- Monster mutagens have specific effects once equipped in mutagen slots.
- Unlock a mutagen slot right away by investing a skill point in the Mutagen tree under Alchemy.
- Generic red/blue/green mutagen are used for alchemy in brewing decoctions.
- Medium alcohol is 2x more cost-effective than Strong. It's 1/4th the price of strong alcohol but 2x Medium is as good as 1x Strong in most contexts.
- Mahakaman Mead's recipe is very useful as honeycombs are common in WO and 2x honeycombs give you the Exquisite Honey needed to craft White Gull.
- Use White Gull instead of Alcohest everywhere. One Alcohest gives you 2 White Gulls - it's twice as effective to use WG.
- The White Gull recipe lets you craft it more cost-effectively than buying Alcohest, which itself has no recipe. Use Medium alcohols to craft WG, they're 2x cheaper than using Strong alcohols even though you need 2x as many.
- Buy Yeast whenever you see it. Useful for making Mead and Dwarven Spirit.
- Water is cheap in Novigrad.
- Superior Potions are far better than Normal or Enhanced in the beginning of the game because of their additional effects. There is absolutely no reason to brew/use the lowest tier of potions unless you're forced to.
- Enhanced Potions are useful once you can brew with secondary effects (Albedo/Nigredo/Rubedo) later in the game. Can mix Superior with Enhanced to keep one secondary effect active once you can manage Toxicity effectively.
- Use White Gull to distill plants/mats into Essences and then use those to make Superior potions.
- The Alchemical Refinement skill reduces cost here since one of the ingredients in these recipes can be of one quality level lower. Get this early - good choice for your first General skill point.
- Albedo is a good way to increase Toxicity drain and manage multiple potions.
So, the game kind of has a reverse difficulty since enemies don't get stronger at all (no upscaling) or not much (with upscaling) and also you can play the game out of order so I'd recommend mostly doing quests involving human opponents. Since all skill points are always active, you do get a lot stronger over time. The alchemy tree's toxic frenzy makes you up to 15% faster for all actions based on tox% which can go above 100% with manticore set.
This is my 3rd playthrough and I went white orchard -> had vesemir carry me through griffon fight -> novigrad -> free sword from hattori -> clear random bandit camps along the beaches and take fights against wolves, nekkers, avoiding dangerous things-> rescue dandelion -> toussaint get the house so I can rest there and get crafting bonuses and free crafting mats-> made lots of bombs, oils and potions -> got basic griffon armor -> got aerondight -> runewright unlock runes -> got manticore set -> unlock mutations -> started doing monster contracts.
most important thing to do with money is to buy alcholest, dwarven spirit, etc. which is cheapest in toussaint. you use alcholest to make substances:primary in alchemy tab. this takes a substance, alcholest and makes it into 1 tier higher.
there are lots of quality level ingredients lying around as plants. you turn these into pure level and then with the ALCHEMICAL REFINEMENT perk, you can use all pure ingredients plus strong alchohol to make superior potions which have really strong effects.
Petri Filter is signs always crit so aard always knockdown, igni always burn, etc.
Full Moon makes it so max damage in 1 hit is 1/6th hp during night.
Tiara you can't be staggered during parry.
Also, you can hold blocking while you are dodging with space, always do that. The little hop. You can parry while hopping not while long dodging.
If you are hitting something and barely damaging it it’s because they are dodging lol. Enemies take 15% damage when they dodge. Happens a lot with mobile enemies which is why I recommend camping yrden.
Ya dodging is unreliable until you get a feel for safe angles and what not. Hold down parry instead. Perfect parries stagger most non giant enemies.
For big monsters generally I use distance modifiers while unlocked and it looks very silly but you are essentially running around them in little arcs while hitting them from the side or behind. You use their big size against them. Helps a lot if you’ve played dark souls or monster hunter.
huntsman, positioning, fleet footed, alchemical refinement, and appropriate school technique perk are my first 5 in some order
albedo = increases toxicity degeneration
nigredo = increased attack power
rubedo = small vitality regeneration
I usually try to fit secondaries on the potions that have only 3 ingredients. so Cat, Thunderbolt, Tawny Owl. Black Blood and Golden Oriole as well, though they're more situational
I don't really care too much about superior Tiara, Cat, Thunderbolt, or Blizzard
- Superior swallow has quite long duration because of superior so dont try to couple it with a secondary effect. Superior tawny owl doesnt get its duration ticked between 10pm and 10am so using both superior swallow and tawny owl shouldnt give you any tox at night
- Superior tiara can be particularly good against drowners because you will be immune to stagger even with mistimed parries
- Superior maribor forest with albedo can be very good for toxicity management
- Superior petri will enhance your crowd control immensely, try to use it more often
- Superior full moon at night is superb for tackling contract monsters at night, since it will prevent you getting bursted down
- Superior golden oriole can be a very good healing potion if you have high tox
Quick guide for higher tox drain (direct or indirect)
- Use superior potions
- Use albedo secondary
- Max out purification skill
- Max out saturation skill
- Max out metabolic control skill
- Insectoid archmutagen gives tox drain
- instectoid decoction gives tox drain
- While using insectoid decoction, inflicting poison will reduce toxicity
- Arachas mutagen gives tox drain
- Assimilation glyphword will increase duration of potions hence less tox gain
- Constitution glyphword has some small tox drain bonus
- Lesser axii glyph gives tox drain
- Drink potions while meditating
- Maribor forest at full vigor will increase tox drain
The effects of secondary substances that some ingredients have are as follows:
- Nigredo(Black) gives you a damage boost on top of the standard effect of a potion.
- Rubedo(Red) gives you a healing bonus on top of the standard effect of a potion.
- Albedo(White) gives you a toxicity drain boost on top of the standard effect of a potion.
Also some things to consider regarding secondary substances:
- When crafting a potion all ingredients selected must have the same secondary substance in order for the bonus to apply, this can easily be done by using the ingredient category lock which can be changed with the "," key this will cycle between Normal(ingredients with no secondary substances)/Nigredo/Rubedo/Albedo.
- The bonus effect from secondary substances will only work on potions, so don't waste ingredients that have secondary substances on bombs or oils unless you absolutely need it and are out of Normal ingredients.
Regarding combat here's the actions you can perform:
- For perfect parries you have to parry at the last second(without holding any distance modifier), this will make it so the enemy gets staggered.
- For slash counters you have to hold long distance modifier and do a timed parry, this will damage and apply stacks of bleeding on an enemy.
- For Kick/Bash counters you have to hold medium distance modifier and do a timed parry, this will heavily impact enemy stamina.
- Kicks can also be done when doing a fast attack while holding parry button, kicks have a chance to knock down enemies if they are low on stamina which leaves them vulnerable to a finisher.
- Double strong attack is done when doing a strong attack while holding parry button.
- Keep in mind kicks/bashes won't be possible to execute against most large monsters, unless you have Reflection I Glyphword enchantment.
- Medium and long distance modifiers can be used to manipulate attacks in order to dodge an attack while also attacking the flank of an enemy which means you'll be using less stamina than if you use dodge and attack separately.
Some other tips regarding combat:
- Always read the bestiary as it has valuable info on the weaknesses of enemies and if you're having trouble with the attack pattern of a certain enemy use the Blizzard potion so you can learn their attack pattern or alternatively you can also use poison or rime oil in order to slow enemies down (unless they're either Elementas since only corrosive oil works on them, or wraiths since only veil and argentia oil work on them).
- Fighting a group of enemies will always be hard so always carry samum bombs and use igni for crowd control, you can also use Axii if you have Link upgraded in order to stun multiple enemies.
- If you get low on stamina use Axii to buy yourself some time, if that fails or you have no vigor you can also use Blunt/Explosive/Frost crossbow bolts to CC an enemy.
- If you're struggling too much against enemies with very high armor that also block often like Golems or Trolls then when you get the chance buy Lucerne Battle Hammer diagram from a blacksmith and craft it and keep it in your inventory for when the need arises, that's because this secondary weapon is excellent vs high armor and enemies that block often like Trolls do, but keep it mind that a normal attack with this weapon takes too long for Geralt to swing so instead always use quick uncharged Rend attacks in succession.
You need to read the books about monster families, to get recipes of decoctions (2 books for each family). Most of them can be purchased from book vendors in Novigrad's main square. Herbalist at kaer trolde and Germiest (master alchemist) also sell some. Some are rewarded during after missions (Giving swallow for wounded in white orchard, saving kids from dog, and loot in Triss's shop are the ones I remember, there might some others elsewhere but, you already get all 20 with above locations/quests)
