Mechanics

The Witcher 2 has a reputation for burying newcomers, and the reason is that it presents fifteen systems with roughly equal confidence. Nothing in the interface tells you that the talent tree will decide whether Chapter 2 is playable while the dice game is a pleasant way to spend twenty minutes and nothing else.

That is the sorting principle here. Every mechanics page on our wiki is placed by how much of the game you can finish without ever engaging with it, starting with the four you cannot avoid and ending with the ones that exist purely because Geralt needs somewhere to be when he is not working.

The four you cannot skip

Combat, levelling, the talent trees and the choices. Skip any of these and the game stops, either because Geralt dies or because a cutscene is waiting for an answer.

Combat

Our combat guide covers the part people get wrong first: the two attack buttons are not weak and strong versions of the same thing. Swift blows on the left mouse button are for agile opponents with no armour or shield, strong blows on the right are for armoured ones, and using the wrong one against a heavy enemy is why some fights feel impossible. The feedback in the bottom right of the screen tells you which is landing.

Blocking costs vigor and parrying knocks an opponent off balance, which is the opening for a counter. Rolling is the other answer, and once the Sword Master tree has extended your roll distance you can simply move, strike, and move again, which our guide rates as the most dependable survival habit in the game.

The five Signs each cost one vigor. Aard throws enemies back and breaks crumbling walls, Yrden lays traps that become an impassable barrier once upgraded to three, Igni burns, Quen shields Geralt for 30 seconds and reflects half the damage when upgraded, and Axii charms an enemy into fighting for you. A sixth, Heliotrope, only exists once you take Magical Sense, and it slows everyone around you. Adrenaline unlocks one of three finishers depending on which skill you took: a group finisher that can kill three enemies at once, a berserk mode, or Heliotrope.

Levelling and talents

Geralt caps at level 35, which means the roughly fifty abilities spread across the four trees are never all yours in a single playthrough. Our levelling guide covers the gate that catches everyone: six talent points must go into the Training tree before Swordsmanship, Alchemy or Magic will open at all.

The skill tree guide has the full tables for all four trees, and it is worth reading before you spend rather than after, because abilities cannot be unlearned. Swordsmanship is the straightforward melee route through Riposte, Footwork and Combat Acumen; Magic upgrades each Sign in turn and ends at Magical Sense; Alchemy is the longest chain and the only route to mutagens, which is really what it is for.

There are six mutagens, and slotting one is permanent. Critical Effects, Range, Vitality, Power, Strength and Concentration each raise a different statistic, and each comes in lesser, basic and greater forms. You do get exactly one chance to undo a build, through From a Bygone Era: bring Malget's notes to the smith Bras of Ban Ard once you reach Act 3, and the Vran Guardian in the tunnels below him will hand your talent points back.

For a build rather than a reference, our talents guide recommends specific picks in each tree and argues that spreading points evenly across all three is the riskiest thing you can do, because it leaves Geralt weak everywhere for a long stretch of the middle game.

Choices

The choices guide is the only page here that is not about a system you operate. It is about the decisions the game makes you operate, and it runs from the prologue through to the last act, including the five that The Witcher 3 remembers: Aryan La Valette's fate, Roche's fate, whether Anais is saved, whether Triss is saved, and whether Letho lives.

The Chapter 2 forks are the ones that produce the largest visible swings. On Iorveth's path, killing Stennis drops Aedirn into anarchy and leaves Saskia unopposed on the Pontar, while sparing him puts him on the throne as her chief opponent. On Roche's path, killing Henselt throws Kaedwen into chaos and gives the Blue Stripes their revenge, while sparing him leaves him in power and Roche unhappy about it.

Optional in name only: alchemy and crafting

You can technically reach the credits without brewing anything. In practice these two systems are where the difference between a difficult fight and an easy one lives, particularly against the bosses.

Alchemy produces three kinds of mixture: potions that raise your statistics with a side effect attached, oils that coat a blade with no downside at all, and bombs. Nine natural substances sit inside the herbs and monster parts you pick up, and the alchemy panel during meditation shows you which ingredient carries which. The single most important rule is one the game never emphasises: potions are drunk in meditation, never mid-fight, so preparation happens before you walk into a room rather than during.

Crafting is a three-part transaction. Find the schematic, gather what it lists, and take both to a craftsman, marked with a plier icon on your map. Bombs are the exception, since you make those yourself. If a merchant is out of an ingredient, leaving town and meditating for a day or two restocks him, which is the quiet answer to most crafting bottlenecks. Our crafting diagrams page lists where the schematics themselves are sold and looted.

Systems that reshape the whole run

Three settings change what kind of playthrough you are having rather than what you can do in a fight.

Difficulty

Five levels, and our difficulty guide notes that you do not pick one from the opening menu. The game teaches you its systems first and lets you choose afterwards, and you can change your mind at any point through the in-game menu.

One consequence is worth knowing before you switch. Moving off Dark part-way through locks you out of the Madman achievement, which requires the whole game start to finish at that setting. Everything between Easy and Hard can be changed freely with no effect on the ending or on achievements.

Dark Mode

Dark Mode deserves separating from the difficulty list because it is a content unlock as much as a challenge setting. Three six-piece outfits exist only here, one per chapter, each made of four armour parts and two swords, and each costs considerably more than the last.

The six swords have an unusual flourish: drawing one desaturates the screen and shifts the soundtrack darker. That only happens when the sword and its matching outfit are worn together, so crafting a sword on its own gets you the statistics and none of the theatre. Dragon Scales are the hardest component to find, and our guide points at Philippa's house in Loc Muinne, the Operator's corpse and Dethmold's chest during Of His Blood and Bone.

Romance

Six opportunities, and one of them reaches the ending. Our romance guide covers all of them: Triss through the elven bathhouse in Chapter 1, Ves after beating her in the Ave Henselt tournament on Roche's path, the succubus at the end of With Flickering Heart on Iorveth's, Mottle if you saved the elves in Flotsam, Cynthia after The Secrets of Loc Muinne, and the courtesans in the Flotsam and Kaedweni brothels at 100 Orens.

The path lock is the thing to plan around, since Ves and Cynthia sit on opposite sides of the Chapter 2 branch. Both have their own walkthroughs in our NPCs guide.

Pure diversions

Five systems that award coin, experience and the odd achievement, and change nothing else. All of them have quests attached, which is the only reason a completionist has to care.

Dice Poker is the most lucrative because the bets get large and every NPC in the world plays. Eight combinations run from five-of-a-kind down to one pair, and our guide's practical advice is to keep two or three matching dice, reroll the rest, and save before sitting down. The Poker Face quests in Flotsam, Vergen, the Kaedweni Camp and Loc Muinne are the tournament chain, and a five-of-a-kind unlocks the Poker achievement.

Fistfighting runs on quick time events rather than the combat system, so it rewards reflexes and nothing you have built. Lose and the organiser will offer you a payback bout to win your money back. Six quests run on it: the two One on One tournaments in Flotsam and Vergen, Fight Club, the Blue Stripes bouts, A Score to Settle, and one route through Bring it on in Loc Muinne.

Arm wrestling is simpler still: keep the cursor inside the orange bar while it slides right and shrinks. Our guide's one piece of hard-won advice is to avoid dwarves entirely. It carries the four Bring It On quests, Hung Over, and the optional route through The Ballista.

The Arena is the largest diversion by some distance, at thirty waves with a leaderboard attached. Three allies are for hire: Harald Gord the dwarven mercenary at 250 gold, Vincent Molnar the knight at 500, and Lady Adrianna the sorceress at 1000. Our guide's read is that the dwarf falls off quickly, Molnar is the value pick for drawing enemies away from you, and the sorceress is the one to buy if you are chasing points rather than survival. Bombs are the answer to the nekker and harpy waves, and Wave 30 is Draug with six Draugir.

Hairstyles change nothing at all, which is the appeal. Six cuts are available for 30 to 60 Orens from barbers whose locations go up on the notice boards: Einar Gausel in the Flotsam district, Sambor in the Kaedweni Camp and Felicia Cori in Vergen. The Rivian Ponytail is Geralt's default.

Outside the game entirely

There is no console in The Witcher 2. Unlike the third game, no key opens a command line, and our console commands page exists mainly to say so and then point at what people actually use instead: cheat tables, trainers and mods.

The ones it recommends are a cheat table that exposes vitality, vigor, toxicity, experience, adrenaline and talents, a mod that drops the medallion cooldown from ten seconds to three, a zero-weight mod for the inventory limit, and a mod that grants two talents per level so you can actually max out a tree. Mods do not affect Steam achievements, but the page is blunt about trainers carrying real risk from untrusted sources.

Where to start

If the game is beating you, the order that helps most is talents, then combat habits, then alchemy. Almost every fight our bosses guide covers assumes Quen and the right oil, and the pages above are where both of those come from. Everything below the alchemy line on this page can wait until you feel like a break.