The following post was written by Yev, who manages content writing for SlotsUp – Best Online Slots and Casino Reviews.
The Witcher. The game, where you dress up only to spend the night with the sorceress and elude the main quest to collect all Gwent cards and clear out every question mark on the map (yes, we’re looking at you Skellige). However, all jokes aside, The Witcher game series is one of the greatest ones of our generation despite the could-be-better gaming process in the first one and the nerves-wracking-fingers-breaking fighting system in the second one. The Wild Hunt is taken as practically flawless. And thanks to the recent The Witcher TV series produced by Netflix the number of players of The Wild Hunt rocketed sky-high and the book lovers got so excited that 500,000 books are being printed right now for them.
But if you’ve only just watched the series and got interested in the game, we suggest you start with the third game, since it’s much more developed and easier in most aspects than the previous two games. And you’re probably asking – what is there to do in The Witcher games aside from the highly developed sidequests and unpredictable main plotlines? Glad you asked!
What are the options?
Before we begin, it must be said that The Witcher 3 game has lots of content to keep you entertained. Apart from the upper mentioned main quest, important side quests, less important side quests, contracts, and treasure hunting, there are less conventional in-game activities.
A witcher walks into a tavern…What are his options? Well, how about a pint and a round of Gwent for starters? You don’t know what Gwent is? Basically, Gwent is a card game in The Witcher universe where each of the five decks represents different army:
- The Monsters – red deck;
- The Nilfgaardians – black and gold deck;
- The Scoia’tael – green deck;
- The Northern Realms – blue deck;
- The Skellige – purple deck (a relatively recent addition).
The point of the game is the three-round battle between two armies where the winner is decided by the number of points in each round. To get those points you can build a better army, plan the strategy and tactics, change the weather, use spies and boosters or simply destroy half of the enemy’s army with a single move. It all looks pretty confusing on itself, but this game will monopolize your attention faster than any mobile game before that. More often than not, players got so obsessed with the Gwent they started ignoring the plot and the quests instead they’ve just moved from NPC to NPC to play another round. That’s definitely saying something about the game development abilities of CDPR.
And what will you get for playing Gwent, besides endless frustration and sweet taste of victory? Well, first of all – new cards for your deck. Most of the cards can be obtained only by winning them from NPC. Also, you will get a certain amount of in-game currency that you can later use on your gear improvement or in the plot-related situation. (And for those of you afraid of sleazy schemes and loot boxes – relax, since The Witcher 3 is not an online game, these winnings cannot be converted to actual money or profit).
Throwing The Punches
When you’ll get tired from playing Gwent (and how is that even possible?!), what else can you do with your free time in The Witcher 3 to avoid following the main quest so that the game won’t end too fast? Well, it’s time to ease up some tension on the ring. Fistfighting is taking its own major place among in-game activities as a branch of quests. Unlike its predecessor in The Witcher 2: Assassin Of Kings, the fistfighting process is much more complex and requires more attention than a simple QTE, and on higher difficulty levels it can become quite a challenge for the unprepared gamer.
There are four big areas in the game – Velen, Novigrad, Skellige islands and Toussaint. Each of them has it’s own fistfight championship with gradually leveled opponents and in the end, you have to fistfight a bear. With your bare hands. And a troll. Despite that, when creating a life simulation The Witcher 3 is incredibly realistic and at some point, you would be asked to have a rigged fight for a better prize – think for yourself, but you can always win it back fairly. And for the movie fans, fistfighting seems to have lots of movies easter eggs. Starting with subtle references like Snatch and Fists of Fury, to blatant ones like Fight Club and almost an actual copy to Brienne of Tarth herself from famous Game Of Thrones.
Same goes with the horseriding – the achievement for winning all races is called Fast & Furious like the racing franchise. The races can also be found at every major location and are available as their own quest-branch at any point in your walkthrough, although in much lesser quantity then Gwent matches. And there are some races as parts of the main plot quests where winning is optional but is nevertheless pleasant.
Where’s The Catch?
Those activities are extremely fun on itself if you have a taste for them. They are fairly complex, challenging yet rewarding no matter what you’re chasing after. Whether it’s achievements, 100% walkthrough, plain fun or plain money – if you try, the game will deliver. Of course, each of these elements includes not only your amount of skill and determination as a player but also an unnoticeable gambling element, since to participate almost in all of it you would need to bet on yourself with actual in-game money. No need to worry, it has nothing to do your real-life savings, but in the game (just as in real life) without cheating, all your money is hard-earned and if you have troubles winning over, try to make lower bets so in case you’re the kind of person who makes dozens of tries before either winning or giving up, you won’t leave your Geralt without a coin to toss.
There’s no need to be alarmed since both races and fistfight are oriented on a good reaction only (and the saving system is very charitable – so you can try as many times as you like), and Gwent is not as hard as it looks like. Plus, you can tweak the Gwent difficulty in the game menu so your first acquaintance would be much more pleasant. It would be good to suggest you try free stand-alone The Gwent game CDPR produced a few years ago – it was a really good try-out for the Gwent newbies. However, the game had a few major updates that even though upgraded the game immensely, made it completely unrecognizable after the in-game version from The Witcher.
Summing up this guide through the ways your Geralt can have some fun, we hope that with all these tips it would be easier for you to make up your mind and you will have fun as well. Because essentially, this is what games are about – bringing fun and entertainment in the whirlpool of everyday life.