Okay, here goes nothing.
Did you manage to collect all possible gwent cards? :p

Question.

How the heck did you get to level 34 in under two weeks??

I have hours into it this game even took a few days off and also worked from home(wink) a few days.

I there is still ton more I need to do.

There are lots of people on the Steam forums who had it finished in the first week. I assume they took a more linear path through the main quest-line though and were probably using various strategy guides as well.

And skipping through all the talky-talk.

No, sadly I couldn't. There are a few cards in the first area that aren't available if you don't get them before moving on. I'm replaying it now though, so now I'm aiming for them all!

Yep. I saw people completing it several days ahead of me, which doesn't happen too often, but they probably just had the week off. It's remarkable just how much time it's possible to put into a game if it's the only thing on the schedule.

Do you mean the prologue or Velen? I understood they had added the prologue cards back in somewhere (Elsa's brother?) for anyone who didn't pick them up before going to Vizima.

I know it's possible to miss a card by not doing one of the blacksmiths early enough, but maybe there are other twists that remove and/or piss off Gwent players. I seem to remember, Celtic Frost I think it was, managed to alienate the innkeeper at the crossroads.

Forget the initial area, it's patched.
But there are several sidequests to collect more gwent cards and some of those aren't titled as gwent quests at all. Also, rushing through sidequests without thinking can lead to missing on cards.

Basically I asked did he solve all sidequests. ;)

For gameplay time, some steam crybaby posted that they finished the game in 22 hours and is now angry because there is no post maingame material. I mean… WTF.
I can't understand people who rush games generally, but when it comes to TW3, where the world depends not only on main story choices, I can't understand that even more.

I am trying to stay away from the main quest, doing mostly side quest, witcher quest and treasure quest.

I'm level 11 and almost done with the main quests in Velen (I think). Maybe only 1/4 of Velen is fully explored (lawnmower style). Lots of exclamation points remaining despite cherry picking a lot of them, and about 17 open side quests, etc… I am taking a break from the MQ for the Wolf gear treasure hunt I ran across accidentally, although the clothing stats seem to be weaker than than what I am wearing except for little boni to sign intensity.

It is what always happens in MMOs. People rush up to max level and then complain there is no "end game"… I'm still only level 15 in TW3, but must have played over 50 hours in the last 12 days or so - Gwent is a bit of a distraction of course - just found this really great card… :).

I can't get into Gwent at all. The idea of finding every merchant just to collect some cards is anathema to me. I do the fistfights as I come across them, because they are very fast on the easy difficulty. Most guys can only take 3 punches and G can take about 30. I played the Baron with the few cards I did have and he started throwing scorches and 7 and 8 point cards around willy-nilly. Not gonna waste the time to come up with a deck to beat him.

People enjoy CRPGs for different reasons - And collecting is one of those things that is quite compulsive. We collect gear to be better in combat and Gwent cards to be better at Gwent. In a way its not all that commendable, as an aspect of human nature, since it's probably complicit in why some people feel it necessary to stash huge amounts of cash, have 12 ferraris in their garage, and let others starve. I suppose that if you adopt a more adventury play style then the collecting side might not be what draws you to play these games. I tend to like exploration most and finding cool stuff goes together with that quite well.

crpgnut, why would you go find every merchant for sakes of cards, most of them don't even play gwent.

Inkeepers sell and play cards so find every inn instead.
Smiths you'll definetly visit to repair gear and buy schematics, then you can play cards against them too.

Speaking of Baron… He's easy peasy to beat. Easier than tutorial game.