The Witcher 2 screenies. What do you think? Can it give Skyrim a run for it's money? I can play it with my HD5850 at about 30 to 40 FPS on the high setting. At ultra high I get 8-12 FPS.
Ultras too laggy because that silly Uber thing is poorly optimised. It also dosen't make a noticable difference. I suggest putting your shadows to medium and turning down the AA a bit as well, you might get constant 60fps on high then.
Yeah, I did turn the shadows down. I need to turn the AA off as well. But I would like to up the draw distance. Might need to OC my card a bit.
Yeah, the tessalation in the game really makes the geo standout and the lighting effects on them look incredible.
Well, I'm going to after I finish my exams in a couple of weeks time. But I've been looking up stuff on how to run it very nicely and still have it looking very pretty.
I think I'm going to put off most PC games until after I finish up some professional/ academic business. Then I'll be able to upgrade my computer. And maybe by then I'll get some cheaper prices on these games via Steam discounts. I'm going to try to stick to Steam specials for now.
I didn't realize that they were actually serious about the Insane difficulty having a "definitive end" of the quest if you die once. It borks all of your saves on Insane if you happen to die a single time. So freaking pissed this just happened several hours into the game. This seems like a monumentally stupid design decision. If you can't increase the difficulty with gameplay and have to rely on limited saves and that type of bullshit, you're doing something wrong. I'm fine with paying a stiff penalty as in Demon's Souls, but corrupting all my previous saves?!? Are you kidding me?
No, you see a big skull and crossbones over your Insane saves for that game and can't load them anymore if you die once. I got swarmed by 4 endrega and and a few nekkers and was dead within a second or two. Getting poisoned takes off a massive chunk of your life bar. I soon realized afterwards that my entire Insane run was ruined.
I thought I'd post a beastly Witcher 2 Alchemy/Swordsmanship build. Almost all the credit for the development of this build goes to a poster on another board I don't know, Crimson Phantom. Most of this is a re-post of his work. To start out, you have to put points into the Training branch. First, do not use any mutagens until you have managed to get to Impregnation up to 2/2, which dramatically improves the impact of mutagens. If you install mutagens before you have 2/2, you will have a permanently weaker character. Then you want to use as many Greater mutagens as possible. Dump any of the Lesser mutagens, as you can't remove them. You shouldn't be using mutagens until around lvl 13 or 14. So to start off with the point allocation: Training tree 6 points (mandatory) 1 Dagger Throwing, which gives you a new skill 2 Parrying - Improved defense for tougher difficulty settings 1 Arrow Redirection - It's mutable; the skill itself is lousy. 2 Fortitude - Mutable with +1 Vigor. So at this point you've opened 2 mutagen slots. Next, I'd recommend putting a single point into the Feet Work skill in the Swordsmanship tree so you can dodge enemies effectively. Demon's Souls players will greatly appreciate this. It will dramatically improve things for you in combat. Now it's back to the Alchemy branch: Alchemy 1 Alchemist 1 Side Effect 1 Harvester 1 Spec: Oil 2 Impreg (35% boost to 10 mutagens is what it says, in effect it doubles all mutagens) You're now free to start applying mutagens in those empty slots. I think it would be wise to also get to the end of the Alchemy branch, and you'll open more mutagen slots. 1 Taster 1 Metathesis mutable 1 Condensation mutable 1 Beserker mutable 1 Mutant mutable 1 Amplification mutable I'd consider putting the extra point to fully upgrade the last two, but you may want to start working on Swordsmanship depending on your preferences (keep in mind there's no problem with abandoning Swordsmanship and going with an Alchemy/Magic hybrid instead at this point; starting with Alchemy gives you lots of flexibility). Swordsmanship 1 Position 1 Violence 1 Whirl 1 Hardy 1 Finesse 1 Invincible - mutable 1 Combat acumen - mutable 1 Whirlwind - mutable By now you'll be at around lvl 28. You should have unlocked 10 mutagen slots, and you'll be at the end of both Alchemy and Swordsmanship branches. If you stay OD'ed on potions, you'll be a wrecking ball in combat. I'd fully upgrade the last two Swordsmanship skills so you have special attacks building up all the time. You can use the extra points you have left however you like. The Madness mutagen is rare, but it's easily the best mutagen in the game. Always install Madness mutagens in free slots after you have Impregnation at 2/2. The mutagens should more than make up for limiting many of your skill allocations to 1/2. It's well worth it. Not only do you get most of the upgrades for 2 branches, but you also get tons of bonuses besides that from 10 mutagens. You'll find this build to be among the most powerful, especially if you farm good mutagens and combine the skills you pick with complimentary mutagens. Personally, I like the critical effects. By the end, enemies were catching fire, bleeding, and getting poisoned with nearly every sword strike. Quen is very valuable on Hard. You could use a couple of extra points left over to upgrade it to lvl 2. Quen plus the benefits of potions should make you very tough to kill.
Unfortunately I didn’t understand how mutagens worked until a few levels into the game. I put a weak one in one of my slots. In the long run it doesn’t matter too much on the regular difficulty. I got my group finishing moves which takes care of all the regulars. Even the mini bosses go down with that.
It would make more of a difference on Hard or Insane, although I'm not playing Insane again unless they patch it so that it doesn't bork your saves if you die (probably won't happen). I just thought of a possible workaround of the save corruption bullshit. I wonder if you could get around it by copying the latest file after you finished playing in another folder. If you have all your files ruined by dying, perhaps you could erase the corrupted files and paste in the backup file. I haven't tried this yet, but it seems like it could work to at least prevent you from losing everything.
You could take it a step further and do a back-up of all the directories and restore when needed. Schedule it to run every 10 minutes. Your disk performance would stink but it might solve your problem.
I probably wouldn't need to go to that level. If it wipes out a long playing session, I still get some of the effect of the Insane setting without completely ruining my games. I think they meant well with this aspect of the challenge, but it's just a bad idea to corrupt game saves. Demon's Souls has an autosave and stiff penalties for dying, but it never does anything remotely close to ruining your entire game. If this method of backing up after gaming sessions works, I may actually play through Insane afterall. I'll have to try it out and see what I think. BTW, I read that there will be a major update of The Witcher 2 (2.0 patch) by the end of next month. It's going to be free. We don't know what's in it, but my guess is DX11 support and some free DLC missions and content.