The Witcher allows a player to mix his ingredients and essentially take a random shot at creating something, like an unnamed potion, without having gathered information for that potion prior to brewing it. There's nothing wrong with that initially, but the problem arises when you're given the decision to purchase expensive scrolls that tell you how to brew said potion. One can save his game, purchase the scroll - read it, and reload to an earlier point where he didn't purchase the scroll (thus saving his orens), and concoct his potion without the scroll. This is a major loophole. With some patience, I can essentially cheat the game out of orens. It sounds neat, but I want a fair game without any major advantages.


Does this aggravate anyone else? I'll probably just play the 'fair' way and purchase the scrolls, but not without begrudging the developers for overlooking such a glaring flaw.

I'll admit that it's somewhat silly, even though I didn't even think of resorting to such a way when I struggled to kill something. What's worse, I take that it basically means that one could get a hold of elixirs available only in the later chapters as early as in chapter I? Which would make this loophole way more serious, allowing more than just saving some money.

Or maybe they are just testing one's strong will. ;) I definitely recommend playing it as intended, especially as orens stop being an issue halfway throughout the game - slowly but surely you start accumulating more than you could possibly spend.

I'm afraid that what may piss you off even more about alchemy, eventually, is the inability to make a number of potions at once (say 5x Swallow nigredo, using the same ingredients), or the ultimately tiresome 'drag and drop' system.

It is true that one can "cheat" the alchemy system in this way. But you don't have to do it; i managed to scrape enough money together to buy the formulas I wanted. There are also often legitimate "free" options for finding formulas, for example as quest rewards.

Since Kalkstein tells you in so many words that experimental alchemy is the way to go, it's definitely allowed by design, and it's not an oversight. If your Geralt can survive the experiments, more power to him.

You can exploit any game by finding out how to do something and then going back to a previous save, or reading about it in a guide (in this case, the Witcher Wiki), so this is not a flaw worth being pissed off at.

Its really not about the game its about you. Play it the way you want. Its your choice.

I completely agree. If you want a fair game you can try by your own or buy the scrolls as much as you like. But like cjrgreen said above, it's not a crime using guides or that "cheat" to use Alchemy.

Having enough orens has never been an issue for me but I just don't bother with buying scrolls. You can get many scrolls for free anyway. If you can't, some npcs will tell you the recipe or you can drink an unknown potion you looted to learn the recipe. I like being able to make whatever I want whenever I want provided I have the reagents.

i never was short for orens.
Just collected all i killed and sold this without intentional grinding.
Finished the game with about 14000 orens left :s
So when i replayed it again i bought all scrolls and books and still had more then 5000 left.
So even if you resort to this to get leftover money. It's worthless in the long runand you'll feel you finished the game with cheating.

The only recipe i had to cheat on as fisstech my first playthrough. basically i sold everything before needing it. There was no way to get some more so...

Yeah, that's an obvious exploit, but one should not be that short of coin. Between Witcher contracts, quest rewards, misc loot and dice poker, I had over 7000 orens left over at my first playthough, and I bought several rune/meteorite swords and the 2000 oren armor upgrade.

Money's too plentiful to matter, but as BarryMC said, there is little reason to buy books or scrolls. I think Tome of Fear and Loathing II is the only one you must buy to unlock an ingredient, and Book of the Golden Oriole is the only one you must buy to unlock a recipe.

Has anyone ever made a useful potion that you can't find on a scroll? One of the books recommended experimentation; so off I went experimenting: after about 7 or 8 tries all producing stuff that hurts me, I gave up experimenting.

If you mean by that that you can find many of the other books, I suppose; but you need to read books in order to be able to harvest herbs from bushes.

Until now, I've always bought all the books (and sold them again immediately) and I've never been want for cash, in fact I usually have lots left over at the end.

That is also mostly not true. You can learn about many of the herbs and almost all of the ingredient-yielding monsters in game from NPCs. Books are mainly useful when you need to know about an ingredient now, or for rare instances like Feainnewedd.

i've just finished a playthrough, with about 27k. no cheating though I did box a lot..... lol

below is a small breakdown of the information sources on monsters + plants (SOME SPOILERS)

in Ch 1, old women can tell you about all the local plants(and some of the city plants. there's several of them, and they cycle, so you may have to approached them multiple times, lol. I've spent about half and hour trying to get description of Balissa) as well as the following monsters: Barghests, drowners, echinops, fleders. there's a book in one of the houses about the corpse-eaters. and, of course, you learn about the Beast from the notes.
in Act 2, you can learn about all the swamp plants by giving a Brickmaker woman honey. Seighfreid will tell you about the cocatrix. only book you need to buy is corpseaters pt II for the Alghoul contarct (at least only book I couldn't find). Fear and laothing II (the cursed creatures) is available in one of the houses. you may need the Golem book, but that fight's not about the fighting, if you know what I mean.
in Act 3, in New Naracort Inn, one of the regulars will tell you stories, if you get her milk or beer (2 jugs of milk in the Hairy bear Inn chest, if you're that stingy). she tells you about basilisks, Archespores, and Wyverns. not sure if it'd update the entry for Royal wyverns, b/c I'd read the book in Act 2, but it probably does. The only monsters I didn't find a source on were the Kikimoras. that's the one book you may need to buy. oh, and Vaska gives you the book on Dagon.
In Act 4, one old women will teach you all the local plants for sweets, 2 peasants will tell you about the noom/night shades and nearly half the villagers can't wait to tell you about the the last 3 vampire species. up to this point, only other vamps you'd have encountered are


1) the bruxa in "Echoes of the past"
and
2) the vamp family in the brothel.

Also, in the sidequests in Act 4, you have 3 books as optional quest rewards:
Nayad: the vodyanoi
Harn (mason) Ghosts+wild hunt
the Hermit: vampires

In Act 5, in Kalkstein's house there's a book of Alzur--breakdown of Koschey + the skullheads. I bought the Rigger book off the Druids in the cave, but it's optional. there's a Striga book, too.


In total, I think you need to buy 3 books all game, haha oh, and the Feainvedd one.

there's a lot of books about the world as well, but I don't think there's a single one that cannot be found instead of bought. you just need to search every house for it.

"Tome of Fear and Loathing II" must be bought. It is not available to be found anywhere.

One of the Trade Quarter guards (I believe he's marked "Guard Knight" and patrols near the city hall) will tell you about kikimores. You have to ask him twice, on separate occasions, to get both Warriors and Workers.

Shani will tell you about how she once dissected a (randomly chosen) monster: Drowned Dead, Bloedzuiger, or Fleder.

You can take the "Monster Lore" talent early in Act I if you are impatient. Because you will later have bronze talents you have no use for, this is not as wasteful as it sounds.