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Last night’s agenda was to finish up the low-ish level contracts in Velen and move on to Novigrod and also finish finding the rest of the Griffin stuff.
So we met Triss Merigold, and we had an epic fight with a wyvern on the top of a tower, and such. But mostly we discovered the absolute worst place on the Continent for a summer home. There’s a fast travel point named Harpy Feeding Grounds that is, in fact, exactly what it says, and if you kill most of the harpies you get to slide down a cliff and find a level 14 basilisk, which it’s real difficult to run away from because, as we mentioned, cliff, and i was like whoever sold you this timeshare is a fucker and DF was like holy shit i know.
I’m writing this in two halves though so you gotta read some boring stuff first, and Novigrod and the wyvern is getting some later, but like, i gotta work on actual writing sometime today. it’s cool, i’ll be away this weekend so i’ll separate out the playthru diaries and queue ‘em up to keep us going.
anyhow.
we started off with The Shrieker, which is a cockatrice. Cockatrices are draconids, so you need draconid oil, and otherwise similar tactics to the griffin at the end of the White Orchard level– crossbow, Aard, hit while stunned, run the fuck away, repeat ad nauseam. Yes, Geralt’s higher level now, but so is the critter.
At one point the Shrieker got Geralt down to 0 health, like there was absolutely no red left in the bar, and Geralt just ran, and with two different regen mechanisms going he managed to creep some red back into that bar. The thing about the cockatrice is that it’s really fast at following you even crawling on the ground– a good dodge buys you fractions of seconds at best, and you just have to keep running and it’s exhausting. There isn’t time to cast any Signs, and so you have to choose between having time for Quen, to protect yourself, or Aard, to knock it down so you can attack it. DF kept choosing against Quen and then the thing got in a big hit on him and killed him, so we had to reload yet another time.
The third attempt was just a grind. Tried samum bombs until we ran out, took Swallow (to heal) until we ran out, took Thunderbolt (strength booster) until we ran out, Shrieker’s at 15% health or so, Geralt’s at 15% health or so, the thing’s chasing us and we keep Aarding it and getting in one swipe and then having to run and the thing is just right behind us and it was just this panicked brutal slog and suddenly the weird “WHOOMPH” followed by the choral “AAAH” noise came up and the slogan on the screen was like “Quest Completed: Shrieker!”
“What the fuck,” DF said, and had to run back and try to find it. It had just– expired, while we were running away. Bleeding, probably, but like. What the fuck.
We eagerly combed through the loot to look for the cockatrice heart, which we need to make Enhanced Beast Oil, which has been a running joke since we started, but alas. No heart. Lots of other parts, but no heart. (”Why does anyone play this game, if not for that?” MM had wondered, a little earlier, but by now she’d fallen asleep on the couch, so we had to break the news to her slightly later in the game when she woke up again.)
Sad and kind of high in toxicity, we wandered off to cash in the reward. It’s been so long since we took the quest that I had forgotten that the guy who gave us the quest was actually named Chet, like, what the fuck. Anyway, he was grateful, and was like “well we don’t have much money but,” and the dialogue option was like “thanks [take the cash]” or “save it for Some Character’s Name.” “Who?” DF said, squinting.
“Oh, the really unnerving-looking poppet who had to tell you all about how the critter disemboweled his dad right in front of him,” I said.
“Ohhh yeahhhhhh,” DF said. “Shit. Goddamn. Fine.” He let the guy keep the money, and we went on our way. “Well, now for Jenny on the Block, who was a Wraith of some kind, so we gotta use Specter Oil…”
To start off with, DF was being lazy about Quen, and had forgotten to move any food into the quick-provision slots. You cannot take things out of the food and drink inventory while in combat, so if it’s not in the quick-provision slots you don’t have access to it.
So…. Sighhhhh after reloading after Jenny murdered Geralt, we got re-set to Crow’s Perch, and had to make our way back to the location. There’s a quick-travel point nearby, so DF just hit that, which brought us to the middle of, oh yeah, the place we liberated from bandits and the peasants moved back in and oh yeah that was the night we were pretty drunk and DF was Igni’ing beehives and took out someone’s grandma and an exploding barrel and then we got killed so it all reset. Riiiight.
“The beehives are still there,” I pointed out.
DF threw Igni at them, missed, hit an exploding barrel in the middle of a group of peasants, which blew up, knocked a bunch of them over, and that set the beehives on fire, so they dropped their honeycombs and we went and looted them. But, sober, DF was concerned enough to walk over and look at the downed peasants, some of whom were weeping. But they sat up. They’d just fainted, apparently.
“Okay,” he said, and left.
Jenny from the Block was annoyingly capable of one-shot kills. Butakilah12902 came through with the suggestion of using a smaller dodge than the big rolling dodge that was the only move DF had really mastered thusfar, and that helped with staying inside the Yrden circle (it’s B on an Xbox 360, in combat context– other contexts, B is Jump, but the menus change in combat mode) – “That’s clutch,” DF said, and made Geralt shuffle-step all over the place like a demented chicken with a sword. (They worked hard on the animation; his hair flies around super-majestically but also humorously.)
At the end of the fight I was like “agh shit Quen please!” and he was like “THIS IS NO TIME FOR QUEN” and– finally killed Jenny, so there was that. (He’s not wrong. I get twitchy and like defensive strategies. This is why I’m not playing this game, or any game, I am here for the color commentary and constantly texting for hints and also using Google a lot, thanks. I also hate surprises. No, I don’t tell DF everything, but I am prone to blurting things out like “ah check the west end” and “GET PAID UP FRONT FOR THIS ONE” and “those fuckers blow up when their health gets below 10%” and such. Mostly, it doesn’t annoy him. I know… )
When we got back to the village to cash in the contract for Jenny, we got our first look at Geralt’s Super Toxic face, after two back-to-back hard fights that he’d potioned up a lot for. In the cutscene, all the veins of his face were dark purple, he had shadows around his eyes, and his scars were all vivid purple against his extra-white skin. It was fucked-up. It probably didn’t actually affect the cutscene dialogue but the guy was like “Oh! Oh you– yeah! Here! Here’s a pile of money! You’re sure that wraith is gone, eh?”
Geralt was like (if I knew how to do that eldridtch dripping font effect I would) “YES. I’M A WITCHER. I KNOW WHAT I’M ABOUT. IT’S DEAD AS FUCK. FOR GOOD.” Peasant Guy was like “Ah um fantastic here is a pile of money please go!”
This time, Geralt had no compunction about taking the money and going.
Last night’s agenda was to finish up the low-ish level contracts in Velen and move on to Novigrod and also finish finding the rest of the Griffin stuff.
So we met Triss Merigold, and we had an epic fight with a wyvern on the top of a tower, and such. But mostly we discovered the absolute worst place on the Continent for a summer home. There’s a fast travel point named Harpy Feeding Grounds that is, in fact, exactly what it says, and if you kill most of the harpies you get to slide down a cliff and find a level 14 basilisk, which it’s real difficult to run away from because, as we mentioned, cliff, and i was like whoever sold you this timeshare is a fucker and DF was like holy shit i know.
I’m writing this in two halves though so you gotta read some boring stuff first, and Novigrod and the wyvern is getting some later, but like, i gotta work on actual writing sometime today. it’s cool, i’ll be away this weekend so i’ll separate out the playthru diaries and queue ‘em up to keep us going.
anyhow.
we started off with The Shrieker, which is a cockatrice. Cockatrices are draconids, so you need draconid oil, and otherwise similar tactics to the griffin at the end of the White Orchard level– crossbow, Aard, hit while stunned, run the fuck away, repeat ad nauseam. Yes, Geralt’s higher level now, but so is the critter.
At one point the Shrieker got Geralt down to 0 health, like there was absolutely no red left in the bar, and Geralt just ran, and with two different regen mechanisms going he managed to creep some red back into that bar. The thing about the cockatrice is that it’s really fast at following you even crawling on the ground– a good dodge buys you fractions of seconds at best, and you just have to keep running and it’s exhausting. There isn’t time to cast any Signs, and so you have to choose between having time for Quen, to protect yourself, or Aard, to knock it down so you can attack it. DF kept choosing against Quen and then the thing got in a big hit on him and killed him, so we had to reload yet another time.
The third attempt was just a grind. Tried samum bombs until we ran out, took Swallow (to heal) until we ran out, took Thunderbolt (strength booster) until we ran out, Shrieker’s at 15% health or so, Geralt’s at 15% health or so, the thing’s chasing us and we keep Aarding it and getting in one swipe and then having to run and the thing is just right behind us and it was just this panicked brutal slog and suddenly the weird “WHOOMPH” followed by the choral “AAAH” noise came up and the slogan on the screen was like “Quest Completed: Shrieker!”
“What the fuck,” DF said, and had to run back and try to find it. It had just– expired, while we were running away. Bleeding, probably, but like. What the fuck.
We eagerly combed through the loot to look for the cockatrice heart, which we need to make Enhanced Beast Oil, which has been a running joke since we started, but alas. No heart. Lots of other parts, but no heart. (”Why does anyone play this game, if not for that?” MM had wondered, a little earlier, but by now she’d fallen asleep on the couch, so we had to break the news to her slightly later in the game when she woke up again.)
Sad and kind of high in toxicity, we wandered off to cash in the reward. It’s been so long since we took the quest that I had forgotten that the guy who gave us the quest was actually named Chet, like, what the fuck. Anyway, he was grateful, and was like “well we don’t have much money but,” and the dialogue option was like “thanks [take the cash]” or “save it for Some Character’s Name.” “Who?” DF said, squinting.
“Oh, the really unnerving-looking poppet who had to tell you all about how the critter disemboweled his dad right in front of him,” I said.
“Ohhh yeahhhhhh,” DF said. “Shit. Goddamn. Fine.” He let the guy keep the money, and we went on our way. “Well, now for Jenny on the Block, who was a Wraith of some kind, so we gotta use Specter Oil…”
To start off with, DF was being lazy about Quen, and had forgotten to move any food into the quick-provision slots. You cannot take things out of the food and drink inventory while in combat, so if it’s not in the quick-provision slots you don’t have access to it.
So…. Sighhhhh after reloading after Jenny murdered Geralt, we got re-set to Crow’s Perch, and had to make our way back to the location. There’s a quick-travel point nearby, so DF just hit that, which brought us to the middle of, oh yeah, the place we liberated from bandits and the peasants moved back in and oh yeah that was the night we were pretty drunk and DF was Igni’ing beehives and took out someone’s grandma and an exploding barrel and then we got killed so it all reset. Riiiight.
“The beehives are still there,” I pointed out.
DF threw Igni at them, missed, hit an exploding barrel in the middle of a group of peasants, which blew up, knocked a bunch of them over, and that set the beehives on fire, so they dropped their honeycombs and we went and looted them. But, sober, DF was concerned enough to walk over and look at the downed peasants, some of whom were weeping. But they sat up. They’d just fainted, apparently.
“Okay,” he said, and left.
Jenny from the Block was annoyingly capable of one-shot kills. But
akilah12902 came through with the suggestion of using a smaller dodge than the big rolling dodge that was the only move DF had really mastered thusfar, and that helped with staying inside the Yrden circle (it’s B on an Xbox 360, in combat context– other contexts, B is Jump, but the menus change in combat mode) – “That’s clutch,” DF said, and made Geralt shuffle-step all over the place like a demented chicken with a sword. (They worked hard on the animation; his hair flies around super-majestically but also humorously.)At the end of the fight I was like “agh shit Quen please!” and he was like “THIS IS NO TIME FOR QUEN” and– finally killed Jenny, so there was that. (He’s not wrong. I get twitchy and like defensive strategies. This is why I’m not playing this game, or any game, I am here for the color commentary and constantly texting for hints and also using Google a lot, thanks. I also hate surprises. No, I don’t tell DF everything, but I am prone to blurting things out like “ah check the west end” and “GET PAID UP FRONT FOR THIS ONE” and “those fuckers blow up when their health gets below 10%” and such. Mostly, it doesn’t annoy him. I know… )
When we got back to the village to cash in the contract for Jenny, we got our first look at Geralt’s Super Toxic face, after two back-to-back hard fights that he’d potioned up a lot for. In the cutscene, all the veins of his face were dark purple, he had shadows around his eyes, and his scars were all vivid purple against his extra-white skin. It was fucked-up. It probably didn’t actually affect the cutscene dialogue but the guy was like “Oh! Oh you– yeah! Here! Here’s a pile of money! You’re sure that wraith is gone, eh?”
Geralt was like (if I knew how to do that eldridtch dripping font effect I would) “YES. I’M A WITCHER. I KNOW WHAT I’M ABOUT. IT’S DEAD AS FUCK. FOR GOOD.” Peasant Guy was like “Ah um fantastic here is a pile of money please go!”
This time, Geralt had no compunction about taking the money and going.
