Quick Impressions of NG+ and HoS [no spoiler]

[RageGT]

Quick Impressions of NG+ and HoS [no spoiler]

So, I played HoS as part of the main game, starting it at the suggested level and ended the game at level 41. Started a NG+ right away and all I can say is that I'm still loving it. I still need to be careful if I do not with to take lots of damage or die. It is not just a button-smack fest, even with all upgraded items from NG. They help with survivability and of course, make me feel or rather my Geralt, quite powerful.

I hope that if CDPR ever decides to release an Enhanced Edition, they add an Insane Difficulty, just like that of The Witcher 2. Then I'd dare people who wants to nerf everything because "it's too easy" to beat the game. (I can say that I would try it anyway. Did it in TW2 with 2 completions and 2 deaths in middle-end game. Not counting numerous restart right at the first Dragon appearance or the first Dragon QTE, but those were so early in the game that I don't count them)

 

[DesMusic]

"Steel need to be careful" it's not enough for NG+. I finished HoS at level 38 and can kill everthing in Velen in 5-10 seconds. Even group of angry guards with 50 level.

 

[jon7882]

"Steel need to be careful" it's not enough for NG+. I finished HoS at level 38 and can kill everthing in Velen in 5-10 seconds. Even group of angry guards with 50 level.

First what difficulty are you on ? Cause I'm on NG+ lvl 43 on Blood and Broken bones and it is not that easy.

 

[RageGT]

First what difficulty are you on ? Cause I'm on NG+ lvl 43 on Blood and Broken bones and it is not that easy.

Same on Death March. I've been playing Death March for the past 1250 hours of the total 1350 hours I have clocked playing this game. He probably has one of those "awesome, super duper, can't-beat-me DPS built". Although 5-10 seconds sounds fishy. If only he had some videos of it....

 

[jon7882]

Same on Death March. I've been playing Death March for the past 1250 hours of the total 1350 hours I have clocked playing this game. He probably has one of those "awesome, super duper, can't-beat-me DPS built". Although 5-10 seconds sounds fishy. If only he had some videos of it....

Yeah people who make claims like this never submit proof for one simple reason there is none.

 

[DaSmas]

Yeah with a more ' normal' build its not as easy.

Once you get to the point that every enemies level is in grey, the game does get allot easiet though.

 

[funkmode]

i finished the normal game and HoS and only just got to level 39 and that was pushing it.. how did you get 2 more levels?

 

[Pug.]

I hope that if CDPR ever decides to release an Enhanced Edition, they add an Insane Difficulty, just like that of The Witcher 2.

I think that Death March is probably as far as they are going to go. The description for Death March already says something like "for those who are truly insane and loving it." It would be interesting if they included a permadeath mode, kind of like Diablo 1 and 2 used to have ... but I'm not so sure I'd be willing to try that out, especially after the beating that Iris' Biggest Fear initially gave me.

 

[RageGT]

i finished the normal game and HoS and only just got to level 39 and that was pushing it.. how did you get 2 more levels?

I finished HoS at level 39 (started at 32). Then I had Time and Space with Avvalach and all final part of main quest in Skellige to do. =) (Went to Isle of Mists at level 28)

I think that Death March is probably as far as they are going to go. The description for Death March already says something like "for those who are truly insane and loving it." It would be interesting if they included a permadeath mode, kind of like Diablo 1 and 2 used to have ... but I'm not so sure I'd be willing to try that out, especially after the beating that Iris' Biggest Fear initially gave me.

Sorry, forgot to mention that I had /sarcasm mode ON. heh
I don't think Insane diff a la TW2 is necessary.

 

[MrPK2710]

Yeah.. Same! I think The Witcher 3 too easy on HARD..

 

[shaiwan]

Those posters are not lying. With DPS build (death march) you kill everything in seconds. You hit for like 4500+. It's cat school armor, red mutagen, ursine sword build.

 

[Exentryk]

Those soldiers aren't tough. I remember nuking them with Igni back in the old patches as you can see below. Now, I am in the middle of updating my build, and I can just as easily destroy these guys with the sword. Will make a video to demonstrate that too.

 

[ThePrody]

I started HoS at rank 33 and finished it at 39 . Afterwards i tried a NG+ but , as most of you said, it is not much of a challenge , nothing can hurt me . I used a "tank" build - Ursine , Bear School, 8 alchemy and 3 Combat skills . The combined protection from Mastercrafted Ursine and the oil protection plus the high armor rating makes you virtually invulnerable to almost all the monsters . The damage output is not that impressive but it does not matter , you outlive any foe - also you score 3000+ critical hits quite often . Drinking three decoctions at once and still having room for another potion is also a big plus , 13000 + HP adds to the value . I killed the rank 48 ArchGriffin from Skellige without much problems in under a minute . Difficulty is Death March ofc .
So...that being said , because i wanted the game to be both enjoyable and challenging i tried something else : i started NG+ with an older save when i was rank 31 . I redistributed my stats in a more balanced manner: 6 alchemy , 3 magic and 3 combat . The big idea is that i will restrict myself to use any armor except the basic Kaer Morhen Set that you receive when you start the NG+ . There are no sword restrictions but no witcher diagrams may be used . So far it looks pretty nice : the bonus from alchemy is still there, oil protection and being able to drink a couple of decoctions is more than something but the enemies are no longer to be ignored , a couple of hits from a drowner and i lose half HP so ... i might give the game another go .

 

[WolvenGear]

NG plus is hard the first 3-4 levels then it gets easy. Im on my 6th playthrough and this is my 5th playthrough on blood and broken bones.. its not hard enough

 

[RageGT]

NG plus is hard the first 3-4 levels then it gets easy. Im on my 6th playthrough and this is my 5th playthrough on blood and broken bones.. its not hard enough

You should try Death March to see if it's any harder.

What I can say is even with a kicking ass DPS build which I'm using, in Death March, I tested at level 55 against two level 38 scumbags/rapists in a side quest and let them hit me. Two hits and I was dead. Of course I don't let them hit me in my normal play style and try to avoid taking damage at all in any fight, but for the record, 2 low level peasants can kill a level 55 with a good build in 2 hits. Perhaps 3 in a tank build but still, the charm of being a Witcher, for me, is the fight style to avoid getting hit as much as possible. I remember in the tv series, no human could hit Geralt although he was pretty lame against monsters.

Every little bugger would send him to Neneke for stitching and recovery. I'll start the books after this run and I'll be disappointed if he's that easy to be hurt there too. Those two thugs had bludgeoning damage and I think that's what my Geralt is most vulnerable to, but again, they couldn't hit me once when I played it seriously. I'll definitely try and kill every Witch Hunter and Soldier I find when I get near the end of the game. That's always a challenge since they'll always be 14 levels higher than me.

 

[ottffsse]

You should try Death March to see if it's any harder.

What I can say is even with a kicking ass DPS build which I'm using, in Death March, I tested at level 55 against two level 38 scumbags/rapists in a side quest and let them hit me. Two hits and I was dead. Of course I don't let them hit me in my normal play style and try to avoid taking damage at all in any fight, but for the record, 2 low level peasants can kill a level 55 with a good build in 2 hits. Perhaps 3 in a tank build but still, the charm of being a Witcher, for me, is the fight style to avoid getting hit as much as possible. I remember in the tv series, no human could hit Geralt although he was pretty lame against monsters.

Every little bugger would send him to Neneke for stitching and recovery. I'll start the books after this run and I'll be disappointed if he's that easy to be hurt there too. Those two thugs had bludgeoning damage and I think that's what my Geralt is most vulnerable to, but again, they couldn't hit me once when I played it seriously. I'll definitely try and kill every Witch Hunter and Soldier I find when I get near the end of the game. That's always a challenge since they'll always be 14 levels higher than me.

well that's the trade off of going cat school / light armour vs bear school and alchemy. things can kill you fast if you don't quen or dodge. I play cat school myself and after tearing up white orchard I got to the griffon and I was sort of sleep walking at that point. anyways as i was a bit lazy/ ignorant of recasting quen as I was hacking away at it the griffon got me. after I reloaded I was like ok, time to focus: in 5 seconds of fast attack / whirl it was down to half health and flew off to phase two.

More challenging would be two take the lvl 32 Geralt from the standalone HoS option and send him into ng+ deathmarch. Of course that as a pain as you never used a single place of power to get those 20+ extra ability points.

 

[WolvenGear]

You should try Death March to see if it's any harder.

What I can say is even with a kicking ass DPS build which I'm using, in Death March, I tested at level 55 against two level 38 scumbags/rapists in a side quest and let them hit me. Two hits and I was dead. Of course I don't let them hit me in my normal play style and try to avoid taking damage at all in any fight, but for the record, 2 low level peasants can kill a level 55 with a good build in 2 hits. Perhaps 3 in a tank build but still, the charm of being a Witcher, for me, is the fight style to avoid getting hit as much as possible. I remember in the tv series, no human could hit Geralt although he was pretty lame against monsters.

Every little bugger would send him to Neneke for stitching and recovery. I'll start the books after this run and I'll be disappointed if he's that easy to be hurt there too. Those two thugs had bludgeoning damage and I think that's what my Geralt is most vulnerable to, but again, they couldn't hit me once when I played it seriously. I'll definitely try and kill every Witch Hunter and Soldier I find when I get near the end of the game. That's always a challenge since they'll always be 14 levels higher than me.

omfg.. I mean this is my 5th time doing deathmarch lol.. I got those mixed up. B&B was what I did on my first playthrough.

 

[Estaim]

The only way to balance the cat school dps build would be to change how Quen works. Is stupid that it blocks at least one hit no matter what. Because at DM against strong foes, having 140% sign intensity on Quen (700 points shield) or having 10% sign intensity doesn't change anything. This is simply wrong in terms of balance. I've never used an extreme build because they weren't balanced properly. A DPS build should have been extremly glasscannon: if you want to have a dps of 4500, then you have to be a glasscannon and your Quen shouldn't protect you from more of your effective shield. Then it would be a balanced build: one-shot or being one-shotted.
At the same time there sould be cons for a full tank build and full sign build (but the latter is now quite balanced after the change of firestream, since the sign damage scales really bad after the first 30 levels or so).

To return in topic, personally I didn't find the Dark Mode in W2 more difficult than DM (not in NG+ tho), the problem is that, for both of them, the first levels are the most difficult, and more you go on more it becomes easy: the hardest parts were not a final boss fight or a big creature at the end of the game, but the groups of nekker in Flotsam and the groups of drowners in Velen. Also, Dark Mode would have been much more difficult without the overpowered armor and weapon sets you can build. After getting the Oathbreaker's Outfit the game becomes a piece of cake (it's just a matter of grinding the materials).
HoS is fantastic because it has a growing difficulty curve and that should be the case for the main game too.

As @ThePrody said, fortunately it's easy to increase the difficulty by imposing to yourself some restrictions: I've also played NG+ without changing the initial armor and with my favorite build, which is very balanced (1 yellow, 2 green, 4 blue, 5 red skills; 2 blue and 2 red mutagen).

 

[HarelMor]

The main problem in my opinion is the level difference that you receive after you reach around level 15, geralt start to outlevel everything there. I am using Enemy Scaling and Gameplay Overhaul (ESGO) on death marchand now enemies can kill geralt in one hit, HoS bosses ware hard, i had to think and prepare in order to survive the fight. In my opinion HoS was incredibly good experience interesting enemies beautiful landscape and the order of the flaming rose of course (using cat school gear with 2 red 1 blue and one green mutagens).

 

[ShinGnosis]

Armor, the runewright and NG+

So, started a NG+ on DM difficulty a while back. Two reflections:

1) I think the "legendary" armors could have been handled better. IMHO it would have been better if the legendary armors looked like the mastercrafted ones (and are indeed required for the making), then you could add small design changes to make them stand apart. For instance I think the standard mastercrafted griffin armor is way too shiny so you could have made the legendary version all black or something. Things like that, small touches. Maybe we even get to choose color. Going from mastercrafted griffin armor and then to what looks like a stock griffin armor is a bit depressing, even though it say it's "legendary" and has slighly better stats. It almost would have been better if we didn't get to keep the armor from the old game, at least it would have been "cleaner". But it is definitely a bit sad that the legendary armors look exactly the same as the stock ones. Small touches would have done.. color changes, textures etc.

2) The runewright is a really high level quest in NG+. lvl 60 something like that. I don't think this is a good idea, you want to give people access to him earlier so that we can enjoy the runes while playing the game. I cheated so that I could beat the lvl 60 something enemies and it's the only time I've ever cheated in your game, but I think it was justified. I had a fully upgraded runewright and you just took him away and I wanted to be able to enjoy what he offered.