Essential Things To Do First

1. Difficulty & Early Game Foundations

Your first few hours set the tone for the entire adventure. Get these right and everything else falls into place.

• Choose Your Difficulty Wisely: Difficulty impacts more than just enemy damage. On higher difficulties (Blood and Broken Bones or Death March), you earn less quest XP, lose more gold on death, and — critically — meditation no longer regenerates your vitality. This alone forces you to rely heavily on potions and food, fundamentally changing how you play.
• Clear White Orchard Completely: Don't rush to Velen. White Orchard is an extended tutorial packed with crucial XP, starter gear, and six Places of Power that each grant a free ability point. That's six free levels of power you can't get anywhere else.
• Manual Save Constantly: The Witcher 3 is full of tough choices with consequences you won't see coming, and autosaves can be spaced far apart. Get in the habit of quicksaving before conversations, fights, and whenever you explore a new area. It will save you hours of frustration.

2. Character Building & Combat

How you build Geralt and how you fight are deeply connected. A few smart decisions early on make a massive difference.

• Have a Rough Build Plan: You don't need to min-max from the start, but having a general direction (combat-focused, sign-focused, or alchemy-focused) prevents you from wasting points in abilities you'll never use.
• Prioritize These Early Abilities:
  • Gourmet (General): Food regenerates health for 20 real-time minutes instead of seconds. This is arguably the single best quality-of-life skill in the game.
  • Sun and Stars (General): Slowly regenerates vitality during the day without using consumables.
  • Muscle Memory (Combat): Boosts fast attack damage — your bread-and-butter combat move.
  • Exploding Shield (Signs): Upgrades Quen so it damages nearby enemies when the shield breaks.
• Slot Your Abilities! Unlocking an ability is not enough. You must manually drag it into one of the limited Active Skill Slots on the character screen. Unslotted abilities do absolutely nothing. This is the most common beginner mistake.
• Use Mutagens Early: Starting at level four, you unlock mutagen slots. Equip mutagens and match their color to the abilities in the same row (e.g., red mutagen with red combat abilities) for up to a 100% stat bonus.
• Quen is Your Safety Net: Always cast Quen before engaging. It absorbs one free hit, giving you a margin of error against every enemy type in the game.
• Dodge, Don't Roll: The quick sidestep dodge costs no stamina and keeps you close enough to counterattack. Only use the long roll to escape massive area-of-effect attacks.
• Parry Humans, Dodge Monsters: Parrying is highly effective against human enemies and can trigger devastating ripostes. However, parrying does not work against monsters — trying it will get you killed.

3. Gear & Resource Management

Gold is scarce in The Witcher 3. Spend it wisely and you'll never struggle for equipment.

• Save Your Gold: Don't waste money buying basic gear from merchants. Almost everything you find as loot will be better. Hoard your crowns for crafting superior Witcher School gear sets later — they are astronomically better than anything you can buy.
• Hoard Runes & Glyphs: You'll find runes (for swords) and glyphs (for armor) throughout the game. Don't socket them into early-game gear that you'll replace in a few levels. Save them for your late-game Witcher sets where they'll permanently boost your build.
• Repair Gear Regularly: Weapon and armor durability degrades with use, directly reducing your damage and defense. Visit blacksmiths or use repair kits you find in the world. Never fight a tough enemy with broken gear.
• Use Grindstones & Armor Tables: Found in most towns and villages, these give you a free 15-minute, 20% buff to either attack power (grindstone) or armor rating (armor table). Always use them before heading into a fight.

4. Alchemy & Preparation

Alchemy is Geralt's greatest advantage over ordinary fighters. Neglecting it makes the game significantly harder.

• Start Crafting Potions, Oils & Bombs Early: Don't wait until mid-game to engage with alchemy. Even basic items like Swallow (healing), Thunderbolt (damage boost), and Specter Oil are game-changers from the very first contract. Herbs are everywhere in White Orchard — pick them up.
• Alchemy Items Refill Automatically: You only ever need to craft a potion, oil, or bomb once. After that, meditating automatically refills all of them as long as you have strong alcohol (like Alcohest or Dwarven Spirit) in your inventory. Use your items freely — they're designed to be consumed.
• Check the Bestiary Before Every Fight: The Bestiary tells you exactly which Sign, bomb, and oil each monster is weak against. Fighting blind makes every encounter twice as hard and twice as long.
• Toggle Auto-Apply Oils: In the gameplay settings, you can enable automatic oil application based on the enemy you're fighting. This saves significant time and ensures you never forget to prepare.

5. Crafting & Exploration

The Continent rewards the curious. Every side path, every abandoned building, and every notice board can lead to something valuable.

• Hunt for Witcher Gear Diagrams: Seek out Scavenger Hunt quests from merchants and notice boards. These lead to diagrams for Witcher School gear sets (Feline, Griffin, Ursine, Wolven) that scale with your level through upgrades and are vastly superior to random loot.
• Use the Crafting Menu at Merchants: When visiting a blacksmith or armorer, open the crafting menu — it will show you if they sell any materials you're missing for a recipe. This saves you from running around searching for components.
• Loot Everything (But Don't Steal): Pick up every herb, junk item, and piece of gear you find. Dismantle junk for crafting parts or sell it for gold. But never steal in front of guards — they're massively over-leveled and will knock you out and confiscate your crowns.
• Sell to the Right Merchants: Weapons sell for more at blacksmiths, armor sells for more at armorers, and herbs/alchemy items sell for more at herbalists. Selling to the wrong merchant type can cut your profit in half.
• Buy Saddlebags for Roach Immediately: Your carrying capacity is severely limited at the start. The first saddlebags you find or buy for Roach increase your inventory weight limit dramatically. Prioritize this purchase.
• Use Witcher Senses Constantly: Hold the Witcher Senses button whenever you enter a new area. It highlights lootable containers, interactable objects, footprints, and hidden items that you'd otherwise walk right past.
• Check Every Notice Board: Notice boards in towns and villages unlock new map markers, contracts, and side quests. Always check them when you arrive in a new settlement.
• Minimize Fast Travel: While convenient, fast travel causes you to miss hidden treasure caches, random encounters, monster nests, and entire side quests that only trigger when you physically travel through an area.

6. Additional Tips

• Start Gwent Early: Gwent is the in-game card game, and it has its own progression. Buy cards from every innkeeper and play every merchant you meet from the very beginning. If you wait until later, opponents will have advanced decks that are impossible to beat with your starter cards.
• Pay Attention to Dialogue Choices: The Witcher 3's choices have real, long-term consequences that can affect entire questlines, character fates, and even which ending you get. Read your options carefully — there are very few "right" answers, and some timed dialogue choices will auto-select if you wait too long.