RPGWatch Feature: Hands-On With The Witcher 2

Wow, propheet thanks a lot for high quality information! That was definitely a very good post!

If all the things you said… one thing I am really wondering about is… you can't drink potions in battle? so in that case… should you guess what kind of enemies you will face next and drink some potions just in case? and for hard battles save and load… just so you'll know which potions to drink in advance since you'll know what you'll face? sounds like a lot of saving and loading?

Yes, that may be so, but in the preview build it's been pretty clear that you can figure out what's coming your way (or what you're coming towards). In Flotsam, when you're about to enter Lobinden (a village that is basically in the forest, a stone's throw away from beasts) you can actually see a poster that warns you about monsters (with a cute propaganda-like drawing btw). When you face your first Drowner (or, if you count Witcher 1, your 10000000000th Drowner) you can actually see it ahead of you and can still meditate for a bit since it won't notice you at once. Elsewhere, you can see distinctive Endrega cocoons or Nekker burroughs from afar; if you're fairly knowledgeable about beasts (and you should be from using books and other sources of lore, easily available if you take time to learn) you'll know what to look out for. It's NOT like DA2, you're NOT pitted against endless waves of monsters spawned offscreen.

And if in doubt, there's plenty of universal potions that actually help in any situation. Only three potion effects can be active at once (four with one Alchemy skill), all last 10-20 minutes (the longest with Alchemy skill) so meditating just to shake off toxicity (as in W1) is not an option. What do you do? You quash Golden Oriole (30% to resistances, no side-effects) + Virga (+20% armor, +75% to resistances, -25% to dealing crits) + Swallow (in-combat/out-of-combat Vitality regen boost). This makes you very hard to damage and allows you to heal fast. If it's some giant monster that is super tough to kill, you can still run away from such fight; with those potions, such retreat will not end in death. And if it's some tough humans, then you can (even in combat) apply Brown Oil or Falka's Blood to your steel blade and just tough it out by rolling and landing an occasional blow (if Brown Oil is used, they'll eventually just drop due to bleeding out).

patch is out:

Several major balance fixes (economy and fight)
On screen fixes (items descriptions, journal etc.)
Audio mix fixes
Several audio areas, music, cutscene fixes and added better sounds
Many UI fixes (functional, smoother and more user friendly ex. inventory items selection)
Many fixes to quests, quests markers
Visual fixes to fade outs, blackscreens in scenes, cutscenes
Many community fixes - work, npc’s life
Big opponents fights balance and fixes
Many cutscenes fixes - animations, items, lipsync
Gamepad fixes - playing gamepad is now much better
Camera fixes - collisions with objects, collisions with npc’s, combat camera improvements
Some hair physics fixes
Minor QTE fixes
Several locations fixes - objects collisions, envoirements improvements, lights, effects
Crafting, shops, alchemy improvements
Added new autosaves in important places (ex. before fight with Letho, Arachas, Draug)
Some random crashes fixes
Dice poker improvements - logic bugs fixes

Day -1 one patch? Now that is interesting…

Originally Posted by GhanBuriGhan
Day -1 one patch? Now that is interesting…

For me not especially - they seemed to have the final code sorted quite a long time ago and off for production, so plenty of time to continue working on the product digitally.

I wonder when the review embargo ends. I was hoping to see some reviews today.

Originally Posted by vurt
patch is out:

Several major balance fixes (economy and fight)
On screen fixes (items descriptions, journal etc.)
Audio mix fixes
Several audio areas, music, cutscene fixes and added better sounds
Many UI fixes (functional, smoother and more user friendly ex. inventory items selection)
Many fixes to quests, quests markers
Visual fixes to fade outs, blackscreens in scenes, cutscenes
Many community fixes - work, npc’s life
Big opponents fights balance and fixes
Many cutscenes fixes - animations, items, lipsync
Gamepad fixes - playing gamepad is now much better
Camera fixes - collisions with objects, collisions with npc’s, combat camera improvements
Some hair physics fixes
Minor QTE fixes
Several locations fixes - objects collisions, envoirements improvements, lights, effects
Crafting, shops, alchemy improvements
Added new autosaves in important places (ex. before fight with Letho, Arachas, Draug)
Some random crashes fixes
Dice poker improvements - logic bugs fixes

Uhm, I've seen this on NeoGAF too, but I haven't managed to see a source for it. Is it a readme from the Polish CE's patch (I presume it was downloaded through the game's launcher) or..?

Is it safe to assume that patch is for all versions - retail, GOG, etc,?