I went strait to the enhanced griffin armor which is still good at level 20. There are probably better sets but it's hard to beat the 25% sign intensity. I'm finding that I fight most my difficult battles with signs so I'll probably stick with it.
I don't really pat much attention to what I wear, I switch armor as I find a better one. Saw these special sets but haven't started searching yet. The fact is I play on second difficulty level and combat is actually very easy here. Most of duels can be won by using Igni together with rolling back and forth, dodging and slashing from behind.
I play on the same difficulty and I agree that it's pretty easy. I only die when I get lazy or go in unprepared to a trophy monster fight. Collecting the armor is still fun though.
I upped the difficulty just before I got to level 16 after I defeated a lvl 20 Leshen fairly easily. I knocked it down to 2/3rds health quickly and it called a lvl 23 pack of wolves to its aid and they were hard, but I managed to beat them once equipping an oil and relying on quen, a fair bit of food and a swallow potion. I wasn't sure if a leshen was a relic or a something else so I equipped the wrong oil when fighting it but it didn't matter much. Using the new alternate movement setting brought in with 1.07 (on PC with keyboard + mouse) made the game easier also. On the second highest difficulty a swamp hag a couple of levels below me coupled with a few drowners several levels below me can actually hurt me quite a bit if I'm not careful. I still managed to beat a lone Lvl 20 cockatrice pretty easily without oils or potions, although I am lvl 17 now.
I think that Leshen might have been my hardest battle. I died a few times because I was surprised by the root attack which hit me for about 50% health. After that it was just a really long battle with me dodging the roots and throwing fire everywhere. Wolf packs were called several times. What are your thoughts on HairWorks? I cranked it up and I didn't think hair looked any better.
I noticed hairworks on the bears and griffins but it doesn't really add a hell of a lot to the game graphically to be honest. With the new patch I'm playing with it set to low which makes it look fairly low poly but you don't notice in battles anyway. The creatures still look differen't, just not as detailed up close. Before that I created a profile for witcher 3 that was reducing tessellation max in the catalyst control panel to 8x since it of course ran like a dog turd on anything that isn't a Nvidia 9xx based card. Basically it over tessellates to the point that there are more polygons being 'drawn' (obviously thrown away and never displayed) than there are pixels for that area. I think the new low setting looks a little worse than hard limiting it in ccp so I might go back to that. I haven't compared the performance since the patch also effected performance. I'm playing with everything at Ultra except hairworks at low and Ambient occlusion set to SSAO at 2560x1440. Performance seems to average around 30-40fps but definitely dips to the 20's from time to time. Good enough for me with this kind of game... it definitely is a slightly smoother experience than what I've seen on consoles.
Oh by the way the leshen I found easy (besides the wolves) was the second leshen I found which is over to the east of the map in Velen. The first one I found was around the centre of the map and I was below lvl 10 so had to run away. The wolves near it were only the regular variety around lvl 5 or so. I should probably go back and fight it now.
Btw, what Sapkowski did in his books is he filled the world with variety of creatures of names that were not used before, names were just introduced. Leshen, bruxa, striga, alp, cockatrice and many others (I had to consult english wiki as I play the original Polish version of course) needed their names to be translated. I hope translators did a good job, as a non-native speaker I can't say whether these fit the world design or not. For example, the card game name, Gwynt, is not a translation, it's a transliteration of Polish Gwint which means screw thread. But there is a hidden meaning there as gwint is also used to name the thread in the upper part of a wine/vodka bottle. Also the "pić z gwinta" means "drink from bottle thread", "drink straight from the bottle without any glasses". All these subtleties are of course lost from the translation.
Ha. I just assumed Gwynt was a made up word. I've wasted many hours playing that game. I found two as well. One was guarding treasure and I stole that without a fight. The one I did fight was part of a small quest and a rather good one. I thought the Leshen was one of the more interesting monsters because of the level of intelligence it showed. It was ancient and smart enough to know how to survive forever.
That one looks like a third one I have not encountered since the area is not familiar. The other two I was taken to when on two seperate missions that involved exploring abandoned/destroyed estates to find out how certain people died.
How's this game running now on PC? It seemed like a mess early on, so I decided to just come back to it later. I noticed there are lots of updates for it.
I hadn't even bothered trying Hairworks. I'm getting a relatively consistent 60 fps with mostly Ultra settings and a few of the most demanding effects off, so I'm pretty happy with the way it looks and how it's running right now. It was a disaster at launch. I thought it would get better, but perhaps not by this much. It's been a great game so far. I'm up to level 11 and have spent most of the last several hours in Velen. The Crones story was pretty interesting. The music when the Crones were present was really unsettling, too.
What video card are you running these days? Just bought the game. Curious how it will run on my GTX 980.
Have you finished the story? It consists of few missions and the very end is when the Baron is gone (there are two possible endings with the same outcome). Which ending have you got? I am now in Skelige, level 23 and the Skeligr story is also very involving. If I had to say how much time I spent in various places, I'd say I spent 1/3 in Velen, 1/3 in Novigrad and the last 1/3 in Skelige. And there is still so much to do. In the meantime, I finish the book saga for the 6th or 7th time and still consider it as one of the finest fantasy sagas around. I really hope all books are finally translated so that english speaking readers can get the whole story.
@cmdrmonkey I'm still running the GTX 670s in SLI. I keep thinking I'll have to rebuild soon, but then I try out the Witcher 3 with mostly Ultra settings and still get mostly 60 fps. My PC has lasted much longer than I expected given how fast tech ages. @torq No, please don't spoil anything. I'm still on the Baron storyline. I've only really been playing it for a couple of days. I saw how badly it ran at launch and opted to shelve it until it worked properly. I've been skipping around and exploring quite a bit. I've spent much more time exploring and doing side quests than the main storyline. And unlike Skyrim, it isn't constantly getting bugged out to where you have to look up console commands to fix it, making exploration and roaming much more enjoyable. Up to this point, I think the storyline of the Crones in the bog has been the most impressive and enjoyable. CD really did a fantastic job with those characters. The theme music and voice acting for those characters were also impeccable.
I'm getting about 41- 48fps at 1440p on my 780 with settings as high as they can go and hairworks off. The game patches and nvidia driver updaets have help a lot. I believe in the beginning those same settings put me at about 28fps. The game actually looks different too. At some point some of the textures have changed. Water looks better. I played two side quest last night that were so good I couldn't believe they were optional. Seems like a pity that someone might miss them.
I've just finished the prologue, met the emperor and been sent off to explore the world. So many little things to do all over the place I'll be amazed if I see it all. I did everything in the first small area but the one thing I found annoying was how it was hard to tell if you had done what you needed to do at a point of interest. For example the first time I found a monster nest I didn't have a bomb, wish had a cross or something when you destroy it as on the big maps I imagine it will be hard to keep track. Keeping track of gear, crafting and alchemy also seems really in depth. If you took a week or two off you'd provably forget everything. Still so early in the game that I haven't done anything too complicated yet but the many hours I've already spent have flown by. I've looked at the 3 maps available to me and they all look huge.. Gonna be on this one a while.
The Crones story could even be one of the best quests ever put in a video game. I really wish such content in other rpg games, not the kind of "maturity" that involves shallow nudity or someone killing someone else or even a "young hero that lost his family", I guess everyone is kinda bored with such shit. This one really shows that we need strong yet dynamic characters with deep background and a story that slowly reveals different views and facts that make you constantly rethink things over and over. There are of course games with similar level of good story telling, however most that come to my mind are linear adventures not open world rpgs.
Completed challenges like monster nest should change the color of the icon on the map. They are white if you haven't done them and some sort of less white/gray if they are completed. I probably destroyed about 20 nest before I realized there was lots of loot in them. Doh! One thing I wished I understood better in the beginning is you only need to make potions and bombs once. After that they will replenish on their own when you meditate. You'll still need some ingredients though. Strong alcohol for potions. Another tip. Loot everything. There don't seem to be any consequences for going into a house and taking everything you can even if the owner is there. Guards will get upset if you steal near them though. It is hard and it used to be harder. A few patches have made it easier. For-instance in the beginning you'd have no idea what notes and books you've read and you'll collect lots of that stuff. I did the The Lord of Undvik quest last night and I think it was a bit better.