Hello, for my first playthrough i chose the dark difficulty. It went well during the prologue, but now i'm at chapter 1, and it's very hard. For exemple, I'm having trouble with endregas when they come in numbers. I have the Aerondight silver weapon and the Raven armor. I use Quen, I roll but it's impossible to do the endregas contract and others.

Am I doing something wrong ?

Once you get the dark mode equipment things get super easy. What I did was to farm nekkers. The key to fighting bigger fights before you are ready is to hit twice and roll away. Kill a monster then run to safety. You can then go back and usually loot it without more monsters appearing.

The prologue and early chapter one are the hardest. Your skill will matter a lot. You have two basic choices. Either get 2 points in daggers and use them or two points in alchemist and lob bombs. Bombs are way cheaper. So for training I put 2 points into hardiness, 1 point into parry, 1 point into deflect arrows (mutagen) and 2 points into fortitude for the mutagen and extra vigor slot which allows a quen and 2 aards to be cast.

Then go for footwork and bombs (only 1 skill point).

The key for me is to fight and run early. Once you get the dark equipment you can one hit most chapter one monsters. My style is to favor attack over defense. So I like to kill things quickly over the other route. Therefore I usually go swordsmanship first. Much later on I do go alchemy for more mutagen slots. I spend 16 skills in swordsmanship and then have 12 to place in alchemy.

By chapter 3 the game is super easy. I have the following skill from swordsmanship:
Position - 1
Feet work - 1
Violence - 2
Whirl - 1
Hardy - 1
Tough Guy - 2 You can actually skip this if you really want to.
Sudden Death - 2 or pick one of the other two to suit your needs and only use 1 skill
Invincible - 2
Combat Acumen - 2
Whirlwind - 2

But the key is to limit your fighting till you have the equipment. Do the troll quest which is easy as you can use the rock to kite the troll around and lob bombs at him. Fight nekkers near the nest but do not destroy the nests. Hit twice and roll away to safety but not too far. Lob a bomb or two to kill the nekker.

Oh and loot the entire town before leaving it. Stash away all the stuff in your storage at the inn.

And don't rush for chapter 2. Once you get the good dark stuff then farm nekkers. The cave behind the waterfall is great. Wait 24 hours and they respawn. This way you can have all the equipment you need to get the chapter 2 dark stuff right near the start. You will only have to get some harpy feathers I think and the Draug armor piece.

Goodmongo has good general advice about how to fight with the starting equipment. Bombs are definitely useful; you should buy the schematic for grapeshot bombs and make a lot of them as they're cheap and make good ranged weapons.

But Goodmongo's skill guide isn't the only viable option. I played Dark mode focusing on the magic skill tree and it was awesome. I like playing for offense so I upgraded Aard and Igni before Quen, but upgraded Quen is also really useful. Prioritize skills that give more Vigor so you can cast more, if you want to try magic. I would still do some sword fighting but I mixed in a lot of signs. The only swordsman skills I took were Feet work 1 and (eventually) Position 1. Position is very useful if you are rolling away from enemies and getting backstabbed a lot. If you're better at avoiding that then it's not critical. Feet work is very useful though since it increases Geralts roll distance and makes it much easier to dodge.

So, don't worry too much about which exact skills you take. More important is fighting technique. As Goodmongo said, try to move in for a few quick strikes and then get out (with a few exceptions... wraiths are easier to kill by attacking constantly and never letting up). Resist the temptation to roll directly away from an enemy (i.e., towards the camera), as this will make Geralt turn his back on the enemy and give them an opportunity for a backstab. Instead, roll to one side to avoid attacks.

When fighting nekkers, be careful not to get surrounded. Dodge away if you are swarmed. Use bombs to hit groups of them. When fighting endregas, be careful to dodge when they charge you (or use Quen, but it will deplete your Quen). Then use heavy attacks. I think endregas are more vulnerable from behind.

Most importantly, though, get the dark gear as soon as you can. It's very expensive, so one way is to fight lots of nekkers without destroying their nests and sell their parts. You can also do arm wrestling at the inn for 30 orens each time, although that gets repetitive quickly. Once you have the Dark equipment things will be much easier. By the time you get to Chapter 2, you'll have good skills too and should have a much easier time. At that point, don't feel like you need to get each new set of Dark gear; there are comparable non-Dark equipment sets late in Chapter 2 and in Chapter 3. But in Chapter 1 you definitely want the Dark gear.

Also, I should point out that for Chapter 2, the Dark mode gear is not only very expensive but also requires a component that can only be found at certain points. On one of the two story paths you can get it at the beginning if you're careful, but on the other path you can't, so you may not be able to craft it until much later in the Chapter. Don't worry too much about saving up cash in Chapter 1 for it though, as you can kill harpies and sell their feathers for a lot of money in Chapter 2. That's a fast way to make money.

Thanks to you two, your responses will be very useful :)

I wanted to add one more tip. You can easily do the hospital quest without much leveling or equipment.

In the first room two wraiths spawn. Just place lots of the snares (you are collecting them right) all over the place, especially near to where they spawn. Then wait for them to come to you setting off the traps.

Killing the last guy is also easy as you can set the traps before talking to him. That only leaves the middle fight against two wraiths. In that one you will have to kite and bomb them.

BTW I didn't mean my build was the only valid one. It was just the one that fit my playstyle and needs.

I applied all your advices and it goes well.
But I have a question, isn't the game too easy with dark armors ?

The game gets easier later on no matter what. Chapter 2 and 3 are much easier than Chapter 1 and Prologue, both because Geralt gains skills from leveling up and because he gets better equipment. But if you don't want to use the Dark mode gear, there's nothing forcing you to. You can always just get by with regular crafted / found gear. The Dark mode gear also requires some grinding for money, which can be boring. It also means you miss all the other gear that Geralt finds on his adventures.

I had already played the game on Hard before switching to Dark mode, so I enjoyed trying out the Dark gear since I'd used all the other gear already. But for your first game you may find you have more fun without it. Totally up to you!

Note that the way the Dark gear works is that if you have one of the swords equipped but you aren't wearing the full set, your life will be drained whenever you have the sword drawn. But if you are using a different sword, you can wear pieces of the Dark gear set at the same time with no ill effect. So the negative impact of an incomplete set only matters if you are using the swords from the set. (This actually let to a really annoying part where Geralt's swords were taken as part of the story, then he gets one back and a big fight starts. I kept dying until I figured out that his silver sword wasn't equipped after the cutscene, so the set was incomplete and he was constantly losing vitality.) Also there's a weird graphical effect that appears when you draw a sword from a Dark set, but I found a mod to get rid of this.

The swords are what is really OP. They actually give you health back with each hit. The armor rating is higher than normal with the resistances being very high but they aren't double the armor.

As Waltorious said the game naturally gets easier. You gain skills that let you kill mobs much faster. You can hit more than one mob at a time. You defenses and resistances go way up. Etc.

That said most boss fights are still 'gimmick' fights to me. Not as bad as the Kayran but but they all have a strategy that you follow. For me I viewed the game sort of based on Geralt regaining his memory and skills. He was always OP. But due to the memory loss he was no where near as strong as his natural abilities dictated. So as he gains his memory he gains his skills back. Nekkers, Harpies and all other sorts of monsters are child's play to him.

Thanks for your responses, I'll try to go without dark armors.

Well the hardest mob in the game to me is "Operator" or atleast that is how it's called in Russian version though this guy not even a boss but dealing with him might be tricky.