One question nobody has answered yet, unless I missed it - do items in the stash carry over, or, do those items have to be in Geralt's personal inventory?
In an unrelated note, there is one thing I'd like to point out to those of you frustrated because it's not as challenging as you want it to be - stop. Four million copies of this game have been sold, and you are one of them. Just one. The devs have to make decisions that will work for the majority of players and not the minority. If you've put in 285 hours into this game, as I have, OBVIOUSLY the combat is going to trivialize itself overtime. I guarantee you if it be came too hard you'd have way more people complaining about that than it being too easy.