Part 33 - The Witcher 3 - 2nd playthrough - Death March

I'm starting the Deadly Plot quest which involves scheming to assassinate King Radovid. Since the first stop on this quest is at a brothel, Geralt - dressed appropriately - chatted up a girl. After they finished having fun, Geralt attended a meeting with Dijkstra and Roche.

Geralt learned that they had a third associate who went missing.

There is a disillusioned Redanian solider named Gregor who may know more about their associate, so they asked me to speak with him.

Roche also asked me not to draw too much attention while doing this mission. Was he hinting at the fact that Geralt's butt was hanging out? :D

The soldier named Gregor told me he had seen the spy riding a cart, and an abandoned cart was later seen off the road not far from there. I found a shoemaker's cart, and a trail of shoes that led to a dumb troll with a shoe fetish.

I have no patience for trolls, so I killed him and his two friends in their cave.

This fight was also a test to see if turning "enemy upscaling" on or off changed anything in the difficulty of killing them with Geralt butt naked. Answer: no. In any case, I'm leaving "upscaling" on.

This was before I killed the trolls. The guy's name is Thaler, he is Dijkstra's and Roche's Temerian spy friend and also has a long history with Geralt that I'm lazy to read up on now. I rescued him from the trolls, and he went to help Dijkstra and Roche, completing this quest for me. I reached level 17 at that point. Sadly, I could not play gwent with him just yet. I think I need to get the Old Pals gwent quest from Zoltan the dwarf first.

There was one more experiment I wanted to perform which was donning some non-witcher armor and seeing if fighting in that or naked made any difference to the amount of damage I was getting. Answer: no. When I reported these findings on the official forum, a moderator said he could not explain what was going on. He believes this was strange but likely normal, but if I wanted to be sure, I should ask the developers.

As level 20 quests were now only three levels above me, I chose to complete those. I first completed A Feast for Crows naked, because playing as naked Geralt is fun. :) (I do still plan on dressing him in the enhanced griffin gear when he reaches level 18.)

Speaking of crows, I never noticed this one before, sitting here near the Hanged Man's Tree. (See picture above.) Is it always here?

A Feast for Crows is an easy quest in Novigrad where you have to kill three level 20 dwarves in a tiny room for some loot. I just used igni on them, no oil, no potions, no armor, no issue.

Next was the contract Mysterious Tracks.

Still without armor, yes. :)

"Am I supposed to jump in there naked??"

Depositing chort lure.

The chort was dead in no time, and I went back to Lindenvale to collect my reward from the hunter.

I picked up a low-level quest, Witcher Wannabe, from the local ealdorman. This man was posing as a witcher, cheating the villagers out of money. I exposed him, and I think the villagers killed him for his crime.