Figured we could use a thread like this, as there's a few monster slayers among us. While I only just completed Witcher 2 myself, I plan on taking plenty of screenshots in Witcher 3 when I begin later tonight. Also thought I'd post a few 'tips & tweaks' for the game in this thread, to optimize performance.


- Read Nvidia's The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Graphics, Performance & Tweaking Guide - Regardless if you are using AMD or Nvidia, it provides a very nice overview of the impact these settings have on performance.

- If you decide to use HairWorks; Go to <Drive>:\The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt\bin\config\base, open rendering.ini, locate "HairWorksAALevel=8" and set that down to 4 or 2 for a small boost. Performance impact of Nvidia's GameWorks settings are still quite high, so most people tend to turn them off. (Remember to mark the .ini files as 'Read Only' when done. Also when doing .ini tweaks from Nvidia's guide, or else the game will just override them again).

- For AMD users, who enable HairWorks, you can also open CCC and turn down the tessalation level to 8x or 4x for a performance improvement. Here's the visual difference between the levels; https://i.imgur.com/olctIlc.jpg

- I'd also consider setting the game's CPU priority manually. My game was running 'below normal' during tweaking, which isn't optimal. I also suggest unparking your cores with either this application (http://www.coderbag.com/Programming-C/Disable-CPU-Core-Parking-Utility) or look into Process Lasso which has custom power profiles, core unparking in said profiles, memory trimming, custom priority per .exe

- As for in-game settings, turn off the FPS limiter (people claim it can cause stutters) and do it manually with third party software or use Vsync (Use adaptive, to avoid massive stutters if the game goes below the Hz threshold).

- For Nvidia users; You can use Nvidia's own control panel OR use Nvidia Inspector to add 16x AF. As per Nvidia's guide, manually forced AF looks better than the AF the game has with virtually no performance difference. Also remember to set "Multi-display acceleration" to "single" and "Power management" to "prefer maximum performance".

- Geforce Experience users who do not make use of the streaming function, should turn it off as it uses a small bit of CPU processing power at all times. ('How to' here; https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/co...e_cpu_usage_by/)

That's what I have right now, will adjust and add as new stuff is discovered. Hopefully it helps someone.

Looks nice!

The faces in the game really look amazing

I have it on PS4 and have enjoyed it so far. I put 40 plus hours recently in Witcher 1 and a couple of weeks ago just finished W2.

I'm so used to the previous witchers slaving you to the ground so yesterday when I needed to get into a well for a side quest, I thought "hmm, where's my action button that allows me to climb into the well?...Wait a second...I can jump now! I forgot." So I just jumped right in. So cool having an open world Witcher now.

Wow!

Is the game only third person? I was interested in trying it out and hoped it would be better than Skyrim but after seeing the videos and the ridicules fighting sequences I thought maybe not.

I didn't like W2 Third Person... until I tried it. The combat wouldn't work 1st Person.

What details about fighting didn't you like? It depends on style of the user also...

I do hope there's an option to clean up the interface a little. On PC at least... I don't want action keys displayed.

If it was first person it'd be like first person mode from Jedi Outcast: a jumbled vomit inducing rollercoaster ride. Geralt's ability to survive relies on his dodging and parrying, on hard mode you can only take a few hits and you're dead.

RS I believe if you go into your options menu you can control what HUD bits are displayed. Not sure if it gets rid of the E key notifications but personally I need those to know what you can interact with.

Patch 1.03 released;


- Improves stability in gameplay and the UI
- Improves performance especially in cutscenes and gameplay
- Fixes grass and foiliage popping that can occur after density parameters change
- Improves Nvidia Hairworks performance
- Boosted texture anisotropy sampling to 16x on Ultra preset
- Sharpen Postprocess settings extended from Off/On to Off/Normal/High
- Improves menu handling
- Improves input responsiveness when using keyboard
- Corrects an issue with stamina regeneration while sprinting
- Fixes a cursor lock issue that sometimes occcurs when scrolling the map
- Generally improves world map focus
- Corrects a bug where player was able to fire bolts at friendly NPCs
- Corrects an issue in dialog selections
- Corrects some missing translations in the UI
- Minor SFX improvements -Blood particles will now properly appear after killing enemies on the water
- Rostan Muggs is back

And a couple of shots from me;

(Demonic rooster on the left)

Oh it's pretty...

It's so hard to capture the game's atmosphere in screenshots properly. Really sends a chill down my spine at times, with the trees blowing in the wind, the music, the dense foliage and the detail of the world. They really outdid themselves with this one.

Sethos, you're doing a pretty damn fine job with words alone

The colors are indeed a bit on the bright side... wonder if someone will do an injector for it.

Lots of SweetFX presets available already.

Also met the love of my life. She's a stunner.

You can play completely without interface, not tips, no minimap no health bar no level bar if that's what you're looking for.

Edit:

The game is one of the best I have ever played. I enjoyed TW1 for the story even though the combat was boring and there was a lot of MMO like grinding involved to get all the stuff you need, especially on higher difficulties, TW2 was also really good, improved the combat a lot and the story was great as well but it doesn't even come close to this one. No story in a game, even not the one in previous titles had me on the edge so often, care about the characters that much, even if it's just a side quest or made me regret some of my decisions the way TW3 does. And I'm only about 30hours into the game and did a lot of side quests, Monster Contracts and just sightseeing. Plus, it looks absolutely gorgeous. It's my GOTY so far and it will probably stay that way.


Some screens:

It is indeed a hell of a game. Red Dead Redemption in medieval times, done even better.

He was just trying to cook a damned ham for dinner you jerk.

What difficulty are you guys playing on? I'm using Blood and Broken Bones (hard) and it's pretty much the perfect balance to me. You need to think and dodge during battles since you die relatively quickly, but it's not stupid difficult to the point of feeling unfair at all.

There will be no cooking on my watch!

On the second difficulty level, forgot its name. While I do enjoy the occasional challenge, nothing kills my gaming mood faster than being stuck on something forever or having to start over multiple times. Plus, Witcher games can provide a solid challenge even at this level, especially when meeting packs.

RPGs I mostly want to soak up the atmosphere and immerse myself.

That is one of the few things that irks me about RPGs where you play a set character (as opposed to build your own from scratch). You are supposed to be this awesome powerful Witcher, but you start at level one with so-so equipment and armor, no resources, no materials, no money, and level 10 creatures kick your butt like if you were any other peasant. A game mechanic, I know, but still, you do not really represent the character they say you are (until the later stages of the game). Maybe that would be different for those that imported their character from Witcher 2?

Anyway, I am pleasantly surprised on how well this runs on my 2 year old AMD card, with 5 year old everything else. I have all settings on Ultra, no AA and with HairWorks disabled, and it runs smooth as butter downsampled to 1440p.

EDIT: I guess since screenshot thread, I should post a couple:

So happy this turned out as awesome as it did. It just shows that some studios can still deliver the goods.

CD Projekt Red are also sitting on Cyberpunk and after what they've achieved here I can't wait for that.

Was surprised to hear Charles Dance's voice in the game

Best RPG I had ever played, well laid out environments. Love all the references Slavic mythology, even all the herbs are not made up, but based on reality, well their effects though greatly exaggerated.

I'm playing on medium which is just under the broken bones one. Its plenty difficult for me on that setting. I had an awesome sword fight with some bandits on the road.

It took me a few times after a few deaths but I finally bested them. I love the combat in this. It took the layered strategy from the first and the better controls and flow of the second and put them together. You have to think about what you are doing. I finally cut the last guy in half and his legs walked then topple over. Creepy when I saw that.

And I was glad to see the physics are still in place. I was worried in seeing that ragdolls were removed but the way they programmed it works nicely. You can still see PhysX at work in the corpses if you walk through them and they jiggle a bit.

I'll eventually get this on pc. Also the land area are huge and full of nooks and krannies.

Still amazed at how beautiful the sunrises and sunsets are.

"Also met the love of my life. She's a stunner."

Well, hell! With a tongue like that I can see why. Really, though, this looks nice. It's not the kind of thing I play but maybe it's time for something new. I have a 60 dollar gift card to spend at Steam. Was going to get Assasin's Creed: Rogue, because I loved the sea battles in Black Flag. Rogue has more of that. But now, I don't know.

Well I just got the pc version today and as I suspected it is so far so much better looking and smoother playing which makes it better for my eyes. Though I was enjoying it on the PS4 performance and framerates just weren't there for me. Still looked good but frames being stuck at around 30 fps and all the juttering was making me have a hard time really enjoying it.

I've got everything set to high and water on ultra and it looked and ran better than my PS4 version. Still some lag until I totally disabled Hair FX. With that turned off my fps skyrocketed and now its pretty much butter smooth. I still notice some odd juddering no matter what when on horseback. Its the same on PS4. I thought that on the PS4 is was performance related but on pc with frames being buttery smooth the horse walk and trot still produces a weird hiccup.

I'll look into the hair fx tweak to see if I can get that running in such a way as to not destroy my fps. The only other thing I turned up was the "sharpness" setting in the post process section. I'm not sure what that is actually doing but it does make an already better image crisper. Now I can really start enjoying this game.

As much as I like my PS4(and The Order: 1886 is an exquisite rendered game compared to most next-gen console games), this is soooooo much better.

Yeah, the horse stuttering I've seen as well. I believe it's because the animation 'stops' every time it walks a step, like they didn't do a fluid transition to the next animation. Really bugs me. Plan on doing some recordings later I might throw up on the Reddit Witcher sub-forum, see if people see the same and quite possibly report it.

Check the GOG Forums, lots of qualified bug reporting there and it's closest to the devs.

W2 needed a special dx9.dll to run smooth for some people, it had microstutters even at 60 FPS.

But this particular issue isn't a microsttuter per say, it's just a stiff animation transition. You can tell because the rest of the world still moves fluidly and you can even check the frametimes with FRAPS, no change.

Oh well, some more shots;

Great shots!

The sunsets make you want to throw down your sword and take up a peasant's life.

Definitely. They really nailed the various times of day, the weather effects, everything. They did a stunning job.

Yeah, and as someone mentioned already: The wind, leaves, wildlife. Also his little comments here and there as you move around that seem to mirror what's going through your own mind. Really a new level of immersion.

The cruel downside is that when something does behave like a mere mortal RPG, e.g. some character gives the same answer twice to a prompt, it's almost jarring.

Does anyone know of any tweaks for Nvidia hairworks in the game? I can't find any tweaks for NVidia gpu owners just AMD. Farcry 4 uses this technology and it doesn't hurt my fps. In W3 its the difference between butter smooth frames and chop. I can live without it but if there's a tweak out there I'd like to find it.

They just released patch 1.04 that tweaked it further. But you can't do much other than set it to Geralt only, which shouldn't have such a large impact and then possibly set it from 8x AA down to 4x AA (how-to listed in OP).

Someone on PC imported their saves from W2? I heard about this function a while ago but so far not if it works...

Yeah, ran through Witcher 2 on the day of Witcher 3's release, so I could import a save.

How do NVidia users change tessellation values on hairworks? The op seems to be for AMD users only. I'll check out the new patch too.

You can't, it's not an issue with Nvidia either. Just AMD because it's an Nvidia technology that over-tessellates on AMD cards.

You did W2 in a day?

I'll be curious what effects it has on W3. Would love if it imports his haircut, maybe starting gear...?

Two days, two afternoons, took around 12 hours.

Gear and money won't transfer, not sure about hair either. I believe tattoos will transfer but the main thing is the core choices you make through W2, that will decide which characters you will meet etc. Basically does what 'Simulated Choices' option does, with the added bonus that you actually understand and have taken part in the choices. Some of the simulated choices, you have no idea what does.

I read someone noting that Letho quest seems bugged with a savegame. He isn't considered alive, where he can be with the simulated save. Not sure if it has been fixed for "new games", but it will break the option if you've already completed the associated tasks.

Wow, they went deeper than I expected... so they really read the quest decisions of W2 and change character interaction correspondingly...

No bug with my savegame. I ran into Letho - really nice surprise:

I'm glad to hear he made it... Probably someone loading a *not-quite-the-end* savegame... which would use the default "Letho is dead" setting then.

I didn't actually use my savegames, and had a conversation in Vizima instead, where I corrected most of the assumptions made - mostly there being more of the old gang left around...

Heheh....this little Easter egg in the game pleased me...

Alice in Wonderland? Sorry, just checking.

//Edit, aw man. Only just saw the skeletons. Duh.

For some reason my Geralt still has a tattoo on his neck though I had Triss remove it in W2.

Thanks to nVidia Ansel you can take some nice shots.

Nice shots Cheyenne. I especially like the second to last. I'd love to take some pictures of Witcher3 like you can in some other games I just wish Nvidia Ansel could be a separate Nvidia utility that you can download along with a Nvidia and PhysX driver. I don't like Nvidia Experience. Maybe its more stream-lined now but its "optimization" tool stunk burnt beans whenever I tried using it. I don't think it really does anything other than compare and contrast your hardware with minimum/recommended game requirements and then just turns off and on a bunch of stuff. It never could do the same job I could albeit with more effort on my part. I may try it because I'd really like to have the tool but I'm not ready to mess with new drivers and Experience yet.

Thanks for keeping the thread alive. Keep them coming! I'll try to find some of mine that I've taken. I'm still working on Blood and Wine after something crazy like 350+hours!

Thanks Coot!

I started playing recently. Have the GOTY edition. I can not describe how amazing this game is. I'am playing on hard difficulty and i turned off all of the hud and question marks on the map. I think that's the only right way to play this game.

It is great! I played most of the game on Sword and Story but recently switched to a harder difficulty. I also play with all Hud stuff off so that I have to physically check my map. I do use some mods like a camera mod and another that makes horse back riding controls more like Red Dead Redemption if you use a controller and some others. GOG was nice and gave everyone who owned the game and all DLC and expansions the GOTY edition free. So whenever I play the game again in the future thankfully it'll all be in one install now.

One thing I wish though, as a rule of thumb I don't like enemy auto level scaling but for awhile I actually turned that on because once you really level up, human enemies become a little to easy to kill in my opinion. I know Geralt is one of the world's best sword fighters but in my way of thinking is not the best per say and still fallible. In fact, this world is chock full of other individuals who are professional swordsmen such as mercenaries, soldiers, knights, certain bandit gangs. So turning this on helped return human fights to a more enjoyable challenge however, it makes rabbits and dear impossible to hunt LOL. I like to hunt for the meat for health and with auto level on, all your rabbits become level 40 rabbits and you cannot kill them with the crossbow. I wish the auto leveling had a select-ability to them. I like the normal, non-leveling scaling balance when it comes to coming upon some creatures that are too difficult and you need to run away but then others who were once impossible, now become easier. I figure we've earned that satisfaction by then. However, I still want human enemies to still be variably challenging too even as we level up. I'm hoping by switching to a harder difficulty that this will help with that.

I agree. Human oponents are a bit to easy. I'am currently at level 15, still in Novigrad (which by the way IMHO is the best location in an RPG game that i've ever seen) and humans pose no threat. Maybe when it's like 5+ of them at the same time but still it's pretty easy. Some monsters on the other hand can put up a decent fight. The beginning of the game was quite hard. I even died couple of times but after learning combat mechanics and ui the game got easier.

Crafted my first set yesterday - griffin one. Looks awsome. Used to wear Nilfgardian armor set from the free DLC. It's also beautiful but to elegant for a Witcher

I just now recently after 300+ hours upgraded my Griffin armor to superior except for gauntlets.(I haven't found them yet but its okay as I like the look of the base ones) It just slightly neatens the appearance and adds some bits and pieces here and there. I like the Griffin armor because it feels and looks just enough like a knight's armor without being too clunky.

I'm not sure where it stops but I wish they would have kept up the fights in Novigrad that you could get into. I suppose it was that criminal leader's guys(can't think of his name but a real nasty fellow)with white painted faces. I know the story kind of comes to a close with those characters but I wish they would have still added a randomizing chance of being attacked by human bandits within town for example. I still have a lot to do in Blood and Wine but I went back to Velen to try to finally save up enough crowns to pay that runesmith(from Hearts of Stone) one last time but now I'm broke and there's nothing I can have him make for me after hours alone just grinding to get materials and money to this guy so he can make me stuff. I'm not sure what went wrong with that. It was introduced in HoS but there's no way I could unlock that feature within the time of playing HoS itself. I guess they were thinking players would be rich or something by then but it seems a bit off to me. You have to pay him 5000, 10000 and then 15000 plus a little side quest of gathering some material. Too much! Now I have no money or glyphs or runes for him to make me an enchantment. Some you can buy from him but they all end of being anywhere from 400-1400 crowns. Freaking crazy man. I'm not sure how they intended it to work out but its not really doing so for me at this point. I don't want to grind anymore. I just want to continue with the story. According to all the pre-release trailers and such isn't Tris and Yenefer supposed to show back up? After finishing the Wild Hunt and HoS everything feels so lonely now and some areas just feel downright empty now.

Just when you think nothing could be more pretty than Velen and Novigrad, you travel to Skellige...

It really is. They did an amazing job all around with this engine but the sky boxes/volumetric cloud stuff they did is just exceptional. I'm in Toussaint right now but there's a bunch of stuff I haven't done in Skellige yet. It does a great job of making you feel cold!

After 120h i'am finishing the main quest. Level 28 but still lot's of side stuff to do. Regarding your issues with money Coot, at the moment i have almost 20k. Mainly from selling armor and swords i find. And some monster killing of course. Will see how it goes in expansions. I intend to craft every Witcher set since they look soooo good, i prolly will have to grind some materials.

If you like those settings just wait until you get to Toussaint in the Blood and Wine Adventure, the story and setting are marvellous.

There are very few games that I play again however I cannot wait to play this for a second time

The original books on which the games are based are very good, you should check them out.