FAQs: Do you have any tips for someone just getting started/playing for the first time? ..............................................
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The 13 Most Common Mistakes I See People Make When Playing Witcher 3 and How To Not Make Them:

FAQs: Do you have any tips for someone just getting started/playing for the first time?

.............................................. aka

The 13 Most Common Mistakes I See People Make When Playing Witcher 3 and How To Not Make Them:

All images on this page are from:
The Witcher 3:
Wild Hunt
|Game of the Year Edition|
Completionist Run:
The Avallac'h Playthrough
(Watch It Live HERE)

Due to the fact that I am daily bombarded with requests to give advice to this quest or that quest, this build or that build, this beast or that beast, with the most common request being to give tips on how to "properly" play the game... I have decided to write this list up and just direct people to it.

First off let me say this:

#THERE IS NO RIGHT OR WRONG WAY TO PLAY THIS GAME!

I highly recommend that you just play the game in whatever way you find is most fun for you, because at its core, having fun is what this and any game is about.

If you are doing your first playthrough, I recommend you DO NOT use any guides or other outside help and just play the game fully blind and unmodded.

Playing the game blind is the #1 best way to get your first experience of the game.

Sure, you'll miss important clues, miss doing quests that would help you in the main story, make mistakes, and fumble badly... but that's no different then any other first playthrough of any other game and you'll have fun experiencing things for the first time.

Your 2nd playthrough is for going back and choosing opposite choices to see alternate ends, find clues you missed before, hone the skills you learned in the first run, etc.

#So please: have fun with your first playthrough and stop worrying about doing things "correctly"

If you want to play the game "good", then choose "good" choices. If you want to play the game like a dick, choose "dick" choices. Want to stay neutral? Chose the "neutral" choices. None of these paths is "correct" and each leads to different results.

My personal play style is heavy on role play. I like to find out the lore behind a character and then play that character, in character, to their source material. I do this in every game, but you see me especially doing this in my Avallac'h Playthrough, just like you saw me do it in my Ge'els and Regis playthroughs.

I take role play to extremes in my playthroughs - removing features the character should not be able to use - for example:

* Avallac'h is physically very weak, so I reduced his vitality to 500 and it doesn't level up with him.

* He also has a lame leg, struggles to walk, and can not run, so I have completely removed run, sprint, jog, dodge, parry, and roll from the game, and slowed walk by 20%.

* Avallac'h had a phobia of portals and was never seen without his beloved horse Rudy, so we ride the horse everywhere and do not use fast travels.

* Though a skilled archer, Avallac'h has a crippling phobia of sword, so we use a crossbow as the primary weapon and avoid swords altogether unless the quest requires one.

* The most powerful mage in the universe, Avallac'h was known for his ability to vaporise entire attacking armies in a matter of seconds. Thus signs were removed and custom built high powered vaporising spells put in their place.

It irks me badly if a character is doing things out of character for them, thus you see role play taking top precedence in my own playthroughs.

And yet this is only one way of playing the game.

Many like to play Witcher 3 as a hack and slash game: run around with a sword, killing everything. If that's your playstyle, this game has a lot of offer you, because it loves to shove 50 drowners up your ass all at once.

If you're a hack and slash type of player, then Death March is definitely for you. It doubles how many monsters are crawling up your ass, boosts their attacks by 83% and gives them so much vitality that it takes forever just to take down a single drowner.

Death March not hard enough? Add Enemy Upscaling and see how many times you can die in 2 minutes.

If you are someone who likes slow paced, laid back story games, the Just Story mode is right up your alley. It has hewer monsters, the monsters barely do any damage, and monster vitality let's you one hit drop everything with no trouble, allowing you to concentrate fully on exploring the story of the game.

If you want story with more action, there's a setting for that as well. And if you want story with hack and slash, just drop it one below Death March.

Someone who is a total lore hound? The game is based off a set of 8 novls and they put everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING, that is in the novels... in the game. After reading the novels take a walk around the map... you'll see shop names in Novigrad that you'll remember from the books; you'll see random background characters walking by that you met in the novels; and there are 600+ in-game books to read, every one of them the equivalent of 4 or 5 pages from a real world paperback book. You literally have to read a full novel if you want to read all 600+ in-game books.

Like open world exploration? the 5 maps of Witcher 3 are bigger then the maps of WoW. You can explore the world for years and not see everything.

Like quest heavy games? Well, you can spend months playing W3 and not even make a dent in the Skellige Question Mark quests... and that's just one map.

Every quest has at least 2 outcomes, most have 3 to 6 outcomes, and some have as many as 8 outcomes.

There are 135 quests in the main story, meaning there are well over 400 quest endings for you to experience.

And those 400+ quest endings are just the quest endings... you also have treasure hunts, contracts, and of course the game endings on top of that.

The base game has 3 endings (for Ciri), with 36 sub endings (for other characters - Yen, Triss, Geralt, etc and for the country's/kings/etc - who is king, what happens to Skellige after the war, etc) for them.

The Blood and Wine dlc has 6 main story ends, each of them, with 4 to 8 variations depending on what happened to Ciri, Yen, Triss, and Dandelion at the end of your base game. Ciri herself has 4 different endings in Blood and Wine, for each of the 6 Blood and Wine endings.

The only way for you to experience all of them, all 400+ quest ends, all 3 main ends, all dlc ends, all sub ends, is to replay the game a grand total of 42 times and carefully choose different steps each time.

You will drive yourself mad if you obsessively try to get the "correct" end for every single quest in the game. There are simply too many endings for each quest. And no ending is truly the "correct" one.

In many cases, the quests have no "good" endings, but rather only several "grey" endings that are varying degrees of bad because you have to kill this person to save that person or so on.

Do you see now why I say it's very difficult to give some one tips on "the right way to properly" play this game?

Witcher 3 is so huge and has so much to offer, that no matter what your playstyle is you are bound to find the game matches you.

Yet, even with all this game has to offer, it's not for everyone. Many will quickly find the game draw out and boring, while others will quickly be frustrated by how hard it is even on easy settings, and still others will hate the constante onslaught of monsters, while others will hate the long back and forth of running from point a to point b every 5 minutes of quest.

It's a great game for people who like this style game, and it's your worst nightmare if this is not the type of game you normally play.

#Keep in mind too that in spite of the prestigious awards it has won: this is NOT a AAA game.

#It is a self-published indie game, made by a handful of college students, and it shows. The game is riddled with HUNDREDS of bugs and glitches, most of them critically game breaking, and if you get hung up on them, it'll drive you mad.

#While the game is awesome, it is also clearly made by amateurs who had no clue what they were doing half the time. The game is riddled with bugs, glitches, and game breaking errors. Most of its most game breaking bugs, a simple code erres that professional game devs would not have made.

What type of errors are in this game?

* 4 of the 17 potions do nothing when you drink them

* 17 of the 80 skills do nothing even when you enable them

* 6 of the 26 decotions, have EMPTY code strings, meaning they do nothing at all

* 2 of Axii's 5 upgrades can not be used and break quests when you activate them

* Roach... if you've played the game, you know all about Roach, the most bugged out horse in gaming history

* 3 of the game's primary bosses have a bug that make them unkillable in 37% of all copies of the game; if you can't kill the boss, you can not progress; the game devs made an official announcement that 37% of the players encountering this is not enough to warrant a bug fix and said to just buy a 2nd copy of the $80 game (over 4 million people have encountered this seriously game breaking bug)

And this is just the biggest of the game breaking bugs... there are multiple hundred more bugs, that while letting you still play, will seriously break you out of immersion.

While I am on a mission to make bug fixes for each of the 400+ bugs I have personally encountered in the game, the sheer size of this task, due to how many bugs there are, and the severity of how game breaking some of these bugs are, is daunting and stands to take me 3 years minimum to do. But I love this game and would like to play it fully bug free, and have the drive to do it, so, I've set out to fix all these bugs.

If buggy games bother you, then avoid Witcher 3 like the plague and go play something far less buggy, like Skyrim or FallOut76.

It's next to impossible to advise you on how to play the game, if I don't personally know you and your prefered playstyle.

That said, I can give you tips on things that will make your playthrough less stressful and more fun, regardless of your prefered playstyle.

Before I give you tips, let me first tell you what this game is:

>>>Here have a quest, travel a long distance, loot crap, pick flowers, brew potions, fight 20 monsters all at once, run screaming for the hills when you realize those 20 monsters are just the first onslaught and 20 more are climbing up out of the river.

>>> travel an even longer distance, loot even more crap, pick flowers, brew potions, take your loot to a merchant to be disassembled, craft awesome gear with the crap you looted spend an hour in your inventory menus,

>>>travel a much longer distance, fight a random boss that ran across your path, fight 20 more monsters all at once, pray that sound you hear behind you isn't another 50 Drowners wanting to kill you, realize it's it's worse then 50 more Drowners - it's 5 more Foglets and run away screaming hoping you can find someone to repair your broken swords

>>> travel a long distance, loot crap, pick flowers, brew potions, fight 4 more random bosses back to back while 40 other monsters tear you to shreds, repair swords, buy food, repair armor, wonder where the hell am I, spend a night at the inn because you need rest, wake up to fight 20 more monsters and 3 more random bosses...

>>>discover bandits stole your gear in the night, hunt them down, get your gear back, loot more crap, finally get to the quest monster, battle a boss that sends Dark Souls bosses running for the shadows, while 5 mini bosses and 20 other monsters beat the crap out of you every time you take a swing at the big boss

>>>die 10 times before defeating the big boss, cut off it's head, wonder where the hell you left the guy who gave you this quest, travel all the way back across the continent, battling 10 to 20 drowners, ghouls or wolves every step of the way back; encounter 7 more mini bosses before you back to the guy

>>>go back to quest giver tell them the quest is done, get your reward, go to next quest giver get the next quest.

>>Realize that you just spent 4 hours doing one single quest, and fought 100+ monsters and 10+ bosses on the way to it's big boss, while learning very little info about Ciri, but also learning vitally important info about Ciri.

>>>Breath a sigh of relief that that quest is finally over.

>>>Check to see what your next quest is.

#Now repeat that 135 more times (there are 135 quests in the main base game story).

Keep in mind that the main story quests will take you around 45 minutes to complete - each quest; if you really push it, you could possibly complete some of them in 20 minutes, but you'll do so at the expense of dialogue clues vital to the main story; and if you are a lore hound who reads everything and explores everything, most quests can run 2 or even up to 4 hours.

Meaning YOU CAN NOT complete the main story of the base game in anything fewer than 70 hours and most people will take 200+ hours to do so, with lore hounds taking a whopping 700+ hours just to complete the main story.

Yes, there are people who obsessively dug for lore and it took them 2,000+ hours to complete the main story of their first blind playthrough.

That is how BIG this game is.

But most people are going to play 70 to 135 hours on their first blind playthrough of the base game before they even start the dlcs.

The average person takes 2 to 5 months to finish the game with both dlcs, while lore hounds can take over 2 years to finish their first playthrough before starting the dlcs.

#and you'll have Drowners, Ghouls, Wraiths, and other monsters crawling up your ass every step of the way, for endless back to back mini-boss fights that will make Dark Souls look like a cake walk.

>>>135 hours later you have fought 2,000+ monsters, 500+ random bosses, 135 big bosses and reached the end of the game.

>>>This is a VERY quest heavy, grindy game that is going to have monsters crawling up your ass every 5 seconds.

#If that doesn't sound like fun, then run from this game - get as as far away as you can get.

If it sounds right up your alley, then keep reading.

I love long ass games, games heavy on quests, games driven by story, and games that throw monsters up your ass every 5 seconds, so for me, this is the perfect game.

It is difficult to give random tips out of the blue, without knowing your playstyle. Everyone plays games differently.

I can however tell you what I've seen Witcher 3 newbs do that caused them to rage quit the game, common simple mistakes that could easily have been avoided and could help you not make their same errors.

On Twitch alone I have watched more then 400 complete first time playthroughs of the game... in addition to the 300+ complete playthroughs I've watched on Twitch, I've also watched a whopping 5,000+ playthroughs that started but never got completed because the streamer either got bored (Witcher 3 was not their type of game) or rage quit (got frustrated because they refused to play the game the way the game was intended and got their ass whipped by the game).

Let me tell you something right now:

#DARK SOULS IS EASY

#WITCHER 3 IS NOT!

Often touted as the most difficult game ever made - any idiot with a sword can slash and hack their way through the entire Dark Souls franchise, without breaking a sweat.

Dark Souls you can run in with your sword swinging and you are eventually gonna kill something if you hit it enough.

This is not the case in Witcher 3.

Witcher 3, even on it's easiest difficulty settings can give the toughest Dark Souls veterans a run for their money.

If you use the Dark Souls strategy of grab a sword and run in swinging, you'll get your ass kicked, your pride slaughtered, and find yourself at your wits end in boss fights.

Just like 2nd edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, the game system Witcher 3 is based on and uses, Witcher 3 requires a LOT of micro management, pre-battle prepping, reading lore to find out what your enemy is weak to, calculating percentages, balancing weight, and to be successful, you'll need to spend at least 40% of your game time in your inventory menus making potions, buying food, trading items, dismantling loot into crafting materials...

...plan on at MINIMUM an hour of inventory menu time for every 4 hours of gameplay. (In other words 3 hours of story progression and boss fighting, plus 1 hour of inventory management).

#If you don't like micromanaging and inventory management, alongside endless steady onslaughts of monsters attacking you at every turn, then you will HATE this game.

If you think you can pick up a sword, strap on some armor, and run your way through this game doing nothing else, you are sadly mistaken and setting yourself up for huge levels of frustration and disappointment.

You want tips that'll help you succeed?

Okay, let's run through some common mistakes that I have seen HUNDREDS of streamers do that caused them to quit the game:

#1: Side Quests are NOT Optional

Remember, Witcher 3 is sold and advertised an OPEN WORLD game.

Witcher 3 is sold and advertised as a game that takes MINIMUM 100 hours to play the main story of the BASE GAME.

If you sped through the game in anything under CD Projekt Red's recommended 100 hours then you missed a hell of a lot of the MAIN STORY QUESTS and probably got to the end of the game wondering what the heck is happening, finding yourself utterly 100% clueless as to what Ciri was doing and why.

The game maps in Witcher 3 are DOUBLE THE SIZE of game maps in mega sized MMOs like World of Warcraft... and if you didn't know that, then you REALLY missed out on a LOT of the game.

Witcher 3 is NOT Skyrim or any other game. So get everything you know about side quests in other games, out of your head.

Most people who rage quit the game, exclaiming that it is too hard, the monsters are too high level, their armor and swords are shit, they don't have enough ability points to unlock the good skills... went into the game thinking it had side quests and that any quest not related to Ciri could be skipped.

If you skip the side quests you WILL ALWAYS get the Ultimate Bad Ending of the game:

>Ciri dies.

>Triss and Yen both told Geralt to fuck off.

>Geralt commits suicide.

>Emperor is killed by angry mob.

>Evil King Radovid wins and kills all the Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Gnomes, Mages, Herbalists, Healers, Alchemists, etc.

>Evil Jarl Bran takes over Skellige and murders the other Jarls

#REMBER: Witcher 3 has no side quests.

When the game unlocks a quest and tells you to do it... you NEED to do it.... is IS part of the main story.

People often say: "I'm not doing side quests"... but did you ever look at the list of quests?

NOWHERE does it say: "side quests"

You have 4 lists:

>>>Ciri's Story

>>>Secondary Character's Stories

>>>Witcher Contracts

>>>Scavenger Hunts (some editions say Treasure Hunts)

#THERE ARE NO SIDE QUESTS IN WITCHER 3

Most people INCORRECTLY assume that Ciri's Story is "main quest" and Secondary Character Stories are "side quests". But this is not the case.

Ciri's story is JUST Ciri's story.

People often run through Ciri's story and then wonder why they never interacted with Yen or Triss and never unlocked and sex quests.

One of the single most common complaints I hear people saying they have with the game is the fact that they bought it for the sex and felt cheated because there was no sex in it.

There are 17 sex girls in the game. Some of them have multiple sex scenes. ALL of their stories appear in the "secondary" list.

If you skip those quests because you incorrectly believe they are side quests, you not only miss out on doing all the sex quests with those 17 different girls, you also miss out on learning why the Wild Hunt is after Ciri, Why Avallac'h is helping Ciri, and you miss out on some of the most memorable parts of the main story, including you will have NO ONE with you, helping you fight, at the fight of The Battle of Kaer Morhen!

You could end up with 15 additional characters helping you fight the bosses... if you didn't skp the "side quests" and got left running into battle alone.

Scavenger Hunt quests give you that much needed Witcher gear - swords and armor so insanely high powered and infiltrated with bonuses, that you'll quickly realize every piece of LOOTED or STORE BOUGHT armoris utter junk.

If you skip the hunts you will not have good armor or good swords and will be stuck using the shitty, low level crap armor and crap swords you pick up in loot and buy at blacksmiths.

The Witcher contracts send you on the trail of rare boss fight "monster hunt" beasts, that drop the mega rare mutations (griffin mutagen, leshen mutagen, etc) needed to make the Alchemy potions.

If you skip the monster hunts the Witcher Contracts give you, then you've just shot yourself in the foot , because now you can't make the potions you will need to fight the main story boss fights.

Let me repeat this:

#SIDE QUESTS ARE NOT OPTIONAL IN WITCHER 3, because THERE ARE NO SIDE QUESTS IN WITCHER 3!!!!!

Every single quest in the game provides important information to Ciri's story and if you have ANY quests left in your quest log when you get to the end of Ciri's story, then you missed learning info about Ciri.

Because you probably need to be told again:

#THE SIDE QUESTS ARE PART OF THE MAIN STORY - IF YOU SKIP SIDE QUESTS, YOU ARE SKIPPING THE MAIN STORY QUESTS!

If you do not like doing "side questy games" then you really won't like playing Witcher 3.

If a quest is optional, it will say (Optional) after it's name. If the quest does not say (Optional) after it's name, it is NOT OPTIONAL.

While some people are satisfied with the bad end, MOST people who rush through the main quest, stating they will do side quests later and are devastated when they realize the end of the main story IS THE END OF THE GAME and that because they skipped side quests, they got the BAD END.

#2: You MUST play the quests in order they unlock. You CAN NOT do the main story first and then go back and to the other stuff later.

The end of the main story is the END OF THE GAME!

Witcher 3 has no side quests.

When the game says "Here's a quests from the Blood & Wine expansion, do it now"... DO IT NOW - IT DOES CHANGE THE MAIN STORY of the base game. Main characters who die in the base game can be saved if you do those Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine quests WHEN THE GAME TELLS YOU TOO!

#3: If you do not do the Scavenger Hunt Quests FIRST, BEFORE starting the Main Story, you WILL STRUGGLE to fight even simple low level monsters and find yourself in tears when coming up against Bosses

The Scavenger Hunts give you super high level Witcher Gear: swords and armor that you NEED to have if you want to defeat bosses on anything other then easy/story mode

#4: If the quest or enemy has a RED SKULL over their head - they are 15 levels - FIFTEEN LEVELS - higher then you - if you are not an experienced player in the game: RUN! - NEVER attempt a red skull quest on your first blind playthrough.

Yes, you do see me plowing straight through red skulls on Death March... but I've also played the game more then 5,000 hours and know which armor, which swords, which potions, which oils, which signs to use against those enemies....

...AND... I'm playing as Avallac'h, the most powerful mage of the universe, not Geralt, world's most famous witcher.

Geralt starts the game at level 0 with 10,000 vitality, adds 500 vitality per level (so at level 20 he has 20,000 vitality and at level 40 he has 30,000 vitality.) With Red Skills bonuses he gains +5% per skill (which means your Geralt could have upto 300,000 vitality by level 20, in addition to the 20,000). He can gain upto a 30% boost in signs (but rarely do player achieve this) His stamina regens at 1% to 10% per second depending on level and he has 3 adrenaline points.

Avallac'h's vitality is only 3,500 and it does not go up as he levels (so at level 200 he still only has 3,500 vitality, whereas at level 200 Gerlt would have 110,000 vitality before the upto 300,000 bonus), meaning Avallac'h dies super fast and one hit from most enemies kills him.

However, while he's physically very weak, his attacks are VERY powerful and as long as he can avoid taking a hit, he often can kill enemies with only one hit as well.

Avallac'h is a glass cannon. He's a tank in battle if you can keep him alive. He can take out 30 bandits in one hit.

The highest level sword in the game deals 700 damage, yet Avallac'h's staff deals 8,000 damage.

Geralt's Aard often hits for 300 damage, Avallac'h's Aard rarely hits for anything less then 5,000.

Geralt's Yrden freezes enemies so they can't more and has a 1 in 20 chance to also deal 100 damage. Avallac'h's Yrden deals 80,000 (yes, eighty thousand) damage.

While I can have Avallac'h plow through an onslaught of red skull enemies on Death March, I have a lot of practice, died a lot, and learned from lots of mistakes what works and what doesn't... AND... I'VE BEEN PLAYING AS AVALLAC'H EVERY DAY FOR 4 TO 14 HOURS A DAY SINCE MAY 13, 2018... and previously played as Regis and Ge'els, plus played as Geralt vanilla without mods daily for 2 years before that.

I DID NOT start out my first playthrough fighting red skulls.

My first playthrough I quickly learned that red skulls are impossible for Geralt and ran screaming from every red skull I saw.

But even today, playing as Avallac'h, you ALWAYS see me stopping to prep my character BEFORE going up against a red skull.

ALWAYS.

#ALWAYS

I never, never, never, ever go into any battle, red skull or not, with dull blades, broken armor, and low supplies.

I always prep for battle.

I always repair my weapons to 100%.

I always have spare weapons on me. ALL at 100% so as soon as my weapon gets down to 90% I can drop it and grab a 100% one. My blades are always at 100% in battle because of this.

I always repair my armor to 100%

I always have spare armor on me. ALL at 100% so as soon as my armor gets down to 90% I can drop it and grab a 100% one. My coat, pants, gloves, and boots are always at 100% in battle because of this.

I always go to an inn and buy all their food, then go to 3 or 4 more inns and buy all their food. Then head to a cow field amd kill lots of cows. Sell the raw meat and cow hides, keep the cow milk, and use the money to buy even more food.

I always have 100+ cow milk, 100+ baked apples, 100+ olives, and 100+ raspberry juice in my inventory before I go into battle, red skull or not.

I always make sure all my potions are full (I'm using Witcher 1 alchemy so they don't auto-refill when meditating, like they do in your game; like food, if I drink it, it is gone until I go back to an alchemist and ake more). I always have 10+ of any potion, decoction, or oil I need for that monster.

I don't drink one potion and call that good enough. You frequently see me pushing Avallac'h to his toxic level limits with him in serious danger of dying from a drug overdose (yeah, that can happen... but rarely do players ever drink more then one potion, so most don't know it).

I load Avallac'h up on 15 decorations, 7 potions, and then oil up a sword. He's staggering around stunned, half blind, vomiting, and confused with 98% toxic levels, but now he's got 500% attack boosts, 300% crit hit chance, 8,000% sign intensity boost, and tons of other bonuses, so he can one hit drop the entire boss fight within 5 seconds of it starting, before he passes out of a drug overdose.

HUGE mistake everyone makes, is they drink 1 potion or 1 decoction, when they could drink everything in their inventory all at once and get ALL the bonuses at once.

But, when you try to fight red skulls and then boo-hoo to me that I could do it, so why couldn't you... well... did you do what I did and spend an hour, 2 hours, or more in your inventory prepping for the battle? Did you go to all the blacksmiths for repairs? Did you buy all the food? Did you load Geralt up on all his drugs?

No?

Well, then, that's why you failed to plow through red skulls like I do.

I always do pre-battle prep before I start a fight.

Yes, I know, viewers constantly bitch and complain that I spend way too much time in my inventory menus and way too much time talking to blacksmiths and innkeepers, but guess what - all that micromanaging is why I make fighting red skulls on Death March look easy.

I'm not running into battle with broken weapons, broken armor, and no food to heal myself with.

If you ain't gonna prep for the fight, then don't try to fight any enemy that has a red skull over their head. Go find something else to do in the game that will level you up, then come back to this enemy later when it's no longer marked with a red skull.

#5: Loot everything. The game gives you loot for a reason. YOU DO NEED IT! Right before every quest starts, you'll find lots of loot - you NEED that loot to complete the quest

The game is not tossing loot in your face all willy nilly.

Every item of loot is REQUIRED for some part of the quest nearest in location to that loot.

If there is a box full of silver, thread, dwarven spirit, and iron... near a field of blowballs and white myrtle, you can be sure that nearby is a boss that requires potions, bombs, oils, decoctions, or armor that requires those items to make.

Stop and loot the boxes, pick the herbs, and make whatever oils, potions, decoctions, swords, and armor use the items you looted.

You WILL NEED those items to fight the boss in that area, that is WHY the game put that particular set of loot items in that exact location.

The game contains MORE THAN A THOUSAND LOOT FILES. It's loot system is massive and items are meticulously placed in locations WHERE YOU WILL NEED THEM.

There is no USELESS loot in the game.

EVERY item of loot can be used to make swords, armor, oils, potions, decoctions, or bombs.

Make those items - you will need them and you'll soon regret it if you run into a boss fight and find you didn't make ahead of time the proper gear, oils, and potions needed to fight that boss.

#6: Alchemy is NOT optional! If you do not make the potions, oils, decotions, and bombs, you will find yourself struggling DEEPLY in ALL combat situations

If you don't like looting stuff... do not play this game.

If you don't like picking herbs - this is not the game for you.

If you think brewing potions and oils is a waste of time, don't even bother trying to play this game.

Alchemy is not something you can skip.

You'll deeply regret it if you do.

Far too many times people ask me: "How do you defeat ____" and the answer they want is "Which sword should I use?" or "Which sign should I use?" ... and I tell them something like:

"Take Relievers Decoction, Noonwraith Decoction, Leshen Decoction, then drink Swallow, Thunderbolt, and Tawny Owl, then put Specter Ol on your sword."

And they whimper and whine back with....

"Buuuuuuuuuut, alchemy is soooooo boooooooring. I don't wannaaaaaaaa do it. How else do you beat them?"

Uhm... why are you playing this game again?

And why are you sitting there screaming:

"I don't wanna, I don't wanna, I don't wanna, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa."

Go change your diaper, tell your mommy to give you a good spanking for being such a cry baby, then head back to your kindergarten games where whinny, sniffling, temper tantrum throwing cry babies belong. This game is for adult, not children and clearly you are not mature enough to playing if you are whimpering and pouting like a 2 year old. Come back to Witcher when you grow up, become an adult, and can follow the instructions the game gave you in it's tutorial.

*sheesh*

If you don't want to do alchemy, then why the hell are you playing a game, where the main character is an alchemist?

You are playing alchemist sword fighter, you know that right?

Geralt is an alchemy expect. He uses it to enhance his fighting. It's not optional.

There really IS NOT another way. The monsters are coded to be weak to certain oils and potions and immune to plain swords and signs.

If you use your plain sword, you can defeat them, 10 or 12 damage points per hit on a 20,000 vitality boss.

Or you can drink the potions and decoctions, oil up your sword then one hit drop the 20,000 vitality boss the same way I do.

I'm sorry if you don't like alchemy, because you hate doing inventory management, but it's tough luck on you if you ignore basic game mechanics and want to spend 5 hours doing 10 point hits on a boss without alchemy.

I AM using an alchemy build when you see me one hit dropping Caranthir, Eredin, Toad, Bruxa, Shaelmaar, and other mega high powered boss fights.

This game REQUIRES alchemy if you want to do serious hit damage.

If you choose to ignore alchemy, don't come crying to me looking for help, because I can't help you.

#7: Repairs - make them often and never go into ANY battle with swords and armor anything under 100% damage.

Probably the number 1 biggest mistake I see players make.

Running into battle with a 400 Damage sword, that is at 0% meaning it's doing 0 damage, and they bitch and moan and scream and yell: "Why am I doing no damage?"

Running into battle with 800 damage armor at 0% and then crying out: "How did they one hit me, I've got great armor!"

Yep.

You do got a good sword and great armor, but they are broken, so are nothing but useless pretty baubles doing ZERO damage and providing ZERO protection.

Buy repair kits, make repair kits... and use them often.

EVERY hit you make causes 5 to 10% damage to your sword.

#YOU MUST REPAIR YOUR SWORD AFTER EVERY FIGHT!

EVERY hit you take causes 5 to 10% damage to your armor.

#YOU MUST REPAIR YOUR ARMOR AFTER EVERY FIGHT!

You can loot repair kits, make repair kits, buy repair kits, and go to blacksmiths to have repairs done by them.

Repair early.

Repair often.

Have you ever noticed that no matter where I am or what I am doing, I have Avallac'h jump on a horse and ride to the nearest blacksmith after EVERY fight?

I get a lot of people who complain that I spend too much time in merchant inventory menus, but guess what? All that time spent in merchant inventory menus is why I go into every battle with 100+ food items, swords doing 100% damage, armor doing 100% protection... believe me, with survival skills added to the game, and Avallac'h being such a weakling, the last thing I want is him running into battle with broken gear.

Don't come bitching and boo-hooing to me that you don't know why you are being slaughtered by monsters, after I told you "REPAIR YOUR WEAPONS AND ARMOR AFTER EVERY FIGHT!!!" and you ignored my advice and ran into battle anyways with gear doing 0% damage and protection.

#8: Use your skills tree - you'll NEED it

Those skills are there for a reason. They boost up your character, allowing you to level up tactics you use and ignore playstyles you don't use.

If you like fighting with swords, then boost up fast attack. If you want to be a fire mage, then put all your ability points into igni.

While you can ignore the skills you don't use in your playstyle, you NEED the skills that boost your prefered attack style.

You don't need every skill, but you WILL struggle badly if you never use any skills at all.

#9: Plan on dying. A lot.

So many HUNDREDS of people play this game and are screaming every five minutes:

"Why did I die? I never die in ___*some other game they play*___!"

Never try a permadeath run in Witcher 3. You'll be dead before you get to White Orchard. Those ghouls are always gonna kill you.

You are going to die in this game.

You are going to die a lot in this game.

You are going to die 10, 20, 30 times EVERY STREAM that you stream.

This games likes to kill you.

Get used to it. It's what this game does.

My first time through the Detlaff Boss Battle, I died 29 times - on easy story mode, playing as Geralt. Then I went back there with weakling Avallac'h, no swords, no armor, and tried to fight Detlaff on Death March - I stopped keeping track of death counts after it reached 50.

And no - if you saw my 1st Avallac'h playthrough, you know we got the King of Klink ending, so, no, I have NEVER yet defeated Detlaff on Death March settings - EVER.

This game requires a lot of patience, persistence, practice, trial and error, and level headed coolness.

Are you someone who's heard the rumor that there is a broken boss in the game that can not be defeated on Death March?

August 18, 2018 I broke a world record, spent 7 hours in a single boss fight (7 hours WITHOUT DYING) and became the first person in history to defeat the Djinn Boss Fight on Death March.... and I did it with Avallac'h... do you have any idea how hard it is to keep him alive just in a normal attack with wolves and ghouls, then try to keep him alive for 7 damned hours against the freaking Djinn on Death March?

For those wondering: Avallac'h's vitality is 3,500 and it does NOT increase as he levels up. Geralt STARTS the game at 10,000 at level 1 and increases 500 per level.

The Djinn hits for 5,000+, so one hit will wipe out Avallac'h. Plus unlike Geralt, Avallac'h has no run, parry, roll, or dodge... meaning the fight was literally hiding behind the one pillar of the ship, and attacking during the rare opens.... for 7 hours straight.

Let me remind you... NO ONE has ever, before or since defeated the Djinn on Death March - I am the single, solitary, ONLY gamer to ever do it.... and you will see me do it again this playthrough.

Why am I the only person to ever beat the Djinn on Death March?

Because I don't get mad, I don't rage quit, and I have the patience to continue to restart the game after 20+ deaths and try again, even if each of those deaths came after 4+ hours of whittling the boss down and the final fight required 7 hours with no break of beating that boss down.

Dedication.

That's what this game requires.

Dedication, persistence, and a hell of a lot of patience.

If you are someone prone to being salty, prone to rage quitting... you WILL FEEL VERY FRUSTRATED by this game.

Remember: The Witcher series is one boss fight after another, with HUNDREDS of mini-enemies attacking you at every turn.

#DARK SOULS IS EASY

#WITCHER 3 IS NOT!

If you don't like Dark Souls, then you'll HATE Witcher 3!

#9: Gwent... ignore the in-game card game and you WILL suffer the side effects when you reach a level 35 boss and you are still only level 12 and can't figure out how to level up.

While you can ignore Gwent and never play it at all, do know that you miss out n 200 to 5,000 experience points for EACH of the 100+ card games you skip in the game.

Yes, there are gwent players who reward you with a whopping 5,000 experience points - 2 of them in fact.

You level up every 2,000 points so those 2 games of gwent alone add 5 levels to your character.

#10: If you piss off Avallac'h too much, you start gaining FEWER ex points with each quest after interacting with him.

Yep... there's a "hidden quest" in the game called "In Avallac'h We Trust"...

you will never see it in your quest list. The only way to find it, is to open up the game's script codes and look for the code titled "mq_in_avallach_we_trust.w2scene" and read through it's flow chart to see how drastically you interactions with Avallac'h change your interactions with Ciri, in turn changing Ciri's hidden quest "Path of the Swallow".... as well as effecting how much ex you get, in turn affecting how high you are leveled up in the game overall.

For example... how you interact with Avallac'h in the Ruby Room grants you as few as 10 ex points (yes just ten) or as many as 10,000 ex points (yes ten THOUSAND) BEFORE you leave to go get Ge'els.

And how you interact with Avallac'h during the trip to Ge'els can grant you as few as 20 (twenty) ex points or as many as...

wait for it...

>>>35,000

#Yes, you can gain THIRTY-FIVE THOUSAND EX POINTS during the quest Through Time and Space, just for being nice to Avallac'h.

In total, that one quest, can give you UP TO 50,000 ex points

You gain a level and an ability point for every 2,000 ex points.

If you are NICE to Avallac'h you can gain a whopping 10 (TEN) levels and 10 (ten) ability points, just for doing his one quest.

But then you have to go to his lab with Ciri... and this same thing repeats itself once again, with how you interact with Avallac'h effecting how many ex points, levels, and ability points you gain.

Listen to the background hud noises every time you click on any choice with Avallac'h, you'll here a "ca-ching" sound trigger after every option you select - that sound is the game engine adding up how many ex points that option gave you.

In total, if you pick ALL the "good" options on the "In Avallac'h We Trust" flow chart, you will gain an astounding 100,000 ex points, increase 50 levels and gain 50 ability points.

If you want ex and gaining levels fast, your number 1 way to do it is to be nice to Avallac'h.

I have never reached the end of the main story at anything less than 70 levels, and it's because I've never done the bad choices with Avallac'h and have always unlocked his insanely overpowered ex, level, and ability point bonuses.

Avallac'h really was helping you a lot more than you realized when you played the game.

To get the insane huge bonus from Avallac'h:

1: do not pick any snarky options when talking to him

2: do not pick any options that suggest killing anyone (he's a pacifist)

3: do not pick any option the mentions swords or blades

4: ask him every "white" option possible

5: do not SKIP ANYTHING with Avallac'h - cutscenes included

6: grit your teeth and be nice to his mega bitch wife Isilira (Avallac'h is a psion, he can see and hear EVERYTHING you say and do, even when you are miles away - he KNOWS every word you said to her)

7: trash his house - yep, that's the good option (Ciri does it often in the novels and he thinks it's funny to watch humans act like barbaric, mindless savages, thus proving what he already knew - Elves are superior)

8: DO NOT touch Lara Dorren's necklace (doing so will ERASE any point you already got and leave you with 10 ex no matter what else you did)

9: take Ciri to visit Skjall's grave (Again, Avallac'h is a psion, he knows if you are helping Ciri or making her cry)

10: After visiting Skjall's grave go back to Avallac'h. Don't immediately walk up to him. Wait for Yen to run to him first and listen to what they say as Avallac'h and Yen break out into a bitter, heated argument. DO NOT SKIP THIS SCENE. Wait for Yen to accuse him of being a stalker obsessed with Ciri, then go talk to Avallac'h.

11: IGNORE the option to ask him who the she-elf in his lab is (if you throurally looted the place, you have his diary and already know who she is) - DANGER!!!! If you select this option, you will get ZERO ex points for every interaction with Avallac'h after this, and will receive 50% fewer points for EVERY QUEST in the game after this point - ALL QUESTS! You will also LOSE ALL future options to interact with Avallac'h.

12: IGNORE the option to ask him about Lara Dorren - You will LOSE ALL future options to interact with Avallac'h and loss any ex points you already gained.

13: When the option to do so shows up, pick "I believe you" - this will trigger the In Avallac'h We Trust Dialogue and unlock 2 rare cutscenes with Avallac'h: the one when he talks about the rape scene in the novels and the highly sought after but often missed rope scene.... this option alone grants you 35,000 ex points.

14: Ask ALL the "white" options. If you've done everything on this list correctly up to this point there will be A LOT of them. There should be a question about him rutting unicorns, why is he helping Ciri, and who is Caranthir (these 3 don't always show up - if you've pissed him off they won't be there) his answers to those 3 are important to the final boss fight.

Yes, Avallac'h is an arrogant, self-righteous, perverted prick... but he is insanely in love with Ciri and he will secretly reward you for helping her.

#10a: Did you know EVERY TIME you belittle Avallac'h in front of Ciri, Ciri becomes more depressed and loses her self-confidence?

Even when Avallac'h is NOT there, you can gain or lose points from him, based on what you say about him to Ciri.

Nearly every conversation with Ciri includes an option where Geralt can choose to belittle Ciri for spending time with Avallac'h.

Choosing these options gains you negative points with Ciri, contributing to your chances of getting the Dead Ciri ending.

Remember. Ciri is Queen of Cintra and her choices have been undermined by EVERYONE, here entire life. Made Queen at only 8 years old when her father murdered her mother, no one has ever let Ciri make ANY choices on her own.

The entire first few years of her reign as queen, she WAS NOT ALLOWED TO MAKE CHOICES because she was a child, and advisors ruled her kingdom while completely ignoring anything she said.

Ciri, as an adult, put her foot down, defied everyone, and took back her right to make choices and she did so by getting rid of ALL of the people who were not letting her make her own choices and replaced them all, with one person: Avallac'h.

Avallac'h stands unique among the other characters in that he has NEVER stood in the way of Ciri's choices. He has never told Ciri how to live her life, never undermined her decisions, never forced her to do anything, never took away her freedom to choice. While he is quick to tell her all the reasons why she shouldn't do something, he also steps aside and lets her do it anyways.

#^^It is for THIS REASON that Ciri made Avallac'h her advisor and royal court mage^^

This is a very important fact to keep in mind.

Why?

Because making Avallac'h her chief advisor and royal court mage was the first decision Ciri has EVER made on her own. EVER. In her entire life.

And because Ciri looks up to Geralt as a father figure and wishes to please him.

Ciri is prone to making poor decisions for her own life, just to try to make Geralt like her.

It becomes a balancing acts of Ciri wanting to be her own person, but Ciri also having trouble cutting the apron strings and clinging dearly to Geralt's opinion.

Geralt is a very opinionated person who hates everything, but then anything else, he hates Avallac'h.

Ciri has had to hide her relationship with Avallac'h from Geralt for a very long time.

Ciri has been Avallac'h's lover since she was 12 years old. She is now 33 years and Geralt is only just learning that Ciri and Avallac'h have been living together.

Ciri knows Geralt and Avallac'h had a bitter past history and that Geralt had tried to kill Avallac'h many years ago. Ciri is terrified that Geralt is going to hate her, if Geralt finds out that Avallac'h is her lover. Ciri's is having a hard enough time as it is struggling with how to tell Geralt that her first action as queen was making Avallac'h her advisor and court mage.

Every time the player, picks a dialogue option that has Geralt talking bad about Avallac'h, mages, and magic, WATCH what Ciri does....

...she turns away from the camera, starts nervously racing her fingers on a mug or sword or whatever she''s holding, and CIRI STARTS CRYING.

The camera zooms right in on her, leaving Geralt in the background.

While Geralt belittles Avallac'h in the background, the camera zooms in on Ciri as she starts crying.

There are more then a dozens times when you can pick an anti-Avallac'h option while talking to Ciri and make her start crying.

You will get only 2 ex points for that quent, whatever quest it mat be, if you make Ciri start crying at any time during the quest.

During the Dead Ciri ending, you will be shown a flash back that includes 5 of these scenes, and for most players, it's the first time they are even aware they made Ciri cry. Very few streamers ever notice her crying during the quest and only notice she was crying when the watch the Dead Ciri ending flashback sequence.

Ciri is in love with Avallac'h, and you undermine her choices every time you pick a dialogue option that says something bad about Avallac'h to her... this in turn causes you to lose ex points, hindering your ability to level up over the course of the game.

#How you treat Avallac'h, how you interact with Avallac'h, and how to talk about Avallac'h when he's not around has a HUGE impact on your ability to gain ex points, gain levels, and gain ability points.

If you are mean to Avallac'h and go out of your way to try to break him and Ciri up - you will find yourself reaching the end of the base game struggling to fight it;s overpowered level 35 bosses while you are still only level 15 or 20.

If you were nice to Avallac'h and went out of your way to try to strengthen his relationship with Ciri, you will breeze through the end of the base game at level 60 or 70 while one hit dropping it's weak level 35 bosses.

#11: Get the damned Rune Maker in the game! Do it BEFORE you start the main quest!

As soon as you leave Vizima and enter Velen at the Hanged Man's Tree, you will IMMEDIATELY be given a new quest from the Hearts of Stone Expansion, which tells you to go to the Upper Mill and talk to the Rune Wright.

Yes, your chat WILL be screaming "Don't do the dlcs!!!!!"

#Kick your fucking chat in the ass and tell them to go fuck themselves.

#Chat is not god, 9 times out of 10 they don't know shit about this game and will advise you to make the exact same stupidly idiotic mistakes and errors they made

If the game tells you to do a quest... DO IT NOW, when the game tells you. Even if it's a dlc quest... the game tells you to do the quest WHEN they are SUPPOSED TO BE DONE. You do them out of order and mess up the main story big time if you skip them and do them later.

#The game tells you to do quests WHEN YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO DO THEM!!!!!!!!

There are quests in the dlcs that you are REQUIRED to do BEFORE the Battle of Kaer Morhen, because they DRASTICALLY change the game by KEEPING ALIVE the primary main npc that ALWAYS dies during that quest otherwise!!!!

That said, the Rune Write is the single number 1 reason why you are NOT able to fight bosses.

This guys makes super mega powered armor and swords.

I am CONSTANTLY getting asked:

"What mod is that ___ you are using?"

And nearly every time someone asks that question, it is NOT A MOD they are referring to, but a sword or armor upgrade I bought from the RuneMaker!

I've encountered HUNDREDS of gamers who said they thought the runewright upgrades sounded lame so they NEVER EVEN BOTHERED TO TRY THEM.... these same hundreds of streamers have been shocked and dumbfounded when they each asked about the OP attack powers I use in my game and were stunned to learn that these are those "lame skills" they never bothered to try.

The RuneWright Enchantments are a beast and you can tank through the biggest Death March bosses with them.

In my 1st Avallac'h playthrough, you saw my level 14 Avallac'h one hit drop Toad - a 40 level boss, simply by casting Yrden on the ground. Yrden shot out a lighten bolt that started multiplying around Toad, and dropped him in one hit, with out Avallac'h ever needing to pull out a sword.

That spell is called Entanglement... the Runewright will add it to your armor.

Throughout my current playthrough, you see me march Avallac'h through the Redanian Camp at the Oxenfurt Bridge... and casting igni, that one hit drop 30 (THIRTY) red skull soldiers at once, as they explode into oblivion.

This is Eruption - a spell I bought from the Runewright.

You see me frequently have Avallac'h running around naked, nothing but a towel on, no armor, no swords, and one hit dropping bosses by cast single spells... I had the runemake put spells on the towel.

You can literally put a RuneWrite enchantment on any shitty, 0 damage sword or armor and with your level 3 Geralt one hit drop ever 40 level boss in the game.

You've seen me do it.

The runewright enchantments ARE that powerful.

Most people never even try to get the runewright in the game and the few who do, never bother to buy his spells. They don't know what they've missed out on.

#12: Inventory management and endless micromanaging makes up at least 40% of this game - ignore that aspect of the game and Witcher 3 will drag your ass to hell and back leaving you running back to the safety of Dark Souls' much easier to play game

There are over a dozen blacksmiths in the game, as many armors, herbalists, and alchemists, as well as 3 hidden mages you can find, a bookseller, a loan shark, 2 bankers, innkeepers, and a whopping 100+ merchants.

These people are important.

They will make your life in this game so much easier.

Yet around 80% of all players never unlock more then 3 or 4 of these npcs, and the few that do rarely visit them.

Have you ever noticed that most of my streams are 4 to 6 hours long and I spend on average 2 to 3 hours of each stream riding a horse back and forth between merchants and smiths and doing a hell of a lot of work in the inventory menus?

You see me going sometimes 2 or 3 streams between a boss fight, because I'll spend the entire 12+ hours of those streams prepping my weapons, spells, and inventory for said fight.

#^^^THIS IS WHY I WALK INTO BOSS FIGHTS AND ONE-HIT DROP MEGA HIGH LEVEL BOSSES^^^^

Have you ever noticed I ALWAYS go to a blacksmith to get my gear repaired, read the in-game books to find out what I'm up against, then go to an alchemist to make potions, then go to an innkeeper to buy food - BEFORE I set out to fight a boss?

#And I do this for EVERY SINGLE FIGHT.

Have you ever noticed that when I get a sword made, I'll make 14 (yes FOURTEEN) copies of that same sword and carry all of them with me at once?

This is so that when in battle, soon as my sword drops to 90% I can drop it and switch out to another 100% sword, meaning I'm ALWAYS using a fully repaired 100% damage sword throughout the entire battle.

I NEVER fight with a sword that's fallen under 90% because of this.

Notice too, that I do the same thing with armor?

I carry 14 copies of Avallac'h's blue toga in my inventory at all times, and soon as it starts to take damage, I swap it out with one that is 100%. So armor protection is ALWAYS at 100% throughout the battle.

Some battles are long and grueling and will quickly drop your sword to 50% even 0%, meaning your 800 damage sword only does 400 damage at 50% and does ZERO damage at 0%

Avallac'h's staff deals 8,000 damage, so at 50% it drops to 4,000 damage. That is quite a BIG difference and you notice it fast in battle, soon as you hit a guy and you hit him for half the expected amount.

That's why I have Avallac'h carrying 14 copies of his staff. Soon as it drops to 90%, I switch it out with a fully repaired 100% staff.

And have you seen my food menu?

I'm carry 100+ baked apples, 100+ cow's milk, 100+ raspberry juice, 100+ olives, 100+ dried fruit, at any given time.

With survival skills added to the game, Avallac'h can die of starvation, thirst, or fatige. HE MUST EAT and DRINK to stay alive, and he must do so multiple times throughout the day or he'll become too weak to walk, let alone fight.

Because of this we go through food supplies fast.

And while it looks like my food stores are always full and I don't need to be constantly buying food... watch how fast Avallac'h goes through the food and we run on empty if I STOP going to innkeepers and buying food every 2 or 3 hours in my streams.

While the vanilla game does not have survival skills (this is a mod I added), so you don't have to worry about hunger, thirst, or fatigue... the principle of being prepared still applies.

Far too often I see players run into battle, broken swords, broken armor, no potions, AND no food... and then they wonder why they are struggling to fight the boss?

You'll have much more fun and enjoyment in your gameplay if you make use of the innkeepers, blacksmiths, alchemists, and merchants.

Take things slow and steady, travel to each of these merchant to get supplies, gear, food, and repairs, THEN head off to battle prepared for the fight and with a chance of winning with ease.

Far too many people play this game with a mind set of rushing through it just to get to the end as fast as possible, and they end up frustrated, upset, and disapointed as a result of their scatterbrained, unprepared, slash and dash, hectic method of running through the game.

You will NOT enjoy the game if you try to do it your own way and disobey the game's mechanics that it spells out for you every step of the way.

#13: This is an OPEN WORLD game and it gave you a horse for a reason... the game is NOT meant to be rushed through... it's meant to be enjoyed.

When the game tells you: "go here and get that" and you discover that you have to travel 50 miles to the other side of the continent, what do you do?

If you are like most streamers, you start screaming, yelling, crying, throwing your keyboard, saying you want to smash your monitor, and then rage quite the stream.

The next day you come back on, fast travel from point to point, skip cutscenes, yell that there is too much talking, too much traveling, too many quests, and too many monsters.... whie I wonder why you are even playing this game at all since clearly you hate everything about it.

If you are a sane, rational, mature, level-headed adult, you call your horse, follow the dotted white line on the map, and take a long leisurely horseback ride over hill and dale, through forest and glade, and explore the world. It'll take you at least an hour to get to where the quest is sending you and you will see some of the most breathtaking landscapes in gaming history, stop to eat at inns along the way, help random old ladies find lost items (gaining you ex, coins, levels, and ability points)...

ANA...

... you started out this trip at level 5, got to your location at level 8, found out the boss was level 10, and thought:

>>> "DAM! Good thing I road my horse here and racked up all that extra ex on the way here, if I'd fast traveled I'd never have been able to fight this thing. Lucky for me that dotted white line lead me past all those little old ladies needing help on the way here. Thank goodness I helped them and leveled up on the way here."

If you fast travel everywhere, you will be WAY too low level for EVERY boss you fight in the game.

If you follow the dotted line on the map, it will ALWAYS take you through little points of interest, where you find merchants, homeless, orphans, old ladies, even the ghost of a friendly dog all needing help.

Yep, Friendly Dog, the little Rottweiler puppy dog you see traveling with Avallac'h in my playthrough, came to us through one such quest... now don't you wish you had skipped the fast traveling and explore the world so you could have Friendly Dog as your travel companion too?

Those dotted lines on the map, take you past EXACTLY the things you need to gain the ex, gear, levels, and ability points that you will need to use when you get to the quest location.

If you say to hell with your horse, to fck with exploring, and just fast travel to the quest destination, you start out level 5 and reach the level 10 boss while you are still level 5 AND you miss out on all the beautiful sunsets, snowstorms, and villages that the game devs put so much hard work into creating.

#..............................................

Not a tip, but, let's call it one because the sooner you learn it the better...

#No one ever gained lots of views, followers, or subs by playing Witcher 3

Nearly EVERY streamer who I've seen play Witcher 3 has a few things in common:

>1: a brand new channel with under 50 views and 5 or fewer followers

>>2: starts their Witcher 3 playthrough saying they picked this game SPECIFICALLY because it was so popular and therefore would help them become big streamers like Ninja

Some facts:

#1: Ninja has never played Witcher 3 (I know, I watch most of his streams - he's almost exclusively Fortnite)

#2: I am literally the BIGGEST Witcher 3 channel on Twitch.

But with 30,000 views and 200 followers, I'm also one of the smallest channels on Twitch.

Let that soak in for a minute.

Once in a while you see someone with 20, 30, even 100 or more viewers, while playing Witcher 3. It happens, but it's rare.

And here's the big shocker that you REALLY want to think about: those people bringing in 200 viewers while streaming Witcher 3 - look at their NORMAL view count - every one of them have 1 to 10 million viewers and NORMALLY have 1,000 to 7,000 viewers per stream.

Streamers with mega, monster sized channels, channels that get 5,000 viewers per stream, struggle to get even 100 viewers on the times they stream Witcher 3.

Know this right now: If you are only playing Witcher 3 because you got it into your head that it'll bring in lots of followers, views, and subs because it one Game of the Year... you are in for a HUGE disappointment.

Even when Witcher 3 was new, streamers struggled to get views for it.

Did you know that both PewDiePie and JackSepticEye both played Witcher 3 and both, even with 30million to 70 million subs - both of them struggled to reach 2,000 views on ANY of their Witcher 3 videos? We are talking streamers who get 2million+ views per stream and 40million+ views per VOD... they couldn't even hit 2,000 views stream or VOD with Witcher 3.

Play Witcher 3 because you enjoy the game. But don't play it expecting to build a huge community around it. That's not gonna happen.

Witcher 3 has long been a game that is fun to play, but few care to watch you play it.

Most people who wanted to watch it for the story, watched someone else play it 4 years ago and has no interest in rewatching it.

The people who do watch it are for the most part like myself - Witcher fanatics who just keep rewatching the game hundreds of times. There aren't many of us out there. A few hundred at best, and guess what... when you stop playing Witcher 3 and move on to the next game, we stop watching your channel and move on to the next new streamer who is playing it.

Witcher 3 fans consistantly watch the game for the game, and don't stick around for the streamer.

It's WHY you so rarely see anyone post in chat of any Witcher 3 stream.

Most viewers are not interested in getting to know the streamer. They are not looking to be your friend. They will not become part of your community. They were there for the game. Only this and nothing more.

If you saw me in your chat, that's because you somehow stood out as a streamer and I liked you as a streamer, so, I stuck around, even after you stopped playing Witcher 3.

It doesn't happen often.

In most cases, you'll never know I was one of your viewers because I rarely ever post in chat.

And most Witcher 3 viewers are like this.

Most streamers who gain huge followings, are playing chat interactive multiplayer games like Fortnite or PUBG. If you are looking for subs, views, and followers, that's the type of game you need to play, not Witcher 3.

#..............................................

Hopefully this info helps you out in playing your own game.

While Witcher 3 is a popular award winning gaming, it is not a game well suited to everyone.

It is not a fast paced game, nor should you try to play it as one. It is a long, slow moving, grindy game full of lots of op bosses and dozens of monsters waiting to kill you around every turn.

It is a game that requires a lot of slow, thought out planing of tactics and strategies.

It requires a lot of reading... A LOT OF READING... there are more then 600 books to be found in the game, many of them have as many words as a full chapter of a real world paperback novel.

If you don't like in-game reading you are going to struggle heavily with this game as many of the game's info on how to fight monsters can only be found by searching for books about said monsters.

It requires lots of looting, lots of herb gathering, lots of flower picking, lots of traveling back and forth between distant locations, lots of pen world exploration to uncover hidden secrets, lots looking for and reading books, lots of doing small missions for npcs to get rare items needed for the main story....

Played PROPERLY as the game devs intended it - the main game WITHOUT dlcs takes 200 hours MINIMUM to play.

If you rushed through the game in anything less than 200 hours, you MISSED A LOT, including you missed most of the main story.

This game is an acquired taste and is not for everyone, so don't expect to like it just because someone else does or because it won a lot of awards.

There are plenty of award winning games that I think are absolute shit. Does that mean they are bad games? No. It just means they are not suited to my tastes.

Remember, there is nothing wrong with starting a game, learning it's not your type of game, and just walking away. No one ever said you had to slog through a game you didn't like.

The important thing is to have fun.

There is no real right or wrong way to play a game. Heck, look at me, I haven't played Witcher 3 as it was intended for over a year now. I went and rewrote the whole damned freaking game.

The right way to play any game, is to play it in a way that you have fun playing it. If you are not having fun playing the game, there's no reason to keep playing. Find another game one that is fun, and have fun.

I see far too many people start playing Witcher 3, get frustrated with it, and then spend weeks slogging through it, determined to finished it, but not having any fun. Don't do that. Don't do that. There is no rule that says you have to finish every game you start.

Play while you are having fun. And when it stops being fun, move on to another game. Your personal health and mental happiness is far more important then finishing a game that is frustrating you and making you feel stressed out.

Remember.... Don't feel depressed or defeated if you don't finished the game. Witcher 3 is a VERY difficult game. Even people who breezed through Dark Souls find Witcher 3 to be a long, tedious, grindy, annoying game that throw way too many monsters at you way too often.

If you scroll down, you will find 100+ other questions people have asked, that I have answered here on my profile, including a step-by-step guide to how to play Death March the way I do (without mods)