A Beginner's Guide to The Witcher

This guide is for those who have just started playing, or are thinking about playing, The Witcher.
It includes tips regarding combat, alchemy, and generally how to approach the game.

Introduction

The Witcher is a truly incredible roleplaying game, with a mature and deep story and interesting variety of characters. However, particularly when starting out, this can sometimes make the game feel dense and confusing, and as such the game puts off many people. When I first started playing, I would get a few hours in and then feel like I just couldn't play any more, and would then start an entirely new game weeks later, only to do the same again. However, once you overcome how overwhelming the game initially feels, you're in for a truly spectacular experience.

This guide is to help you get into the game as easily as possible, without feeling intimidated by everything that's going on. As such, this guide will contain information about the user interface, combat, signs, meditation and alchemy, and general tips for engaging with the game. While some of this information is covered in the tutorials, I aim to explain some of the game's mechanics a little more than the tutorials do.

This guide is reasonably lengthy, but it will hopefully provide you with a functional understanding of The Witcher's core mechanics and interface. So without further ado, let's get into it.

Main Interface

When you first start playing The Witcher, the user interface is about as intuitive and simple as piloting a spaceship. However, once you get used to it, you can quite quickly navigate the various elements of the interface.



Above is a screenshot of the basic interface (click to enlarge). If using the high or low isometric view-point, you can merely move your mouse to select elements of the interface. If using the 'over-the-shoulder' viewpoint, either hold down the Shift key or press pause (the spacebar) to move the mouse around the interface.


First of all, let's take a look at the top-left corner, which contains some of the more important information. The most obvious feature is the Witcher's medallion, which looks like a wolf's head. This will visibly vibrate when there are monsters nearby. Alternatively, you can set it to detect sources of magic, but changing this requires meditating (more on that later).

Surrounding the medallion is your experience bar. This will fill up when you defeat monsters and complete quests. Once you gain enough experience, you will level up, gaining talent points which you can spend while meditating.

The brown circle around this will generally be empty. However, when moused over, it will show your level, as well as how far through the current level you are. Additionally, when you use potions or gain other temporary effects, an icon for them will appear on this ring. These can be moused over to show the effect and duration of the different modifiers.

To the right of the medallion are three bars. The red top bar represents your Vitality, or health. As you might expect, you want this to be as full as possible. The next bar, which is yellow, is your endurace, which is consumed when casting Signs. The final bar is your toxicity, which will be empty by default, but will slowly become green as you consume potions.


Along the left-hand side of the screen are your weapons, your quick potion button/s, and buttons to select which Sign you are using. Generally speaking, you will only use the first two weapon buttons; the first equips your steel sword, and is bound to Q. Once you have your silver sword, this will be bound to the second button, or E. Once either of these swords is equipped, three additional buttons will appear next to the first; these change your fighting style, which will be explained later.

The quick potion button allows you to quickly use your potion of choice, and also frees up a slot in your inventory. When you put a potion, or stack of potions, into the corresponding inventory slot, you can just press this button to drink one of the potions without having to look through your inventory.

Finally, the Sign buttons. Clicking on one of these will change which Sign is used when you press the right-mouse button. These buttons will appear as you acquire more Signs, up to five in total. Mousing over any of those will tell you which Sign the button 'equips', as well as the hotkey for the button, 1 through to 5 on the keyboard. Note that this number does not necessarily correspond to the chronological order in which you acquire the signs.


Now let's have a look at the top-right corner of the screen. The centre of this area is the mini-map. In the centre of the mini-map is a small arrow, representing Geralt and the direction he is facing. A partially transparent cone will also show which direction the camera is facing. When tracking a quest, a small red arrow or circle will appear on the mini-map, to indicate the direction or location of the quest objective.

Just to the left of the mini-map is the clock, represented by a slowly rotating sun and moon, which show the time of day. Mousing over this also gives you the time in 24 hour format. Now let's talk about the menus.

Menus

To the right of the mini-map are buttons which take you to different menus. The first is the System menu; the same one accessed by pressing the Escape key. From here, you can save, load, change settings or exit the game. The next button opens the map, which can also be opened with the M key.



The map, shown above, gives you a reasonably detailed layout of the area you are in. Campfires are represented by a yellow circle, people of interest by a green circle, quest objectives and other important locations by a red circle, places of power by a blue circle, and general locations and areas by a black circle. Clicking on one of these circles on the map screen will track the location, cancelling any other tracking. Note the glowing white ring around the black circle on the far left; this shows that I am tracking this location. You can also add your own map markers to the local map by right-clicking, so you can keep track of a specific house, or a good spot to gather alchemy ingredients.

Now let's look at the next button, the Hero interface, which can also be opened by pressing the H key.



This menu is primarily used when meditating, in order to spend talent points acquired by levelling up. On the left-hand side of the menu are Geralt's different abilities; clicking on any of these will bring up the talents associated with the ability. Surrounding the wolf medallion are the talents themselves. Note how these are split into three colours: bronze, silver and gold. Bronze talents can be purchased with bronze talent points, silver talents with silver points, and gold talents with gold points. To begin with, you will only receive bronze talent points. Purchasing the main talent in any given 'row' will allow you to purchase the others in that row, and also to purchase the main talent in the next row. When a talent is purchased, its circle will be shaded in, but the purchase is not finalised until you have finished meditating. Note that if you select the wrong talent during meditation, you can press the 'erase' button just above the medallion to reset all the points you spent during this medidation. Once you have rested, however, you cannot undo your choices.



The next button opens up the journal, which can also be achieved by pressing J. The journal is full of important and interesting information, organised into eight different tabs. The first tab, labelled 'Quests', gives you information on the quests you have received from various people. Clicking on the name of a quest will bring up more information on your current objective. If a quest has a star next to its title, it can be tracked by first selecting it, and then pressing the 'Track Quest on Map' button. Tracking can be cancelled by pressing this button again.

Next is the 'Characters' tab. Geralt's observations of and interactions with many important people are listed here. After this is the 'Locations' tab, which gives you information regarding places you have visited or read about. The 'Monsters' tab in turn gives you important information regarding monsters, both in terms of lore and their weaknesses, but only if you have read or heard about them. The 'Formula' tab is extremely useful when performing alchemy; it details the effects, duration and toxicity of all the potions, oils and bombs you can make. It also tells you what ingredients and bases are required for the creation of the item in question. The 'Ingredients' tab tells you what alchemical components are contained in plants, bits of monsters, and other alchemical ingredients. The 'Glossary' tab contains lore regarding topics in books and conversation. Finally, the 'Tutorials' tab can be accessed to bring up information shown in tutorial pop-ups, in case you need to refresh your memory.



Our final button is the inventory, which can also be opened by pressing the I key. The inventory shows your equipped weapons and armour, general items, and alchemical ingredients. The outline of Geralt will show slots for equipping armour, your steel sword, your silver sword, an extra large weapon, and an extra small weapon. Mousing over any of these items will provide its stats. Note that you can only have one of each such item in your inventory at a time; for example, you can't pick up a different sword unless you either have your extra slot free, or first drop your equipped sword. Also note the small slots above the steel sword. Putting a potion into this slot will allow you to use it without entering the inventory screen, by pressing the quick-potion button mentioned in the General Interface section. The inventory screen also shows how much money you have, as well as the items you pick up.

To the right of the potion slots are your Quest Items. Any item you pick up which is exclusively used for a quest will be placed directly into one of these slots. There is no limit to how many quest items you can carry at a time. Underneath this are your general items. There are 42 slots in total, each of which can contain a stack of any one item. The alchemy inventory is similar, and any alchemical ingredients you pick up will automatically be sent here. To the left of the general and alchemy inventories is a green button, which will automatically sort all of your items. Additionally, the alchemy inventory has a filter which will allow you to look at your ingredients based on what components they contain. If your inventory starts to get full, you can visit an innkeeper to put items in an extremely large storage space. Items you put in here can be accessed from any innkeeper, who can be found in every chapter of the game.

Combat Basics

As you may know, the combat in The Witcher is very hit-or-miss. It's strange in that it requires a lot of thought, but is also reasonably passive. If you are playing from an isometric viewpoint, combat almost feels like a classic RPG, whereas the Over-the-shoulder option almost makes the game feel like a spectacle fighter. In isometric, movement can be achieved with the WASD keys, or by clicking where you want to move. In OTS, only the WASD keys are used for moving. In either mode, you interact with people and objects, and attack enemies, by left-clicking. Clicking on a distant object or person will automatically move you towards them before interacting.

Generally speaking, you will either be using your steel or silver sword when fighting. The steel sword, which you start off with, is best used against human opponents and animals, whereas the silver sword is far more effective against monsters and magical creatures. With either sword, you will have three 'styles' to choose from: strong, fast and group.

Strong Style: The strong style consists of wild, powerful swings of the sword. It deals extremely high damage, but is quite easy to dodge. As such, it is best used against strong but slow opponents, such as armoured humans, or ghouls. While agile opponents will take a lot of damage from the strong style if they are hit, they will likely dodge the majority of your attacks. You can switch to the strong style by pressing the Z key.

Fast Style: The fast style is as the name suggests; many quick, precise hits. Although it doesn't deal very much damage, it is extremely accurate, and its constant onslaught makes it difficult for enemies to retaliate. Fast opponents with little health are vulnerable to this style. It can be used against tough opponents, and is almost guaranteed to hit them, but will take a long time to kill them. You can switch to the fast style by pressing the X key.

Group Style: When you are surrounded by three or more opponents, the group style excels. Swinging your sword around your body, you can damage all nearby enemies, taking down whole groups in a matter of seconds. Although particularly effective against groups of agile enemies, the group style also works when facing multiple tough foes. You can upgrade this style to knock down enemies, making it effective at reducing the damage you take from large groups. You can switch to the group style by pressing the C key.

When facing human opponents, it is fairly easy to determine whether to use the strong or fast style. If they are wearing armour, use the strong style. If they look small and quick, use the fast style. With monsters, however, it isn't always so easy to figure out. If, however, you have an entry for the monster in the Journal, it will often list which style is advised. As a rule, I like to use the group style when there are three or more of any opponent nearby.

The interactive element of The Witcher's combat is a sort of chain-attack system. As mentioned above, you attack an enemy by left-clicking on them. This will initiate a series of a few attacks, during which you don't have to, and shouldn't, click. After these couple of hits, the cursor will briefly turn into a flaming sword, which is when you should click again. If you click before the cursor changes, or take too long to click, you will instead cancel the attack entirely, and have to begin again. If you manage to click at the right time, this will perform the next, more powerful attack in the combo, which initially consists of three such sequences. Spending talents to improve the different styles will add more powerful attack sequences to the combo, allowing you to deal more damage in much less time. Note that the strong, fast and group styles have to be upgraded separately, and have different upgrades for the steel and silver swords.

Later on in the game, you might unlock charged attacks. Each style has one, and it is always the fourth major skill in that style's tree. Once you have unlocked the attack, you can use it by switching to the required style, and holding down the attack button on your chosen foe. A bar will appear at the bottom of the screen, and when it is full, lifting your finger off the attack button will cause Geralt to run to the foe and initiate the attack. Be aware that these attacks all use, and require, endurance to perform.

Dodging and parrying aren't active processes in The Witcher; instead, you will have a chance of dodging or parrying any attack made against, determined by your talents. There is, however, a manual roll which can be used to leap over enemies and evade certain attacks. This can be performed by double-tapping any directional key in isometric or OTS viewpoints, and also by double-clicking on the ground in the isometric viewpoints. Other than this, there is little need to move during combat, as Geralt will automatically stay close to enemies he is attacking.

That more or less covers the basics of sword-fighting, so let's move onto another aspect of combat: Signs.

Signs

In The Witcher, Geralt can channel magical abilities in the form of Signs. While magic in many games is something extremely powerful that can be used almost endlessly, Signs are very tactical spells that can usually only be used once or twice per combat, but can decide a fight if used properly. Signs are learned through finding and interacting with elemental stones. Note that these can be easy to miss, so keep an eye out! In total, there are five Signs, which are as follows:

Aard: The first sign you learn. Using Aard blasts enemies in an area in front of you with a rush of force, dealing minor damage and potentially knocking them down. It can be upgraded to stun enemies, allowing you to instantly kill them. Aard is also used to break down weak walls and some terrain. Press 1 to equip Aard.

Quen: A defensive sign. Quen creates a shield around Geralt, making him invulnerable to damage. However, it is cancelled if you attack or use another Sign. As such, its main use lies in approaching distant enemies, using potions in combat, and running away from dangerous fights. It can be upgraded to damage foes who strike you while the shield is up. Press 2 to equip Quen.

Yrden: This Sign is used to create magical traps. Casting the Sign creates a symbol on the ground, which will damage and slow enemies who pass over it. It can be upgraded to deal more damage, poison enemies, and be activated many more times before disappearing. Press 3 to equip Yrden.

Igni: This Sign creates a small burst of fire in front of you, dealing some damage to foes. This Sign is initially very weak, but can be upgraded to greatly increase its damage and give it a damage over time effect. Press 4 to equip Igni.

Axii: Using this Sign on an enemy will cause them to temporarily fight for you, making it helpful when fighting large groups of enemies. It can be upgraded to cause enemies to run away in fear. Press 5 to equip Axii.

Once you have a Sign equipped, you can activate it by right-clicking. Note that this will use up Endurance. Each Sign can also be upgraded to have a more powerful 'charge-up' variant, which will use more Endurance but have a greater, or varied, effect.

Meditation

Well, by now you're eager and ready to go out and fight some monsters! But a true Witcher doesn't just rush head-first into danger; Geralt of Rivia is a man who likes to be prepared. Do the best you can to fight a monster on your own terms, so you're as likely as possible to emerge alive. To do this, you want to make sure you spend your talent points, know when and where you'll find enemies, and have a variety of potions, oils and bombs at your disposal.

All of these things require meditation. Meditation requires either a lit campfire, an inn, or someone who's happy to let you sleep at their place. To light a campfire, you must either have a piece of flint in your inventory, or cast the Igni Sign on it. You can then left-click on it to enter meditation. If using an innkeeper or a friendly NPC, talking to them should bring up an icon of Geralt sleeping. An innkeeper will charge you 5 orens to meditate, which isn't really an issue, particularly later on.

If you have gained any talent points since the last time you meditated, meditation will immediately bring up the Hero menu. This will allow you to spend your talent points. Remember that these changes are permanent after you meditate, but you can reset any choices you have made during the current meditation session by pressing the 'erase' button. To begin with, you will gain three bronze talent points at each level, but you will get other types later on.

While meditating, you will notice an hourglass appears in the bottom-left, surrounded by four circles which indicate different times of day. Clicking on one of these circles will cause you to meditate until that time, and you can further adjust how long you meditate for by using the slider to the right of the hourglass. Remember that you can check the time by mousing over the clock next to the mini-map. Spending talent points or creating potions requires at least an hour of meditation per action (eg spending points and creating potions will take two hours).

Alchemy

And now onto what defines a Witcher: alchemy. Alchemy lets you use ingredients from plants or creatures to create potions, oils and bombs which can greatly help you in combat. Perhaps you want to drink a potion that increases the effectiveness of your Signs. Maybe you'd like to coat your sword in an oil to make it much deadlier to ghouls or wraiths. Or, if you're more active, you might feel like creating some bombs to stun whole groups of enemies.

When meditating, an alchemy button will appear in the top-right, just under the hero button. Clicking it will bring up this menu:



Before crafting any potions, let's talk about components. Your basic potion will contain three to five alchemical ingredients, mixed into an alcoholic base of medium, strong, or top quality. Alcoholic bases are reasonably easy to come by: waitresses, innkeepers, and others will sell liquor which will function as either a medium or strong base. Mousing over liquor will tell you if it functions as a potion base, and how strong it is. Additionally, you can sometimes find top-quality alcohol. If not, you can always create your own top-quality base; White Gull is created like any other potion, and uses a lower quality base and some ingredients to give you one that can be used for anything. A base's quality determines how many ingredients can be added to it. A regular base can take three ingredients, a strong base can take four, and a top base can take five.

Ingredients themselves can be found on monsters, picked from plants, or bought from vendors.
Most monsters will drop at least one type of ingredient, but more can be found if Geralt has knowledge about the monster, through reading a book or being told about them. Similarly, herbalism books allow Geralt to pick different plants, provided you first learn the Herbalism skill in the Intelligence tree.

Whenever you find an ingredient, scrolling over it will reveal that it contains one of six basic substances: vitriol, rebis, aether, quebrith, hydragenum and vermilion. Some ingredients contain a secondary base, but more on that later. There are also some potions which have permanent effects and you will likely only make once, as they require extremely specific ingredients from rare monsters.

A potion will require a particular combination of basic substances, as well as a base of high enough quality to support that many ingredients. Swallow, for instance, is a potion that requires one ingredient containing, vitriol, two containing rebis, and one containing aether. As such, it requires a strong base, as this can support four substances.

If you so choose, you can attempt to manually create a potion, even if you don't have the formula for it. To do this, open up the alchemy menu shown above, and drag a base into the middle circle. This will open up a number of slots for other ingredients depending on the base's quality. You can add whatever substances you choose, and can then mix the potion. If you didn't follow a known formula, you will create a potion of unknown effect. Drinking it will reveal its effect. It is highly recommended that you don't create potions without knowing their formula, as these can have detrimental effects.

If you choose to use a formula, you can simply click on the name of the potion on the list in the alchemy menu. Provided you have the required ingredients, this will select some appropriate substances required to make the potion. You can change which ingredients are being used, as long as they have the same basic substances. You can then mix the potion.

Formulae can be learned from NPCs and scrolls. If you find an alchemist or bookseller, they are likely to sell formulae for potions, along with a brief description of what the potion does. As with books, right-clicking on a scroll with let you read it, adding an entry to your journal. Once you have learned the formula, you can create the potion like any other.

After you have finished meditating, you will have any potions you may have created in your inventory, ready for consumption. When using a potion, you will instantly gain its effect, and your toxicity will also be raised, filling a portion of your toxicity bar. Generally, drinking one or two potions will not be harmful, but if your toxicity goes above 60-70, you will lose health. Note that the duration of potions is limited, but Geralt's toxicity will not reduce once the potion wears off. However, toxicity can be removed through meditating, as well as other means.

If you learn the required skills in the Intelligence tree, you can also create oils and bombs. Oils can be applied to weapons to make them much more effective for a long time, whereas bombs can be thrown to damage or disable enemies in a small area. Crafting oils and bombs is a lot like creating potions, except instead of alcoholic bases, oils require greases, and bombs require powders. These can be found or bought. Once made, an oil can be applied by simply dragging it from the inventory onto the weapon to be enhanced. Bombs can be used by right-clicking them, and can also be put into the quick-potion slot.

If you are not satisfied with creating basic potions, you can use certain ingredients to give your potions extra effects. As mentioned above, certain ingredients will contain one of three secondary substances: albedo, nigredo or rubedo. If all of the ingredients in a potion contain the same secondary substance, it will gain an extra effect, depending on the common substance.

Much like Signs, the effects of potions, oils and bombs are often not extreme, but can turn the tides of a fight if used tactically. Most potions give a moderate boost to some ability over an extended period of time. For instance, one of the first potions you will be able to make is Swallow, which moderately increases your health regeneration for a few hours. Another is Thunderbolt, which will increase your damage significantly while also drastically lowering your defenses.

Oils range from general minor effects to extremely powerful bonuses against specific enemy types. For instance, Necrophage Oil will make the affected sword much more effective against ghouls and similar monsters, whilst Spectre Oil will help against ethereal creatures such as wraiths. Other oils have more general effects, like increasing your chance of causing enemies to bleed or just providing a flat damage bonus. Note that only one oil or grinding stone can be applied to a weapon at a time.

Bombs have similar effects to some Signs, sometimes temporarily incapacitating whole groups of enemies. Samum is a bomb which will likely stun anyone caught in its blast radius. If you want to damage multiple foes, try a Devil's Puffball, which inflicts anyone unlucky enough to be hit by it with a potent poison.

All in all, alchemy is an extremely powerful tool in the Witcher's arsenal, allowing you to devastate enemies if you are well prepared.

General Tips

Hopefully over the last few sections you've gained an understanding of some of the more confusing elements and mechanics of the game. However, these are not all that can make The Witcher sometimes feel overwhelming. The world is huge, the story is complex and rife with mystery and intrigue, and almost every single NPC has their own defining characteristics. These things make The Witcher great, but also slightly intimidating. I'll admit that the first few times I tried to get into the game, I kept getting extremely confused about who all those characters were and what I was meant to be doing. As such, this sections contains a few little tips for staying on top of the fairly deep world and story.

• Once you get past the Prologue, you're thrown into this pretty big area right away. Its size might seem a little daunting, so try just running around for a bit (at day if you want to avoid fighting monsters) to get your bearings.
  
• Talk to people! Almost everybody has something to say, which will help you understand what's going on and who you are.
  
• Don't skip conversation. Sometimes it's tempting to just click away during a lengthy conversation, but you never know what you'll be skipping. You won't be any less confused if you skip everything somebody has to say, then suddenly find out that Geralt has become a mother of six. Besides, a lot of the dialogue is actually quite witty.
  
• If you find that you just don't know who people are, have a look at the Characters tab in the Journal. It gives some brief but informative descriptions of what you know about the main players in the story.
  
• The story has lots of twists and turns, but you can look at previous stages of quests in order to remember what you've already done. To do this, open the Quests tab of the Journal and disable 'Show Active Quest Phases Only'.
  
• The Witcher involves a lot of running back and forth across large areas. Try to look at your quests and see if there are any in the same area, so you can do them at the same time.
  
• If you find that looting groups of enemies or containers is taking too long, you can press CTRL + click to automatically pick up everything in a container or corpse.

Well, that about covers it. I hope this has been helpful, so good luck, and I hope you enjoy The Witcher!

[taliani]

Thank you for this guide! I started playing and tried to keep an open mind, and get used to the interface. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything major for how the combat works, and your guide helped explain the basics for everything. This is awesome, and much appreciated!

[kolek]

game dond akiw

[MrLobster]

Nice Guide!
One suggestions to maybe add..
Trophy Quests...there are 2 per chapter and if you miss them you cant complete them anymore.
Not a huge deal unless you really want to collect everything but as a completionist it always bothered me knowing that ive missed them

[vibingdev]

Thank you very much ! now I feel like I maybe able to get into it

[Lady_Toxxic]

Very useful and insightful. Thank you for taking the time to create this. I'm sure it will help all the new players. I wasn't aware of the ctrl-click to auto grab everything out of a chest or off a body. Saves me time!

[SyluxGuy28O3]

Thanks for writing this up. It was a pleasure to read.

[doomslug]

So helpful! I love the Witcher (book fan 1st) and my husband got me Wild Hunt since I loved the books. Then this year, he got me all 3 Witcher games when I got an actual gaming PC. I was so confused tonite when I started this game's combat. This helped a ton! Thank you!

[empty7777]

Thanks 😊

[faengera]

Habe das Spiel über Steam gekauft runter gelanden nur lauft es nicht sauber. Ich kann keine Pflanzen einsammeln obwohl ich das durch kaufen und lesen des Buches frei geschaltet habe

[DragonBorn]

Started playing the enhanced version recently and my God this helps. I often worry on whether I'm using all my bases and ingredients early on too many Swallow, Tawny Owl and Cat potions (if there's even such thing as too many) since I know there are more new and handy potions that I am yet to come across. I'm also curious on how much average Oren do players get by the end of Chapter 2. Certain contracts pay really well but the useful stuff that I can buy cost a lot as well.