Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is an epic RPG for Windows and consoles. For new players, that game can be a little daunting at first. From the outset, you’re thrown into a sprawling world that’s chock-a-bloc with monsters equipped only with lightweight weaponry and armor to fight them. Geralt of Rivia must battle it out against all manner of foes to find his beloved Ciri and defeat Eredin’s Wild Hunt. Here are some Witcher 3 beginner tips to help you on the journey.
Read also: The 10 Best Witcher 3 Mods to Enhance Your Game
Meditate to Replenish Geralt’s Health
Geralt’s meditation hourglass is a very useful thing in Witcher 3 on the game’s lower two difficulty settings. Meditating for a few hours (game time) by turning the slider on Geralt’s hourglass replenishes his vitality (health). You can fully replenish Mr. Rivia’s vitality by meditating whenever you’re not in combat. Don’t eat or drink anything when you can regenerate your vitality by meditating instead.
Meditating also replenishes potions when you’ve got some alcohol. When Geralt meditates, he’ll consume one alcohol item to replenish an equipped potion. So, make sure you’re well-stocked with booze to make the most of meditation.
Meditating only replenishes Geralt’s health on the easy and standard difficulty levels. So, don’t expect meditation to replenish vitality on the two harder settings. If you’re a beginner, you shouldn’t be playing the game at hard or very hard to start with anyway.
The meditation timer
Keep an Eye Out for Places of Power
Places of Power are scattered throughout Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s lands. Those are magical relics left behind by the Conjunction of Spheres. The Places of Power boost the intensity of Geralt’s various Witcher signs.
However, the best thing about them is that each one gives you an Ability Point the first time you discover and draw from it. As there are 30 Places of Power in Witcher 3, you can amass up to 30 Ability Point to upgrade Geralt’s combat, sign, alchemy, and general skillsets by discovering them on the map. Therefore, finding Places of Power is a great way to strengthen Geralt.
A Place of Power relic
So, keep an eye out for those magical Places of Power. To find more Places of Power, check out the question mark locations on your maps. You can discover many POP sites at or near question marks on maps. To add more question mark spots to your map, always interact with the noticeboards at villages and towns.
Buy a New Saddlebag for Roach
The more loot you can pick up the better. To start with, Geralt can carry 60 items. If you eclipse that inventory weight, however, Mr. Rivia will be encumbered and can’t run.
Therefore, it’s worth purchasing a saddlebag to increase the item weight your horse (Roach) can carry. A saddlebag is an item you can purchase from some merchants and armorers that enables Geralt to carry more items. So, look for saddlebags when you check out merchants’ stock.
Roach and Geralt
You can also acquire saddlebags by winning some horse races. For example, the Races: Crow’s Perch secondary quest in Velen is one with a saddlebag prize. Check the notice board at Crow’s Perch on the Velen map to unlock that quest. You’ll win a saddlebag by beating Iron-Arse Hans on that quest.
Complete Secondary Quests to Level Up Geralt
Geralt’s combat level is most important to completing Witcher 3. Every time you level up, you gain an Ability Point to enhance Geralt’s skillset. Leveling up also enables you to equip stronger weaponry and armor with which to take on tougher enemies. The higher Geralt’s level is, the easier the main quests will be.
Witcher 3 secondary quests
Recommended levels are specified for main and secondary quests. You’ll have a tough time playing through Witcher 3’s main quests if your hero’s level falls a long way short of the recommended levels for them. Set aside some time to play through secondary quests to gain more EXP points to bring Geralt’s level up to the recommended levels for main quests when needed. You can also gain more EXP by completing contracts pinned to notice boards at settlements.
Steer Clear of Higher-Level Enemies
You can see the level of an enemy beside its vitality bar. That level value highlights the relative strength of an enemy compared with Geralt. Do yourself a favor and steer clear of enemies with level values that are somewhat higher than your hero’s current level. You might be able to slay enemies that are a couple of levels higher, but the much higher-level monsters will probably kill you.
Read the Bestiary
Exploiting enemies’ weaknesses will often give you the upper hand in combat. To find out what common monsters’ weaknesses are, check out the bestiary. That provides a lot of useful information about enemies’ weaknesses that will help you kill them. When you’re finding a particular monster tough to handle, the bestiary will probably help.
The bestiary
Craft Weapon Oils With Alchemy
When you’ve had a look through the bestiary, you’ll better appreciate why it’s important to craft oils for your weapons. Many monsters are susceptible to specific weapon oils that you can add to your blades. You’ll be able to exploit monsters’ weaknesses more often with a good collection of oils, which alcohol will replenish. So, weapon oils for your weapons can help you a lot.
The Necrophage Oil
Make the Most of Geralt’s Witcher Senses
To craft weapon oils, you’ll need to pick up lots of ingredients for them. Alchemy ingredients and other loot are all over the place in Witcher 3. To ensure you don’t miss anything, make sure you utilize Geralt’s Witcher Senses with regularity, which highlights all types of loot orange.
It’s especially important to utilize Geralt’s Witcher Senses to find underwater loot. As loot is not especially visible underwater, you’ll miss a lot of it when swimming if you don’t use Mr. Rivia’s special senses.
Geralt’s Witcher Senses
Upgrade the Axii Sign
Axii is one of Geralt’s five magical signs. That’s one of the best signs to upgrade because it can be very useful for both combat and dialogue. Axii temporarily stuns most enemies in combat, which can come in handy for keeping them still to inflict well-timed strong attacks on them for maximum damage.
So, enhance your Axii sign by investing in Delusion and Puppet on the skill tree. Delusion stops targets moving toward Geralt when casting Axii. Upgrading Delusion also enables you to utilize Axii in dialogue, which can save you gold by ensuring uncompromising characters comply with your requests. Furthermore, it can help you avoid some needless scrapes to boot.
The sign menu
Puppet is an Axii skill that briefly turns enemies into allies. When cast, a targeted enemy will start attacking nearby foes for a few seconds. Casting Puppet will also ensure the targeted foe won’t block your next attacks.
Upgrade the Quen Sign
Quen is also a very useful sign to upgrade in Witcher 3. You can upgrade Quen’s Exploding Shield and Active Shield from the outset. Active Shield is especially useful because the damage it absorbs restores Geralt’s vitality. Thus, it both protects Geralt and restores health.
The Quen shield
The Exploding Shield enhancement for Quen inflicts some damage and pushes opponents back when it breaks. Pushing opponents back with that shield will ensure you can get attacks in without enemies blocking. It’s useful against human foes armed with swords and shields who can often block your attacks. So, it’s well worth investing six Ability Points in Quen’s shields.
Those Witcher 3 beginner tips will give you a better chance of completing the game. Now go and give the Wild Hunt a good hiding in Witcher 3!
