Hello,

I was wondering what difficulty is best suited for someone that enjoyed Witcher 2 on hard and wants a challenge from this game(Hard was easy in most fights). But I don't want to find my self reloading saves on every single mob because it will just leave me frustrated.

I was wondering if the hardest difficulty forces you to use all your skills and potions. I enjoyed the souls games as well, mainly because there is a sense of progress, but in some games when you pick the hardest difficulty it feels like you are mostly just reloading very often until you can beat a certain enemy(not fun imo).

TL;DR: Is Death March difficulty enjoyable? What difficulty did you pick and why?

I played first playthrough on medium, but now, on my second, I just finished the main game on Death March, it was almost same easy/dificulty for me, a few times I need it potions(most for sword, oils), but I have the build around the signs(almost spam igni and queen, not so much of using swords).

Anything less than Death March is basically dull.

That might sound like bravado, but in reality it's experience. The lowest level essentially means you can defeat almost anything unless you stand there and don't defend at all.

The middle two have some graduating difficulty.

Death March provides the maximum difficulty. But not so difficult that it is impossible.

If I may also suggest. Just before you reach the end of each chapter, try to save the file in a separate location on your drive. That way, if you find later, you made a mistake, and you will, you can go back, without having to start again from the beginning.

And now I sound like a total Game Nerd.

I started out with Death March! and it felt like I was dodging a lot and rolling around setting up the enemies for an opening and striking. Usually I would cast Quen and strike, go for chain strike if I was feeling lucky and roll away and cast Quen again and wait for an opening. It's very time consuming and I feel like it's a little silly that I just defeated a dragon but I am having a problem with a pack of hungry wolfs or a group of drowners. I'm contemplating on bringing it down to Blood and Broken Bones difficulty and that hopefully will force me to use consumables/signs and tactics without having to feel like a peasant.

Start is always the hardest part. You've probably overleveled for Viper Swords and Warriors Armor. But once you can wield witcher armour, and have some better oils, the game becomes easy.

Group Fights are always hard, but try to separate. With Bandits I target the archers first since they manage to deplete my Quen. Good separation tactics are Igni and Bombs. When burning initiates the enemy's becomes immobilized, until struck with a sword. Bomb from afar and Igni on close quarters and attack the rest.

Don't mix Igni and Aard, since they cancel each other. But good Aard will knock enemy's and initiate finalizer, also that can give a breathing room.

I find group of nekkers to be the hardest.

If it´s easy for you, try Death march + enemy upscaling

I hope this is not too late to reply, but like yourself I had also been given advice that anything less than Death March can allegedly make the game dull towards late game. I hadn't even played other Witcher's before, and I have to admit the beginning map had been kicking my ass!

However, once past the first griffin I have picked up a reasonable rhythm to my battles and occasional setbacks. At times maybe playing at this difficulty is masochistic, but it's been nonetheless rewarding for me.

Story and Sword. Because higher difficulties, rob you off convenient (for Geralt) gameplay mechanisms (such as heal upon rest, etc).

And no, am no softie, i beat Witcher 1 in Highest difficulty and 2 in Dark mode.

I started out with easy (story mode) for the first few hours while getting used to the controls (as controls are quite different from the first 2 Witcher games), once I got the hang of the controls, I started increasing difficulty to see how each of different. I didn't notice that much difference between Story and Sword and Blood and Broken Bones, they seemed the same to me. After about 100hrs in, I added enemy upscaling, then finally switched to Death March + enemy upscaling (BEFORE I reached either the DiJinn quest or the quest to help Triss with the rats... dang! I got slaughtered by dozens of level 45 rats! LOL! - make sure you turn off both Death March and enemy upscaling when you do those 2 quests - it's a known glitch in the game, that those 2 quests can not be played, let alone defeated on either Death March or enemy upscaling - I was unaware of the glitch before I got there. so went into both battles clueless... 7 hours of being eating endlessly by rats later I went to the forums and asked, and found out about the glitch. Hopeful they fix it in the next patch update)

Also, I'm one of only 2.6% of players to ever beat Eredin on Death March... people keep asking me how I did it... it's called I cheated, I spawned Avallac'h in to fight with me, Avallac'h has the single highest hit damage of any character in the game (he consistently lands 2,000 to 4,000 point crit hits, compare against Geralt's 700 to 900 point crit hits -- then again, he IS supposed to be the most powerful mage in the multiverse, so stands to reason his crit hits would be so high)- he took out Eredin 10 seconds into the battle while Geralt stood there doing not one thing. Avallac'h basically ran in, and one hit dropped Eredin. He'll do the same thing at that Hanse Base in Toussaint too - one hit dropped 30+ bandits while Geralt watched and did nothing.

Be careful of spawning in Avallac'h to help you though, he will run wildly into the nearest village and start slaughtering all the villagers left and right - including the primary game characters (Yennefer, Triss, Zoltan, fist fighters, innkeepers, bookies, etc) you'll be sitting there watching Avallac'h massaquer everyone while dozens of "Quest Failed" messages flash across the screen, because you can't do the quests now that the characters are dead. Avallac'h's a human hating psychopath, be careful when and where you spawn him in, make sure you save first in case he runs around killing everyone. I didn't realize he was so violent. On a side note, if you've got a save file to reload, it's fun to spawn him into the game and watch him go nuts on everyone. :P

I definitely recommend playing on easy for the first hour, while you get used to the control settings, as they are not standard, but then increasing difficulty once you've got your fingers used to where the controls are. Trying each setting for an hour, see how each feels, and anytime you get bored, spawn in Avallac'h as a companion for Geralt and watch him have a psychotic meltdown.

And if you REALLY want to shake the game up... there are mods that allow you to strip Geralt right out of the game entirely (as in delete Geralt from the game) and play AS Avallac'h... you want to beat the city guards? Become Avallac'h... he is so insanely overpowered, it ain't funny... last week I did a YouTube episode where I stormed up to Vivaldi's bank, killed the guards, and then did nothing but kill every single guard that came running up - 3 hours and 500+ dead Redanian soldiers and Witch Hunters later, I sent Avallac'h to mass murder everyone in Temple Square... it so fun to play as Avallac'h, hel to get the mods to work though, they are old and glitchy, had to rewrite half of them to get them working together...

I'm now on NG+ (new game plus) playing as Avallac'h, with Ciri and Isilira (Avallac'h's wife) and Ge'els and Tulip (Ge'els' girlfriend) and 5 Scio-teal elves (altered to look like Aallac'h's 5 warrior she-elf bodyguards he has in the books/novels) spawned into the game, as player companions (meaning they fight alongside him in the battles) and doing a Human murdering, Avallac'h based fanfiction run of psycho Elves lead by king psycho elf himself on Death March with enemy upscaling. Basically I've built a renegade group of Elves and and replaying the game by letting them kill every last human they encounter. (And if you've never read the books, definitely read the books... Now that I've finished the cannon vanilla game, I'm modding it out to be lore-friendly. I'm on my 4th playthrough of Witcher 3 right now - this game is so much fun, and the modding abilities, makes it able to have absolutely endless replayability)

In the settings/options menus, same place you can change the difficulty and enemy upscaling, just above those 2, is a slider that lets you adjust the automatic game saves - set it to 7 minutes, and you'll end up with about 3 game saves for each quest.

I'm doing a completionist run for YouTube, and by having the game autosave every 7 minutes, I'm able to go back and reload each quest, to get all the options, all the easter eggs, all the achievements, and all the cutscenes into my let's play videos.

base game is very easy play deathmarch. expansions are harder blood and wine is hard af.

watchout for a quest called extreme cosplay, fuking spent 30 minutes very high dps mage enemies and instant kill 2handed enemies.