The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

[Merad]

I'm thinking of playing the game again on a harder difficulty level (I don't remember what or how many levels there are, but I imagine I played it on the default/normal difficulty). I'm aware that one aspect of the next difficulty level up is that meditation doesn't result in healing, but is there anything else I ought to be aware of?

At the higher difficulty settings the witcher resources (potions, oils, etc) become a lot more important. However even on death march the game might start feeling too easy after level 15 or so if you are using all those resources, have a decent build, keep your gear updated, etc. You might want to turn on enemy level scaling or tweak your build & play style to make things more interesting. For example I'm at level 85 and just finished the base game on NG+ and really for the entire NG+ playthrough I haven't bothered with oils or potions except on bosses and large groups, and that's even being down two skill slots because I didn't unlock everything before starting NG+ (be warned if you intend to do NG+).

 

[alcoholbob]

I'm thinking of playing the game again on a harder difficulty level (I don't remember what or how many levels there are, but I imagine I played it on the default/normal difficulty). I'm aware that one aspect of the next difficulty level up is that meditation doesn't result in healing, but is there anything else I ought to be aware of?

Be careful in town because the guards will 1 shot you in higher difficulties. Sometimes this is unavoidable and you will be in the middle of a scripted fight and the town guards aggro on you accidentally and next thing you know you are dead, so definitely save more often, because you can lose some progress from that, lol.

 

[zinfamous]

I'm thinking of playing the game again on a harder difficulty level (I don't remember what or how many levels there are, but I imagine I played it on the default/normal difficulty). I'm aware that one aspect of the next difficulty level up is that meditation doesn't result in healing, but is there anything else I ought to be aware of?

It's primarily a much harder starting curve, but it still gets trivially easy to OP yourself early enough on death march. You can still more or less be 2 or 3 shot throughout the game, but it's still fairly easy to avoid most attacks. There is such an endless amount of food and potions and what not that the lack of auto healing doesn't mean much. I think my first play through had me going into DeathMarch by level 20 something, and then the replay through the "plus" or whatever playthrough was Deathmarch only. It really isn't that bad. I seem to recall Quen being far more useful, though.

 

[mikeymikec]

Yup, playing it on the second-highest difficulty at the moment and I'm at level 10 IIRC. Once I got used to using 'Swallow' potions rather than food and using Quen instead of Igni on a regular basis, the game feels as difficult as it did on normal difficulty.