Witcher Hard is hard! Or: savegame trouble.

The Witcher

Thrasher

Wheeee!
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Well I am officially frustrated by the game.

First it has crashed a few times. Once requiring a power off to recover. I thought they had polished this with the patched and extended versions? As it stands it is rough when compared with Dragon Age and even NWN 2 ! :(

You weren't kidding about that last battle of chapter 1… yuck…

Don't get me wrong. Hard is fine. I don't mind getting killed a few times, to figure out the best tactics. That is fun actually! :)

What is NOT OK is that the set battle and the one I referred to in my previous email are preceded by LONG dialogue trees and/or cut scenes that you have to click and escape through. Now if the loading times between the dialogues and cutscenes and load from "death" were fast it would be tolerable, but the loads are sometimes too long!

Example: I die, a load window pops up, I click on it. It takes almost a minute for the saved games list to come up! Then it takes another minute to load the last saved game. Then I transition to the new area with the dialogue. That transition takes another 20 seconds. Then I click through the long dialogue and cut scene. The battle begins with me surrounded by enemies. No time for preparation like drinking potions or putting on weapon balm. Ugh. Horribly tedious…

Love the atmosphere and the music. The dialogue has certainly been improved over the demo, but still has some awkward and logically inconsistent statements. The characters and their behavior in chapter 1 is certainly dark and gritty. There are lots of despicable characters, and the way chapter 1 ended was thoroughly depressing. Didn't like that vibe…

My machine is a quad core and a few gigabytes CPU memory, and a gig of video memory on my mobile CPU. Had no problems with other recent releases….
 
Joined
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Example: I die, a load window pops up, I click on it. It takes almost a minute for the saved games list to come up!

Easy solution:

1. Locate your savegame folder. Should be in My Documents\The Witcher\Saves

2. move all but the newest 2 or 3 files somewhere else, or better yet, zip them all up. Or delete 90% of them. Savegames can be quite big (~20 MB) and get bigger the further in the game you are.

3. Voila. Savegame handling will be very quick again. Alternatively you can defrag your savegame directory. Or even your entire game directory, if you have the option (I used MyDefrag to put the entire game into one continuous piece of space on the disk, sorted by name … unnecessary with SDDs of course).
 
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Arhu is so right on with his tips. This is the number one thing you can do for all your games, since most are impacted by it due to large save files, especially if you are a rampant saver like myself. I have a hard drive solely for backup saves...
 
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Oct 26, 2006
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I am a compulsive saver. Thanks! I'll try that. :)

But, the following Witcher deficiency makes it difficult and also really annoys me. I can't seem to name my save files. So I can't tell which ones to save and which ones to ditch.

Is there a way to add names to your saves when you make them?

BTW, this should probably be moved to a Witcher thread....
 
Joined
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I never experienced a single crash playing The Witcher, but I was playing on a desktop setup, not sure if you playing on a laptop is a factor here.

As I said before, the first couple of chapters are pretty tough, but don't get frustrated, you'll get a lot stronger soon. There's not many fights as hard as the Hellhound in Ch 1.

Combat also becomes a lot more enjoyable in the later chapters as your fighting repertoire expands, and you encounter a greater variety of enemies.
 
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Oct 21, 2006
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Arhu, that fixed the wait when waiting for the saved game list to come up. Thank you!

Now if only the long loads afterwards and between areas could be fixed….

I am having some fun using aard and igni signs to make it through battles. Also swallow potions seem to be compulsory to survive anything that is a challenge.

EDIT: Oh, and that theme music is stuck in my head, haunting me.... chilling (in a good way, I think)...
 
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I'm in chapter 2 now, but am somewhat disliking the waiting around for day and night cycles to meet with people.... Gets irritating after a while (as do the long load times)...
 
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