a matter of seconds. With tawny owl you'll never run out of endurance while Full Moon practicaly doubles your life points.

 

[Solohk]

It seems like it could be good, but CTD every 15-20 min isn't too fun. I might have even been willing to stick through that until a patch, but half the time the CTD is caused by saving the game.

I guess I'll play something else until a new patch.

 

[Marsal]

It seems like it could be good, but CTD every 15-20 min isn't too fun. I might have even been willing to stick through that until a patch, but half the time the CTD is caused by saving the game.

I guess I'll play something else until a new patch.

Weird. I haven't had much problems. Only a few bugs and crashes and I'm on act 5 now. Are you on Vista? Not enough space on C(usually) drive(saves go in My Documents folder)?

 

[Solaris]

I've only had one CTD in about 35+ hrs of gaming, but even that was probably due to me overclocking the memory at the time. Basicallly, the game is rock solid for me. I'm playing with the 1.1a patch.

 

[cardtrick]

It seems like it could be good, but CTD every 15-20 min isn't too fun. I might have even been willing to stick through that until a patch, but half the time the CTD is caused by saving the game.

I guess I'll play something else until a new patch.

Are you using Vista 32bit? If so, there's a hotfix that you need to apply, affecting some DX9 games, including The Witcher. This seems to be the cause of most crashes. (Either that, or not having sufficient RAM.)

 

[bozia2012]

I think the crashing is related to the game memory requirements - I had several crashes but always on loading screen after playing for at least 3-4 hours non stop (XP@2GB).

Oh, please don't complain if the game crashes after 15min on your high-end Vista notebook - you were asking for it.

 

[Kingston]

I crashed once during a quicksave, but that's it.

 

[Volrath]

Kingston's avatar is incredibly manly.

Why thank you, Admiral. He was my first and second and third character in Arcanum. Stubble Ironfist, a sickly dwarf who shot things with his elephant gun.

Oh and I'm in Act 1 in the Witcher. I'm not sure why people say combat is hard in Act 1, I'm on hard difficulty and I've only died once (the drunken fight with the overgrown plants), otherwise its pretty easy. Fun though.

Edit: "Ded'uns, you say?" made me lol

Wait 'till you get to *spoilarz*the beast*spoilarz*, the difficulty just takes a random spike there.

Seriously though, that fight on hard is excruciatingly difficult if you don't prepare accordingly. I had to reload a save prior to a certain plotpoint just so I could make a shitload (= 4!) of swallow potions and get the spectre oil.

I've heard people say that they had trouble with that fight on normal but Abigail at least stands up there after 20 seconds to heal you, when you lose Abigail on hard she's down for good and I couldn't see any way of keeping her alive either.

 

[Kingston]

Oh god fighting those overgrown plants in a cave is a pain. Most of the time when I click on them nothing happens, and if I just randomly click it around sometimes Geralt attacks but most of the time he just stands there holding his dick.

 

[Szioul]

I found that if Geralt doesn't attack when you click on an enemy right next to you, you should manually dodge and click again.

Oh and it never crashed on me, but froze in a cutscene 3 times, and encountered a game breaking bug only once in 1.1a.

 

[kingcomrade]

What sort of computer do you need to play the game. I read earlier that you need 3 GB of RAM? That's fucking retarded.

 

[Kingston]

Well I've got 2 gigs of ram and the load times aren't all that horrible.

 

[Szioul]

1 gig here, ~20-30 second loading times in the biggest cells.

 

[RK47]

Hit chapter 5. After the boring rubbish of Chapter 4, I'm glad I held on and got into it. Obsidian can't even do something like that for a city the size of Neverwinter.

 

[indigo]

Oh god fighting those overgrown plants in a cave is a pain. Most of the time when I click on them nothing happens, and if I just randomly click it around sometimes Geralt attacks but most of the time he just stands there holding his dick.

Igni then attack. Read the fuckin journal - those plants are vulnerable to fire, theyre hard to kill with sword. (if you dont own Igni yet use torch)

What sort of computer do you need to play the game. I read earlier that you need 3 GB of RAM? That's fucking retarded..

1.5gb RAM, X2 5000+, 8800GTS 320mb here - graphics on max @12x10 and game runs smoothly. Loading times - yeah its pain it the ass I agree (30sec is a standard)

edit: oh and not a single CDT/other crash - game is 100% solid (winXP)

 

[caliban]

I've heard people say that they had trouble with that fight on normal but Abigail at least stands up there after 20 seconds to heal you, when you lose Abigail on hard she's down for good and I couldn't see any way of keeping her alive either.

It wasn't THAT bad for me. If you position yourself well at the start of the fight (to protect the damn witch), and manage to kill the first few barghests quickly, The Beast and the dogs it summons will focus on attacking you, and the witch will help you (she sometimes casts some sort of healing on you). Then just use Group style to fend off the mutts and strike the big bastard with Aard repeatedly.
If you're using the specter oil and some potions (Tawny Owl, Swallow, maybe Blizzard?), you should manage to survive long enough for one of your Aard attacks to succeed, and when the Beast drops to the ground you can just jump in and finish it like any other creature.
I had to repeat the fight 3-4 times to get it right, but it was OK - just enough to be challenging, not enough to make me throw the PC out the window

 

[Kingston]

Indigo, I couldn't read the "fucking" journal because I didn't have info on them. And I didn't have igni either. The combat was somewhat unresponsive, which was annoying.

Oh and:



Right on!

 

[MountainWest]

Use the wasd-keys for movement (when in combat). It's a pain trying to reach those plants using the click-on-monster-approach,

 

[Oarfish]

Where can you get a journal entry for echinopsae in chapter one? I guessed the fire vulnerability.

 

[Volrath]

I've heard people say that they had trouble with that fight on normal but Abigail at least stands up there after 20 seconds to heal you, when you lose Abigail on hard she's down for good and I couldn't see any way of keeping her alive either.

It wasn't THAT bad for me. If you position yourself well at the start of the fight (to protect the damn witch), and manage to kill the first few barghests quickly, The Beast and the dogs it summons will focus on attacking you, and the witch will help you (she sometimes casts some sort of healing on you). Then just use Group style to fend off the mutts and strike the big bastard with Aard repeatedly.
If you're using the specter oil and some potions (Tawny Owl, Swallow, maybe Blizzard?), you should manage to survive long enough for one of your Aard attacks to succeed, and when the Beast drops to the ground you can just jump in and finish it like any other creature.
I had to repeat the fight 3-4 times to get it right, but it was OK - just enough to be challenging, not enough to make me throw the PC out the window

They never did that in my game, sure I was able to fence off those muts the first time, but the moment they respawned they came right for the witch. And after x tries, I couldn't be bothered with saving her anymore.
Just vitality+endurance and putting out those fires with Aard and a lot of fucking patience got me through that section.

 

[caliban]

You can extinguish those flames with Aard? Cool, I didn't know.

Anyway, even if you didn't manage to save her, you didn't miss much.

Actually, the quest involving guiding Vesna to her house and protecting her from barghests was harder for me - they kept surrounding her and ripping her apart, and she kept running right at 'em with that puny dagger of hers, instead of staying put and letting Geralt deal with them. Stupid wench. They kept killing her until I decided to use the longer road along the river bank, where barghests don't spawn (only drowners, which are slower and not as agressive). THAT was a really annoying quest, it nearly made me want to cut Vesna's head off myself and feed her to the ghouls.