Hi threads

Oh, it's my first time too - I am just SO slow - but who cares if we are enjoying ourselves ??

Cheers.

Mad

Well I'll be standing in the castle with my hands in my pocket for months if I pretty soon don't figure out how to get my guy to swing his sword - good grief - I'm more than pathetic.

nickie - thanks - not sure if it's superlative but the puppy is long

Looney, I've waited until the evening after I finished the game to start again. What a weenie! I missed Geralt and the Swamp
Syd, I played it in Vista and it was really stable. I didn't even have the lastest patch on it. I had some screen freezes which I cleared up by going to task manager and if it said the game was still running I'd switch back to the game. Voila! I was back with a game that was running perfectly. Until chapter 5, I had about 4 crash to desktop situations. Chapter 5 has so many more cut scenes that it gave me a bit more trouble, but nothing to really upset me. I hope you get the same experience with Vista and your rig.

Syd, did you use the mouse option when you started the game or the keyboard? If mouse, then you wait for combat to start and left click on one of the bad guys with a red circle around him. You will see the sword icon then left click. Always left click when you see the fiery sword because it will give you a combination of moves (you don't have to do anything to get the combo Geralt just does them based on the Talent you have chosen when he levels up). P.S. you will only see the fiery sword icon on easy and medium levels. I played on easy first because I didn't know how I'd do with the combat system.

Hi Debra - got it figured out - thanks. I think my brain must have fried last night and I was just too tired to figure out what I was supposed to be doing.

I'm playing on easy and opted for mouse/keyboard control. It's taking a bit of getting used to. I just got inside the citidal with Leo (somehow he does not inspire confidence as a back up guy to me - time will tell).

Glad to hear Vista was stable for you - so far I haven't had any problems - keeping my fingers crossed it will continue. I had to give up on Gothic 3 - couldn't play more than 10 minutes without the game crashing or getting the dreaded GURU - I was at level 46 also so it rather irks me.

Glad you got the fighting figured out, syd. It does take a bit of getting used to. I'm playing on XP with mouse and a gamepad. I didn't have any issues at all other that some jerkiness during Chapter 5 fighting scenes in Vizima. I'm in the swamp cemetary right now and trying to drag the game out so it won't be over!

And, the Christmas poem was indeed a stellar performance once again this year! Huzzah!

Thanks Drac - glad you liked it - actually, I'd be surprised if many even wade through it - the darn thing sorta took on a life of its own

Darn - I was wrong about Leo and feel guilty that I didn't have faith in him - rats. Still plugging along - gathering ingredients for Triss' potion - have to get the claw from the frightener now so up top I go. I do love the map system in this game - it's nice to have one that actually shows you where you are and where you need to go - which in my case is absolutely imperative

I am with you Syd on the map, without it I get horribly turned around in circles and have no clue.

That brings up some memories of some old posts! I'm glad there's a good map too!

The small active map in the upper right has saved my bacon a couple of times! Once I ran out of Cat (a potion to help you see better in the sewers and crypts) and was running around and fighting completely blind. The little map got me out of there without being killed!

Wow, nickie you're finally playing...YAY! And threads! Glad to see the group grow!

Mad is right on, take your time and just enjoy! Trust me, by the time you get close to the end, you'll be wishing you had gone slower anyway. I hated to see it end. So much that, as you saw, I'm playing again already! Like Debra, I missed Geralt, not too sure about the swamp tho!

Ya know syd, after I got used to the combat, I think it seemed easier to pay more attention to the story than to the fighting since it was so easy! One thing that I learned late, was that when you're in a fight, if you hit when you aren't supposed to (when you see the sword icon with a circle and line thru it, Geralt gets "off balance" and then he can't hit. Also, once he gets off like that, if you find a spot near him that will show a fat arrow, double click and he'll do a cool sort of backflip over or away from the enemy and he also gains his balance back. Then you can get back to the fight... or can get a good running start!

I hope I explained that okay? I'm so good with the describing thing!

My questions:
-I'm making lots of money playing dice! But can anyone tell me why I have 3 sets of dice?

-Did I miss something with the Maribor Gate? I never did get thru it.

-Did I also miss something with The Mill entrance? The Miller's Gate? Didn't get into these places either!

I never got into them either. I never saw that fat arrow thingie. I know if double tap my W key, Geralt will do a backflip over the enemies he's fighting - that is if there aren't too many of them.

Now I've got a question. I'm in the swamp and I want to do the armor quest. I've got the elven minstral notes, two pieces of old armor and Raven's armor. I can't find anything else. When I map the quest, it tells me to go to the one Refugee cave. The only thing I can find in there is a Wayfarer's Stone which doesn't do anything. I thought maybe it was the secret way to the sorceress' lab, so I hit it with Aard, Igni, Aard. But nothing happened. Do I have everything? Is this the right place?

Hi Drac!

I didn't do that quest darn it! But I did read that the stone is important, then you do the aard, igni, aard. So, you can't pick up the stone? Have you tried using the signs anywhere near the stone? Maybe the secret opening is just beside it...??

Let us know!

Well, I don't why, but when I went back and did Aard, Igni, Aard again it worked! Whoa! The new armor was totally worth it! I'm now figuring out whether I can get past the force field in the Salamandra headquarters. It doesn't look like I can. I need to go finish a quest with Kalkstein and then it's off to see the King and I guess move into the final part of the game. *whine*

I just want to know what am I going to do with this $14,000 in orens I've accumulated!!

Hi

"I just want to know what am I going to do with this $14,000 in orens I've accumulated!!"

I'll mail you my address !!!!

Cheers.

Mad :christmas:

You beat me to it, Mad! Didn't someone say that orens are hard to come by in the beginning?

At last (I think - hope - keeping fingers crossed) real life just might give me a chance to load the game later today or tomorrow. Am now so far behind I've forgotten what I was about to do next

Wonder if I can remember what I've already done

Syd, in her Epic, mentioned I hoped to complete the game by Christmas 2008. may need to change that to 2009.

:holidays:

This is so discouraging! I'm still waiting on the patch . I know it shouldn't be to much longer, but the wait is driving me crazy. I'm really hoping that the patch will finely stop the game freezing problem. I also put in a new sound card that sure isn't going to hurt anything. Keep your fingers crossed!

Marilyn :christmas: to all!

I'm keeping my fingers crossed Milee! :holidays:

On Dec 15, I received an email from the Witcher boards and it had this to say about the patch so maybe your wait is finally coming to an end. Let's hope it fixes the problems.

Good info oldman! Thanks

Rusty

Thanks oldman! They had said by Christmas which is almost here. Talk about waiting till the last minute to announce a release date! Now I'm wondering if they'll say AFTER Christmas. Do I sound impatient ...yup.

I got that same e-mail. I sure hope it helps you, Milee...

Milee my game isn't freezing - yet - but it crashed about every 10 minutes once I got out of the castle. I got a nice apology about it being sorry that it would have to close down which didn't help much after I just got through killing a mass of those green dog thingies (I'm only in chapter 1) and I had to go back and do it again.

I did the bcdedit thing and got the latest drivers for my video card and was able to play longer stretches yesterday. The load times are terrible - I hate going into the houses and coming back out again. I have 2 megs of ram - guess I'd best be looking into one or two more megs to see if that will help speed things up a bit.

I also somehow lost my dagger which I guess I need to get the brains of those drowners. I keep killing them but am only collecting green goo and ecto stuff (sigh) I don't know if I dropped it back at the castle or at the Inn - hopefully at the Inn because I don't think I can get back to the castle.

Syd, another meg of RAM probably won't help. What are your load times? About 20 to 40 seconds are about the best you can hope for. I'm playing with 2 MB of RAM and about 30 seconds is the longest I have to wait. Looney solved a lot of her long load time issues by getting a bigger hard drive. She exceeded all the other hardware specs, but her old 40 GB hard drive just wasn't giving her the space the game needed. She upped to a huge drive and it really sped things up. What they are recommending as the maximum specs should really be the minimum specs as the quality of gameplay just isn't possible with the minimums.

Your dagger won't help you get Drowner brains. Well, I mean it WILL help you kill the darned things. But you will need to have a Drowner entry in your Bestiary to be able to get the stuff you need. You get the entries from books you find and buy along the way. I somehow missed buying (or couldn't afford at the time) the book on vampires and missed out on a couple of quests at the end because I didn't have the entry in my Bestiary. Open up your in-game menu and click on your Journal. There is an option for Monsters which will tell you what is there and what isn't.