I'm having a problem. I'm playing on the easiest difficulty level, and I'm still finding a lot of fights to be quite challenging and preparations still need to be made, and I'm perfectly fine with that; it's what makes the game fun, after all, and FCR improves on this immensely, even at the lowest difficulty. My problem, however, is that it's hard to prepare accordingly for a fight, when the preparations don't behave the way they are supposed to. Enemies who stun can be a death sentence to encounter, unless you prepare and drink a Willow potion, this much I know from having played the game many times. Unfortunately, this does not seem to work, as I am still being stunned constantly when fighting fleders, garkains, or skullbeasts, for instance. At first, I thought I might be confusing the stun status effect with something else that renders me equally incapacitated for a while, but I eventually managed to catch the proof I needed that I was not simply reading it wrong. Take a look at these screenshots:
One ("Willow - Immunity to Stun and Knockdown effects.") and
Two ("Stun - Control of Geralt is blocked. Opponents can kill Geralt with one hit.")
So that's where I get confused. I do want the game to literally give me a game over if I do not have the appropriate preparations made, but when I actually do have these immunities active, and I still suffer from the status effects when fighting certain enemies, it frustrates me, somewhat. What else can I do to prevent such status effects, if not drink a potion like Willow? I mean, since I'm playing on Casual, and still end up dying a lot when I get sloppy with my protection, I can't imagine what happens on a higher difficulty (such as 'Witcher'). Is there something I'm missing? Some mechanic or exception that is mentioned somewhere (I searched the manual to no avail), that I've not learned yet? Any other tips?
I'm nearing the end of this playthrough, but I have at least one more (full) planned, and FCR makes the game so much more enjoyable overall, but I really don't want to have to struggle against these sort of things again. I need to know how to make Geralt immune to Stun, or at least very resistant to it. Like I said, I'm on 'casual' difficulty level, with all the must-have talents that protect me from damage and status effects, learned, and I always quaff a Willow when facing these types of enemies; and yet, the sheer frequency of Geralt being stunned by fleders, garkains, and skullbeasts in particular, is shocking.
Thank you in advance.
EDIT: Also, Black Blood does not exactly perform as advertised, either. The text says it kills the target outright, while in reality, they only take a certain amount of damage, before they start regenerating health again - combine this with the Stun they cause, as described above, and the effect of the potion is rendered almost useless. Again, maybe I'm missing some important information or I'm doing something wrong...