Very Quick Tips: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Geralt can’t catch a break

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is an improvement upon its predecessor in a lot of ways, and despite the fact that it’s a tad more streamlined, there is a learning curve involved.

Here’s a few quick tips to get you started.

General tips:

• If you come across a bulletin board, always take all of the quests. They don’t force you into completing them right away, and most of the notices highlight extra points of interest on the map. There’s no real downside to it.

• Save often. Death can mean loading up a recent checkpoint, which is often fair, but I’ve encountered a few 10-15 minute losses before. Try to keep at least 3-4 saves handy with different tiers — like when you enter a dungeon, keep at least one save available before you head into it.

• Sometimes calling your horse, Roach, can be a pain. Keep calling it by double-tapping the left analog stick and try turning around. Often times that’s all you’ll need to get it “unstuck” as turning will allow it to teleport. If you look straight at it, it won’t break the rules of the game to get to you.

• Take lots and lots of food. If you use an auto-inventory slot on a certain food item it will automatically replace it with something else. Get in the habit of buying food bits often on the cheap.

• If you’re not sure which sword you’re using (steel or silver), remember that the empty scabbard will match up with whatever you have equipped. Remember, steel is on the left, and silver is on the right. It’s confusing at first but you’ll get the hang of spotting it.

• Mutagens are an easy way to buff existing abilities. The simple way of looking at it is to line up the color of the Mutagen with abilities. Red is for melee, blue is for Signs, and green is for alchemy. If you have that color correspond to each skill in a quadrant of the skill tree, you’ll add a bonus effect.

• Meditate often if you aren’t playing the top two difficulties that remove the healing bonus. It will save you tons of gold, not having to heal using items or food. Seriously — even if you are only missing a tiny sliver of health, just meditate for a few seconds to pop your bar back to 100%, so you’re always read for what’s next.

• Don’t forget your Signs (spells). Even if you don’t use them often, try to always have Quen queued up and use it to shield yourself before (and during) every fight.

• Actually do the quests you come across. You’ll need to level up to complete the campaign, and your gold will slowly drop over time if you don’t complete tasks. This can lead to some disastrous results if you don’t have enough cash to repair your gear or buy healing items.

• In combat, you can dodge out of stuns pretty easily. Don’t just sit there and remain reeling after a hit — try to hit the Circle (B) button often to cancel it out and get your bearings.