I just started playing pic related, and am about 1-2 hours into it

I just started playing pic related, and am about 1-2 hours into it.
Is there anything I NEED to know in order for me to fully enjoy the game? It seems pretty intricate so far.
Also any tips on how to play GWENT would be appreciated.

Shameful, OP. I hope you pirate it and picked the popular route in witcher 2.

Just play the fucking game.you fucking tardface. You just can't live without making shitty posts here don't you?

Turn it off, take out the disc, bring it back to the store and return it. Then buy any other game. I promise you, you will thank me from saving you from this overrated soft core porn.

Damn dude, calm the fuck down, I just want to enjoy a game, is that asking too much nowadays?

I pirated both Witcher 2 and 3.

Fucking faggot just learn on your own.

At least my butt doesn't hurt.

You sure?

Well you manage to avoid the faggot status.

Pretty sure.

Eh just play the game, do a bunch of side-quests aswell, most of them are enjoyable.

Gwent is a bitch in the beginning, but it's more fun that way than later on in the game. Try and get your hands on special-abilities-cards like the one that doubles your score when you got several of the same on the table. Depending on what deck your opponent has, change your weather-cards for that, like frost for Monster-decks etc. Also, vendors and innkeepers will drop new cards whenever you beat them, so just keep on gathering them. Try and find a vendor that sells the Commander's Horn card, it's invaluable. And just get rid of scrub-cards whenever you reach the minimum-limit of a deck, they are not needed.

Finally someone with an actual response, thanks.

Guess what, if you are planning on doing a 100% run remember to always nigger nigger nigger NIGGER nigger nigger nigger NIGGER nigger nigger nigger NIGGER nigger nigger nigger NIGGER nigger nigger nigger NIGGER nigger nigger nigger NIGGER nigger nigger nigger NIGGER nigger nigger nigger NIGGER

Buy EVERY gwent card you can
Gwent fucking sucks though I hate it. But you only have to play it for like one quest to save a guy but you don't really have to save him of you dont want to.

TURN OFF THE MINIMAP. You will thank me for this. I found out one of my friends, who doesn't play vidya all that often, didn't realize you could go back once you get to Skellige, so… that. You can fast travel back to Velen, or White Orchard, or wherever without trying to catch a boat or anything. Most of the fun of the game for me was wandering the world and discovering sidequests, though that tends to leave you massively overleveled for the main quest.

If you're on PC:
If you're using an NVidia card then I highly recommend looking at how to do screenshots via Ansel, because (despite Holla Forums railing on the graphics downgrade) the game is fucking beautiful at times.
There are some quality-of-life mods if you may be interested in if you're on PC, like Jumping in Shallow Water and Torches Hold to Interact that fix some of the real annoyances. Maybe Friendly HUD as well if you want to replace the quest markers, though the game does include toggles for every part of the HUD (and I recommend making use of them).

For Gwent start by pulling out all but one of each of the weather cards, the default deck starts you with two of each and you're basically never going to need more than one. Once you've started getting more cards specialize your deck towards one or two rows and pull out the weather for those rows. Northern Kingdoms are probably the easiest to get a good deck going for since they start you with the most and early game people tend to give you cards for that when you beat them, you'll probably want to stack melee and siege cards since those synergize with the leader abilities the best. Pull out anything low without an ability, poor fucking infantry are trash but the 1 power siege operators who give +1 to all siege are alright to keep if you've got plenty of trebs and catapults.

When you start getting spies put every single one of them in your deck and blow them all in the first round, you'll almost always lose the round but you'll get you such an absurd card advantage that it should be impossible to lose rounds 2 and 3. If your opponent plays spies at you use a decoy to pick them up and play them right back, or use a revive card to play them back in round 2. With pretty much no exceptions if you play more spies and thus more cards than your opponent you're going to win since your average card power is always going to be way higher than the CPU's decks. Fundamentally its a really fucking simple minigame, it only appears complex at first glance and by the time you hit Novigrad you should basically never lose a game of it.

Man, out of all devs you could have pirated you chose the one with friendliest business practices. If youre poor then its ok but you should at least buy one of the games.


You can do sidequests after the main story too

Dude I'm so poor I can't even afford food for the next week, piracy is the only option for me. I wouldn't do it otherwise.

Nope. Have fun. It's the most resource intensive cutscene simulator currently available.

Yeah that was one of the first things I've noticed, Witcher 2 seems to be even worse for me in that regard though.

The memes, Jack.