The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings
- There's no traditional tutorial. Do the flashback sequences in order because you'll be tossed into the furnace without being able to practice.
- Combat is deadly as the developers openly stated their Demon's Souls influence. One-against-one Geralt is a beast but you're almost always fighting three or more guys. Enemies inflict +200% damage on your flank and certain hits stagger you which means you can be juggled to death in literally two seconds. In tight spaces cast quen (absorbs damage, prevents stagger) and use every bomb and area attack to not die horribly. In open areas use Geralt's speed to your advantage by running circles around enemies, laying traps, casting yrden (creates a paralyzing trap), cast igni or aard to whittle away opponents, and dodge roll behind people to stab them in the back. Understand there's a slight pause between certain actions so be patient and don't jump the gun or you'll die. Simple as that.
- Axii is an underrated spell. Hold down the casting button over an enemy to temporarily mind control them. You have to pull it off from a good distance but in large groups it causes all enemies to target the hypnotized enemy which makes flanking them easy.
- Before going out in the wilderness or a dungeon suck down some potions. You have to be in a relatively safe area to do this and they last about 5-10 minutes. Swallow is an important one because there are no conventional healing abilities.
- Don't horde. I keep reading posts about people hitting the weight limit but this is ridiculous because there's no point in hauling a bunch of junk around. It would be nice if they brought back the storage from the first game but you have plenty of space. Sell weapons and armor you don't need, sell anything labeled "junk" in the menu screen, and sell off any common crafting equipment that you can find by looting a random house like cloth or timber. Brew some potions and bombs when you run low and sell off everything else that's terribly common like monster ingredients.
- You have to keep your formulas to use them despite the fact they're added to the journal. It sucks that they weigh .1 pounds while books (which add an entry to your journal) somehow weigh 0 pounds so hopefully next week's announced patch fixes this oversight.
- Pressing "Z" activates the wolf medallion which highlights objects. It also reveals magical auras and environmental hazards.
- You can double click on a quest in the journal to mark it on the mini-map. Blue and green dots that show up on the mini-map are important NPCs while enemies show up as red dots if you use the wolf medallion to mark them.
- The game is about delayed choices so you won't notice the effects of your actions until later. Be warned about the occasional quick-time-event (they're fortunately rare) and timed dialog choice.