Blood and Wine Discussion

With the final expansion for The Witcher 3 coming out tomorrow, I would love to hear everyone's thoughts on the DLC once it unlocks. I had a blast with Hearts of Stone, and if Blood and Wine is set to be between 20 and 40 hours or so, it's bound to be awesome. ( Roach is still going to be the dumbest horse ever I bet. )

Edit: So I just beat the main quest line and I got the worst possible ending. Exact same thing happened to me on my first time thorough the main game. I suck at predicting the consequences of my actions!

I think it's actually live on GOG right now. I had a big 14 GB update for the expansion and latest update. Excited to close out my holiday weekend playing this

Edit: It's for sure up and ready to go as 7 p.m. CST

Downloading now! Can't wait to see that new city =)

@mikemcn: Where exactly is the new location on the world map? Is it to the south near Vizima? Or somewhere else?

@busto1299: Just go to the nearest Quest board in Velen to pick the starting quest, the breadcrumb will do the rest. You' ll eventually auto-travel to the new location.

@aktivity: Ok cool. Thanks!

Was wondering if any could help me. I completed the witcher 3 on the ps4 and have the saves in the cloud, in the meantime I had to replace the ps4 so don't have them on the system as the game is not installed on the new console (and traded in). If I downloaded blood and wine would it be able to pull my character from the saves.

I appreciate this is elementary if I need the original game on the system to play blood and wine.

@snowypliskin: Pretty sure you can just get your save off the cloud to start Blood and Wine, but if for some reason you can't, they let you start the DLC with a pre made character

@busto1299: cheers for the reply.

It's kind of depressing that this 18 dollar piece of dlc is better/bigger than most full priced games. For that I think it should be a game of the year contender. Fuck the rules.

I wonder if they'll make it standalone at some point.

They made Destiny eligible last year because of the Taken king, so it should actually be within the rules!

One thing you can say straight off the bat is that it sure is colorful. It's almost like CDPR saw all this dark, dire fantasy that has been going on and decided to flip the script. Apart from that it is more witching. I cleared out a wine cellar from rottfiends and started helping out with a vineyard infestation which turned out to be killing mutant plants in several locations. At level 37 though enemies hit pretty hard.

Did they remove the ability to heal by meditating? I tried it a few times last night and it didn't work. Other than that, I'm really enjoying Blood and Wine.

Are you playing at harder difficulties becouse at deathmarch as an example you dont get hp back by meditating.

@rethla: I was able to regain HP by meditating before this latest patch. I think I'm on the difficulty one below Deathmarch.

I like Blood and Wine more than Hearts of Stone already. I don't know if the main story will be as good, but everything else is just so much better. Witcher 3.5. It's the same feeling when I started W3 and was roaming Velen for the first time, the difference that Toussaint is a lot more pleasant and invinting. Just exploring abandoned vineyards and villas , playing gwent with inn keep(the music is just fantastic!) I feel like this is equivalent to chapter 4 from original Witcher.

No fast travel, no mini map. Death march with enemy scaling on new game +. It's awesome.

I played 11 hours of it. I love it. It's The Witcher 3, but more of it through new content, and that's great. Playing 280 or so hours of the game, and now perhaps 40 more, I'm still super into it. Though I was excited to play the DLC, I wasn't sure how excited I was to play another time consuming game, and yet right when I started, I was into it. Those 11 hours was in one sitting minus bathroom breaks and what have you. I've hardly touched the main quest either.

That makes me super exited to hear! I cant wait to play it but i need to gain 10levels more on my NG+ character first, i have such an terrible timing with things like this. In preparation for the Witcher 3 release i was replaying Witcher 1 and 2 and i was just at the beginning of 2 when 3 released so i couldnt start playing it until a month after release.

I stopped after the first fight but I already love it haha. Milton de Peyrac-Peyran is a phenomenal name. Kicking myself for not getting through all the books before this expansion.

Loving the new DLC so far.

Just super impressed with the scale of Blood and Wine so far. I'm walking around the main town and salivating at all the quests I've yet to start, all the Gwent I've yet to play. It's like CDPR made a whole game and called it DLC.

I'm happy to hear everyone is enjoying B&W so far. I'm honestly super stoked just to enjoy all the improvements made from patch 1.2, let alone play the new story.

The Paperchase quest is amazing! That is all.

Man, everything about this expansion is amazing. CDPR really took some lessons from the base game, and condensed/perfected it here. Also, the soundtrack is great! Definitely the best of the year so far.

If you're on the fence, jump off of the damn thing and buy this!

How is the gwent? I have to know.

I've recently started a NG+ on Death March because I enjoy pain. I've yet to buy any of the DLCs, but I'm looking forward to getting into them. Is it a good idea to play the DLCs for the first time on NG+, and if so which level do they require?

There's some really good stuff in this, I don't think the main story has as much of a draw as Hearts of Stone but honestly I think Gaunter O' Dimm is one of my favourite characters in a video games so I can't blame them for not upping themselves once more. As far as characters go I'm really liking the Duchess I think she's super cool and their depiction of Regis is great as well, they both have fantastic voice actors too which helps add a lot.So while I've not been as grabbed as I was with HoS this is still very good.

The minor gameplay changes to Points of Interest are nice too, turns out adding quest lines that send you to POI's to continue is a good way to make them seem less checklist-y (still not the greatest but better than before). I got my favourite video game sword back Aerondight in which they have seemed to have said "fuck it" in terms of any semblance of balance because now with that sword and my build all light attacks hit 6-7k damage strong attacks hitting 11-12k and a charged Rend for 24k.

I'm also glad to see that CDPR has been browsing the Nexus, they added in some of my favourite mods like manual sheathing and no-fisheye effect for Witcher Senses.

@zomgfruitbunnies: There's plenty of it and there's another tournament.the Skellige deck has some neat cards but Nilfgaard and Northern Realms are still easily the best 2 decks.

EDIT: I'll also say it's astounding that this is an expansion. This is bigger than most full priced sequels in the RPG genre from the past 5 years while still being better than most of them. If the base TW3 wasn't so exhaustingly huge that fact would be even more apparent.

@baronsamedi: Can you explain how Aerondight works? I just got it but I am too dumb to understand description in the game. I also wanted more Lady of the lake related quests or something but I think CDPRs "less is more" approach with her.

I played the hell out of TW3, to the point that I completely burned out on it. I mean, I finished it, slideshow framerate and all (I was still running two AMD 6950s and Crossfire, like usual, wasn't working properly), but when I was done, I was done. That means I completely skipped over Hearts of Stone, and practically every patch and improvement made to the game since the first or second one along with it.

That made Vinny's stream (and my reaction to it) all the more surprising; it looked like he was having a hell of a lot of fun, which made me have a hell of a lot of fun, which made me go and pick up the DLC.

Here's my take on the first big chunk of it, and on my long absence in general:

1. My Witcher-ing skills are rusty as all hell. It doesn't help that I'm playing on Death March, obviously, but I immediately ate a whole pile of shit on the very first encounter in that little village with those bandits. I forgot just how little damage you can take before you die. I started the DLC around level 43, and it made me wonder if I should go back and level up a bit more.
2. My Witcher-ing immediately got way fucking better at the second fight, as I discovered Spin To Win is still as viable as it always was. Once I remembered exactly how my build was supposed to work (keep fucking spinning and stacking bleed/poison debuffs), I became the death engine all over again. Especially in single target, boss battle fights; those poor fuckers barely last 10 seconds, but man does Geralt (briefly) look cool as hell.
3. I'm assuming the major overhaul I did to my PC is mostly responsible for this, but everything looks and plays fantastic. The area is full of bright colors, the character models look great, and it's such a far cry from the Velen hellscape that I find myself enjoying the exploration aspect to a much greater degree. My 980 Ti lets me crank the Hairworks and all that bullshit, with the end result being a very, very pretty (and well running) game.
4. The characters I've met so far have been very well acted, which I guess is just par for the course, but after being away for so long, it's amazing to discover just how much I missed this world and the people in it.
5. The music is probably the best in the series.
6. I never had a problem with the "old" movement before, but now I find it insufferable and had to switch to the "new" movement. I'm not sure if the time gap has depleted my Witcher bullshit tolerance or if the non-slideshow framerate just highlights it in a way that I hadn't experienced, but I'm glad they put in the option to change it.
7. Speaking of Witcher bullshit, fucking Roach, man. She still just goes wherever the fuck she wants. At least I made her look like a cataphract, which is cool.
8. Speaking of cool looking things, my new armor makes me look like an Assassin's Creed reject, which is very amusing.

All and all, I'm loving it so far. I probably won't ever dip my toes back into the main game, but I can see myself giving Hearts of Stone a shot once this wraps up.

I've played a few hours so far and it seems pretty damn good. But either I'm having a hard time getting back in the groove, or they made enemies a bit thougher than I remember. I recently played a ton of Dark Souls 3 so that doesn't help out either.

They improved the AI, or at least gave it better decks. I've even lost a couple of matches, which was pretty much impossible in the main game after a certain point.
There's also another Gwent tournament quest that's pretty funny.

Also while it's debatable whether the new music is better( I like it equally) the implementation of ambient music is done much more elegant. Also one particular gwent music is so good that it can be applied to very dramatic moments in game.

@edgaras1103: The sword gains damage stacks the more you hit with it in a single combat scenario without getting hit. You'll notice it starts glowing and getting a yellow trail following the blade the higher the stacks get.

On top of that when you kill an enemy with its damage stacked the sword gains permament damage that scales with whatever your level is. It currently says 20 for me I'm not sure what the cap is and how much it scales with your level though.

@odinsmana said:

Haha yes! I think one CD Projekt employee definitely had a bad experience with banks.

Yes it is! I played that quest last night. I was thinking about it this morning. Even a simple quest like going to the bank to withdraw money from an account you have turns out to be super elaborate. That's why I love this game.

Toussaint is fucking gorgeous. Wandering around Beauclair at sundown is seriously one of the prettiest moments I've ever seen in games.

With that out of the way, I am really enjoying this expansion. The new monsters are challenging to fight given the rust on my abilities, though they are being honed again. CDPR has done a great job with the sidequest writing yet again, as others have said Paperchase is great, Great Balls of Granite (I forget the full name) is another. The duchess is a great character, and I really want Palmerin de Launfal's armor.

Fuck window 1! :D

Oh wow, as I said in my earlier post this DLC starts off good but didn't pull me in as much as Hearts of Stone but I've just gotten to a point where it's really getting interesting. You'll know when you have to dress up nicely again. Also the Dwarves getting furious about changes to Gwent as a game is a hilarious commentary.

Duchess Anna Henrietta is such a fantastic character, she's on the flip side of what made Gaunter O' Dimm so interesting. It's a lot harder to make a friendly/honest character memorable as they don't hold much in the way of intrigue but they made her very endearing. They also took so much care to the way she animates from her posture, how she walks and to how she holds her hands during conversations has had a lot of attention paid to it it's really quite impressive.

The fact that the Duchess uses the royal "we" when referring to herself was one of those tiny details that had me.

Oh my god the Paperchase quest is fucking hilarious.

"I need form 202 so I can get form A23...."

"please go to window 1"

"but I just came back from there, sigh....."

Geralt stuck in bank form hell.

"excuse me....may I....I need this form....."

Is anyone else having performance issues on PC? I had it crash on me twice last night. Also, the game will be running at a smooth 60 FPS, and then it will hang for a few seconds, and after the game comes back, it won't get above 42 FPS. Restarting the game doesn't fix it, and I have to restart my entire computer.

@brandondryrock: I've had the framerate drop issue as well. Never in the middle of playing but I'll play a 1-2 hr session and then launch the game later in the day and it will run incredibly choppy at like 20FPS or worse and nothing but a full PC restart seems to fix it.

@humanity: Are you on Windows 10? Maybe they pushed out an update that is messing things up. That happens from time to time. I've also been noticing performance issues with Overwatch that can only be fixed by restarting my computer, and I should have no performance issues with Overwatch.

I am loving Blood and Wine. I did the tourney quest last night where you help Vivienne. It was so incredible. The tourney aspect of the quest reminded me of my younger days of attending Renaissance festivals. And the stuff outside of the tourney was amazing. And to think that was a side quest! I can't wait to see where the rest of this expansion takes me.

I get that sometimes when playing Smite (which usually runs at an stable 144fps for me). It must be some crazy stuff with the driver and Windows 10, maybe the card boosts to much so it overheats and go into a safemode or something.

@rethla: @brandondryrock: I am indeed on Windows 10 and this is the first game that did it. Well actually recently I think I installed DirectX for some game for some reason so maybe that is the issue. Maybe I should find the newest DirectX copy and redownload that.

@humanity: Well if you got an up to date Windows 10 you should have the latest DirectX aswell. You cant have one without the other.

There are also archespores, kikimores, and barghests in this expansion. There is a definite feel of the first game to this one. The map is about the size of Velen, but much, much more beautiful.

Man, lot of funny quests so far. Between Paperchase, Testicles, and talking Roach, I've been shocked how much I've laughed.

I've really enjoyed it so far. Memorable quests, Toussaint is beautiful, some great new gear. So good!

I have sever problems with crashing. Let me know if you find a solution.

(I have a lot of game crash problems with my computer though. Beginning to suspect the CPU)

@christoffer: I'll let you know. I'm gonna try re-installing my graphics driver and turning off all overclocking on my PC, and running a stress test on my CPU. If the CPU is starting to fail, it would be a good reason to grab an i7 instead of an i5.