Get the +1 vigor in the Witcher tree (2/2), get 2/2 in knife throwing as well.

2/2 in both Quen improvements.

2/2 in +damage from bombs (adds up to 100%).

2/2 in the dodge roll range skill in the Swordsmanship tree.

If you really want to pull through on insane, you'll want to do most of your damage ranged. Throwing knifes and Grapeshot spam is your best shot, for that, if not the most graceful :p.


Can't think of other _must have_ skills besides that. The one that gives you more herbs in the Alchemy tree is probably smart, but three tiers into the tree I think.


I played through the game on hard with the above skills and most of the rest in the sword tree and only had to resort to ultra cheap grapeshot/dancing star spam with the Mist boss and Ch1 boss (don't want to spoil so I won't be specific :D). Died 20-30 times past-prologue overall, but I did not care since it wasn't on insane, so I wasn't overly careful. I was also still learning the game's mechanics, obviously.


Overall, I think Insane is absolutely doable. Not for me though, I tend to play when drunk and/or tired and can't exactly afford to put my first through my monitor at the time :P Good luck mate, keep this updated.



And, let me repeat, spamming bombs is the I-WIN-BUTTON in every situation in the game, period. It always stuns every enemy long enough to hurl a second one. At the very end I was carrying something north of a hundred bombs with me. It feels very cheap though, but so does deleting your saves upon dying I suppose ;)

Personally I am waiting for them to fix the targeting system before I give Insane another shot, I have died to many times to it. Like at the end of the dragon part where you are fighting a ton of guys and don't have much room to move around. I go to attack the guy closest to me and the target switches to a guy 3 guys back and lets the guy I would have just killed kill me. :( Really sucks that if the targeting reticule does not happen to be on the guy you hit with your sword they don't take any damage.

But if it did that, then that would make the hitting multiple targets part of the sword mastery pointless, it does getting annoying however when it does just jump right into the middle of a crowd, when all u wanna do is hit the guy next to u, but that may be y they added the target selection button (that i never used tbh)

True, it would make that part of the sword mastery useless, but would also make combat a bit more realistic don't you think? I mean how can my sword go right through some guys gut and he stand there like nothing happened?

PS. what target selection button? you mean the lock on button (Alt)? rarely find that useful with the way you need to jump in and out of combat.

Apparently the Lead QA guy from CPR has already beaten the game on Insane mode. A quote from Facebook:

"Anyone who's been with us during the night launch party at Warsaw might have seen our QA expert Łukasz (first-ever player to finish TW2 on Insane difficulty) in action. Now, here's another one of our QA experts - Michał. He's the only player in the world (so far), who finished entire game with only... a pickaxe! Grats!"

So... Insane Mode with pickaxe? Anyone?

I used it for the Prologue its got the best dps!! I can play the game while insane But not insane mode, thankyou anyways.

I challenge them to do it on insane with a pickaxe and dare to say in game that "I'm not the chosen one" :D

I'm not Lead QA, just a QA (with some mad skillz). If you have some questions about beating the game on insane - go ahead, I can help.

For all of you concerned about changing the difficulty - the steam achievement won't count if you changed the difficulty to lower and then changed it back to insane.

CDPR, Tech Support / QA

Hello Lukasz,

After about 20 tries on Insane ( after being up to middle of chapter 2 on Normal) I can now more or less consistently beat the prologue, with the hardest part being defeating the elven archers when landing in Flotsam, without a chance to meditate and distribute skillpoints/drink potions to prepare - do you have any tips for that?

Also, the potion that gives +50% vitality and -30% dmg -- does the damage penalty apply to bombs and traps? I thought no, but seemed like bombs do slightly less damage with it.

Thank you, and thank you for a wonderful game

Make sure to post your suicide video.

WHY NOWHERE IN THE GAME THEY WARN YOU WHAT HAPPENS ON INSANE????

this is the dumbest shit ever! i was playing the game in hard, and still felt it was too easy, switched to Insane and played for 2 hours, died - can't load game.. what kind of crap is that?? how hard is to get a damn warning popup???? such a cheap shot...

When you start game, you can see tooltip which clearly says, that if you die - you won't be able to load saved games.

What demoniko said plus, you know what Insane means right? People may get committed to Psychiatric Institution because of it!

But don't give up. Do an Insane run from scratch and you prolly get as addicted to it as I am. EVen with a few upsets along the journey. Every restart we get better and better. On my 6th run atm after 2 deaths. But the first 2 were normal then hard diff. First run with the game in Insane is, well, Insanity!

I'm addicted too.. last time I died in act 2 from a stupid thing I was about to uninstall the game (not because I don't like it, but to save some time).. now I'm again in act 2 :). I must finish it on insane before I stop playing it.

If you complete the game on Insane - don't load saves without GameData registry backup. I lost all my saves from my second Insane run because I died after completing game and now can't restore them :( First one wasn't so perfect - some quests weren't completed, and I prefer Iorveth's path