I've never had trouble with the Golem befoe, but this time the lightening always hits Geralt. What I'm doing is getting two pylons going, and then waiting until the Golem is near the centre of the circle of Pylons before touching the third one. Geralt always dies on the second strike. Any other strategy advice? I'm getting a weeny bit bored with this.....

Oh wait, that was weird. I hit Escape after the cutscene, getting tired of watching it, and instead of being right on top of Geralt, when the action started up again the Golem was way over on the other side of the clearing -- long enough to cast my Quen sign and set up a strategy. Anyway, Golem down.

Whoa, that is strange. That was always one long slog of a fight and, yes, boring...

I just finished Side Effect Nickie and now will tackle the other one. I played Price of Neutrality before without voices will see how it is here with the voices and then I will be ready to ride that tiger.

Well I just finished the game.

It was a nice long game.

It had a lot of cutscenes and a good story line to it.

It was still just an OK game to me because I would have liked a few things different but that's just me.

I will play it again much later in time and will try different choices to see how that goes.

Well back to Two Worlds we go.

What would you have liked different, VHL?

What did you think of the new adventures Oldman?

That's exciting about the new monitor, Hagatha. I think it would be hard for me to tear myself away from looking at it!

The monitor is gorgeous, and the game...well, it's jaw-dropping at that size. The monitor works on a very high resolution, which, fortunately, both my video card and the game can support. Witcher looks so good that my partner, who isn't a gamer, stopped to watch the entire opening movie sequence and then stayed to watch ten minutes of gameplay.

I know that my older games will suffer, though. I've also got the monitor hooked up to an older computer, and the video card can't handle the high resolutions. Time for a new graphics card, methinks. It's nice being able to switch between the two computers, and the switch also supports music, so I now have only my Bose system set up instead of two speaker systems with subwoofers.

Isn't it great, hagatha?! I just set my new 22" View Sonic monitor and The Witch just looks amazing on it. I know that old 98SE computer won't be able to handle it and I'm going to need to look into upgrading the video card too. I've just robbed the sound card from it to put into another one, so I've got it all apart anyway.

Don't you love that switch? That's the same setup I have.

They are basically a couple of short stories Nickie. The price of neutrality is based around the Witcher's Castle and surrounding area, where you start the full game and the Side effects is all in the Temple Area where you go in act II of the main game.

More exploring in the neutrality adventure while Side effects has a lot of dice playing and fist fighting. There is some monster hunting in side effects but only in the Cemetary and Sewers (which are side quests to get into themselves). At least they have voices this time.

I have now finished the enhanced edition including the two added adventures. Overall I found a little bit of improvement in the loading times and small differences in the characters but nothing to shout about. I found no new animated characters just different voices in a few. I think the King was a completely different voice and he looked different to me in the Epilogue but maybe that's just me.

I enjoyed the enhanced version but don't think it was as improved as I expected. Oh well, expectations are always greater than the real thing.

Anyway I am now ready for Sacred 2 and my copy is in Phoenix according to the USPS tracking so it should be delivered to my house tomorrow.

It's great. Where I once had a 15' long counter entirely covered by keyboards, speakers and two massive monitors I now have a single, thin monitor, one keyboard, and acres of workspace.

Of course, I now have my laptop set up on the counter so I can work in here, but there's still tons of space.

Oldman, it sounds as though the added adventures were a letdown. Too bad. I agree there doesn't seem to be much difference bwtween the original and the enhanced version -- except the faster load times, which I appreciate. Ah well, it's all fun. Witcher 2, anyone?

John, if your package is coming USPS rather than FedEx, I don't think it will come tomorrow; tomorrow is a postal holiday, Columbus Day. So, it will probably show up Tuesday.

FedEx delivers tomorrow as usual.

OH *&%$#@(many Expletitives) . Thanks for pointing that out Marian, guess I'll have it in my hot little hands on tuesday. Oh well, after the long wait, one more day is a walk in the park.

John, I understood your excitement about the game's arrival, and I just couldn't bear the mental image of your waiting around eagerly all day until tomorrow until grim realization dawned!

I look forward to reading your comments when the game arrives.

I enjoyed Sacred when it first came out, and am looking forward to S2.

In the meantime, I am approaching my first level-gaining spot in Witcher. Soon I'll be level 25 or 30, depending on how patient I am.

I'm playing a more magic-oriented game this time, concentrating on basic stats and magic signs rather than combat. This time I plan on getting my signs all up to the fifth level. I've never used Axii before, and can hardly wait to get it to level 3 to see what it does.

Also, I'm toying with taking the side of the Order, just to see what the difference is. So far I've sided with the nonhumans as usual, but I sent Alvin to Shani for the first time. I usually play both sides against the middle until th fourth chapter anyway, so I have time to decide. The Order seems a bit -- ick, though. But the nonhumans have done some fairly ugly things. The slaughter in the Cemetary almost qualifies them to be the enemy.

I never did go with Shani Hagatha, she just seemed too pushy I guess!

I did play a little with the other signs last go round, I thought Axii was a hoot! Not my favorite sign, but it was fun to play with. Now quen and yrden are a whole 'nother thing! Whew! i like these alot! With quen, when you put it up, you can still cast yrden without it going away. With both signs going, the enemy kinda of beats itself up a little!

Anyway, I hate to whine again but this time I was doing The Lost Lamb quest, and I found that boy. I went to Vaska's to talk about it and it said 'quest failed' and something about not being able to look for the boy now.
Nope, can't say I'm fond of this enhanced version.

About Sacred, I have it in my to-be-played pile and it sounds like this might need to be my next in line huh?

That's odd, about the Lost Lamb quest. It's pretty straightforward. Must be a bug. Annoying, though. Completing quests gives you so many experience points, it's a shame to mis one this way.

I've noticed that I don't get truncated dialogue in Enhanced, the way I did with the original version of the game. In Chapter Three Thaler's dialogue, after I rescued him, was always skipped; now it's fine (not that he says anything much).

One other thing I've noticed is that Geralt sometimes gets stuck in bodies and can't move away until the body disappears. Bit of a problem if you're being attacked by multiple Ghouls.

I agree - I'm not seeing a lot of difference with the game. But it's okay - I'm still loving playing it!
One thing I wanted to say for those of you that purchase the retail game- included is a very nice strategy guide with all the maps showing everything you need to get around, and also all the quests. Most helpful.

Well to me the game would have been better if it had the following:

1. Teleporters in all of the chapters.

2. Potions dropped by monsters or you can buy them.

3. Being able to sell my stuff to anyone and not just certain people. My inventory was always full but couldn't sell stuff like wolf pelts or other stuff I didn't need. Infact this game was stingy with finding money or orens.

4. I was dissapointed that you couldn't carry weapons (except for the 3 that you could use) or any kind of armor to sell or to use.

Like I said above....its just my wishes but otherwise the game was good.

At least you could save anywhere you want.

After today's great disappointment I'm going to load the New Witcher. Last time I played I think I was just about to enter Chapter Two.

There is something niggling away in my mind. Can't remember, when, where or how I eventually ate or drank Mutagen (? sp)

Can anyone help?

Alice

Thanks for your thoughts VHL. It's always interesting to hear what folks like in their games.

Threads, hope the game cooperates for you this time! As best as I can explain, a Witcher is a mutation from a human. Mutagens increase the alteration of the structure. For instance, you get a mutagen from that beast in the very beginning of the game (frightener's eye). You don't get those items very often, so the skills you can select that require them to be taken are limited. Does that help or is that even more confusing?

Gosh Nickie, I'm talkiing about when one levels up - the first leg for Strength, for instance, one cannot get further because one icon requires Mutagen, or a similar word. Until one can fill that icon then none of the legs for Strength can progress.

Ok, now I have confused you haha.

I just finished the game again and I was just wondering. When you downloaded the new patch did you get the bonus games? I tried starting a New Game and all I have is the Price Of Neutrality that has no dialogue and it freezes up at the very beginning when you have to distribute talents. It didn't do that the first time I played it. I had such trouble with the patch download (I had to uninstall my COMODO firewall completely) that I would just not play the added bonuses if I had to download again.

Threads, there are a couple of special potions that unlock specific skills. Some of these are optional -- because you have to kill an NPC to get the special ingredient for the potion. Two of these skills are MUTATION, which is on the Stamina tree, and Predator, which is on the Dexterity tree.

But you don't have to get these in order to progress on a specific tree. Basically in order to unlock another level of a skill or attribute, you just use the appropriate bronze or silver or gold token in the circle that's labelled I, II, III, IV, or IV on the skill tree.

Bear in mind, though, that you can't unlock level III skills on any skill tree until you reach a certain character level in the game. So if you couldn't progress it was probably because of that.

Threads, you do not have to do the mutagen to add levels to the other legs. I never did the mutagens in the first leg in any of the strengths in any of the games I played and I was always able to go to the next leg and on to all the others.

Fil, I'm not sure about the extra games as I haven't tried them yet. Maybe someone else can help you who has!

Fildil that sounds like the 1.3 patch which is not the enhanced. That's what I got with the normal update prior to the enhanced version coming out. You should have two adventures, Price of Neutrality and Side Effects with the enhanced version.

One way to check is to double click on your Witcher Launcher and at the top it should read "The Witcher Enhanced Edition".

Thanks oldman, I did check and I do have the Enhanced Edition. I downloaded it from FilePlanet and maybe they didn't have the bonus games on their site. I know that I did download The Price of Neutrality a while ago and played it without dialogue sound, but then I thought that the new patch would patch that game as well. I also checked on the Witcher site and to download the bonuses looked like it was going to hours, just like the patch, and if so, I think that I'll just pass.