I just played this a few months ago for the first time, so here's my thoughts.
Helpful websites
Witcher 3 Interactive Maps really helpful interactive map. This does spoil the game somewhat in terms of where to go, so choose to use at your own leisure
https://guides.gamepressure.com/static/mapy/en/gfx/map_1246.jpg this is a map of Velen (the area outside of the tutorial area) that shows general level bands of various areas. I found it a little helpful to just make sure I completed things somewhat orderly
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt the wiki. I found this to be useful for some of the quests. I would save-scum to see the different options for some of the quest dialogues, and sometimes I would go to the wiki post quest completion to see if there were better/cooler outcomes that I missed. Frankly, I didn't want to play through the game multiple times, so this for me was a time saving justification to see most of the content of the game.
Sex and Romance - The Witcher 3 Wiki Guide - IGN This goes over the romance stuff in the game. Unlike some other games with romance like ME, here, hard choices can actually screw up the endings. You could just do this blind, but I felt a little sad with my ending because I made a mistake early on and didn't see this guide.
Witcher 3 Skill Calculator This is a build planner for Witcher3. I messed with it a ton throughout the game for various builds.
Mods
I'm a big fan of using mods for this game, especially for a lot of UI/UX stuff. I didn't use too many mods that modified gameplay, unless it was UX related or just convenience based.
The Witcher 3 Nexus - Mods and community
The ones I have installed are:
- Auto-apply oils. This is a QOL thing where the mod detects what enemy type you are facing, and coats your blade with the appropriate oil (its a buff basically). Super useful, otherwise you'll likely never interact with oils at all.
- Though, some purists might argue that the idea behind a Witcher is that he spends time preparing for an encounter, so like, they encourage you to read about the creature in the bestiary, apply the right oil coat, potions, etc. Me I'd rather remove bad UX to make the gameplay feel more smooth. But to each their own
- Always full XP. I picked up the DLC version of this mod. Basically you can outlevel quests pretty easily in this game, and I wanted to be a completion-ist and play through it all. This lets you get some XP even for quests you've outleveled. The DLC version just modifies the formula - basically quests above your level give more XP and quests below your level give less, with a floor and ceiling on the amounts. That way a quest like 6 levels below you (a quest goes grey at 5+ iirc) still gives you something for completing it
- Better Icons - UI
- Better Torches - QOL
- Better Trophies - this one was a gameplay change. Basically in the game you get trophies that you can equip with stats for killing mini-bosses. The trophies were really crappy and you tended up using only 1 of the dozen or so you get throughout the game. This mod makes the stats varied on each one of them, so you can choose different ones to complement your build
- Colored Map Markers - UI
- Crossbow Damage Boost - another gameplay one. You basically will never use your crossbow in Vanilla. This one allows you to use it sometimes (still not often)
- Familiar Music
- Friendly Hud - this one is a pain in the butt to install, but is essential. It really fixes up the UI
- HD Reworked Project - texture mod. Really helps beautify the game more (its absolutely gorgeous imo)
- Jump In Shallow Water - QOL
- Leveling Witcher and Relic Gear - also gameplay and this one is a take it or leave it. On one hand, I think it makes you wear the best looking armor in the game. On the other hand, it removes gearing up in the late game, since you'll just wear Witcher gear.
- Map Quest Objectives - extremely good QOL
- No Fall Damage - self explanatory and optional
- Skip Movies - just skips intro for you
- Over 9000 weight limit. This one I didn't start the game with, but by the end of game, I had a lot of extra armor sets because they looked cool or worked well in a particular build, and I didn't want to have to go sell every few minutes when you get encumbered (your carry weight doesn't scale a lot throughout the game, which is bad). You'll likely get this one later, just because of the tedium
I played with an Xbox controller and it was great. I just put the game up on a TV and played the game in 1080p on a big-screen and its such a gorgeous game imo.
Build advice - For beginners, I found the fast attack + battle trance skills in the battle branch work real well. In the General skills, get the Cat School skill to go with the fast attack stuff plus armor you pick up. I also found early game Gourmet (food last 20 mins) to be really useful. It doesn't scale well into late game, but early game food regens you out of combat nearly immediately.
Save often and have the autosaves happen often. You never know when you might want to go back and redo a dialogue.
Rotate every so often between side quests, going on treasure hunts, playing Gwent, and doing the main quests if you're finding what you're doing monotonous.
TLDR - have fun. This game was pretty awesome
- 4
