As any user content mod should be. Read this.diogobrunno said:
Check Sarvenmoore Hollow in User Content Manager (W2 Launcher, Mods).
BTW, has anyone played this advanture? I love the level's layout, but the storyline? No offense to the modder, but it's God awful, I mean, it just doesn't fit well into the Witcher universe, not to mention that Geralt's character/personality wasn't taken into account (at least that's my impression). There is even a major quest where you're given the choice to kill A or B for no specific reason as if Geralt was just a mercenary...
Didn't play it just walked through the levels and admired them, too.
Please keep in mind that it's a lot of work to create such a mod. So not everything can be perfect.
Why not give ih8soup a feedback in the comments section (but not as a mere complaint, please
)
I'm not sure but seems there is an update (iirc the one I downloaded contained one act only): Sarvenmoore Hollow Acts I and II and it's the Mod of the month.
edit: ehm, well, this is what he wrote:
Please keep in mind that it's a lot of work to create such a mod. So not everything can be perfect.
Why not give ih8soup a feedback in the comments section (but not as a mere complaint, please
)I'm not sure but seems there is an update (iirc the one I downloaded contained one act only): Sarvenmoore Hollow Acts I and II and it's the Mod of the month.
edit: ehm, well, this is what he wrote:
(Articles)ih8soup said:
Hello Guys! It seems that this mod even better being told how the year is not so good!
In my case for example, downloaded it, and it is not even recognized by the game, already pasted in CockedPC folder, changed the entry into ContentUserIni and nothing! Just missing even create userContent folder and see how it goes!
In my case for example, downloaded it, and it is not even recognized by the game, already pasted in CockedPC folder, changed the entry into ContentUserIni and nothing! Just missing even create userContent folder and see how it goes!
Hi guys, just thought I'd drop in and answer a few questions about my mod.
Dzwonsson, I appreciate the feed back about the story. I have really only had a chance to set up the roots of it so far, as only half of the mod is complete. The basis of the story is discovered during Act II, it is briefly discussed on the evil questline with the bandit mages, and is the first time the main story starts to ramp up. If you chose the good questline with the villagers after rescuing them from prison, Geralt discusses in a little more depth the same hint from the evil side. And this same villager gives an idea of what is to come in the future. Did you play through the bandit questline on both good and evil? If not, that is where I started cranking up the main story of the mod.
As for everything that happens in Act I,(everything outside the bandit area) you are simply exploring and meeting people in this world and these people will affect the story in Act IV. The lore in this game is delivered in a similar manner to one of my favorite games, and that is by talking to NPCs and filling in the gaps however you may interpret it. If you speak with Steven, his wife, son, the elven hunter, and troll, you discover that as a child a monster stole one of Steven's toys. If you explore the troll's home you will find an old and worn toy doll on the ground, indicating the troll was the one who in fact did it. The troll says he has seen Steven held responsible for killing many monsters but is unaware that he actually was the cause. Steven grows up hating monsters because of this and when you first speak with him, you may get the impression that he lives in fear of them as he will not face them himself and so he asks you to protect his family for him.
shak-otay, I am glad you recognize the effort that goes into these mods. Act I and II took roughly 500 hours to do and the only instructions were from brief Youtube videos in difficult to read translated English. Almost all that you see in my mod was created by myself using the trial and error method, "Ohh, what does this script do?". If you liked the scenery in Act I, I strongly recommend you take another look at Act I and II (Act I and II contains the content in Act I, and the Act I area has had is foliage completely redone). When I first decided what direction I wanted to take with my mod, I wanted it to be very heavily combat focused and challenging, with the story hidden within the characters and locations throughout the world. Unfortunately with the character talent system and equipment scripts being not yet implemented in the Redkit beta by CDPR, it is very challenging to make a combat focused mod. The characters are exactly how I envisioned, you have to play both the good and evil side of the mod to see everything the characters have to offer. I can imagine some people will say the story is lacking, and I would say they either haven't found it, or don't care to look for it as it's hidden and open for interpretation, which is fine with me. I can't please everyone, but I myself am very happy with how it's going so far.
I have however found myself stuck in a strange position. My mod's world has become so large that the client of The Witcher 2 itself has memory problems loading such a large world in one initial load screen and the preset graphics options are becoming buggy. Make sure to follow the download instructions or you likely won't get it to run on your own unfortunately. Benz has a similar problem, and says his mod will not start at all. In the future I am going to have to create an entirely new Redkit world and tie in the decisions you made in Act I and II. I have a great idea how to do so, but I simply do not have another 500 hours of free time to spend on my mod as of right now.
diogo_brunno, I think you are not following the download instructions I listed with my mod. It sounds like you are in the wrong directory looking for the UserContent folder. It is not the same directory as The Witcher 2 game, the UserContent folder is usually in: C:/Users/"your pc name"/My Documents/Witcher 2/UserContent. Simply download my mod, extract the file you downloaded into that directory, start the Witcher 2 launcher and check my mod in the mod section, and save and run.
Dzwonsson, I appreciate the feed back about the story. I have really only had a chance to set up the roots of it so far, as only half of the mod is complete. The basis of the story is discovered during Act II, it is briefly discussed on the evil questline with the bandit mages, and is the first time the main story starts to ramp up. If you chose the good questline with the villagers after rescuing them from prison, Geralt discusses in a little more depth the same hint from the evil side. And this same villager gives an idea of what is to come in the future. Did you play through the bandit questline on both good and evil? If not, that is where I started cranking up the main story of the mod.
As for everything that happens in Act I,(everything outside the bandit area) you are simply exploring and meeting people in this world and these people will affect the story in Act IV. The lore in this game is delivered in a similar manner to one of my favorite games, and that is by talking to NPCs and filling in the gaps however you may interpret it. If you speak with Steven, his wife, son, the elven hunter, and troll, you discover that as a child a monster stole one of Steven's toys. If you explore the troll's home you will find an old and worn toy doll on the ground, indicating the troll was the one who in fact did it. The troll says he has seen Steven held responsible for killing many monsters but is unaware that he actually was the cause. Steven grows up hating monsters because of this and when you first speak with him, you may get the impression that he lives in fear of them as he will not face them himself and so he asks you to protect his family for him.
shak-otay, I am glad you recognize the effort that goes into these mods. Act I and II took roughly 500 hours to do and the only instructions were from brief Youtube videos in difficult to read translated English. Almost all that you see in my mod was created by myself using the trial and error method, "Ohh, what does this script do?". If you liked the scenery in Act I, I strongly recommend you take another look at Act I and II (Act I and II contains the content in Act I, and the Act I area has had is foliage completely redone). When I first decided what direction I wanted to take with my mod, I wanted it to be very heavily combat focused and challenging, with the story hidden within the characters and locations throughout the world. Unfortunately with the character talent system and equipment scripts being not yet implemented in the Redkit beta by CDPR, it is very challenging to make a combat focused mod. The characters are exactly how I envisioned, you have to play both the good and evil side of the mod to see everything the characters have to offer. I can imagine some people will say the story is lacking, and I would say they either haven't found it, or don't care to look for it as it's hidden and open for interpretation, which is fine with me. I can't please everyone, but I myself am very happy with how it's going so far.
I have however found myself stuck in a strange position. My mod's world has become so large that the client of The Witcher 2 itself has memory problems loading such a large world in one initial load screen and the preset graphics options are becoming buggy. Make sure to follow the download instructions or you likely won't get it to run on your own unfortunately. Benz has a similar problem, and says his mod will not start at all. In the future I am going to have to create an entirely new Redkit world and tie in the decisions you made in Act I and II. I have a great idea how to do so, but I simply do not have another 500 hours of free time to spend on my mod as of right now.
diogo_brunno, I think you are not following the download instructions I listed with my mod. It sounds like you are in the wrong directory looking for the UserContent folder. It is not the same directory as The Witcher 2 game, the UserContent folder is usually in: C:/Users/"your pc name"/My Documents/Witcher 2/UserContent. Simply download my mod, extract the file you downloaded into that directory, start the Witcher 2 launcher and check my mod in the mod section, and save and run.
Hello again!
It is true, many hours to create a mod, so we have to give congratulations to whoever is willing to create them!
As to the problem in my installation, there was no previous description, it was not installation error, but lack of userContent own folder. To test this I created folder in the location where it should be and "bingo" recognized and installed the mod.
In the description of the installation there was a lack of foresight to own folder because it is very unlikely to happen, but it happened!
For anyone who is with the same error, the trick is to prove the existence of userContent folder, otherwise create it and copy the file to it.
It is true, many hours to create a mod, so we have to give congratulations to whoever is willing to create them!
As to the problem in my installation, there was no previous description, it was not installation error, but lack of userContent own folder. To test this I created folder in the location where it should be and "bingo" recognized and installed the mod.
In the description of the installation there was a lack of foresight to own folder because it is very unlikely to happen, but it happened!
For anyone who is with the same error, the trick is to prove the existence of userContent folder, otherwise create it and copy the file to it.
@ih8soup: it's not the adventure being far from complete. I understand how much work it requires and that you'll spend hundreds of hours not only on fishing the story, but also on smoothing things up and polishing every single quest. There are, however, various quests included in the first two acts that have a negative impact on the whole storyline of the adventure. I don't want it to sound harsh, I'm convinced, that you're willing the final product to be not only playable, but also highly enjoyable. I don't know how much you appreciate gamers' feedback, but these are a couple of things I'd take into account if I were you. And remember, I'm not critcizing you, I have no IT/programming/modding experience and I have a lot of respect for you and the work you've done so far making this mod playable. I do, however, have a lot of gamemastering experience and I'm also very fimiliar with Sapkowski's work, so who knows, maybe my feedback will be worth something?
- the very first quest of the adventure, IMO you're kind of forcing the player to pick up this quest. Do you remember how Geralt met Zoltan in TW1? You should play that way, let the player explore the area and put him in a situation where he can make a choice to whether help the merchant or decide to rather not intervene. That would a] make the quest more attractive as you're not forcing anything and b] make the player feel he has to make a crtical decision, something what Geralt does throughout the novels/games;
- the guard hunting the nekkers. It made me ask myself if I could do anything to prevent this guy's death. Well, could I? You're leaving the player with an open question and there's apparent no follow-up;
- the dwarven miners/elven hunter beef. IMO this quest is too shallow. Geralt is not a mercenary and he isn't a hitman either. At the point where I had to choose between killing the elf or the dwarves I felt like I hit the dead end. I didn't wanna kill any of both because I felt the case wasn't solid enough, but I had to pick a side to push things through. I recently read the new Sapkowski's novel and there was a moment when Geralt was given a choice to kill a person responsible for brutally killing 60+ innocent people. There was plenty of evidence including the guy being caught red-handed. But Geralt didn't kill the guy, because he wasn't 100% sure. Do you understand where I'm going with this? Geralt would never pick up this kind of contract;
- a smith asking for shitload of orens to start up a business. Why would I give the guy 4,000 orens? I mean, it doesn't make much sense. Geralt isn't settling there and he's also not that type of guy who would invest that kind of money in a very shady business. I don't know anything about the guy and there's no evident profit. This quest is yet another example of "it sucks, but I gotta do it to push things through";
- combat encounters. The monsters/bandits are coming out of nowhere. What would endriags/nekkers/harpies do there? Why would bandits set an ambush in this particular place? You know what I mean? I think you should put more emphasis on monster contracts, make Geralt do some witcher work.
Again, I'm not cricizing your work, I'm just trying to help, because I think your level has so much potential it could become a really good avdenture.
- the very first quest of the adventure, IMO you're kind of forcing the player to pick up this quest. Do you remember how Geralt met Zoltan in TW1? You should play that way, let the player explore the area and put him in a situation where he can make a choice to whether help the merchant or decide to rather not intervene. That would a] make the quest more attractive as you're not forcing anything and b] make the player feel he has to make a crtical decision, something what Geralt does throughout the novels/games;
- the guard hunting the nekkers. It made me ask myself if I could do anything to prevent this guy's death. Well, could I? You're leaving the player with an open question and there's apparent no follow-up;
- the dwarven miners/elven hunter beef. IMO this quest is too shallow. Geralt is not a mercenary and he isn't a hitman either. At the point where I had to choose between killing the elf or the dwarves I felt like I hit the dead end. I didn't wanna kill any of both because I felt the case wasn't solid enough, but I had to pick a side to push things through. I recently read the new Sapkowski's novel and there was a moment when Geralt was given a choice to kill a person responsible for brutally killing 60+ innocent people. There was plenty of evidence including the guy being caught red-handed. But Geralt didn't kill the guy, because he wasn't 100% sure. Do you understand where I'm going with this? Geralt would never pick up this kind of contract;
- a smith asking for shitload of orens to start up a business. Why would I give the guy 4,000 orens? I mean, it doesn't make much sense. Geralt isn't settling there and he's also not that type of guy who would invest that kind of money in a very shady business. I don't know anything about the guy and there's no evident profit. This quest is yet another example of "it sucks, but I gotta do it to push things through";
- combat encounters. The monsters/bandits are coming out of nowhere. What would endriags/nekkers/harpies do there? Why would bandits set an ambush in this particular place? You know what I mean? I think you should put more emphasis on monster contracts, make Geralt do some witcher work.
Again, I'm not cricizing your work, I'm just trying to help, because I think your level has so much potential it could become a really good avdenture.
Dzwonsson, I do appreciate any constructive suggestions to improve my mod in terms of quest flow and story. Just keep in mind that I can never please anyone. When I create things it's kind of a combination of, "Let's see what what I am able to do with Redkit." and, "Okay, there things in TW2 that I did not like that other games did well, let's see if I can do something different than CDPR did.". A couple things I did not like were Geralt's choices and their outcomes. An example of this is early on when Geralt is shackled and Roche tries to shake his hand. I saw a choice I thought I'd say, "Very funny." and then Geralt says, "Fuck you." and I thought, "Well, that's not what I wanted to say nor what the choice lead me to believe he'd say.". But on the other hand, that may have been a choice that someone else playing it really enjoyed. Maybe they wanted Geralt to come off as cold and bleak. To me, towards the end of my third play through of TW2, Geralt really came off as having a boring personality to me. But did I let that deter me from the game? Of course not. You can't get upset with a game for being something it's not. Maybe I didn't interpret that line how it was meant to be, as sarcasm is difficult to get across, even in real life.
My goal with the intro quest is to kind of set the tone for the world. You can save Barnabus, kill the bandits that are harassing him, and then later on Arnold the boatbuilder will have to you help rebuild his home, and two gravestones appear outside the furnished home for Barnabus's wife and daughter. On the other hand, if you choose not to help with the bandits, Barnabus runs inside of the building to try to save them himself and dies. After five minutes of playtime, the house burns to the ground. When you reach Arnold later on, he builds three gravestones at the home, which he says are now haunted by three wraiths, and asks you to kill them. Of course because the game is open world, you can skip a lot of it. You can walk right past Barnabus and continue on, and Arnold will offer you no quest for him. I considered giving a five minute time limit from the moment you enter the world to his house burning down if you don't save him; However, I thought it was too early for an initial quest to do that - sometimes people like to fiddle around with the controls or look around before they start a game.
It is interesting to see that you would prefer to build up in anticipation to a quest, where I went with the opposite. I wanted a world where you had to explore and get to know people to understand what's doing on. Dark Souls is one of my favorite games in terms of story, obviously completely different from TW2 in its story telling but of course both are very enjoyable. I do have a quest that builds up, and it starts with Act II, when you choose to either side with the bandits or save the prisoners. I don't want to give away too much, but it will end with a full fledged attack on the regions main village. I think that quest line is more of what you are after in terms of build up. I will try for more of a mix of the two. That village attack will take place in Act IV as of now. For Act III, I have planned to do an almost storyless area where you can just go in and explore without anyone telling you what to do or where to go. There will be a couple side quests found from exploring, but otherwise I want it to be mainly combat and exploration oriented like other RPGs I have played. One thing I am happy with for the story telling in my mod is that a lot of stuff happens without things being added to the quest journal, or the journal is very light on info. I understand that's not what everyone likes, but I'm not trying to please everyone. There is someone who made a full fledged wiki on both of mod's Acts and they found every little detail I put in. Those are the types of people I am aiming for with my audience. It was an awesome feeling to read through with Chrome translating the page for me. And I did take their feedback as far as some encounters being too difficult, and quest problems that took place in Act I.
It is funny that you mention the nekker quest. That quest is the result of a failed attempt by me to create a quest where you blow up all seven nekker nests in my mod and return to find his corpse half buried in one. I could have made a trigger of finding his corpse and Geralt mentioning something, but I thought it was a funny change of pace from the normal fetch quest and kill and collect style quests. One thing I like to do with my mod is preserve my previous work as much as possible, and the nekker quest was one of my first. The harpy and nekker quests follow directly with when I was learning how to create quests with the wikis for how to make a kill and collect quest with harpies, and how to make nekker nests that spawn nekkers until you blow them up. Those two tutorial quests were the only instruction that I got on how to make a quest, so it was important to me to preserve them in the game and not completely revamp them when my skills improved. I may in the future have you meet that guard's family in the village, and touch on that quest some more, just for you!
As far as you not liking how I imaged Geralt as a mercenary, that is how he came off as a person to me. Geralt has killed countless numbers of people, takes out contracts to kill monsters, you can kill the troll in Flotsam forest, there are achievements to kill all of the trolls, so he comes off as quite the killer in my eyes. It's kind of like contrasting reading a book, and then watching a movie. In the movies they kill hundreds and hundreds of bad guys that were never mentioned in the books, so it's easy to say, "They didn't mention all of these trivial bad guys dying in the books, there was only the one main guy.". That's just part of the differences of print media and film/games. If it were like a book where you only kill a few major characters with a huge buildup in story, it would make for a boring game to play. I understand if he appears differently to you, but you do have to acknowledge that Geralt has murdered hundreds of people in the games and shamelessly looted every last oren off of their corpses!
I wanted you to have to make decisions that affected people's lives without much information, but discovering the consequences of that decision later. You can talk to both the elf and dwarves to get some background on their problem, but you have to take it with a grain of salt as you don't know who you can believe - much like arguments in real life. If you kill the dwarves, you will find that later the cave is covered in blood and the bodies are piled up by the elf. The elf is found deep in the cave next to the dwarves loot stash, and once you talk to him, you discover how bad the monster infestation really is, he tells you to run while you still can. On your escape you are attacked by rotfiends, and if you return to the elf, you find he did not make it, but you get his armor as a quest reward from his corpse. To me I captured some aspects of The Witcher, where the choices may not be what you thought initially would happen. And with Dark Souls, where things happen in the world based on your actions and you don't necessarily ever know that they did without finding it for yourself. There is the elven hunter in the troll quest who does ridicule Geralt for his killing of people and things with their own lives, families, and such. You'll only see this dialogue after killing the troll and returning to the elven hunter after he opens up shop as a quest reward though.
The smith quest was inspired by two quests in the Fable series. In Fable 2, a man asks you for money to help build a town into a prospering tourist attraction. If you help the man, he rebuilds the town when you return. If you do not help, you return to find the town an impoverish, pirate infested dump of a town. In Fable 3, you are asked to fund a sailing project. If you give them the gold, you never hear from anything of the quest again. But if you explore on the other side of the world map, you later find a ship wreck on a sand bar, as well as notes on their days leading up to their demise, realizing that it was in fact the ship that you funded to be sent there. If you do not fund the ship, you never see that part of the game. That's the kind of stuff I really enjoy in video games. As far as the smith needing a lot of money, I wanted the evil quest paths to give lots of money for rewards, and little or no xp, and the good quests give a lot of xp, but little or no money, so you are temped to do some bad things in the world. The reward for completing the smith quests is one of my favorite dialogues in the game, a crafting shop and vendor. And he played a vital part in Act I, depending on your choices. If you choose to not kill the troll, you will find that a large tree has fallen behind Steven's house that provides access to Arnold's house. If you kill the troll, there are two ways to access Arnold's house as the tree is never knocked over without the troll quest. You either play through the entire bandit quest line on good or evil, or you commission the blacksmith to build you a scaffold access in the woods after his shop is finished. As well as some more dialogue with the smith about the shadiness of Arnold.
I am not really sure what you are wanting from the encounters. There are nekker nests throughout the world with nekkers nearby them. Drowners near the water that guard a treasure chest with armor in it. Harpies have nests and or attack you in open areas on mountain cliffs. Endriags have nests and live in the trees throughout the world. Exactly how it was in TW2. And multiple quests let you know this is bandit controlled land, the bandits have a huge main base in Act II, and they "protect" the people living there from monsters and such. If you choose to kill the troll, and follow through with Steven's offer of more bloodthirsty work, around midnight each night you will find a man named Strife under the huge tree on Hans's farm. If you saved Barnabus from the bandit attack, Strife tells you that Barnabus did not pay a protection fee and was attacked after missing many payments, and now wants you to finish the job since you sabotaged the attack. If Barnabus dies in the fire and you didn't help him initially, the quest line never mentions the attack again. Part of myself wanting you to do multiple play throughs to find everything. It is also up for interpretation as you now are not sure whether the bandits were working for Arrack, in the main bandit base, or if they were working for Strife or maybe now this links Strife and Arrack. You can either take the quest or not, you are not forced to. Strife makes you feel like a heartless prick for doing so, and gives you more information on each person you kill, as well as thousands or orens for each kill. He will play a bigger role in the future. I am not sure what country you live in, but it is kind of a poke at a crime problem in some parts of California in the US. For example, there are gangs of criminals that force street vendors to pay the gang for "protection" from other gangs who may come into on gang's territory. If the street vendor's don't pay the protection fees, the gangs destroy the vendor's merchandise and or shoot/stab the vendors. I think it's a pretty standard bandit infestation like pretty much every game, including The Witcher series, has.
I do appreciate the feedback in areas that I am lacking in though. I am not sure how familiar you are with Redkit, but there is a huge amount of very different things that have to be done. I feel I excel the most at quest creation and story phasing with different quest paths. But there is still world creation, story, side quests, dialogue, sound, world decoration, monsters, lighting, things like that. I do everything by myself. I would have to bring in someone who has a gift for writing story that I do not, but that would take away some of the fun for me. It feels good to bring something to life that is entirely your own doing. I don't really want to bring in more people to works hands on with my mod as it would make it less of something that is personal to me. The outside suggestions like yours and a few questions to other modders are the only help that I will accept. />/>/>
Also, if you are planning to start another playthrough anytime soon, the new version of my mod, 1.2, is up for download on the Redkit website. I fixed some bugs so you can play on ultra settings now, and completely redid the world lighting.
My goal with the intro quest is to kind of set the tone for the world. You can save Barnabus, kill the bandits that are harassing him, and then later on Arnold the boatbuilder will have to you help rebuild his home, and two gravestones appear outside the furnished home for Barnabus's wife and daughter. On the other hand, if you choose not to help with the bandits, Barnabus runs inside of the building to try to save them himself and dies. After five minutes of playtime, the house burns to the ground. When you reach Arnold later on, he builds three gravestones at the home, which he says are now haunted by three wraiths, and asks you to kill them. Of course because the game is open world, you can skip a lot of it. You can walk right past Barnabus and continue on, and Arnold will offer you no quest for him. I considered giving a five minute time limit from the moment you enter the world to his house burning down if you don't save him; However, I thought it was too early for an initial quest to do that - sometimes people like to fiddle around with the controls or look around before they start a game.
It is interesting to see that you would prefer to build up in anticipation to a quest, where I went with the opposite. I wanted a world where you had to explore and get to know people to understand what's doing on. Dark Souls is one of my favorite games in terms of story, obviously completely different from TW2 in its story telling but of course both are very enjoyable. I do have a quest that builds up, and it starts with Act II, when you choose to either side with the bandits or save the prisoners. I don't want to give away too much, but it will end with a full fledged attack on the regions main village. I think that quest line is more of what you are after in terms of build up. I will try for more of a mix of the two. That village attack will take place in Act IV as of now. For Act III, I have planned to do an almost storyless area where you can just go in and explore without anyone telling you what to do or where to go. There will be a couple side quests found from exploring, but otherwise I want it to be mainly combat and exploration oriented like other RPGs I have played. One thing I am happy with for the story telling in my mod is that a lot of stuff happens without things being added to the quest journal, or the journal is very light on info. I understand that's not what everyone likes, but I'm not trying to please everyone. There is someone who made a full fledged wiki on both of mod's Acts and they found every little detail I put in. Those are the types of people I am aiming for with my audience. It was an awesome feeling to read through with Chrome translating the page for me. And I did take their feedback as far as some encounters being too difficult, and quest problems that took place in Act I.
It is funny that you mention the nekker quest. That quest is the result of a failed attempt by me to create a quest where you blow up all seven nekker nests in my mod and return to find his corpse half buried in one. I could have made a trigger of finding his corpse and Geralt mentioning something, but I thought it was a funny change of pace from the normal fetch quest and kill and collect style quests. One thing I like to do with my mod is preserve my previous work as much as possible, and the nekker quest was one of my first. The harpy and nekker quests follow directly with when I was learning how to create quests with the wikis for how to make a kill and collect quest with harpies, and how to make nekker nests that spawn nekkers until you blow them up. Those two tutorial quests were the only instruction that I got on how to make a quest, so it was important to me to preserve them in the game and not completely revamp them when my skills improved. I may in the future have you meet that guard's family in the village, and touch on that quest some more, just for you!
As far as you not liking how I imaged Geralt as a mercenary, that is how he came off as a person to me. Geralt has killed countless numbers of people, takes out contracts to kill monsters, you can kill the troll in Flotsam forest, there are achievements to kill all of the trolls, so he comes off as quite the killer in my eyes. It's kind of like contrasting reading a book, and then watching a movie. In the movies they kill hundreds and hundreds of bad guys that were never mentioned in the books, so it's easy to say, "They didn't mention all of these trivial bad guys dying in the books, there was only the one main guy.". That's just part of the differences of print media and film/games. If it were like a book where you only kill a few major characters with a huge buildup in story, it would make for a boring game to play. I understand if he appears differently to you, but you do have to acknowledge that Geralt has murdered hundreds of people in the games and shamelessly looted every last oren off of their corpses!
I wanted you to have to make decisions that affected people's lives without much information, but discovering the consequences of that decision later. You can talk to both the elf and dwarves to get some background on their problem, but you have to take it with a grain of salt as you don't know who you can believe - much like arguments in real life. If you kill the dwarves, you will find that later the cave is covered in blood and the bodies are piled up by the elf. The elf is found deep in the cave next to the dwarves loot stash, and once you talk to him, you discover how bad the monster infestation really is, he tells you to run while you still can. On your escape you are attacked by rotfiends, and if you return to the elf, you find he did not make it, but you get his armor as a quest reward from his corpse. To me I captured some aspects of The Witcher, where the choices may not be what you thought initially would happen. And with Dark Souls, where things happen in the world based on your actions and you don't necessarily ever know that they did without finding it for yourself. There is the elven hunter in the troll quest who does ridicule Geralt for his killing of people and things with their own lives, families, and such. You'll only see this dialogue after killing the troll and returning to the elven hunter after he opens up shop as a quest reward though.
The smith quest was inspired by two quests in the Fable series. In Fable 2, a man asks you for money to help build a town into a prospering tourist attraction. If you help the man, he rebuilds the town when you return. If you do not help, you return to find the town an impoverish, pirate infested dump of a town. In Fable 3, you are asked to fund a sailing project. If you give them the gold, you never hear from anything of the quest again. But if you explore on the other side of the world map, you later find a ship wreck on a sand bar, as well as notes on their days leading up to their demise, realizing that it was in fact the ship that you funded to be sent there. If you do not fund the ship, you never see that part of the game. That's the kind of stuff I really enjoy in video games. As far as the smith needing a lot of money, I wanted the evil quest paths to give lots of money for rewards, and little or no xp, and the good quests give a lot of xp, but little or no money, so you are temped to do some bad things in the world. The reward for completing the smith quests is one of my favorite dialogues in the game, a crafting shop and vendor. And he played a vital part in Act I, depending on your choices. If you choose to not kill the troll, you will find that a large tree has fallen behind Steven's house that provides access to Arnold's house. If you kill the troll, there are two ways to access Arnold's house as the tree is never knocked over without the troll quest. You either play through the entire bandit quest line on good or evil, or you commission the blacksmith to build you a scaffold access in the woods after his shop is finished. As well as some more dialogue with the smith about the shadiness of Arnold.
I am not really sure what you are wanting from the encounters. There are nekker nests throughout the world with nekkers nearby them. Drowners near the water that guard a treasure chest with armor in it. Harpies have nests and or attack you in open areas on mountain cliffs. Endriags have nests and live in the trees throughout the world. Exactly how it was in TW2. And multiple quests let you know this is bandit controlled land, the bandits have a huge main base in Act II, and they "protect" the people living there from monsters and such. If you choose to kill the troll, and follow through with Steven's offer of more bloodthirsty work, around midnight each night you will find a man named Strife under the huge tree on Hans's farm. If you saved Barnabus from the bandit attack, Strife tells you that Barnabus did not pay a protection fee and was attacked after missing many payments, and now wants you to finish the job since you sabotaged the attack. If Barnabus dies in the fire and you didn't help him initially, the quest line never mentions the attack again. Part of myself wanting you to do multiple play throughs to find everything. It is also up for interpretation as you now are not sure whether the bandits were working for Arrack, in the main bandit base, or if they were working for Strife or maybe now this links Strife and Arrack. You can either take the quest or not, you are not forced to. Strife makes you feel like a heartless prick for doing so, and gives you more information on each person you kill, as well as thousands or orens for each kill. He will play a bigger role in the future. I am not sure what country you live in, but it is kind of a poke at a crime problem in some parts of California in the US. For example, there are gangs of criminals that force street vendors to pay the gang for "protection" from other gangs who may come into on gang's territory. If the street vendor's don't pay the protection fees, the gangs destroy the vendor's merchandise and or shoot/stab the vendors. I think it's a pretty standard bandit infestation like pretty much every game, including The Witcher series, has.
I do appreciate the feedback in areas that I am lacking in though. I am not sure how familiar you are with Redkit, but there is a huge amount of very different things that have to be done. I feel I excel the most at quest creation and story phasing with different quest paths. But there is still world creation, story, side quests, dialogue, sound, world decoration, monsters, lighting, things like that. I do everything by myself. I would have to bring in someone who has a gift for writing story that I do not, but that would take away some of the fun for me. It feels good to bring something to life that is entirely your own doing. I don't really want to bring in more people to works hands on with my mod as it would make it less of something that is personal to me. The outside suggestions like yours and a few questions to other modders are the only help that I will accept. />/>/>
Also, if you are planning to start another playthrough anytime soon, the new version of my mod, 1.2, is up for download on the Redkit website. I fixed some bugs so you can play on ultra settings now, and completely redid the world lighting.