Build Advice


How you allocate Geralt’s talents as he levels up is extremely important in Dark mode. For certain stretches of the game, you fight enemies at a profound disadvantage in terms of stats. Even with the dark sets for each chapter assembled, you need to be very careful in combat. You can’t afford to invest talents in sub-optimal skills, as every point you spend is a chance to narrow the gap between Geralt’s abilities and his enemies’ ludicrous stats. The overall safest choices to make when playing on Dark mode are a minimal investment in the training tree, an investment in maxing out Quen, and then as many points as possible invested in the swordsmanship tree.

Finishing Dark mode as a mage or alchemist is possible, but attempting to do so increases the challenge you face. Both trees offer lower statistical bonuses than the swordsmanship tree and less immediately useful adrenaline-based abilities. The swordsmanship tree gives you access to the ability to damage multiple enemies at once, the ability to increase your damage significantly, massive damage reduction bonuses, huge boosts to resistances, and the ability to perform instant kills on groups of enemies. These powers can be very useful equalizers in Dark mode.

Here is a sample build based on the builds used to complete Dark mode here at the Prima offices. There is room to vary the build somewhat according to a player’s taste, but you should stick to the basics of it as much as possible. Remember not to invest in the swordsmanship tree skills that involve blocking if at all possible. Enemies do so much damage that blocking simply isn’t something you want to be doing in combat, and trying to make Geralt better at blocking is simply a waste of effort.

Dark Mode Build