Starting a new journey! But on what difficulty?

[BlueBerry_1337]

I'm really excited to start this massive game and obviously as a trophy wh*re that I can sometimes be, I looked up some of the difficulty related trophies.  I have found out that this game needs you to complete it on the highest difficulty and the opinions about it are devided. Some say it spoils the experience, some say that it's pretty easy to get used to. I have previously started other games like Dragon Age Inquisition on Nightmare and The last of us on Grounded immediately during my first playthrough. It didn't spoil my overal experience, but I sometimes did get annoyed (mostly in TLOU because of the limited resources). Should I start the game on the highest difficulty or play it first for the experience and try the highest during a second run in NG+? 

Edited November 26, 2017 by BlueBerry_1337

[that_dude_cam_ps]

Definitely start on the highest difficulty. This is a loooong game and unless you WANT to play it again... incl. dlc you’re looking at 200h to get all trophies in one playthrough. It’s not difficult, you just need to get used to it. The first 5-10 levels are tough and then it becomes really easy. Do lots of sidequests for xp and the main quests will be a piece of cake. Word of advice: dodge and roll vs just thrashing your sword, especially on tougher opponents or you will die. Oh and save after everything that you do, seriously. Nothing worse than wandering about through the world, getting ambushed by a hoard of gigantic spiders and having to do whatever you just did again

[FilmFanatic]

I’m inclined to say go for 2 playthroughs. The Witcher 3 is an amazing game however I didn’t enjoy it very much and I’m pretty sure this was because I went for a 1 playthrough plat. The difference between playing this and Dragon Age: Inquisition for a 1 playthrough plat is that for DA:I you can play as a class that has ranged attacks so never has to get too close to the enemies so there is less chance of dying. It took me a while to get used to the combat in The Witcher (I went with a critical attack build) and even then I still died a lot and what makes dying especially bad is the potentially 1 minute loading times every time and believe me it gets very annoying. By the time I finished the base game and started the first DLC I was so sick of the game I skipped through all cut scenes and dialogue just to get the DLC trophies out of the way. However when the 2nd DLC released I played it on normal difficulty and really enjoyed it.

 

I’ve never been a big fan of playing through a game on the highest difficulty required by a trophy for the first time as you don’t know the game which can make it hard which can let to frustration which leads to me not enjoying the game. Depending on how much time you want to spent playing The Witcher 3 you can either go with 1 playthrough and hopefully you don’t find it frustrating or do a full playthrough on normal then run through the game a second time on Death March just completing the main missions required for the trophy.

[nyonmyan]

I started playing through W3 recently on normal difficulty and I'm not enjoying it. Probably because everything is already established and predetermined, so it's like starting a book in the middle.

I'm planning to do as much trophies as I can on said normal difficulty, such as pushing enemies off high places, etc., then I will quit and start a Death March playthrough to get story trophies and card collectibles.

Hope that helps.

Edited November 26, 2017 by nyonmyan

[Shadiochao]

Definitely start on the highest difficulty. It used to be fairly difficult, but in mid-2016 a new ability was added that made it significantly more manageable. That ability causes every single food item to provide constant healing for a period of 20 minutes.

 

For someone who hasn't played, the highest difficulty was hard because health was very limited. Scarce amounts of food items only healed for 5-20 seconds and you could carry a couple of renewable potions that healed you a little, but there were no other forms of health regeneration. You really had to be careful to not take too much damage during any one battle.

 

With this ability, all that went straight out the window. By the time I even left the first area I already had enough food to heal me nonstop for the rest of my time getting the platinum trophy. Enemies still do a fair amount of damage, but it's not really anything to worry about when your health is regenerating all the time.

 

But even before this ability, things got easier the further you progressed into the game. It was just the first half that was quite rough.

[Leaderboards]

Play Death March

Use this build for leveling https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=453260742

If there's a place you need to go, I'm the one you need to know, I'm the map, I'm the map https://witcher3map.com/

Don't roll, do the dance evade thing

Romance redheads >:)

Get Plat

Edited November 26, 2017 by TurdFlingingApe

[BlueBerry_1337]

@cam_wick Yes 200h is very long, but if i like it that much maybe i will play the NG+. And I have learned about saving the hard way so I hope I won't make the same mistakes again.

 

 @FilmFanatic I think I might start with hardcore and switch to normal if i don't enjoy it. I really liked DAI on nightmare since it was a challenging. So hopefully this will be too. And I havent checked the dlc trophies yet. Do they also need to be completed on the hardest or can I just switch back to normal after completing the main story?

 

@nyonmyan I hope I will get at least slightly get the story since I havent played the first games, but Ive also completed DAI without playing the previous games and still enjoyed it. Hopefully I will be able to enjoy this game too no matter the difficulty.

 

@Shadiochao I will definitely make use of that ability! Ive also seen some glitches that can boost up your lvl. Are they worth making use of or does it spoil the experience?  

 

@TurdFlingingApe lmao I will check that build out for sure. Thank for the tips!

[Redgrave]

I did Death March on NG+ and I really think the only difference between doing it from NG+ and from scratch is you get a better head start in terms of equipment, skills, and abilities but it's not a major one since enemies are still around your level. Death March starting out from the beginning or NG+ doesn't seem to matter too much since the game is pretty fair in terms of combat and enemy difficulty (save for one Contract that I have no idea if it was either bugged or just unbalanced for whatever reason, but it's likely a lot better now). Just be aware of your level and the Quest levels and you should be fine. That is if you would rather just jump into it from the beginning so you don't have to do two playthroughs but honestly the game is good enough to warrant two but that's just me.

 

Anyway, if you want a build tip, this is what I used.

 

Refreshment: 5/5

Endure Pain: 5/5

Acquired Tolerance: 5/5

 

Those are in the Alchemy slot, and if you use a Greater Green Mutagen you can get a 600+ Health bonus. I imagine now with the Blood and Wine extra slots you can increase that by a lot. There's also maxing out the Quen sign which lets you take free hits and there's another ability that lets you use Adrenaline points for Sign casting for when your Stamina gets too low.

 

But if you would rather wait for NG+ then I also recommend downloading the Wolf School Gear DLC which is free. It's basically a jack-of-trades gear that goes for all builds and it helped me out with Death March when I used it. There's also some pretty OP potions you can make which is one other reason having Acquired Tolerance in the Alchemy slot is necessary. Unfortunately I forgot the name of these potions. I believe they were Chort or Basilisk Decoction, and that's assuming they weren't nerfed by the time Hearts of Stone came out. There used to be one that pretty much broke the game. Even if they are nerfed, you can still become pretty powerful and with the Alchemy build I listed you will get increased stats and heal every time you use one. Definitely be sure to get the Superior Thunderbolt potion too, since that pretty much carried me throughout the game on Death March.

[FilmFanatic]

@BlueBerry_1337 The DLC doesn’t have any difficulty related trophies so you can switch it down once completing the base game. I quite enjoyed DA:I on Nightmare as well however when it came to taking down my first high dragon I got my ass handed to me on a silver platter and I ended up running through the last few main quests for the trophy so I could turn the difficulty down however my problem was I didn’t use fire damage reduction potions which was the key to defeating them. After literally 5 minutes I switched from normal to hard as it was too easy and after 5 to 6 hours I was back on Nightmare and completed the rest of the game including 8 high dragons on Nightmare anyway.

 

The ability to health up quickly and easily should make Death March easier as when I played it you needed a lot of food on you at all times to stop you from dying.

 

The storyline is easy enough to follow but there is a heap of background stuff you won’t know about unless you’ve played the first 2 games. I had to research whether to romance Triss or Yennifer as they were both equally very attractive and ended up going with Triss as based on information it seemed like she was the best choice. It might also be worth paying a bit of attention to the different endings for some characters as I didn’t know about them and got a sad ending I didn’t care for.

 

It’s possible that most XP glitches have been patched by now but even if they haven’t I always prefer levelling up naturally myself. Ultimately levelling up quickly probably won’t make that big a difference compared to getting new schematics for better weapons and I believe to make a better weapon you need a lower level weapon first anyway.

[maniek515]

First of all I loved every minute out of nearly 350 hours I invested in playing W3 2 times (1st playthrough and NG+).

 

I started on normal and I think it was perfectly balanced at the beginning, however once you get the idea of how fighting mechanics work, it can become very easy. For me it was around level 10 or something. 

 

After 1st playthrough I immediatly started NG+ on death march and didn't really feel any difference. Important thing here might be the fact I had both dlc's and some of mutations from Blood and Wine are simply overpowered. I was abusing that freezing Aard mutation, it was hell of a fun but made most of the fights a breeze. 

 

It was definetly worth playing for a second time, I encountered few funny side quests I missed on my 1st playthrough (for example the one with sleeping vampire in Novigrad's sewers) and generally gameplay along with story makes this game a wonderful experience.  

 

Actually I just grabbed GOTY edition from black friday deal just to 100% this masterpiece once again

[Kyl542]

I bought the complete edition and i am intending to do a spoiler free normal run first (dont wanna check guides cus want to experience everything on my own) can i do the expansions only on ng+ death march or do i have to beat the expansions aswell to access them on ng+?

[Feral]

Play it on a lower difficulty and enjoy this masterpiece without frustrations wrecking it for you.

 

It deserves multiple playthroughs anyway.

[maniek515]

59 minutes ago, Kyl542 said:

I bought the complete edition and i am intending to do a spoiler free normal run first (dont wanna check guides cus want to experience everything on my own) can i do the expansions only on ng+ death march or do i have to beat the expansions aswell to access them on ng+?

 

You don't. Dlc's missions will be available on NG+ whether you finish them on your original playthrough or not. 

[ddracarys]

Death March + God Mode gurll. 

[JSVilleneuve]

On 27/11/2017 at 10:22 AM, Feral said:

Play it on a lower difficulty and enjoy this masterpiece without frustrations wrecking it for you.

 

It deserves multiple playthroughs anyway.

I did 2 playtroughts just like Feral said and if you wanna fully enjoy this game you should take it, yes it will probably take 200 hours, yes when i finished the normal playtrought i wanted to kill myself thinking i had to repeat everything again but at the end it was all worth it  The game is amazing and when you finished it after all that time you are still gonna miss it.
Resume... If you enjoy gaming start normal, if you are just going for trophies start on the higher dificulty... 

[that_dude_cam_ps]

1 hour ago, ddracarys said:

Death March + God Mode gurll. 

You haven’t even played the game

[ddracarys]

16 minutes ago, cam_wick said:

You haven’t even played the game

 

You don't know that. 

[that_dude_cam_ps]

7 hours ago, ddracarys said:

 

You don't know that. 

I checked your profile ? 

[ddracarys]

On 11/30/2017 at 5:38 AM, cam_wick said:

I checked your profile  

 

Great, I'm glad you can use a basic search function. Unfortunately, you are still wrong however. 

[Platinum_Vice]

Death March. Since level 12 ish it has been a piece of cake. Especially when using every aspect of the combat system and using Quen/sidestepping. When you add in all the different types of buffs you melt your enemies.

 

Just save often and use the Trophy Guides on this website.

[Bartolomeus]

I first played it on normal, and then on DM. Enjoyed the DM run more, but I think one of the reasons was that I'd already played through the game once. The first time it took a little while for me to sync to the game's rhythm, so to speak, and I skipped several side missions to progress the story, as if I was a bit anxious to just get to the end of the game. On my second go I loved the game from beginning to end, and I really did most of what you can do in the game, except for a few treasure hunts and some questionmarks I didn't visit.

 

In my opinion DM was also more fun as it forces you to learn the combat system and use the various tools at hand. On normal I didn't see any purpose in making oils and different potions and decoctions, because I had swallow, thunderbolt and quen which was all I really needed on normal. On DM though, I had to invest into the alchemy skill tree to get the skills that raises Geralt's tolerance due to the different potions and decoctions I was using for different fights. I also had to learn to time my dodges mor efficiently.

 

However, if I'd played my first playthrough on DM I'm not sure if I would love the game as much as I do now. If you feel up for two playthroughs, which you probably will want to at the end of the game anyways, I'd say: go for medium on your first playthrough, play through the game and have fun, and come back a week or six months after your first playthrough to kick ass on DM while making some different choices and doing everything you can do in the game. It's absolutely worth it.

[Prokky_pew]

I played the game with all DLC on normal difficulty, got all achievements, best gear and started NG+ on Death March and beat it in about 10h, like a walk in the park. Didn't feel any difficulties with the platinum.

Edited December 1, 2017 by Prokky_pew

[Taliesin_2943]

this games hardest difficulty is really not that bad honestly the hardest part is the first area and even that isnt too bad if u poke around and level up and practice a little bit leveling in this games slow as f**k till late in the game but no worries just practice with your signs and such and ull be fine i usually hate doing hard runs but with this after the first area and a little into the next i forgot i was even on hard mode its rough im not gunna lie but it feels more like u just need to practice abit not like omfg this is impossible just avoid red skull enemies do missions only a couple levels up from u read ur index use ur signs brew potions ull be fine no worries and its abit easier if u are doing game of the year or have all the dlc cause they add afew things that help

 

honestly your biggest hurdle and i mean seriosly bad news kinda thing is its hard to make money seriously loot everything sell what ur not using loot more sell loot till ur half a kg from not being able to walk go sell ur stuff if shop runs out of gold just use the wait option for afew days then sell more money will be ur biggest bane till later on 

[Dantes_994]

As a person who cannot wait to play this game this was really helpful thanks guys

[MatCauthon]

I just started this game last week and went with the highest difficulty. After the first few hours, it’s not too difficult once you get use to the combat, dodging, and what signs to use.