How do you handle quest levels?
My first playthrough I pretty much played it by ear, doing main- and side quests as I felt like it without paying attention to levels. By the endgame though, I had to farm giants in Skellige to make enough exp to be able to wear the mastercrafted cat armor so I'd look decent for the finale, as the wolf armor quest had bugged out. All the side quests and contracts I'd long since forgotten about, because they were meant for 15 levels above mine when I received, them only gave a few exp points each, and I felt massively misled.
I read about other players' similar experiences, and the main responses they seemed to get were "Do the quests in order by level!" and "Who cares, I play for the experience, not the exp".
I've now played up to level 8, having spent two entire levels finishing the 'Bloody Baron' questline, and am looking at an evening of cleaning up Velen for most of the other level 6/+ quests. It's too early to say, but it seems pretty likely that I'll be a bit overlevelled by the time I reach Novigrad. Can only imagine it will get worse. Is doing every side quest too much? What sort of balance do you strike? When do you usually get your hands on the mastercrafted armor over the course of the story? Because frankly, most of the preceding armors look fairly ridiculous. It would never even occur to me to change my Temerian armor into the basic wolf one, even though the former is 10 levels weaker than the latter.
As for the "I play for the experience" notion, I usually do that as well, but everything in TW3 is designed to make you think about your level. You can't wear cool-looking armor unless you're high level enough. There are a lot of quests that you'll get way, way before you can complete them depending on your level, and if you don't educate yourself on that fact when you get them then you'll certainly find out as you try to complete them. You get a huge penalty against any and all enemies who are much higher level than you, and you'll run into those enemies constantly if you want to explore. And unless you actively micromanage the order by witch you complete any of the quests, your LEVEL can make content nearly inaccessible for no sensible story-friendly reason whatsoever.
My first playthrough I pretty much played it by ear, doing main- and side quests as I felt like it without paying attention to levels. By the endgame though, I had to farm giants in Skellige to make enough exp to be able to wear the mastercrafted cat armor so I'd look decent for the finale, as the wolf armor quest had bugged out. All the side quests and contracts I'd long since forgotten about, because they were meant for 15 levels above mine when I received, them only gave a few exp points each, and I felt massively misled.
I read about other players' similar experiences, and the main responses they seemed to get were "Do the quests in order by level!" and "Who cares, I play for the experience, not the exp".
I've now played up to level 8, having spent two entire levels finishing the 'Bloody Baron' questline, and am looking at an evening of cleaning up Velen for most of the other level 6/+ quests. It's too early to say, but it seems pretty likely that I'll be a bit overlevelled by the time I reach Novigrad. Can only imagine it will get worse. Is doing every side quest too much? What sort of balance do you strike? When do you usually get your hands on the mastercrafted armor over the course of the story? Because frankly, most of the preceding armors look fairly ridiculous. It would never even occur to me to change my Temerian armor into the basic wolf one, even though the former is 10 levels weaker than the latter.
As for the "I play for the experience" notion, I usually do that as well, but everything in TW3 is designed to make you think about your level. You can't wear cool-looking armor unless you're high level enough. There are a lot of quests that you'll get way, way before you can complete them depending on your level, and if you don't educate yourself on that fact when you get them then you'll certainly find out as you try to complete them. You get a huge penalty against any and all enemies who are much higher level than you, and you'll run into those enemies constantly if you want to explore. And unless you actively micromanage the order by witch you complete any of the quests, your LEVEL can make content nearly inaccessible for no sensible story-friendly reason whatsoever.