There’s kings to slay, monsters to hunt and friends to save in The Witcher 3, but all I really care about is finding gear. I will climb the highest mountain for a new sword. I can’t stop. Not when there’s so much treasure to be found.
I can’t say I ever thought about The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt as an open world game. Exploration didn’t really appeal to me. The game suffers from what I like to call “The Fallout 4 problem”. In Fallout 4, your main quest is to find your lost son. It’s a really heavy responsibility that makes it hard to justify rescuing another settlement or simply running off into the sunset with Nick Valentine. The Witcher 3 has a similar issue. Geralt is looking for Ciri, who is basically his adopted daughter. Which means that ruins delving or card tournaments feel a bit less important than the main quest.
But when I found my first scrap of Cat School armour and the game offered a large quest to explore secret locations and really see the world? Well, I’ve been hunting down new additions to my wardrobe ever since. This obsession reached an apex last night. I fought two monsters that were roughly 10 levels above me just so I could get a piece of armour I can’t wear for another dozen levels. Here I am fighting this terrifying rock elemental for a snazzy new shirt.
Make no mistake: The Witcher 3 is full of characters and stories that have captured my imagination. But the entire affair felt a bit on rails; I moved from quest to quest without really exploring the world around me.
Treasure hunts completely change that. It knocked me off the tracks and gave me a new appreciation for the game world. Everything seems larger now and full of exciting potential. I see an old ruin and rush to explore it. If there’s a well hidden cave, I have to go spelunking. After all, there might be new gloves in there!
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8 responses to “I Can’t Stop Hunting Treasure In The Witcher 3”
Is this actually an issue or is it just good structure? I can’t imagine a narrative where each menial task were attributed the same value as the life of a loved one.
The Witcher 3. Probably the best example ever of “Just 10 more minutes and I’m coming to bed I promise…” and then you find yourself still playing at 1 in the morning.
The amount of wrecks I dived in Skellige!…
God I hated those stupid flying merfolk. Why couldn’t they let me loot in peace!?
I just gave up after a while, already had tonnes of cash and more than enough supplies to craft the superior/mastercrafted armours and swords (that I can use at lvl 30) so it just seemed redundant.
Apart from that the game is amazing.
111 hours sunk, and I only just completed the main quest (most card quests still active too). It’s amazing what a video card upgrade can do to your motivation to see that quest log emptied.
Now, xpac time…
I hit 69 (snigger) hours for the main story and that was pretty much just mainlining it … on easy. I can see how a higher difficulty would easily double that time. I console-peasented it though, so there’s a fair chance that I’ll be re-absorbed when I grab it at the inevitable $5 Steam sale price in another 9-12 months.
So many Red Flags!
Let’s see here, you’ve mentioned that you….
-are excessively preoccupied with finding new booty, treasure, and gear, and you have lost your control over this activity
-while you’re engaged in this activity, even the witcher world itself appears more bright and interesting to you, compared to how dull it seems when you’re on some menial rescue quest…
-you spend most of your playing time on either obtaining new booty, treasure and gear or recovering from the long and stressful quests that you must undertake to obtain it
-you travel great lengths and place yourself at great personal risk to obtain your ‘fix’ even for an insignificant artifact of treasure that has little practical use
-you insist on tracking down more and more gear despite other more fulfilling and meaningful quests being available….ones that, presumably, you used to enjoy before…
-you’re so engaged in tracking down more booty, that you’re ignoring the fact that you can get some actual booty from several female characters in various locales.
-Finally, you’ve even neglected your own child, who’s in danger and needs you to play the mainline quests…and though you admit your failures, you still cannot stop!
Well youve made the first step which is admitting your powerlessness.
Now here’s what you do. First, check yourself into Passiflora for a week (it’ll ease the initial withdrawal) When u come out, right away lock away…no, better sell all your treasure maps and all other possessions…everything but the gear that you’ve got equipped…then donate all money to the church of the eternal fire! (Can’t do it? Well hack a patch then…but u cant have any money on u dude.. otherwise whats to stop you buying a treasure map back from the merchant? U know how easy it is to relapse? I’ve known a dude follow all my advice and still relapse…poor bastard sold all his equipped weapons and armor to buy treasure maps…Running around naked with no protection, chasing gear…poor fu.. ended up dying from poisoning on a Nekker fart.
You gotta take this seriously. Do u think this party will last forever? Now while there’s treasure all around you may be flying high and enjoying life, but have u thought about what will happen when you’LL have found all the treasure there’s to find? Of course not! Well, itll happen…and then what? you’ll be visiting the same caves, tombs, layers, and catacombs over and over again…on a slim chance that you’ve neglected to loot every single chest the first time around…pathetically swimming under water, trying to cover the entire surface area of the ocean’s floor so as not to miss a single seashell….hopefully remembering to come up for that annoying air….and its only downhill from there…Sadly I’ve seen dudes after selling everything ending up roaming forests naked, hunting down traveling merchants, ready to suck their **** for a treasure map. Others spent hours waiting for a guard to look the other way so they can quicly loot an empty vial from a nearby crate…only to end up minced guard meat moments later… You think it’s not gonna happen to you, but you just wait dude….you just wait…