escaping white orchard
May. 4th, 2020 03:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7via https://ift.tt/3fklmUA
So I managed to convince Dr. F that he should take another run at the griffin boss fight to escape the White Orchard level in Witcher 3.
(spoilers if you’re only really a Netflix Witcher fan!)
It took a few tries, and some running around– buying components to make grapeshot bombs, looking up how to rapid-switch from crossbow back to Signs. Fine-tuned the concept of alternating Quen and Aard signs to defend while the thing was on the attack and then attack when it was on the ground– the point of Quen being to survive, and the point of Aard being to stagger it long enough to let Geralt go ham on it with the sword. All other fights have been very simple, just lead off with a Sign maybe and then go nuts with the sword and occasionally have to Quen when there’s a counterattack.
But the griffin… well, it took almost 8 hours of in-game time to finally beat the thing. It just was such a long fight, it was unlike anything so far in the game, and it was a good education for the game’s more complex mechanics.
(Hilariously, throughout, Vesemir is running around and occasionally leaps in there valiantly hacking at the thing, and no matter what he does, how dramatic it looks, he never does a damn bit of damage to the critter, nor does he do anything in a way that would allow Geralt to do any damage either; if he’d just keep Aarding the thing so it would stay down and give Geralt a minute to attack it, it’d be great, but it’s not set up that way, so mostly his role is to periodically intone “Damn! it’s fast!” and “I’m too old for this shit” and just… not do anything useful.)
In the end, what did it was pulling back and going exhaustively through all the inventory screens, and re-evaluating where to use the skill points acquired thusfar. The major thing that proved decisive was taking the skill point that had given Geralt passive healing abilities (you don’t have those in Death March without selecting that) and re-allocating it to give him active healing during combat if he eats food. That was what was decisive– getting the health bar to replenish, because otherwise the griffin could oneshot him with very little preparation.
All of this is sort of not what I’m into, in gaming; I’d have no interest in actually doing that. So I mostly sat and made Superior Beast Oil jokes with MM throughout this process, and let DF puzzle through it. We did some cheering, and were suitably glum every time Geralt died again (and relieved when DF managed to get a save point after the intro dialogue).
Finally killing the griffin was fantastically satisfying, though, and we all got very excited about that. And then we could go take the mcguffin to the plot device guy and get the plot coupons we needed to leave the level.
There followed many many many cinematic cutscenes and things, some tragic and some satisfying and some interesting.
(”This isn’t how I thought we’d meet,” Geralt says to Yennefer. “Damn right,” Dr F said, “I wasn’t planning on wearing this for the occasion.” His stats-maxing attempt for the griffin had involved an olive-green gambeson with clashing beige skirt bits, teal hunting gauntlets, and some unnervingly-shiny leather hunting trousers with boots that looked sort of like Uggs. This was not a Fashion Lewk in the slightest and was definitely not what you’d want to be wearing when you met up with your ex.)
And then it became clear that I was the only person who had any idea what the fuck was going on, because, well, massive spoilers if you only watched the Netflix thing, but like, the entire premise of this game is that Emperor Emhyr var Emrys of Nilfgaard wants his daughter Cirilla back and the Wild Hunt is chasing her and he knows Geralt raised her and thus is the most likely to be able to find her.
Which, like. My friends had only seen the Netflix thing so they were like WHOSE daughter??? whomst the fuck is this guy???? so I got to be like oh by the way guys… so that was hilarious, actually.
“You’re the only one of us who knows the lore,” Dr F commented.
MM was extremely amused by the outfits they offered Geralt to meet the Emperor, as was DF, who is something of a clothes-horse in real life. He opted for the doublet with the black-on-black vine pattern. “I have fabric to have one of these made for myself actually,” he said, “but in red,” and then we talked about fashion for a while.
Neither of them really noticed or appreciated the portrait of Ciri, however. I shrieked, but there was too much going on.
Anyway MM had to go as we were leaving the palace, so she could lie in the hallway outside Girl’s bedroom and stop Girl from coming down the stairs on various flimsy pretenses over and over again. (DF’s gaming reflexes are so good that he’d hear her coming every time and every time when she came into the room we’d be staring intently at the inventory screen, he’s quite experienced at this sort of nonsense and also does not need his daughter to decide she’s afraid of the TV again because there was a deranged white-haired swordsman decapitating people when she came into the room three hours after bedtime.)
We’ve now left Geralt on his way to the next quest. It was going fine and then a bunch of drowners showed up sort of out of the blue, and shouldn’t have been able to kill Geralt but uh well, listen, it was time to go to bed.
(I woke up at 5, unfortunately, but as a consolation I did get to write some lovely bantery dialogue for Jaskier’s eventual visit to Kaer Morhen so that’s a thing that’ll happen.)
So I managed to convince Dr. F that he should take another run at the griffin boss fight to escape the White Orchard level in Witcher 3.
(spoilers if you’re only really a Netflix Witcher fan!)
It took a few tries, and some running around– buying components to make grapeshot bombs, looking up how to rapid-switch from crossbow back to Signs. Fine-tuned the concept of alternating Quen and Aard signs to defend while the thing was on the attack and then attack when it was on the ground– the point of Quen being to survive, and the point of Aard being to stagger it long enough to let Geralt go ham on it with the sword. All other fights have been very simple, just lead off with a Sign maybe and then go nuts with the sword and occasionally have to Quen when there’s a counterattack.
But the griffin… well, it took almost 8 hours of in-game time to finally beat the thing. It just was such a long fight, it was unlike anything so far in the game, and it was a good education for the game’s more complex mechanics.
(Hilariously, throughout, Vesemir is running around and occasionally leaps in there valiantly hacking at the thing, and no matter what he does, how dramatic it looks, he never does a damn bit of damage to the critter, nor does he do anything in a way that would allow Geralt to do any damage either; if he’d just keep Aarding the thing so it would stay down and give Geralt a minute to attack it, it’d be great, but it’s not set up that way, so mostly his role is to periodically intone “Damn! it’s fast!” and “I’m too old for this shit” and just… not do anything useful.)
In the end, what did it was pulling back and going exhaustively through all the inventory screens, and re-evaluating where to use the skill points acquired thusfar. The major thing that proved decisive was taking the skill point that had given Geralt passive healing abilities (you don’t have those in Death March without selecting that) and re-allocating it to give him active healing during combat if he eats food. That was what was decisive– getting the health bar to replenish, because otherwise the griffin could oneshot him with very little preparation.
All of this is sort of not what I’m into, in gaming; I’d have no interest in actually doing that. So I mostly sat and made Superior Beast Oil jokes with MM throughout this process, and let DF puzzle through it. We did some cheering, and were suitably glum every time Geralt died again (and relieved when DF managed to get a save point after the intro dialogue).
Finally killing the griffin was fantastically satisfying, though, and we all got very excited about that. And then we could go take the mcguffin to the plot device guy and get the plot coupons we needed to leave the level.
There followed many many many cinematic cutscenes and things, some tragic and some satisfying and some interesting.
(”This isn’t how I thought we’d meet,” Geralt says to Yennefer. “Damn right,” Dr F said, “I wasn’t planning on wearing this for the occasion.” His stats-maxing attempt for the griffin had involved an olive-green gambeson with clashing beige skirt bits, teal hunting gauntlets, and some unnervingly-shiny leather hunting trousers with boots that looked sort of like Uggs. This was not a Fashion Lewk in the slightest and was definitely not what you’d want to be wearing when you met up with your ex.)
And then it became clear that I was the only person who had any idea what the fuck was going on, because, well, massive spoilers if you only watched the Netflix thing, but like, the entire premise of this game is that Emperor Emhyr var Emrys of Nilfgaard wants his daughter Cirilla back and the Wild Hunt is chasing her and he knows Geralt raised her and thus is the most likely to be able to find her.
Which, like. My friends had only seen the Netflix thing so they were like WHOSE daughter??? whomst the fuck is this guy???? so I got to be like oh by the way guys… so that was hilarious, actually.
“You’re the only one of us who knows the lore,” Dr F commented.
MM was extremely amused by the outfits they offered Geralt to meet the Emperor, as was DF, who is something of a clothes-horse in real life. He opted for the doublet with the black-on-black vine pattern. “I have fabric to have one of these made for myself actually,” he said, “but in red,” and then we talked about fashion for a while.
Neither of them really noticed or appreciated the portrait of Ciri, however. I shrieked, but there was too much going on.
Anyway MM had to go as we were leaving the palace, so she could lie in the hallway outside Girl’s bedroom and stop Girl from coming down the stairs on various flimsy pretenses over and over again. (DF’s gaming reflexes are so good that he’d hear her coming every time and every time when she came into the room we’d be staring intently at the inventory screen, he’s quite experienced at this sort of nonsense and also does not need his daughter to decide she’s afraid of the TV again because there was a deranged white-haired swordsman decapitating people when she came into the room three hours after bedtime.)
We’ve now left Geralt on his way to the next quest. It was going fine and then a bunch of drowners showed up sort of out of the blue, and shouldn’t have been able to kill Geralt but uh well, listen, it was time to go to bed.
(I woke up at 5, unfortunately, but as a consolation I did get to write some lovely bantery dialogue for Jaskier’s eventual visit to Kaer Morhen so that’s a thing that’ll happen.)
