The Witcher 3 – Blood and Wine Expansion – New details unveiled + new screenshots

Reddit’s member ‘dmax3901’ has shared new details about the second expansion of The Witcher 3, Blood and Wine. This new expansion will offer 30+ hours, will feature over 90 new quests and 40 new points of interest, will pack 20 new monsters, and will sport over 2 hours of new musical content. You can read the full details below.

The Witcher 3 Blood and Wine Expansion Details:

General:

  • 30+ hour adventure.
  • Over 90 new quests.
  • Over 40 new points of interest.
  • Dynamic points of interest system. Killing bandits in their main hideout will affect the number of enemies in surrounding camps.
  • 14000 lines of dialogue (Hearts of Stone had 6000).
  • 100 individual pieces of armour (including new Witcher sets).
  • More than 20 new monsters.
  • New Game + maximum level increased to 100.

Armour and Weapons:

  • New Witcher armour class ‘Grandmaster’.
  • New armour merchant who is the only one able to craft this level of Witcher gear.
  • Can get blue, hooded armour from Witcher 2, armour from Witcher 1, Ursine Witcher armour with furry pauldron that was in the artbook but cut from the main game.
  • More than 30 new weapons.
  • Can now dye armour. Dyes can be bought from a merchant, crafted or looted. Only obtainable in Toussaint. Pink is among the colours.
  • You can acquire the golden, plumed armour of the Touissant knights, and the same goes for Roach!

New Mutation System:

  • Mutations. 12 new abilities. Mechanic is unlocked through a quest started by a letter from Yennefer. Examples: Signs can have critical hits causing the enemy to explode, instead of dying Geralt is healed and has damage immunity, opponents knocked down by AARD freeze and die instantly. Can only utilise one at a time.

UI Changes:

  • The UI resembles Witcher 2’s character customization screen. Basically they’re super strong abilities/stat boosts that require mutagens and skill points to unlock. Can only pick one at a time but you have to unlock earlier ones to get the others.
  • Despite unlocking it at level 34+ (recommended level to venture to Touissant) the system and anything you’ve unlocked carries over to New Game+ so you won’t have to unlock it again.
  • Greatly redesigned User Interface.
  • Can now rotate Geralt in stats screen.
  • Books moved to glossary.
  • Upon looting a readable item a little notification pops up in bottom left of screen. Upon clicking in the right stick (on Xbox One controller), you can read the text of recently looted books, letters, notes etc without having to go to the menu, inventory, finding the right book and so on.
  • Option to remove fish-eye effect from witcher sense.

Home Base:

  • Geralt gets his own vineyard.
  • It’s called Corvo Bianco.
  • You can renovate it with large sums of money, the option I saw was for 5000 Orens.
  • You can add a greenhouse of sorts where you can grow herbs for all your witcher potion needs, an armourer’s table, a stable for Roach (with its own stat bonuses), upgrade your bed, renovated interior and exterior, secret lab, guest room.
  • Guest room where old friends will come to stay. They said the names Triss and Yennefer, but were reluctant to reveal the names of anyone else who might visit. Surprise Iorveth/Saskia visit??
  • Scaffolding and workers will appear after you choose to build something. Each change takes a certain amount of in-game time to complete, but you can just meditate til everything’s done.
  • Can display your armour, weapons, paintings and books.
  • Some paintings can be bought, or specially made, others are obtained through quests.

Music:

  • Over 2 hours of new musical content in the game.
  • The title screen song is a reworked version of the Bruxa song from the CGI trailer.

Other Tidbits:

  • Can enter Geralt in a tournament, creating his own logo and team colours.
  • Can enter under a fake name, although you may not fool everyone.
  • You can of course race horses, but other events involve crossbow shooting and a grand melee. Seems like there will be more but they didn’t want to say.
  • No new unique weather effects, but the lighting has been prepared specially to reflect the feeling of Southern Europe.
  • No new hairstyles.
  • As of the preview event (3/5/16) they were still working on the final boss fight.
  • Grass has been optimised, more of it but less expensive.
  • Improvements to cloth tech (see interview for more detail).
  • New sword sheathing option. With this new option Geralt no longer automatically unsheathes his sword at the start of combat. Also, he no longer switches weapons to match the opponent. The player has to do it on their own.
  • Nilfgaard and Northern Kingdoms physical Gwents cards exist, unsure if they’re being packaged with this expansion.

Kudos to our reader ‘randir14’ for informing us.

CD Projekt RED has also released some new screenshots that can be viewed below!

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17 thoughts on “The Witcher 3 – Blood and Wine Expansion – New details unveiled + new screenshots”

  1. Freaking awesome! I’ve been waiting forever for this to drop. Now my only question is how this is integrated with the main quest, whether it’s something that appears as part of the main playthrough or if only accessable via selection at the main menu. I’m guessing the second as everything I’ve heard is this takes place quite a bit after the events of W3 and Hearts of Stone. Either way I figure a May 30 release date mean its the perfect time to start a W3 playthrough

    1. I think it’ll be the same system like that from Hearts of Stone. You’ll get a new questpoint and travel to the new area. So it won’t be connected with the main quest line or other quests from the main game.

      I’m playing W3 again this days. Right now I’m in the early NG+ and can’t get away from that game 😀

    2. I started a brand new playthough aswell I just brought witcher 3 for my PC as when it launched i didn’t have one then.. Man it’s like night and day, no horrible framerate dips with my 970 even with hairworks on. I got most graphic options maxed out aswell, I love how well the game runs

  2. I wonder what the new Witcher Armor Set would look like. Maybe it’s that one seen on the 1st, 5th and 6th screenshot but I hope not. Do anybody have more information about that “Grandmaster”-Set?

    1. You misunderstood. Grandmaster doesn’t refer to any particular set, it refers to an armor tier. Every witcher school armor set gets a grandmaster tier (above master-crafted). On top of that we get a huge amount of new armor sets and some old favorites from previous games.

  3. CDPR DLC is the length of most other “AAA” titles lol. Still the single best dev team this side of PC gaming. Long live CDPR!!!!

  4. i hope someone is going to do a realistic mod or something. uncharted 4 graphics own this. CDPR is going down the drain.

    1. Hey Wrath you a 970 right? What’s the highest yours clock to? I been playing around with mine got it around 1400 on the core and now playing with the memory.

      1. 1508 was my max but I dialed it down to 1450 as I don’t really need the extra frames in most titles.

  5. CD Project Red are up there with Rockstar for me. These two are the only ones I’d consider pre ordering from.

    I still wouldn’t because I think it’s ruining gaming BUT my money would feel a lot safer in the hands of these guys than all the rest.

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