Whats up with the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ combat?

[IRIS]

I guess, I am one of the rare, who actually enjoyed combat in the first game. I started playing W2 tonight and god, I am dying every 5 minutes. I heard game is hard and is like Dark Souls, which is perfect to me, since I am a big fan of Souls series and I love hard games. I instantly put the difficulty to hard to enjoy myself but they are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tearing me apart. I consider myself to be skilled player and I do use every sign, bomb and trap, but I always die due to clunky movement, getting stuck, poor hitboxes and simply poor control respond. Anyone has any advice or something.

[phisstek]

I think the best advice I can give you is to invest in the Footwork skill if you haven't already, the one that increases your roll distance and pretty much best skill in the game imho. Master rolling in this game and nothing will ever hit you. And since you can change direction/turn while rolling + the increased distance, you can roll around enemies to hit them in the back for bonus damage. Enemies get this backstab-bonus too, so you might want to invest in the Positioning skill to counter this.

Footwork also makes rolling faster than running so be ready to abuse that spacebar while traveling between objectives lol

[Herb & Bea Ehltée]

The game is pretty easy with roll plus quen, in addition to throwables for dealing with bosses or mobs. As gurthae said above, level up footwork. On top of this I recommend leveling quen early. I don't even bother using the block key or leveling anything that deals with block, because I try not to let opponents even get a hit in. Evasiveness is key. Quen is good for 99% of the things you do in Witcher 2 if you want an easy way through fights, and is frankly an overpowered spell.

With quen, realise that once the shield is hit even once and by even the most minor attack it is gone, so try to back off and recast it, but it will absorb all damage from even the hardest hit. It will also put an instant tamp on any poison or bleed effects. The only issue with quen is that vigor won't regenerate while it is active, so invest in an extra vigor slot or two if possible.

For enemies that have shields, simply try to roll behind them and get a few hits in on their backs. In situations where you're fighting multiple enemies, try to take out the easy ones first. Get bomb making recipes too, and at some point level the bomb throwing perk in the alchemy tree if you find yourself using them. Spamming bombs can take out just about any boss in the game at distance.

I'm not sure if you use a keyboard & mouse or a controller, but with K&M I find it very important to have the "change spells" key and the "cast spells" key convenient to hand; same with "change throwable/trap" and "use throwable/trap." I use these combos much more often than the number keys as quick keys, though obviously I keep the spell I'm casting set to quen most of the time, so maybe just make a very available key for that. If you use controller I'm sure you'll find something similarly appropriate, but I can't say what since I don't use one.

[Sailor Meow]

I approve of all the mentioned advice, but "Quen 'n' Roll" gets quite boring and tedious, if you have to do it all the time.
Put 2 points in all Vitality skills, that will make you invincible and, later on in the game, there is a quest many people complain about, but with this build, you will feel absolutely unkillable there.

I beat the game on Insane with that build and didn´t die once (not bragging, just proving that what I said isn´t absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥). I can post specifics of the build and more tips if you are interested.

[IRIS]

Well, I had to use quen to complete nekker cave quest. I am still playing on hard and I am loving it. I want to focus my build on swordplay and Aard, since I freaking love finishers and the whole effect aard do. I also plan to put few points in alchemy simply to get more out of bombs.
Also, is it smart idea to try to grab every vitality talent I can? And how can I get more vigor? Vigor is for parry and magic right?

[Sailor Meow]

Decent explanation of Vigor (thus casting signs and parrying, yes) and other stats is on the Witcher wiki.

http://witcher.wikia.com/wiki/Character_attributes

You can also plan your Geralt´s developement pretty nicely here:
http://witcher.wikia.com/wiki/The_Witcher_2_skills

If you want to go a little bit into alchemy, I would get the Catalysis 2/2 for awesome potion effects, as described here:
http://witcher.wikia.com/wiki/Effects_of_Catalysis

Potions such as Wolf and Brock (they actually stack I believe) will make you get finishers very often, because Aard critical should happen almost "every time". If you further want to enhance your Aard knockdown, et cetera, throw down Stenchbulb (for greater effects, you can put one more point into Bomb effects and damage).


It is hard to say what you should do, I have played through Witcher 2 a few times and every time I had different build, yet still pretty much enjoyed it. The only flaw that makes me mad is that I would like to gain more skill points per level, while having weaker abilities, but it´s the other way around here. :)

[Herb & Bea Ehltée]

Originally posted by Iris:

And how can I get more vigor? Vigor is for parry and magic right?

Vigor is the little yellow bars under your health bar. Cast a spell and one of the vigor bars disappears. There are perks for faster vigor regeneration and various ways to get more vigor bars.

The following abilities increase the maximum amount of vigor by +1:

2nd level of Fortitude talent (training tree)
Both levels of Magical Vigor (magic tree)
2nd level of Destructive magic (magic tree)

Late in the game you can get it up to 9, but that's overkill. I've never used more than 4 or 5 bars for a complete playthrough, even with full bore quen whoring. If you get down to zero, it's usually only a brief moment before a vigor bar pops back up again, so it's not something you need to spend too many perk points on at levelup.

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Bombs are good and highly recommended as per my previous post, but should be to some extent used judiciously if you don't want to bother too much with crafting them and getting ingredients. They also weigh 0.5 each**. I reserve them for bigger opponents and the more ridiculous moments of crowd control. There's a fight later on with Letho that can be made much, much easier with bombs, if you just toss them every time his quen runs out.

**Do find the storage chest in the basement of the inn so you can store crafting materials and anything else you want to hoard, to keep your weight limit down. They'll carry over from chapter to chapter and you can access storage any time you need to craft something, but it helps if you want to have lots of bombs all the time and also want to compulsively hoard everything you pick up or find.

[IRIS]

My god, is it even possible to play this without quen O.o

[adnoam]

Absolutely.

Quen is very useful when playing the first time(s), but as your control gets better, and you understand better the combat animations (both Gerlat's and your enemies'), you can dance around most enemies without getting hit once (without Quen).

[IRIS]

I am really interested in riposte and aard combo. Full criticals :)

[IRIS]

I finally figured out the combat, and I am having loads of fun right now. It's still hard, but I am actually doing ok. Killed both Endrega queens on hard using only aard and sword. Aard, hit three times, aard, hit three times and run. Work beautiful lol :D My only problem is that sometimes I press left stick on gamepad and Geralt is stuck activating his amulet and that usually kill me -.-

[max.strauss]

Originally posted by Iris:

I finally figured out the combat, and I am having loads of fun right now.

Yes, I think so too. Takes some time to get used to it.

What about editing your heading? -)

[IRIS]

Originally posted by max.strauss:

Originally posted by Iris:

I finally figured out the combat, and I am having loads of fun right now.

Yes, I think so too. Takes some time to get used to it.

What about editing your heading? -)

If I figured it out, it doesn't mean it's not ♥♥♥♥♥♥ anymore :D
It still has lot's of flaws and W1 is still better game to me. But I am still in Flotsam so I hope that will change :)

[therussmeister]

Originally posted by Iris:

My god, is it even possible to play this without quen O.o

yes. I barely used it. I did a Signs build, with Footwork and enhanced Aard you're hard to hit.

[IRIS]

Doing that right now :D Now that i have aard on level two, game became just the way I like it :) Is there a way to go beyond that or?