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Forums - Gaming Discussion - What difficulty should I play The Witcher 3 at?

Peh on 20 July 2016

Glad that I don't bother with highest difficulties, because those can go from challenging to just being annoying.



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Mystro-Sama on 20 July 2016
Aeolus451 said:
Mystro-Sama said:

 

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.

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. 

Nice, thanks for the tips. I usually start whaling on them right after igni. :/



Trunkin on 20 July 2016
Aeolus451 said:
Mystro-Sama said:

 

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.

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. 

That was not my experience at all on Death March. Enemies would parry and stagger me any time I attacked head on. Especially those axe weildiñ bastards.

 OP, be sure to max out acquired tolerance if you plan on using any decoctions. Also, I don't know if it's been mentioned in this thread, but you have to equip a sign in order to enjoy the benefits pf leveling it up.

I wouldn't recommend maxing out quen, as I feel it sucks a lot of the fun out of combat, but that's up to you. I rarely used the sign at all.



Mummelmann on 20 July 2016

Played on Blood and Broken Bones on my first playthrough, it's not extremely hard but it demands attention and focus, unlike the vast majority of RPG's today, regardless of difficulty.
Once you find suitable strategies for each monster type and start mastering the signs and dodging, you'll be fine.



ghettoglamour on 20 July 2016

What do you mean by normal when there's 4 difficulty settings?

I played on the 2nd hardest and it was challenging enough, but enjoyable.
I did a lot of side stuff so that I was most of the time a couple of levels above the mission I was doing though, if you play more straight forward it might get pretty tough.

Keep in my that if you die, it'll load forever - up to 90 seconds, so it might get frustrating if you get stuck on a boss or contract.



Game of the year 2017 so far:

5. Resident Evil VII
4. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
3. Uncharted: The Lost Legacy
2. Horizon Zero Dawn
1. Super Mario Odyssey

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Aeolus451 on 20 July 2016
Trunkin said:
Aeolus451 said:

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. 

That was not my experience at all on Death March. Enemies would parry and stagger me any time I attacked head on. Especially those axe weildiñ bastards.

 OP, be sure to max out acquired tolerance if you plan on using any decoctions. Also, I don't know if it's been mentioned in this thread, but you have to equip a sign in order to enjoy the benefits pf leveling it up.

I wouldn't recommend maxing out quen, as I feel it sucks a lot of the fun out of combat, but that's up to you. I rarely used the sign at all.

I don't remember if the axe guys can parry heavy attacks or not but I know that regular humans can't parry/counter heavy attacks. They can block 'em but they can't parry then counter. It's part of the reason why I use mainly just heavy attacks and signs. I used to spam light attacks. 



Aeolus451 on 20 July 2016
Mystro-Sama said:
Aeolus451 said:

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. 

Nice, thanks for the tips. I usually start whaling on them right after igni. :/

I used to then I read some stuff. It does percentage based dots meaning if something catches fire, they'lll burn off a percentage of their health. it's one of the only abilities that scale well with your level, what you're fighting and difficulty of the game. The higher the hp of your enemies, the more damage it does. It works well when you're fighting groups or 1 vs 1 because it locks things into a "on fire" animation for a few secs which provides a nice breather. Most enemies in the game are weak to it except wraiths and most elementals.



Mystro-Sama on 23 July 2016
Aeolus451 said:
Mystro-Sama said:

Nice, thanks for the tips. I usually start whaling on them right after igni. :/

I used to then I read some stuff. It does percentage based dots meaning if something catches fire, they'lll burn off a percentage of their health. it's one of the only abilities that scale well with your level, what you're fighting and difficulty of the game. The higher the hp of your enemies, the more damage it does. It works well when you're fighting groups or 1 vs 1 because it locks things into a "on fire" animation for a few secs which provides a nice breather. Most enemies in the game are weak to it except wraiths and most elementals.

Cool, i'm considering going single target sign build since I hears that works well on this difficulty though if I do I won't have any points in melee skills unless I go hybrid... this is kinda confusing. lol



Aeolus451 on 23 July 2016
Mystro-Sama said:
Aeolus451 said:

I used to then I read some stuff. It does percentage based dots meaning if something catches fire, they'lll burn off a percentage of their health. it's one of the only abilities that scale well with your level, what you're fighting and difficulty of the game. The higher the hp of your enemies, the more damage it does. It works well when you're fighting groups or 1 vs 1 because it locks things into a "on fire" animation for a few secs which provides a nice breather. Most enemies in the game are weak to it except wraiths and most elementals.

Cool, i'm considering going single target sign build since I hears that works well on this difficulty though if I do I won't have any points in melee skills unless I go hybrid... this is kinda confusing. lol

It's a bit confusing but once you play around a bit with everything, it's not so bad for a while. You're more than likely to change your mind on what build you're using a ton of times. Going after the witcher gear sets will kinda force you to play around with different builds. The griffin witcher set is best for sign builds btw.  Both DLCs add alot of options to combat and builds too.  What do you mean by a single target sign build?