I've never played an NG+ mode in any game (this will be my first), and I also understand this mode tends to differ from game to game. I've read the information released so far and I fully understand what does and does not transfer, but I still don't quite understand how the difficulty and leveling works in the NG+ mode. I've read that enemies will be harder and that the difficulty levels will scale accordingly in the new mode, but what exactly does this mean?

For instance, I'm not an expert gamer, and I just beat the game on the second highest difficulty level without too much trouble. I don't quite think I'm ready for Death March, so I was planning my next playthrough to be on the Blood and Broken Bones difficulty level (before they announced the NG+ mode, that is). Am I better off starting a new game on that difficulty setting, or doing NG+ on that same difficulty setting? In other words, if the existing difficulty levels are numbered 1 to 4 (with Just the Story being a 1 and Death March being a 4), will the NG+ version of Just the Story be a 5 on that scale, or something closer to a 2 or 3? By that same rationale, by going with Blood and Broken Bones on NG+, would I be jumping from a 2 to 7 difficulty level on my scale?

The main draw for me for NG+ would be keeping my weapons and armor (I felt like I barely had a chance to enjoy the Wolf School armor on my last playthrough), though I do want more of a challenge this time around. As for the leveling system, since you automatically start at level 30 or higher, I don't understand how the leveling of enemies will work either. Does it mean that a level 16 monster would now be a level 46 monster in the new mode?

Sorry for the long post and thanks as always for everyone's input!

They said you will be able to attempt NG+ on any difficulty level. I played NG+ on Darksiders 2 and the way it worked was that enemies had extra health so they needed more hits to die and they hit harder (and their levels were higher from the start). I'm thinking they'll implement something along those lines. Since Geralt will start with the minimum level of 30 in NG+ (if you have a lower level character the game will automatically level Geralt up to 30 when starting NG+), I think monster levels will be a lot higher from the get go and you won't find any low level monsters in NG+.