Books in game witcher 2

[JDaniels]

Can someone please confirm whether reading the books [inside the game] affects loot or damage done to monsters the book describe?
I can't help feeling it's a waste of money (but since I played TW1 I also feel paranoid about reading them lol). Thx

[Sgt.Soldier™]

From my experience, I don't think they really make any differences far as "damage" or "loot". Books are different from The Witcher 1. You read the book, and it adds a journal entry, sometimes you might need that entry for whatever enemy you might need for the corresponding quest. They seemed to have also made it though so you can skip books and just kill the respective monsters, after so many you evidently learn on your own without the books. I've noticed throughout game it'll be like "1/3 - Harpy", but it's not actually just 3 kills... not sure what the system for it is. It's a nice option regardless though. Also sometimes you might find the books naturally which is another option. I tend to just google and look at the wiki page for the quest I might need it for to save myself sometime and trouble.

[JDaniels]

Originally posted by Sgt.Soldier™:

They seemed to have also made it though so you can skip books and just kill the respective monsters, after so many you evidently learn on your own without the books.

Precisely. That was a good change IMO. Either by reading a book on the monster or by slaying a good number of them, you get knowledge about this monster. That's even logical. This knowledge is reflected in journal entries in game, which describe strenghts, weaknesses and fighting tactics against monsters and thus can help the player. But aparently, you don't get any advantage of it as far as game mechanics are concerned (just to clarify: in the first game you couldn't loot a monster you hadn't read/heard about).

Now, another matter are books whose actual texts contain information relevant to gameplaying. I'm thinking of that set of 4 books for gargoyle contract. Geralt doesn't learn anything from them (as it doesn't add any journal entry or whatnot), but the player does learn from it. The book excerpts displayed contain information for puzzle solving (or contextualization of the world of Witcher, such as in books like 'Monstrum, a portrayal of the witchers'). You can safely skip reading these books if you have played the game or resort to 'external help' (namely google and wikia lol).