The Ultimate Death March Build/Guide + Video Guide For All Places Of Power + Interactive Maps.

This guide contains everything you will need to know about how to defeat the game on the hardest difficulty. I have presented the skill build and where to locate the places of power, items required and where to farm mutagens, EXP and crowns! Video and screenshots included!

As always, if you liked this guide and found it useful don't hesitate to share/like/reward it!

Thank you for your support.

🌹 Support!

👦 Introduction.

Greetings, fellow witchers!

After getting familiar with the game and having played more than 160 hours, I've decided to share what I truly believe is the best build for Death March.

The guide will include everything you wish to know about the skills and why and when to use them - potions, decoctions and oils required for the build.

By the end of this guide you will be a seasoned Witcher veteran. You will know where to find the items required for the build, all the places of power, where to farm for EXP and all of the mutegens you'll need to become the ultimate monster slayer.

If you have any suggestions, please add them in the comments. I'll be sure to check them out!

🐺 Skills and Mutagens:

When you start playing the game - this goes double for DM"Death March" you will be relatively weak.You will have to rely on your ability to roll more often than dodge in most combat scenarios, so keep that in mind.

I highly recommend finding all places of power for the extra skill points they give and allowing you to get stronger faster. For more on where to find all of them see the separate video guide section. Also I have added a section with a mod that fixes all the XP problems that you might run into the game. Now, let's continue with the skill build.

I have added my skill calculator for the lazy folk, everything is listed below - skills and the reason why I have chosen them. The calculator link sometimes has a bug, so you might need to continue reading the guide. (Sorry 'bout that)

http://www.gosunoob.com/witcher-3/skill-calculator/?combat=115_155_215_235_315_355&alchemy=125_143_215_225_245_345_425&general=231

• The first skill you want to put points into is Muscle Memory - the reasoning behind that is you need to use light attacks (they are your main source of damage) on Deathmarch, even with tons of health and survivability you need to have quick reflexes. You need to be fast and mobile! You need to evade hits, if you take more than 3 from a boss type enemy you are a goner.
  
  Muscle Memory- 5/5 points
  
  
• The next skill is called Resolve. Obviously we need points to unlock the next tier and Resolve is a great skill because we are gonna rely on adrenaline a lot in this build. For now you need to only add 3 points and you can max it later when you have more points then you need.
  
  Resolve - 3/5 points max out later - 5/5
  
  
• The next skill we will need is Fleet Foot - choosing this over Undying is a bit obvious. You need to keep your adrenaline high, this build focuses on doing damage with adrenaline rather than using Undying. That is why you should choose this skill. If you are good with evading and keeping your adrenaline, you will rock this!
  
  Fleet Foot - 5/5 points
  
  
• Precise Blows gives you more damage.
  
  Precise Blows - 5/5 points
  
  
• Now, we are moving onto Alchemy and we'll come back later to the combat skills.
  The first point skill you'll need is "Acquired Tolerance". Why? When you have a lot of recipes your toxicity level increases and allows you to use more decoctions and potions, which in the long run gives you more toughness and damage.
  
  Acquired Tolerance - 3/3 points
  
  
• One of the core abilities for the build is Poisoned Blades (I call it the BS - ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ or Boss Slayer, you choose :D) I chose this because it is the ultimate way of defeating a higher level opponent. If you are using the right oil for the type of enemy you are facing, you just need to hit them a few times and kite until they die. I've provided some screenshots demonstrating the effectiveness of the skill below.
  
  Poison Blades only
  
  
  Bleed and Poison Blades
  
  I guess they marched to theyre deaths.
  
  Here we are doing the same to Morvudd at level 21.
  
  Morvudd doesnt like it at all.
  
  
  Using Poison Blades gives you 900 extra damage, if you are using a sword with a bleed effect the damage goes up to 1500~, and if you add a fire enchant that damage could get to about ~2600. What does this mean? The cyclops you are fighting will surely want to kill himself! He might want to jump of the cliff or just perform the general seppuku. Before his parish he will exclaim: ME NO LIKE POISON BLADES ;(
  Poisoned Blades - 5/5 points
  
  
• The next one - Tissue Transmutation: because we are using a lot of decoctions this will give you more HP.
  
  Tissue Transmutation - 5/5 points
  
  
• The next points you invest will be counted as filler ones:
  
  Protective Coating - 2/5 points we gonna put more later on to unlock Hunter Instinct.
  
  Refreshment - 5/5 points
  
  
• We've arrived at the best one, we've been going through the Alchemy Tree just for this one. Synergy 50% increase to all Mutagens. Oh, hell yes, baby!
  
  Synergy - 5/5 points
  
  
• Remember, I mentioned will be going back to the Combat Tree.
  We are maxing Resolve and continuing with Razor Focus for more adrenaline, yes baby!
  
  Razor Focus - 5/5 points
  
  
• The last skill we need in combat tree is Whirl - with this you become the bane of all thrash mobs throughout the Northern Kingdoms.
  Whirl - 5/5 points.
  
  
• Now we are back to the Alchemy tree.
  We are looking at the Hunter Instinct talent. You generate a lot of adrenaline while fighting, with "HI" you can use your adrenaline to its max potential: 100% more dps against mobs affected by your oil.
  Hunter Instinct -5/5
  
  
• Now, for the general skills you can choose whatever you want, I personally run the cat school technique because it has good synergy with Light Armor and Fast Attack. Feel free to put a point here whenever you wish to.
  Cat School Technique - 1/1 points.
  
  
• For Mutagens you want two Greater Red Mutagens and two Greater Green Mutagens.On how and where to farm those see the subsequent section.
  
  
• Skills should be arranged in the order corresponding to the appropriate color mutagen to get the maximum benefit.
  
  Greater Red Mutagen : - Muscle Memory,Resolve,Fleet Foot - All Red Color - Bonus 60% Attack Power
  
  Greater Red Mutagen : - Precise Blows,Whirl,Razor Focus - All Red Color - Bonus 60% Attack Power
  
  Greater Green Mutagen : - Poisoned Blades,Acquired Tolerance,Tissue Transmutation - All Green Color - Bonus 900 HP
  
  Greater Green Mutagen : - Synergy,Hunter Instincts,Cat School Technique - Two Green Color One Black - Bonus 675 HP

🐺 Potions Decoctions and Oils:

These are the prefered decoctions and potions i run.

Nightwraith decoction:

Reasons being killing more mobs means more HP in my book thats awesome.

Katakan decoction:

More critical chance.With our build this works really well.

Ekhidna decoction:

Ludacris amounts of heal while using whirl and quen.Drink this when you are fighting large group of small enemies.Brought to my attention by the user Hykaro"thanks bud :)".

White Raffard's decoction insta heals are so good:


And Thunderbolt to help with the damage:


With enough recepies found for aquaired tolarance skill you can run up to three decoctions at one time.I personally recommend running Nightwraith decoction+Katakan decoction and Ekhidna decoction with these three you are the Ultimate Warrior,dealing insane damage healing insanely while using ur stamina and having tons of hp.Besicly never have to worry about hp reg or food or any other silly stuff that a weak fighters have too,and if you ever need to heal instant in case of danger just pop White Raffard's decoction.


For oils it goes without saying use oil for the type of monsters you are fighting.

🐺 Items:

This section would be short i will just let you enjoy the game.I put a video guide section for the Feline Armor set that i use and screenshots for where to find Ursine swords and all theyre subsequent upgrades.Also i added a section with video guide for early game items before we hit level 14 needed to use the Feline Armor Set.For more information see the subsequent section for it.

• Feline set for armor synergises well with Cat School Technique and Fast Attack.
  
  
• For swords Ursine because they do more damage and have better stats overall.
  
  
• For Crossbow you can use whatever you prefer i rarely use crossbow only to get monsters out of the sky if theyre not close enough to use Aard,bolts dont matter either since most mobs will die so damn fast before crossbow equip animation is done.
  
  
• For Runes i run Greater Stagger in all slots on the Silver Sword and Greater Armor Pen and two Greater Stagger on Steel Sword.For the armor u can use whatever u want because u dont need any runes into the armor tbh,i run mine full Greater Quin Intensity because no matter how op you are sometimes it comes down to spamming quint just like in the previous game.

🐺 Early Level Gear.

I will put this section here so that people dont have to go slogging throw the early levels without decent gear.This gear you will use till you get to level 14 and we get our main set of armor and weapons.

Viper School Gear
Level Required:1

"DISSCLAIMER:This video is not mine and I do not own the rights to it."

Griffin School Gear
Level Required:11

"DISSCLAIMER:This video is not mine and I do not own the rights to it."

All of these videos are made by PowerPyx all credit for them goes to him,check out his YouTube channel he has awesome guides for almost every game.

🐺 Feline Armor diagrams locations video guide.

All the locations for the feline set and subsequent upgrades.

Level 17 Required

"DISSCLAIMER:This video is not mine and I do not own the rights to it."

Level 23 Required

"DISSCLAIMER:This video is not mine and I do not own the rights to it."

Level 29 Required

"DISSCLAIMER:This video is not mine and I do not own the rights to it."

Level 34 Required

"DISSCLAIMER:This video is not mine and I do not own the rights to it."

All of these videos are made by PowerPyx all credit for them goes to him,check out his YouTube channel he has awesome guides for almost every game.

🐺 Ursine Weapon diagrams locations.

Here i put screenshots of all the locations for the Ursine swords and diagrams needed to upgrade them.Enjoy

• Ursine Steel Sword :
  
  Location Skellige isles main island.
  
  
  Inside this destroyed building take the steps to the ground floor be careful of two wraiths there you will find the diagram for Ursine Steel Sword in a chest.
  
  Level Required:16
  
  
  
• Ursine Silver Sword:
  
  Location Skellige isles main island.
  
  
  Inside these ruins just jump across from where the screenshot is taken and you will find corpse with the diagram for the Ursine Silver Sword.
  
  Level Required:16
  
  
  
• Enchanced Ursine Steel Sword:
  
  Location Skellige isles,small island by the name of Kaer Almhult.
  
  
  After you fight all the pirates and get up to theyre stronghold you will come up to these stairs the sword diagram for Enchanced Ursine Steel Sword is up these stairs and left in a chest.
  
  Level Required:21
  
  
  
• Enchanced Ursine Silver Sword:
  
  Location Skellige isles main island.
  
  
  Inside this ruined keep you will find the sword diagram for Enchanced Ursine Silver Sword in a chest.
  
  Level Required:21
  
  
  
• Superior Ursine Steel Sword:
  
  Location Velen.
  
  
  Inside the chest just a few steps infront from where the screenshot was taken you will find the diagram for Superior Ursine Steel Sword.
  
  Level Required:26
  
  
  
• Superior Ursine Silver Sword:
  
  Location Velen.
  
  
  Inside the cave in a chest you will find the diagram for Superior Ursine Silver Sword.Requires Eye Of Nehaleni to despel the illusion rocks blocking the entry.
  
  Level Required:26
  
  
  
• Mastercrafted Ursine Steel Sword:
  
  Location Velen.
  
  
  Inside this cave in a chest you will find the diagram for Mastercrafted Ursine Steel Sword.
  
  Level Required:30
  
  
• Mastercrafted Ursine Silver Sword:
  
  Location Velen.
  
  
  On the small island shown in the screenshot in a buried chest you will find the diagram for Mastercrafted Ursine Silver Sword.
  Level Required:30

[PLACES OF POWER VIDEO GUIDE.]

"DISSCLAIMER:This video is not mine and I do not own the rights to it."

This video was made by PS4Trophies all credit for it goes to him,check out his YouTube channel he has awesome guides for many games.

[INTERACTIVE MAPS.]

This section provides interactive maps for the whole of Witcher 3 + the expansions. If you are struggling to find something use these maps to locate what you are looking for.

https://www.ign.com/maps/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt/white-orchard
White-orchard.

https://www.ign.com/maps/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt/vizima-palace
Vizima-palace.

https://www.ign.com/maps/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt/velen-novigrad
Velen+Novigrad.

https://www.ign.com/maps/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt/skellige-isles
Skellige-Isles.

https://www.ign.com/maps/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt/kaer-morhen
Kaer-Morhen.

https://www.ign.com/maps/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt/toussaint
Blood and Wine / Toussaint.

"DISSCLAIMER:These maps are not mine and I do not own the rights to them."

⌛ Infinite XP spot.

This is the best farming spot for xp currently in the game that i know off.Here you can easily get 6-7k xp per hour.After you kill the monster just meditate for 1 hour and it respawns.

It looks like our friend the Cyclops has not had enough.

Weakness:Ogroid Oil. Level:30

Located on the Isles of Skellige main island.

⌛ Mutagen and money farming spot.

This is the best spot for farming all the mutagens in the game.This Fiend is gonna be your best friend for getting op and rich at the same time.You can sell the Fiend eye for pretty penny to any herbalist.After you kill the monster just meditate for 1 hour and it will respawn.

Here he is trying to intimate us with his size.Little does he know size doesnt matter especialy with our build.

Weakness:Relic Oil. Level:16

Location Velen

🔧 Useful ini tweaks:

Here in this section i decided to give you guys some ini commands that will make your game look or run better.Before you make any changes to it, make a backup copy. Hope you enjoy.

• NVIDIA hairworks:
  
  Since this is one of the best settings for visual quality in the game and the most demanding after foliage visibility range.The game simply doesnt allow you to tweak it in game for some reason but dont fret i have you covered if u want to have those awesome hairs and bears plus monsters look so much better with NVIDIA hairworks enabled.The reason NVIDIA hairworks demands so much performance is that it utilizes MSAA form of anti-aliasing to smooth out the jaggies on the hair but its verry demanding dont worry you can still scale it down without visible artifacts and still get the amazing hairworks simply go to the game folder located in :
  
  
• C:\Users\your-user-name\Documents\The Witcher 3\
  The file your looking for in this location and the one we are gonna be editing is user.settings.Open it using the notepad.By adding HairWorksAALevel= under [Rendering], you can manually adjust the level of anti-aliasing, trading image quality for performance. Valid values are 8 (8xMSAA), 4 (4xMSAA), 2 (2xMSAA), and 0 (Off),i personally run (4xMSAA) because any lower than that makes the in game hair display artefacts.Here are few screenshots to make a comparison ingame look at Geralts hair,beard and wolfs hair.
  
  
  OFF
  
  
  ON
  
  
  OFF
  
  
  ON
  
  After messing around with the other settings honestly i coudnt tell that they had that huge of a difference on the game fps or visual wise the only one worth noting is :
  
  
• Foliage Visibility Range
  
  This one i scaled down to medium to get the best trade off in visibility and pop in for framerate and it enabled me to use NVIDIA hairworks with decent fps.
  
  Hope you found this section useful,if you need any further info or you want to ask me something leave a comment.

🔧 Mods that i recommend:

This section is for mods that i recommend.

• Fix Exp for quest by lestat8m
  
  What can i say about this mod i think it shoud have been like this in the vanilla game.They made a real stupid mistake limiting xp for quest by levels in a open world game thats just silly.So besicly how it works in vanilla right now if you are 6 levels higher then the recommended level for the quest you get no xp,this mod fixes that and level doesnt matter like it shoud have been in the base game.This mod is a must.Great job this dude did for the witcher fans.
  
  http://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/119/?
  "DISSCLAIMER:This mod is not mine and I do not own the rights to it."
  
  Installation:
  Fix problem with Exp. Now you get exp for quest always.
  Install: extract the file to folder (Witcher 3 - Wild Hunt\content\patch0\bundles)
  Run file fix.bat
  Done
  Now You will get for all quest experience.
  Enjoy!

🐾 Onward Witcher : A Summary of a Monster Slayer.

With all said and done you will be running around with 8.3k hp at level 20 if you stack the hp from weak mobs you can get it up as high as 12k - it depends on how many weak ones you want to kill before engaging the big ones. It is safe to say you can sustain 2-3 hits from mobs twice your level on death march and do insane amount of damage. Don't be afraid to cast Quen sometimes, you might be a strong brusier but you'll need to take care of yourself.

So in the end I trully hope you guys enjoyed this guide and found it helpful, even though it's quite massive. I'll leave you with this song for adventuring, throw out the northern kingdoms and beyond.

"Song:Wake The White Wolf by Miracle Of Sound"

Now go slay some monsters and plough some wenches!

[Adanar]

The mutagen spot is no longer viable it seems as the fiend does not respawn.

[cankağan13]

Merhaba oyunu çok severek oynuyorum ancak ben oyunda öldüğümde en son kaydı yükle bölümünü seçiyorum oyun yüklendiğinde karakter çok yavaş hareket ediyor oynanması çok zor oluyor
Öldükten sonra oyun yukle kısmını seçip diğer kayıtlı oyunlardan birini seçtiğimde yine aynı problem oluyor
Bu problemi aşmak için dosya bütünlüğünü doğruladım ancak düzelme olmadi
Lütfen bana yardım eder mısınız

[AlvagorH]

First time playing, and this build really helped a lot! ty very much

How do you use the Blood and Wine's mutations with this build?

[≁ 𝒱𝑒𝓁𝑒𝒹𝑒𝓃 ≁]

Happy new year folks!

Thank you for the support throughout the years. May the New Year bring each and every one of you and your loved ones happiness, peace, and prosperity. Cheers and happy new year!

[TAD]

First time playthrough on DM on PS5 and it still works fine for me at least. Yeah you only can max 3/3 now its still a good build if you prefer swordfights and you have more skill points left for other usefull skills.

Rest ive invested in quen and axi (for dialogues) and playing with a med armor (wolf school) + griffin school technique.

Bleeding + poison sword + alchemy mutation + quen is pretty solid.

Its not as fun or easy like as with an OP signs build but i prefer this. Its more witcher like.

[SanguineSleet]

@masquerade yes the free next Gen patch haf a mod that reduced all skills from 5 to 3 but left their power the same. I've been playing the build and have more skills than slots but played around with what was important based on my playstyle first few levels. But then once I'm maxed will use all skills he suggests. So far it's bene great and this guide is still very viable!

[≁ 𝒱𝑒𝓁𝑒𝒹𝑒𝓃 ≁]

Merry Christmas folks!

May your days ahead be as vibrant as this festive season. I wish each and every one of you all the happiness and success you can wish for. May this season be full of light and laughter for you and your family .

[≁ 𝒱𝑒𝓁𝑒𝒹𝑒𝓃 ≁]

Thank you for using my guide! I think some stuff probably changed since I last played the game and completed it in 2018 feel free to update or correct stuff in the comments if I decide to replay it again in the future to test out some of the changes I will update the guide again.

[Masquerade]

Yeah, like Belrox said this guide is outdated now that they've changed how skill points work. (For the worse too I've got 2 fully upgraded perks I don't have a slot for)

[Belrox]

So quick question... It says to put 3/5 into lightning reflexes but i can only put 3. it maxes out at 3 on my end. did something change?