I started The Witcher in earnest today, now that the prologue chapter’s tutorial is done, and the first stop is an inn on the outskirts of the first main city.

There were some important NPCs to meet there, of course, including a couple women I’ll apparently be getting to know somewhat intimately… I picked up a few new quests there too, mostly from a bounty board outside the inn.

Inside, I got into a drinking contest with the resident drunkard and beat him soundly, though it left me with blurry double vision and a staggering walk for a while, but I at least won a book for it. This one described a particular monster, and books like these are actually important, since they’ll tell you what fighting technique to use against them and you have to have read them in order to gather alchemy components from their bodies.

There was also a series of fistfights going on in one corner, and I entered myself and beat up their organizer, though I kind of ‘cheated’ by drinking a vitality regeneration potion first. The prize I picked was a ring, which I was disappointed to discover doesn’t have any magical properties, but it might come in useful when it comes time to apply a little seduction…

There were some merchants there, including one with a lot of books with the all-important monster and alchemy information, but I don’t have a lot money yet. I fought a few of the other fistfighters, but didn’t earn much money from them since the bets were limited. The big money won’t come until I can start playing dice games, from what I’ve heard, which are somewhat easily exploited to make yourself richer.

I started exploring the area, but didn’t really find too much interesting other than some simple herbs, now that I’ve picked up the herbalism skill. I have to talk to the local Reverend for one of the quests and I made my way over to his place, but the game crashed upon trying to save there.

Unfortunately it’s not simply a matter of saving more often, as this is apparently a common problem and it’s the saving itself that causes the crash. If it becomes much more common, I’ll be tempted to shelve it until it’s hopefully fixed by a patch.