There are basically 0 references at all to the main story, 1 line of dialogue maybe and nothing about the endgame. Triss/Yen aren't mentioned at all. You can basically treat it as a separate adventure, I think it fits fine after the base game.

It's level 32+ so if you did it during the main game it would happen right as everything is basically coming to a climax. I decided to finish the main game and then do Hearts of Stone.

The new gearset you can get in HoS is level 39 so if you did it before the main story you couldn't wear it anyway (even though I was only level 38.75 after completing HoS).

Spoilers if you do HoS before the main story (no story spoilers):



That's it. It is basically completely standalone. Since Blood and Wine takes place after the main story anyway I'd just do both DLCs after finishing it.

From what I understand both DLCs are so standalone you can choose to play them independently of the main game if you want, you can just start them directly with an appropriately leveled and geared character.

If I had one small criticism of Witcher 3 it's that too many of the missions were similar. There are some really cool missions with neat variety here and there and they really stand out, but the vast majority of missions follow one of two templates.

That's of course nitpicking a great game, in a game with 100+ hours of legit content, it's inevitable that at least some of it has to be somewhat similar.

Yeh there is definitely a valid criticism that a lot of missions are - someone lost/died - follow red line - kill monster. With the occasion choice thrown in.

However the writing; the dialogue, and the characters you meet, made it more than worthwhile for me. I was perfectly happy still doing missions that I was 30+ levels over for.

Finally got round to completing everything. 144hours.

Didn't complete one quest, but I did do it, and it bugged, and failed two early quests in Novigrad.

Loved Blood and Wine.

Just finished Blood + Wine. Done with Witcher 3 after 158 hours.

Fantastic DLC. Fairytale world was great. Ana Henrietta and Regis were both great characters. I liked the easter egg of working the launch trailer for Witcher 3 into the story.

Witcher 3 launch trailer:

Never saw the trailer - that was awesome.

I've just finished listening to the first book, The Last Wish. It's seven short stories (some better than others), and gives a bit of background on how Geralt meets Yennifer, and why he's called The Butcher of Blaviken.

Just finished Family Matters and Ciri's horserace. Was wondering if it gets any better from here on out? It hasnt kept me intrigued story wise yet and combat is meh.

Any tips to for inventory management stuff? Overwhelmed by it all and I have no idea where to get food to heal myself.

Yeah, I am in over my head haha.

so that was ****ing dope as ****. had never seen that trailer.

One random tip I didn't know about until a few weeks after I completed the game, it has to do with a quest towards the end of the game, the one on top of Bald Mountain

Such decision also leads to a cute, short cutscene.

It is pretty impressive how many alternative endings there are. For example, I never knew Svannrige (the weak son of the old king) can become the king.

I know this is a difficult question to answer, but can someone give me a ballpark estimate as to how the game breaks down time wise. What I mean by that is, I've just left for Skellige. I see from the walkthrough online that once I finish there that will be the end of Act I. What % complete of the main story line am I? Are Act II and Act III quicker than the first Act of the game or are all 3 parts roughly equal? It doesn't seem like there are as many main and side quests in Act II and III, but maybe they take longer...

I know this will vary based on side quests, contracts, etc.
Basically I love this game, but I have a huge backlog of other games and don't get a ton of time to play anymore. Part of me wants to stop doing so many side quests and just plow through the main quests and finish the game.

Act I is definitely the biggest, II smaller than I, and III smaller than II.

Maybe something like 65/25/10?

The acts are more broken up by major plot turning points than by % or anything.

If you're looking to cut stuff out to save time just ignore the points of interest and the treasure hunts, there is nothing critical in them.

Do all the story missions, side missions, and contracts though.

Just got the game. Just met the bloody Baron. Seems like a cool dude imo.

Combat sucks so far and i feel like it doesn't have to. Fighting a challenging single can be pretty fun, where you can use dodges, blocks, ripostes, magic, etc. But the game loves spamming tons of weak enemies at you where all i do is spam the weak attack button with the occasional sidestep

Afaik with the harder difficulties the mod enemies are real threats too.

The difficulty in combat comes primarily through how much damage you take when you get it. At higher difficulties the enemies chew you up very quickly if they are actually hitting you, you die in just a few hits very quickly. But it's remarkably easy to never get hit once you get used to the flow of combat, no matter who or what you're fighting, really.

The combat is the worst ****ing combat that ever did combat. It ruined a perfectly good game..

I'm playing on Blood and Broken Bones. My problem with the mobs is that fighting them is a friggin mess. The lock on gets you killed, not locking on means you're swinging in vaguely the correct direction. Dude takes my inputs too literally (if i panic spam the attack button 4 times he swings his sword 4 times even tho by the 3rd swing i'm trying to override those commands with a roll command. He does 4 swings then a roll.)

Love the world and the non-combat parts of the game tho. Even tho i'm not exactly sure what's going on, my imagination works and i can fill in details as needed.

Yeah the combat system seems very clunky and primarily balanced around you getting hit very little if at all. I find the story and characters more compelling than the combat. Long fights against tough enemies can boil down to you getting 50 attacks in over the course of several minutes in what ends up being a really stressful fight with some random monster that you have no idea whether or not they're some rando or actually important.

Here's a pretty solid take on the combat:

Game is pretty awesome. Wish they had been a bit more outside the box and just eliminated 85% of the combat. We don't need mobs of hapless drowners and bandits every 10 feet. Makes getting anywhere just a PITA.

You can just run by enemies if you don't want to fight, they don't really follow you.

"Speaking of old friends, Novigrad, and ploughing, how's Triss?"

Amazing

Picked up Hearts of stone and Blood and wine a week or so back (which is very unusual for me since I hardly ever bother getting DLC or expansion packs for games I've already played through, but W3 is such an amazing game that I had to make an exception) and I'm just in awe of how awesome CD Project Red are.

I've finished Hearts of stone (which was really good) and have played Blood and wine for longer than most other full games already (and I've hardly even started the main quest). They are both incredibly good and go way beyond what they had to do to justify the money for them.

CD Project Red really are the benchmark for how games should be made. They do everything right and their love for making awesome games clearly shine through. Their combination of passion and ability surpasses anyone else out there today.

Yup Blood and Wine was insane.

There was a great review on Steam (I think) about how someone was so pumped, and about to write a great review after killing the starting giant, thinking that would be the ending credits.

Cyberpunk 2077 is “far, far bigger” than W3, and I don't want to get myself too excited, but it's hard (literally!) not to.