Blood and Wine Discussion

@rahf Thats a good point, i have taken to moving slower with Roach as to not break immersion. Not fast travelling and taking it all in is the best way to appreciate everything the devs put inot it

@rubberbabybuggybumpers: I didn't see that option come up. If you tell her that you understand her motive, does it then give you the option to ask for forgiveness? I'll try it one more time tonight.

I think it was the second or third in the list of choices right before you exit the chamber. "Forgive" or "forgiveness" is in the option. That's the one to for.

@rubberbabybuggybumpers: Thanks! I was so frustrated last night when I couldn't figure things out.

@ihatehartley123: Too fucking many. That mountain area outside of the tournament grounds? I just got off and started to fucking walk. I'm still not sure if I was supposed to even be on a horse at those points, but I don't get why they couldn't have made those bridges just a bit wider so their horse AI doesn't lose its mind.

So, I just finished a side quest called Equine Phantoms, cannot recommend doing that side mission enough. I won't give any spoilers, but Roach plays a huge part in it.

@sgtsphynx: Run Roach!

I'm a little late to the party when it comes to Blood and Wine DLC as I needed to finish Dark Souls III before heading out on another epic journey in the world of the Witcher III. I'd completely went over the original and first DLC with a fine tooth comb clocking in 700+ hours according to the in-game clock but I think that's got to be wrong. Anyway, I was so looking forward to Blood & Wine and so far am loving it although it took me about an hour to get back to grips with how the game controls. What is quite shocking though is within the first 10 minutes of gameplay I had two funny glitches.

When starting a battle with the giant I'd end up stuck in a T pose. This happened about 10 times in a row!

The next glitch came with the giant's body just completely vanishing! His clothes and so on were still there mind you. My health bar was completely empty too!

Well I just finished the main quest and for $20 piece of DLC, it feels more like a complete AAA game. I still have some side quests to do and I plan the complete all of them.

The Paperchase quest gave me serious flashbacks to an old Astérix cartoon.

How does one Skellige deck? I managed to win the Gwent tournament by sheer luck last night. Kept losing to the monster deck until I finally drew the frost weather card and scorched his ass into the ground. The dwarves beat my ass because I can't fist fight for shit. Went on to win the next three games somehow. Really not sure how. The Cerys card saved my butt in the finals after I drew it with the mysterious elf card. Still don't think the berserker cards are all that useful. Muster over mushrooms any day. Olaf is pretty great for scorch protection. I guess one has to be more strategic with Skellige than NR. Bran seems pretty powerful with Cerys and shield maidens. I can literally play those cards again in the third round for hella combo.

Gwent is fun as fuck.

Well, yeah, obviously because you were playing The Witcher. Fuck dice poker.

Seriously, though, everyone should at least try to play some Gwent. It's really not as intimidating as some people make it out to be. Northern Realms and Nilfgaard deck are really intuitive and easy to use once you get some decent cards and at least 3 spies.

I have also played around 150h of The Witcher 3 but my steam counter says 250h for some reason ;)

@zomgfruitbunnies: IF anything I thought Gwent was a little too luck based in certain situations. There are tactics but sometimes you just get a bad hand and it's like ehhh. I tried playing for a bit but ultimately gave it up.

Still have a ways to go, but so far really loving it. Right now I'm doing the Bank quest and fucking hilarious that this might be Geralts most difficult foe yet.

I cant see anything even loosely tied to the mainquest so im 99% sure its available after you beat the expansion.

They didnt trespass out of their own greed though, they where tricked into that route by other merchants greed and they wherent the first ones. On top of that there was a reward set out for the beast and many hunters tried to claim it. There was no doubt the beast already had and was gonna kill alot of more men. Its sad it has to go that way (hence the sad music and forlorn looks) but as for Geralt its basicly the same as when he jumps into the Arena to save the knight from his own folly.

@dudeglove: I find NR to be a very brain-dead and easy deck to play simply due to the number of spies it has. It's very rare that you get no spies on the initial draw, and it can absolutely hold its own against a Nilfgaard deck by using decoys because ultimately a NR deck can throw more spies back and end up with more card, not to mention Nilf spies are kind of double edged swords with their high point value. What makes Nilf stand out is the 10 point archers and medics, honestly. It makes NR decks think twice about throwing spies at them during the first round because all those potential spy revives could spell disaster for NR. As a NR player, the Villentretenmerth card is always something I have to contend with (which everyone seems to have in NG+). Sure, my five blue stripes with a horn is a really nice nuke, but Villen sends them all to the graveyard and fucks my chances for that round. In the end, I have to sacrifice my dragon hunters most of the time for scorch protection and maybe two blue stripes or my catapults (really sucks when those get scorched). It's not really that big of a deal since winning is almost guaranteed 99% of the time, but it's a little disappointing that I can't always have those 300 point rounds. ;)

Fiddled around with the Skellige deck some more and decided the berserkers really aren't worth the trouble. Skellige already needs pruning so I went with the an Craite Warriors and Cerys + shield maidens combo with the two siege boats + Drag Bon Dou and the muster ranged boat. One clear weather card + 2 scorches + situational decoys and weather cards. Though about putting in both cow and bird but went with bird alone in the end. Not sure about Ermion since I don't use berserkers so maybe removing him as well. Olaf for scorch protection, of course.

@dudeglove: Nilf has like four medics + Yenn. NR has one + Yenn. It's actually pretty scary for NR to dump spies against a Nilf deck on the first round. Luckily, I've had this happen maybe only once. Asshole kept reviving spies against me in round two. I think I still won, but it was likely very close.

The toughest guy to beat is probably the Nilfgaardian noble in the Vizima palace. The Foltest siege horn is super good for an early NR deck that lacks good cards. I probably lost to that guy like 20+ times during my first playthrough.

Still nothing compared to the Operator fight in Witcher 2. Must have died like 50+ times in my two saves combined.

There is no doubt NR is the deck you want if you wanna have a 95% chance of winning. Take anything else and you can theoreticly win if you have the right decksetup for your opponent but its at least 50% luckbased and there is no dacklayout to win them all like NR.

I have an 22card NR deck which i always get all 22 cards out to play and i never loose even if i often make blatant mistakes becouse i wanna get it moving.

Skellige deck was kinda fun to play but its luckbased and against NR and Nilfgard it just feels unfair, i had to reload 3 times before i got a lucky draw in the Blood and Wine Gwent contest. I had barely scraped together my 22 cards for a Skellige deck and didnt have Cerys or any of the really good cards yet but still.

Are you guys playing on the hard gwent difficultie that was introduced in a few patches ago?

@dudeglove:Oh, yeah. All other things equal, a Nilf deck should almost never outplay a NR deck. NR can play a max total of 7 (3 NR + decoy Nilf spies + mysterious elf) spies while Nilf should only play 3-4 (3 Nilf + mysterious elf). Nilf can theoretically play 7, as well, but at that point you're giving your opponent too many points, and Nilf doesn't have the kind of combo power a NR deck has to make up for the point deficit. In extreme cases, I guess Nilf can play 3 more spies if NR went first and Nilf used medics to throw the spies back and then throw them back again when NR decoys them back, but that's kinda pointless since Nilf should have most of remaining useful cards by the 7th spy. Basically, if both decks draw all their cards, NR will always beat Nilf if played correctly.

@rethla: Nah, playing on normal difficulty. Will change it to hard if I don't forget and see how that goes.

It's doable after beating the expansion.

I wrapped up Blood and Wine about a week ago and it was absolutely stellar. The setting, storylines, and characters all really clicked with me. I loved how you got a sense of this area having a totally different culture and set of customs. Beauclair felt so lively. They did a lot of fun stuff with quest resolutions, like hearing a bard sing a twisted account of a sidequest I took on with him to save a barber (anyone else notice the bizarre haircut he will give you by the way?), or getting to name a wine after Geralt at the end of Wine Wars. I saw some people complaining that the story wasn't the caliber of Hearts of Stone, but I was glad that this was more of an action movie plotline. Hearts of Stone is so good that I don't think you could beat it retreading the same territory, so better to do something completely different. Besides, this story provided more a bang to go out on (I mean that vampire siege of Beauclair at the end was pretty cool, that + Syanna's quest in the fairytale world together felt very Christopher Nolan to me). In my opinion, the characters in Blood and Wine were good enough to carry the whole thing. By the end I cared deeply about all of them (well, except maybe Detlaff, he went off the reservation).

Also, Regis is just the coolest dude ever.

I liked this DLC a lot.

The paperchase quest was just too funny. Monsters, bandits, noblemen, and peasants who won't pay? All are easy enemies compared to bureaucracy. The Roach quest was great, too. It was kinda breaking the fourth wall too, which was funny, just the way things people have said about Roach had been mentioned.

I'm extremely impressed with how much content there is. It's DLC that costs $19.99, and I paid $17.99 on PSN because it was at discount a few days before release. There's a ton of stuff there. And the writing is superb, of course, with a pretty subversive story (which is a Witcher staple), and great characters. The callback to "The Lesser Evil" short story, one of my favorite short stories ever, was great. There's alot of great stuff there for fans of the novels, as well. And them going for a much more High Fantasy setting, rather than the low fantasy setting that pretty much is the Northern Realms, made for a nice change of pace.

@claybrez: You might want to black out the second to last line. It's a bit of a spoiler for fans of the books who haven't played it yet.

@firecracker22: done

Finished the story quest over the weekend and loved it. Fairy tale land was great, too, although got a pretty significant fps drop near the three dwarves place for some reason. Managed to get the best ending(?). Wasn't going for it, just got a little pissed at Syanna after finding out who her last victim was supposed to be and wanted to give her a piece of my mind.

Gotta say, the final boss fight was underwhelming in terms of difficulty. Playing on DM NG+, and Detlaff was barely able to hurt me. His patterns were very easy to read and the last phase could be completely negated with whirl. Maybe alchemy bear build is just OP, I guess? I enjoyed fighting the Alps and Bruxae a lot more, honestly. Come to think of it, none of the enemies were particularly challenging in this expansion. HoS felt a lot better in terms of combat. Nightmare Olgierd gave me a run for my money on my first playthrough. Looking forward to doing him in NG+.

I really enjoyed the DLC a lot. Cool to get a last few touching moments to wrap up.

I would say my one issue is the general tone of sympathy to Syanna from everyone... which I did not share at all in my choices. When you find the letter showing she was after the Dutchess next I was not the least bit surprised. I really don't get how she was supposed to be that sympathetic given what she has done and brings about through her actions. Many die and it was all done knowingly by her and without sympathy. But even at the end sitting with Regis, I am supposed to feel regret... why? Yeah, she was certainly scrwed over at a young age, but then became something on her own. Yet she was consumed by revenge so that she would manipulate anyone and kill anyone (and by the way, says so plainly in the manner of a sociopath to Geralt). So I just really don't get the tone of anything with her. I know they need to work with her at times but it seems it should be kind of how you worked with and handled Sìle in 2 and the bits where she's in 3 where there is not trust.

I thought the last little plot twist was a little bit odd, like an early draft got into production by mistake or something. I think the game litteraly made it very clear from early on that the Dutchess was the final target. When the game then treated that paper from the beggars like a major turnaround i was just clueless as to why that was happening and the sisters actions from there on was just cheesy as hell.

I really enjoyed Blood and Wine and the mainstory but the last conclusion to the sisters beef was just bollocks.

I have no problem sympathising with Syvanna though. In the shitty world of Witcher and the way she was treated in her youth its no suprise whe wants revenge. A few people dying really aint a big deal in her state of mind.

I agree with you on the twist, and for your last part, you explain her motivations and why she doesn't care about others (again, clearly a sociopath) but not at all why she should be sympathetic. The part after you beat the Cloud Giant and she's like "hey lets fuck" I was like uhhh what? Turned her down in a second. She is an insane person. Tons of innocents who have zero to do with her being wronged are killed from her actions. Her manipulations are intentional in a way no one else's actions are in the story besides I suppose Detlaff by the end. There is nothing sympathetic there. I really didn't get the execution at the end in the ways I mention in my post. It really felt like there was more there they edited out of the story or something. Witcher is a grey area world but to me she's just a pretty evil person, case closed.

The fairy tale illusion land was pretty astonishing. The theme music and visual design were top notch, and it was neat seeing so many classic fairy tale characters from the real world being incorporated in creative ways. Crazy that this entire section of the game is missable (I assume you never see it if you choose the other option).

@artisanbreads: that does seem to be the general consensus on syanna and the main reason that the core storyline of hearts of stone is considered to be alot better. It didn't bother me too much and even with her character developments shortcomings she's still a better character than most video game villains to me. She had cause for her actions but they just failed to give a grounded reason for sympathy. I think it's not out of the realm of possibilty that they initially didnt have a sympathetic ending but decided that they needed one to send geralt out on a happy note. I initially got the bad ending and man it got me good. So good that i immediately reloaded and did the last 5-6 hours of gameplay because i didnt know what choices i made to cause the bad ending. Still my GOTY.

Just going to ditch the spoiler block stuff here... BE WARNED.

I'll have to check out the good/bad ending dynamics, I just rolled through mine making the choices I felt. I mean, the Dutchess didn't like me at all at the end but I didn't care (she was a fool for protecting her sister blindly and had become a tyrant of sorts who almost, and would have, seen Geralt killed if not for Dandelion even though he solved all the issues and saved her life). I quite liked Heart of Stone and in the goal of sympathy and development of its main characters it definitely did a way better job with Olgeird, who you can certainly come down hard on with due cause but if you sympathize with his initial choices and the darkness of his curse you can see where he comes from. Also the pain of a failing relationship, born from true initial love (hit a little close to home with me on that quest given recent personal events). Also helps that O'Dimm is such a pure evil that you can pretty easily choose to fight against him.

Given how good CDPR are, I do have to think they edited some stuff out or something. It just feels more like your usual RPG dynamics rather than their expert shades of grey characterization from Witcher 2 and 3 in particular. It really read like there were cuts given how they seem so hard to be playing the sympathy card at the end. I'm glad to hear others feel the way I do because I really felt I was missing something in the story. Even when you pursue her into the fairy tale world Geralt was way too lax and buddy buddy with her. He almost jokes "hey when I've outlived my usefulness here you might just kill me" and they just go on like that isn't clearly a real possibility and a reason not to trust this psychopath.

And past these issues, it was fantastic, don't let my post make it seem otherwise. I liked Hearts of Stone but with providing all the new content this did (and almost all of it being so damn good) this was my preferred DLC over HoS and one of the best DLCs I've played. Witcher 3 is a masterpiece. I didn't play over 200 hours of this game for nothing.

To me, the sympathy cards got played by characters blinded and stumbling in naiveté. If memory serves Geralt himself continuously declares Syanna's guilt and dangerous nature to the Duchess, but his counsel is repeatedly neglected. Ultimately, given the medieval nature of aristocracy, he must submit to her judgment -- she is his employer and a ruler to boot.

@rahf: Geralt is sympathetic. When you sit with Regis at the end (if she dies as she did in my game) they both talk about having regret about it and feeling bad for her (and that's not something that is a player choice in dialogue, it's automatic). Basically everyone is sympathetic to her and it really doesn't make sense. I thought the Dutchess being sympathetic was pretty well handled for her character (an impulsive hot head). And as I said, in the fairy tale world they talk her past and even how untrustworthy, plotting, manipulating, and a cold hearted murderer she is but it's all handled as if Geralt isn't really worried about anything she's done or the fact that he's with such a terrible person who could stab him in the back at any moment.

Well i mean shes a young girl that the world has shat upon for her entire life.

Geralt is not a lawful good character and he probably just sees an great missfortune without putting blame as he usually does.

She may be a psychopath by some standards but she hasnt killed or hurt anyone without reason and she has no reason to harm Geralt. Besides Geralt can probably handle her should she turn insane. Hes in controll.

Also she survived in my playthrough so i dont really know what you are talking about regarding the talks with Regis.

I will replay the ending becouse im dying to see whats up with Orianna and i suppose she will die in that ending.

@artisanbreads: I'll take your word for it, but my impression skewed a wee bit towards neutral. I always felt Geralt's and Regis's discussions about the whole thing were those kinds of talks you have about people that could just as well be miles away. To me, the actual core of the story was about those two, and fixing Regis's tremendous predicament. That's also why I love him as a character, because he always deals with every situation in that somber, mildly sarcastic tone. And he's also constantly the self-inflicting center of tragedy, discounting the possible outcomes with Anna Henrietta and Syanna.

@dudeglove: The "out of the way" brothel provides some funny fanservice though when you talk with the girls ;)

@ivdamke: Also my (repeat) GoTY, took about 60 odd hours to do literally everything in Blood and Wine, another 15 or so for Hearts of Stone and 30 hours of exploration prior to that (Skellige was riveting of course), So ~200 hours last year and 105 hours this year. Blood and Wine doesn't have the sheer character appeal of Hearts of Stone but it does have a nice unique landscape (with completely different lighting), a bunch of new enemies, and a generally interesting plot. Syanna is certainly vile but I think that's sort of the point, the question is is it her fault she is or is it the curse of the eclipse; hence the debate on whether to let her die. I still felt it was a feel good ending even if she's the worst person on the planet, also I like to leave situations in the Witcher in ambiguity so I can imagine that they'll flesh out in weird/interesting ways later on.

Blood and Wine is basically the Witcher 2 sans the extra plotline, decisions have a lot more direct impact and feel a bit more weighty, the game isn't ridiculously long, and the gameplay feels a little bit better.

@rahf:All I can say for sure is this was my ending. So Regis straight up says "I don't have sympathy for her" but then he does ask you about it and regrets she dies (when I don't know if you should really feel all that bad for that happening). And Geralt automatically says he does have regrets. I mean, I suppose you don't want her murdered by Detlaff but I just don't see why you even bring it up. So there's just a lot of subtle things that make her seem like she's supposed to be redeemable but to me she's one of the least redeemable people in the series.

(video below, didn't want to just embed cause it's spoiler images and right in the title)

https://youtu.be/C2iOyrIe784?t=41m36s

Looking at it, I guess I got the bad ending but I don't regret a thing. Not like the bad ending of the game proper.

I also loved Regis in the ways you mention. To me he was kind of Watson-y to your Sherlock Holmes at times (not a perfect analogy but I think you get my drift). I'm someone who sees Geralt in Witcher 3 in a very detective-y way so that comes to mind. Cool character for sure.

@dudeglove: I feel you on wanting it to be a little sillier and have some stuff like romances, it would make sense. But I think they figure you're into your real romance and they have a nice scene for that in there. It would have been nice to have more Yen in there for me but I did like her scene at the end.

I quite enjoyed the bird curse quest as well. I liked the bank quest, the proving virtues/walking on water/king arthur-esque quest for that awesome sword, and spotted wight spoon curse quite a bit (I really liked her house with all the hanging spoon and spoons in every container, plus the idea of her forcing random victims into meals, and how you rescue her and she just eats constantly for like 3 days haha)

I didn't even see the brothel. For shame.

So I also can think of more cool stuff they could have done in there but hard to see them doing any more content for this DLC already. It was very good.

Gods, the Spotted Wight quest gave me chills. That place was so creepy.

Blood and Wine is the best looking video game content I've ever seen. The shot composition in some of those dialogue scenes looks incredible. Play without a minimap and objective text on screen and just look at the scenery.