True, DG is her worst move, but I was always a fan of how she would pee it out lol

I just finished a death march complete playthrough, and its only hard at the beginning until you level up a bit, around 12-14, and can but enough points in some of the signs. After that I found it pretty easy for the rest of the way.

Only trouble you'll have is if you try to fight stuff to high level, so just stick to missions and fights near your level until your feeling confident. And SAVE before every encounter.

If you just want to explore the world freely and kill most things you stumble across, dont play on death march. But, personally, Ive played it through twice now, I found death march the more enjoyable experience.

Mmm

Why did barbarians have red beards? =P

What do you recommend leveling for early levels? I just beat the Griffin and have 2 points and haven't leveled anything yet.

I played Normal on my first playthrough and then went through on Death March on NG+. So I got have my fun and enjoy the game for what is first and then I got to be a sweaty on my second playthrough which I also found surprisingly fun. I feel like Death March is the way to do it.

Didn't do the expansions until NG+ so I dropped it down to Normal after I'd completed the main story because the expansions actually got brutally hard.

Most people recommend dumping points in Quen early on, the alt mode gives you hp back when you get hit. Its also good to have at least two points in Axii for speech checks (some late game checks require 3 points). Two very simple things which I found to make death march easier were Tawny Oil - gives you increased stamina and the Gourmet perk - which gives you health regen for 20 minutes from eating a single item of food (some food gives you 50 health per second and some gives you 80).

Really, the Gourmet perk makes much of death march almost trivial, it was only just introduced with the Blood and Wine expansion. I stopped using quen quite early on and just had fun experimenting with the different signs. All of the signs can be very powerful in the right situations.

Death march just pumps the enemies above your level full of HP, and they hit very hard. Once you get to around lvl 22-25 youll be able to take on enemies 2-3 levels above you without much problem.

If you want the platinum, play on death march from the beginning of the game and don't change the difficulty or it won't count. I recommend death march and second hardest difficulty for just playing the game.

Cool, thanks man. Do I have to download Blood and Wine to get the Gourmet perk?

Its a little tedious at the moment since i'm trying to make the combat feel like second nature but I don't intend on changing diffculty though.

Not sure, check your mutations under the General tab, and it will be on the bottom row. Vanilla game only has 4 rows, B&W added a 5th row.

Ok, I guess I'll give ya a few tips to make it a bit easier.

Whenever you cast Igni, let it burn up the enemies til it runs out before you hit them because it will cancel out the fire damage dots. Igni can out damage anything most of the time btw.

Don't bother tryin to use the crossbow on land expect to knock aerial enemies out of the sky. It's extremely weak except when you're underwater.

Human like enemies can parry your light attacks but they can't parry your heavy attacks. This also applies to fistfighting. 

You can attack while on horseback fairly easy by holding down the light attack button as you approach an enemy and their healthbar is highlighted, It will drastily slow down time to allow you to make adjusts to your aim. geralt will automatically orient his sword to the side the enemy that he is locked onto. Just release the button right before you reach 'em and it will likely hit.  I didn't know about this til after I beat the game. With a bit of practice, you'll be slaughtering bandits easily.