The Witcher 3 Beginner's Guide: Where to Start and What to Ignore

The Witcher 3 dumps a lot on you in the first couple of hours. There's a notice board, a griffin, a horse with opinions, and about six menus, and the game explains roughly none of it. The good news is that most of the intimidating stuff barely matters early on. The parts that do matter are simple once someone points at them. So here's the short version: which settings to pick, what content to save for later, which early jobs pay off, and how to stop your bags from ruining your day.

Choosing a Difficulty Level

You get four choices at the start, and their names tell you most of the story: Just the Story!, Story and Sword!, Blood and Broken Bones!, and Death March!. The blurbs are pretty honest too. Just the Story promises "a smooth ride," and Death March flat-out says you're "truly insane and loving it." Here's what actually changes under the hood:

| Setting | Enemy health | Enemy damage | Meditation heals you? | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Just the Story! | about 50% less | normal | yes | | Story and Sword! | +10% | +40% | yes | | Blood and Broken Bones! | +20% | +130% | no | | Death March! | +80% | +230% | no |

A couple of details the menu doesn't spell out. On the top two settings your gear also wears down faster, and on Death March enemies get a little extra resistance to critical effects. Neither of those should scare you off. The column that really changes how you play is the last one. On Blood and Broken Bones and Death March, resting no longer patches you up. Food, Swallow, and a powered-up Quen shield have to do that job instead, and that's half the difficulty right there.

There's also a small XP cut on the harder settings. It's minor. You will never be blocked from leveling; you just earn a bit slower.

What beginners should pick

Story and Sword for most people. It's tuned so a first-timer who oils up before a big fight and dodges now and then will come out on top, while ignoring prep gets you killed without wrecking your whole night. That's a nice balance for learning the game.

Just the Story is a fully legit pick too. Who's it for? Mostly anyone here for the story, which is a lot of people. The writing is the best part of the package, the combat is the wobbliest, and nobody's grading you. Enemies lose about half their health on that setting, so fights mostly melt. If a specific boss is annoying you later, dipping down for one fight and going back up is normal behavior.

Death March is for a second playthrough, or for chasing the Walked the Path achievement. Heads up on that one: it only counts if you keep Death March on from start to finish of the main story. Death March does force you to play the game "right," with oils, decoctions, and bombs every single fight. That's a fun way to play. It's a rough way to learn in White Orchard while a griffin is tossing you across a field.

You can change it whenever

Difficulty lives in the options menu, and you can flip it mid-game in either direction. The only thing locked to Death March is that one achievement. So start wherever sounds good, adjust as you go, and don't stress about the choice in the first ten minutes. Plenty of players bump up to Blood and Broken Bones around level 15 once combat clicks, because easy fights get dull in a long game.

Which Edition Content Matters

Quick buying advice first: if you don't own the game yet, get the Complete Edition (sold as Game of the Year on some storefronts). It bundles the base game, both paid expansions, and all sixteen free DLCs, and it goes on sale for less than a pizza on a pretty regular schedule. There's no reason to piece it together manually in 2026.

If you already own the base game, check your platform. The next-gen update landed December 14, 2022, free for everyone on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. If you're on one of those, you already have the fancy version.

The free stuff

The sixteen free DLCs sound like a big pile and are mostly small: extra quests like Contract: Missing Miners, Fool's Gold, and Where the Cat and Wolf Play, a handful of armor sets, costume swaps for Yennefer, Triss and Ciri, even a neutral skin for your gwent cards. One of them matters more than the rest, though. Scavenger Hunt: Wolf School Gear is a full treasure hunt for a complete witcher gear set, and it's some of the best armor you'll wear through the middle of the game. All of this just shows up as quests once installed. Nothing to enable, nothing to manage.

The next-gen update is worth a paragraph too. It brought ray tracing, faster loading, a photo mode, a closer camera option, and a few popular PC mods baked in. It also added a Netflix-flavored quest, In the Eternal Fire's Shadow, which hands you the Forgotten Wolven gear so game Geralt can dress like TV-show Geralt. A nice free bonus, entirely optional.

The two paid expansions

Hearts of Stone runs about ten hours and plays out on the regular map, mostly around Oxenfurt. It's aimed at level 30 and up. Blood and Wine is a different animal: a whole extra region called Toussaint, with its own city, its own monsters, a vineyard estate Geralt inherits, and grandmaster gear tiers. Players routinely sink 30-plus hours into it. It's scaled for the mid-30s.

Neither is going anywhere, and that's the point. The classic order for a first run is main story first (or at least most of it), then Hearts of Stone, then Blood and Wine. Blood and Wine technically unlocks after a main quest called A Poet Under Pressure, and you can hop over whenever. Riding to Toussaint at level 12 is still a good way to get flattened, though. The game will absolutely let you do it. Don't.

Early Contracts Worth Taking

Contracts are the witcher job loop, and they're the best early money and XP in the game. The rhythm never changes: grab a notice off a board, talk to whoever's paying, poke around with your witcher senses, prep the right oil and bomb, kill the thing, cut off a trophy, walk back for the coin. Better teachers than any tutorial popup, since a bad prep job ends with you eating dirt.

The boards that matter early are in White Orchard village, then Crow's Perch once you reach Velen. Reading a board also pins points of interest on your map, so it's worth hitting every one you pass even if you take no jobs.

Here's the early ladder, with the suggested levels straight off the quests:

| Contract | Board | Suggested level | | --- | --- | --- | | Devil by the Well | White Orchard | 2 | | Woodland Beast | Velen | 6 | | Patrol Gone Missing | Velen | 7 | | Shrieker | Crow's Perch | 8 | | Jenny o' the Woods | Midcopse | 10 |

Devil by the Well (White Orchard, level 2)

First contract in the game and basically free training. Pull the notice off the board in White Orchard village, or knock on Odolan's door on the west side of town. A noonwraith is haunting the well in the ruined village south of the border post.

The prep here is the lesson. You can brew Specter Oil without ever leaving the area: arenaria grows right around Odolan's place, and there's a bear hanging around south of the herbalist's hut that drops the fat you need. In the fight itself, throw a Yrden sign on the ground and hit her while she's inside the circle. Outside it, your sword mostly swishes through ghost. Late in the fight she splits into copies; hold the circle and pick them off one at a time. The pay is pocket change, honestly. The real reward is that you now know how every contract in the game works.

Shrieker (Crow's Perch, level 8)

The villagers call it that because it screams. It's actually a cockatrice. Grab the notice at Crow's Perch, talk to Chet, and follow the blood trail with your senses until you find its cave. Toss a bomb in to flush it out; Samum, Grapeshot, and Dancing Star all do the job. When it lifts off, ping it with the crossbow to drop it back into sword range. Coat the silver sword in Draconid oil and cast Aard to stagger it mid-attack. The payoff is a couple hundred crowns and 235 XP, which is real money at that stage of the game.

Jenny o' the Woods (Midcopse, level 10)

The suggested level says 10, and you should believe it loosely. This one punches above its weight, and plenty of players swing back through at 13 or 15 and are happier for it. Notice board in Midcopse, then a chat with a woman named Zula to get the story. It's a nightwraith, so the fight only happens after dark. This is the quest that teaches you meditation is a tool and not menu decoration. Same playbook as the noonwraith: Specter Oil, Yrden, patience.

If you want extra work around the baron's storyline, Woodland Beast (level 6) and Patrol Gone Missing (level 7) fill the gap between White Orchard and the Crow's Perch jobs nicely.

One ignore-rule for the whole map: contracts don't scale with you, so that number on the notice is real information. And if an enemy ever has a red skull next to its health bar, that's the game telling you to leave and come back in five levels. It's not a hint. It's a warning.

Inventory and Weight Management

Geralt starts with a 60-unit carry limit, and that is genuinely tight. Weapons and armor are the heavy stuff, and this game showers you with both. Every abandoned campsite has three swords and a chest plate in it. Cross the line and Geralt can't sprint, can't jump, and trudges along at a pace that'll make you want to quit for the night.

Saddlebags first

The fix is saddlebags for Roach. They don't add some separate saddle storage, exactly. Strapping a set on just raises Geralt's total.

| Set | Weight bonus | Ballpark price | Where to get it | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Saddlebags | +30 | ~100 | horse races and town merchants | | Rugged | +70 | ~175 | Oreton, in Velen | | Zerrikanian | +100 | ~900 | Putrid Grove in Novigrad, Skellige port | | Undvik | +100 | ~760 | armorer at Kaer Trolde, Skellige | | Beaclair | +110 | looted, not bought | Toussaint (Blood and Wine) |

The sweet spot early is the Rugged set off the Oreton merchant in Velen. Seventy extra units for about 175 crowns is very affordable by the time you're running baron quests. The Zerrikanian set at +100 is the long-term buy, usually around 900 crowns once you've got Novigrad money. The Beaclair set is Blood and Wine content, so don't plan a build around it.

Strong Back

There's a skill called Strong Back in the general tree worth another 60 units. Two catches, though. One, it eats an ability slot on your character screen, and slots are scarce early. Two, skills do nothing until you actually slot them. Plenty of new players unlock a skill and wonder why nothing changed. Slot it or skip it; the saddlebags matter more.

The stash and what to sell

Since patch 1.07 there are green stash chests scattered around the world, and they all share one inventory. A sword parked in the chest up at Crow's Perch is waiting for you in Novigrad, no size limit attached. That's where finished gear sets and "might want this later" weapons go, not your pockets.

For the rest of the junk: sell it. Junk items exist to be sold. Weapons and armor you've outgrown go to blacksmiths and armorers, who are also the merchants holding real crowns. Books you've already read can go too, since the bestiary keeps everything you've learned forever. And food piles up silly-fast; a couple of stacks is plenty, because it heals you slowly over time rather than in one lump. The loot isn't going anywhere, and there's always another merchant over the hill.

Meditation and Rest Basics

How to meditate

Open the menu and tab all the way to the right, past the map, to the meditation screen. On PC that's the N key by default. On a controller, bring up the sign-swap panel and hit the button prompt. Geralt has to be on foot and out of combat, so no meditating from the saddle. Drag the hands around the clock face; dawn, midday, dusk, and midnight are all marked, and you can stop anywhere in between.

What rest actually fixes

Depends entirely on your difficulty setting. On Just the Story and Story and Sword, one hour of meditation heals Geralt to full and wipes his toxicity clean. Free, instant, repeatable as often as you like. On Blood and Broken Bones and Death March that gets switched off, which is a big chunk of what makes those settings harder. Recovery becomes a resource you manage instead of a free button.

Time-skipping is the other half, and it works on every difficulty. Merchants keep daylight hours, so if you ride into a village at 2 a.m. with full pockets, meditate forward to morning instead of standing around. Some quests only happen at night too, including that Jenny contract up above. The game never makes you wait in real time. The clock waits for you.

The alcohol refill

Here's the sneaky-good part. Meditate for just one hour with strong alcohol in your inventory, and every potion and bomb you own refills to full, automatically. It costs one dose of the alcohol, that's it. Alcohest is the default; Dwarven Spirit works fine as a backup.

This changes how you should think about alchemy. Brew Swallow once and you never need to brew it again, no matter how many bottles you burn through. The rare ingredients you sweated over never get consumed on refills, only on the first craft. So grab Alcohest whenever a merchant stocks it, keep a few doses on you, and stop hoarding drowner brains for potions you already own. One bottle of Alcohest restocks your entire combat kit for the cost of pocket change. Best trade in the game.