[String Of Life]

I have just entered ACT V at last :) Act IV was a joy to play,beautiful landmarks,colours,music..Absolutely great.Spent about 15-18hrs on ACT IV,finished all possible quests.
Now,I have just entered ACT V,gone to Old Vizima,and talked to Foltest at his castle.I am still in the Castle,so it is the very begining.I will continue playing tomorrow,so I would like to ask all of you to give me some guideance,what should I pay attention to,what should I do first etc..
Any kind of help,hints would be appriciated ;) Don't want to make mistakes in this beautiful game :)
Thanks in advance,
SoL.

[game widow]

Hi there,

Act V is really where things start to moving in different directions depending on the path you chose, but basically do this:

* meet your contact (either the nurses, zoltan or rayla) and get to the field hospital and talk to shani,
* take care of the "first striga" then
* go back to the hospital and help out there (you'll see what i mean)
* go find your armorer (different ones for different paths)
* get all the contracts from the notice board
* have sex with Toruviel or Rayla (if it's the nurses, this part must wait a bit)
* fight your way to the breach in the wall (3 different routes -- again, whichever one matches the path you are on)
* get to the swamp cemetery (if you are on the neutral path, go all the way to the druids' cave before going back to old vizima)
* if you are on the neutral path, go back to the field hospital and have sex with the nurses
* finish all the fed-ex quests (armor parts, contracts, trophies) -- this means a fair bit of back and forth between the swamp cemetery and old vizima

and before going forward make sure you get your own Raven's Armor created! and i'd highly recommend getting both the "good" swords but that means that you must have completed all the previous 8 trophies quests (plus the 2 in Act v) -- for the silversword (moon blade)  and you must complete "won't hurt a bit" and find the dentist for the steel sword (g'valchir)

good luck  :peace:

[Owen Bishop]

Don't forget the real Striga Quest!  I do it at the last (all minor quests done) and have all the armor stuff ready to get the Elven minstrel songs.
Will you kill the Striga? Or remove the curse?  The choice is yours...

Quote

this means a fair bit of back and forth between the swamp cemetery and old vizima

Not necessarily game widow. I always start Act V with most of the minor contract monster skinnables required already in my inventory (Cemetaur Jaw, Death Dust, Bruxa Blood, Garkain Saliva, Bloedzuiger Blood etc).  And before breaking the barricades, I have all Kalkstein's contracts complete.  Upon entering the swamp I have the rest of the contracts done all in one swoop.
And I really only visit burning Vizima to "unload" the rest all at once (receipts for cousins, monster & boxer's teeth, bruxa blood, armor pieces etc).

Experience enables efficient gameplay.  But for the noobs, yes - you may have to go back and forth a few times to get everything done.

[game widow]

i take it you don't do the neutral path very often ;)  :peace:

I didn't mention all the quests because they mostly relate to getting the armour pieces :)

[Ancient Crone]

Owen Bishop said:

Don't forget the real Striga Quest!  I do it at the last (all minor quests done) and have all the armor stuff ready to get the Elven minstrel songs.
Will you kill the Striga? Or remove the curse?  The choice is yours...



Not necessarily game widow. I always start Act V with most of the minor contract monster skinnables required already in my inventory (Cemetaur Jaw, Death Dust, Bruxa Blood, Garkain Saliva, Bloedzuiger Blood etc).  And before breaking the barricades, I have all Kalkstein's contracts complete.  Upon entering the swamp I have the rest of the contracts done all in one swoop.
And I really only visit burning Vizima to "unload" the rest all at once (receipts for cousins, monster & boxer's teeth, bruxa blood, armor pieces etc).

Experience enables efficient gameplay.  But for the noobs, yes - you may have to go back and forth a few times to get everything done. ›››

I was going to follow the above suggestions and do the minor contracts and side quests first. I'd first given the bloedzuiger blood to some refugees and was then attempting to give the cemetaur jaws to another group of refugees, but they happened to be near the striga crypt. A cut scene began and I was going to be forced to fight the striga.

I exited the game and reloaded my previous save, and tried to talk to the refugees right there by the crypt, but they ran off and I ran away too so I wouldn't get caught up by Velerad.

It seems very difficult to find my way through all that waist-high water, and then to be frustrated when a quest seems bugged. It's not nearly so enjoyable as the previous 4 acts.

Any advice on how to approach this? I find myself panicking when I can't see where I'm going and I'm surrounded by all the drowned dead and bloodzuigers. I have one of those red ribbons, but it doesn't seem to work very well.

[Corylea]

Ancient Crone said:

It seems very difficult to find my way through all that waist-high water,

It takes awhile to learn your way through the swamp cemetery, and the map is not as useful as it might be, because it doesn't show most of the obstacles. And really, didn't we get ENOUGH of swamps in Chapters 2 and 3? You're right, this is a frustrating area to navigate. But you will learn your way around eventually, and it'll be lots easier after that.

Quote

and then to be frustrated when a quest seems bugged.

I don't think the quest is bugged, really; I think they just want to make sure that you don't miss the striga quest. King Foltest is very insistent about Geralt's dealing with the striga, and I think having such a large area trigger the striga quest is one way that players can feel that insistence for themselves.

I think it's similar to the way they chose to handle inn storage for Chapter 5. Because there's a war on, everything is chaotic, the usual supply lines have broken down, and there are shortages everywhere. How to make the players feel all of this themselves? Give them access to their inn storage only at the beginning of the chapter, so that the feeling of having the usual supply lines broken down is one that the player will actually experience. One can argue about whether or not this is fun or a good idea, but I think it was masterful game design.

I remember being intimidated by the striga quest the first time I played TW1, because I'd watched the opening movie dozens of times by then -- I love, love, love the opening movie of TW1 -- and I didn't think I could live up to what Geralt had done there. Saving the striga (I always save her, never kill her) turned out to be absurdly easy, which was partly a relief and partly a letdown.

The easiest way to save the striga is to cast Quen. She'll exhaust herself trying to hit you while not being able to do much damage. When Quen runs out, just cast it again. Eventually you'll get a cutscene of a candle blowing out. Keep casting Quen until all of the candles blow out, and the princess is cured. Really absurdly easy.

Quote

Any advice on how to approach this? I find myself panicking when I can't see where I'm going and I'm surrounded by all the drowned dead and bloodzuigers. I have one of those red ribbons, but it doesn't seem to work very well.

Well, for one thing, you don't need to panic, because you're a LOT tougher by this point in the game, and drowners are only annoyances now, not very dangerous. By this point in the game, you probably don't even get any experience points for killing them.

In my experience, the red ribbon is worse than useless. It chases the drowners far enough away that they're harder to kill but not far enough away to let you enter the caves without killing them all. I'd sell the damned thing, if I were you.

For another thing, I've made a mod that eliminates most of the drowners and bloedzuigers in the Swamp Cemetery; you can find it here.

[Ancient Crone]

I downloaded your "No drowners" mod and extracted it to the same override folder as the "stuff" mod, but no scroll is showing up in the game now.

I may have done something wrong, because I never know where to put the zip file after it's downloaded, but before extracting the files. This time I just extracted everything to that override folder, including the "read me", so could that be blocking the scroll?

I don't know how to start over again without ruining the whole file setup, so I don't know what to do.

[Corylea]

Ancient Crone said:

I downloaded your "No drowners" mod and extracted it to the same override folder as the "stuff" mod, but no scroll is showing up in the game now.

I may have done something wrong, because I never know where to put the zip file after it's downloaded, but before extracting the files. This time I just extracted everything to that override folder, including the "read me", so could that be blocking the scroll?

I don't know how to start over again without ruining the whole file setup, so I don't know what to do. ›››

The "Stuff" mod comes in a folder of its own. If you put that folder inside the Override folder, then the custom_script.ncs file for the drowner mod wouldn't overwrite the custom_script.ncs file for the Stuff mod, and you wouldn't get your scroll. That's why the installation instructions for the No-Drowners mod tells you to add its files to the exact same folder as your other mods, with no sub-folders.

You must have only ONE custom_script.ncs file in your entire Data folder -- this includes all of its subfolders.

So just take out the custom_script.ncs file that came with the Stuff mod, and you should get the no-drowner scroll added.


The README isn't blocking anything, so don't worry about that. The game doesn't read .txt files.

[Ancient Crone]

Many thanks! That fixed it.