So much for all that Resolve: Part Two

Warning: Spoilers

The past few weeks have been disruptive and self discipline has pretty much gone out the window. I have mostly been escaping into Witcher world when I can. I have been pleasantly surprised by how much I don’t really remember. I remember most of the main story missions but there are many quests and locations I had forgotten about completely. Thanks to a geared up Roach I am not nearly as anxious about exploring or leveling up. I’m finding it hard to play Geralt as a jerk because he’s generally fairly decent anyway. I struggled with the Keira quest line but finally rationalized that Geralt wouldn’t care much about being used and he didn’t sleep with her because he didn’t like her, right? He didn’t romance her the first time but that didn’t make any difference to the story so once again he gruffly sent her off to Kaer Morhen. At this point I decided that Geralt only goes out of his way for his friends but takes the easy way out whenever he can. And is sometimes just pointlessly rude. He always barters for more cash though.

His priorities are Gwent, witcher contracts and treasure hunts, romance and then whatever else he feels like doing. Good thing Ciri appears to be taking care of herself nicely. I am 23 levels in and he’s building a nice bankroll and card collection. In my first play through Geralt spent way too much resources on crafting all the witcher gear and was left seriously short of cash for the DLC. He invested in runewords and mutations rather than crafting any grandmaster armor. He crafted a Knights Tourney outfit instead and equipped the armour piece with a Levity runeword. The silver sword is Aerondight with Severance and his steel sword is a crafted Knights Tourney sword with Prolongation. When I reset his abilities I spent more on combat than I intended to in order to get whirl and could not resist investing some points in sign. As a result Geralt has a mix of all three ability types. I managed to open 2 new ability slots before I ran out of points. Roach is sporting a Beauclair set. They are a splendid pair. I was worried about how long his equipment would hold up but thanks to an investment in alchemy abilities he does fine as long as he remembers to guzzle decoctions. He can still get clobbered by mobs if I am not paying enough attention. When he does start crafting I think I’ll have him focus on the cat school since he likes whirling and decapitating so much. Another ability slot has opened up but I am finding green mutagens for the last one hard to come by. The first time through I was thinking “mutagens, mutagens so many mutagens” now it’s more like, “oh goody a monster nest”.

I am a little disappointed in the so called romance options so far. I wanted Geralt to pick favourites at the brothels but the cut scenes are too repetitive for that. It would be fun if he could talk about witcher contracts or other general events. I like the idea of a neutral safe space for the taciturn witcher to relax in a bit but it might be more work than it’s worth especially if players are more interested in the Yennifer/Triss drama. Speaking of which I am vacillating on that a bit. Having romanced Triss, Geralt is now committed to either blowing it with Yennifer or both. He sounds like such a cad that I am still leaning towards both but the idea of leading Yennifer on and then blowing her off has it’s merits as a jerk move as well.

I avoided the despised Crookback Bog for a quite a while. The whole Baron quest line seemed a lot more involved the first time around. There’s just so many levels of darkness I was glad to leave it behind. This time Geralt clearly expressed his poor opinion of the Baron, killed the botchling and killed the tree spirit because that was his job. He did help the Baron with Anna and Tamara so in the end everything turned out the same way. It was no matter to Geralt because he just needed to get to Novigrad and play cards, romance Triss and oh yeah find Ciri. Then the action moved to Skellige.