If you’ve ever played Skyrim, you’ll know ꦦhow dull smithing can be. The constant clink of hammer on anvil will forever haunt my dreams, and the hours of torrential rain pattering on Whiterun’s cobbled streets made me feel cold just by looking at it. My 🌠poor Dragonborn must have spent hours hunched over Adrianne’s smithing station, single-handedly paying her mortgage as I crafted armour and leveled up.
Part of this was self-inflicted, though. On my second or third Skyrim playthroꦗugh, I wanted to level up as quickly as possible to take on some 🌞of the more difficult side quests intended for later in the game. Who can be arsed climbing the thousands of steps up to High Hrothgar anyway? You probably know what’s coming, but as a measly Xbox 360 player, mods weren’t available to me, and so the fastest way to level up was to craft Iron Dagger after Iron Dagger.
I crafted hundreds of the tiny weapons, which are the cheapest and least resource-heavy item available to craft. My smithing stat skyrocketed, a🌌nd my level rose with it. Players who actual🉐ly wanted to interact with Skyrim’s mechanics as intended may have put their skill points back into smithing, but not I. I spread them between two-handed and heavy armour to match my playstyle – it’s not playing as a mudcrab, but it’s close. Then I’d smith some more.
There were more elements to the exploit, I enchanted every dagger to boost that skill and increase their valu💞e to earn copious amounts of gold. With two maxed-out stats, I’d be able to challenge some trickier quests and jump try to headbutt Daedra to my heart’s content. But holy hell, those hours spent smithing were worse than watching paint dry. I wasn’t even gaming. I was just pressing buttons every minute or so to restart the loop.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Witcher 3 does things differently from most open-world games, and that’s shown most clearly through engaging with traditionally boring mechanics. Take crafting, for example. While I’ve generally found it more fun to ignore the game-y aspects of The Witcher 3 and focus on the wonderful stories it tells on The Continent, I’ve recently been sidetracked by crafting armour of all things. I recently wrote about how good the Hearts of Ston🍃e DLC was, and I only started that in order to level up a couple of times to craft new armour before the endgame. However, my obsession with armour has only worsened since then. After completing that side story, I realised I was close to being able to upgrade my gear to Grandmaster, an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. But let’s take it back a little bit first.
Why is crafting armour in The Witcher so great? It starts with finding the diagrams. You can look up a guide on the internet if you want, but the▨ real fun comes with purchasing a map from a vendor. You’re never sure exactly what you’re going to get, but usually there’s a cryptic description about a long-dead Witcher who scrawled this note as he lay dying in a forgotten cove. Follow their directions to the armour diagram, which allows you to craft it. Except it’s never that simple, because nothing in The Witcher 3 ever is.
As with everything in this RPG, exploring unlocks so many quests and stories naturally. No matter which obscure corner of the Continent you’re hunting through, there will be villagers to help and mythical beasts to dispatch. It never feels old or contrived, every person has their own life in this world, and you’re compelled to help them. Or I am, at least. As such, my first inkling that Feline Witcher Gear existed was when I picked up a note describing Elven treasure buried beneath Temple Isle in Novigrad. It was proper ‘X marks the spot’ style treasure hunting in the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:best video game city ever designed, and I was immediately hooked.
Levelling up the gear requires finding more diagrams, taking you the length and breadth of the Continent. The level ups make those lovely little stat numbers go up, but also add a dash more visual pizazz to Geralt’s armour, adding🍎 fancier clasps and smart collars to reinforce the upgrades you’re working so hard to craft. While the armour upgrades are great and all, it’s the sights you see and the missions you uncover along your way that take crafting from being a boring slog to an exciting experience.
From the limited fast travel to the hunt for armour diagrams, everything in The Witcher 3 is expertly crafted to force you to engage with the game’s core mechanics. Every piece of armour you upgrade will unveil three or four new quests, and I still haven’t completed the endgame, multiple levels and countless hours after I intended to battꦕle the Wild Hunt head on. There’s so much to explore in The Witcher 3’s expansive world, and it’s a testament to CD Projekt Red’s forethought and skill that every mechanic subtly directs you towards the game’s best offerings. It also helps that I’m not smithing a thousand Mastercrafted Feline Gauntlets in a row, I guess.
