User talk:Game widow

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Finally got the game and good luck for the (dark?) future
The page is clean so I hope posting here isn't awfully inconsiderate. Be kind, as I am about to start on the Path :) After reading the game is finally pretty darn stable on Linux (thank you DXVK), I bought it. I'm so excited!! Going to be a wonderful journey, I'm sure. Will probably use this magnificent wiki a fair bit, but will also try to hold off for fear of spoilers. With sad heart I heard Gamepedia got eaten by Wikia. I guess all you guys just have to like it now, and can't say much to the contrary, but I'm really saddened by it, and I saw a giant warning about their activities on this very page. At least I hope the design of the wikis (previously?) hosted by Gamepedia will remain, and won't get forced into the 2 cm width from Wikia. It would be such a smack in the face for all the incredible work all you people have done over the years, especially on this wiki, which I saw as the benchmark for all others to try to reach (and largely fail). Anyway, just a note from me about finally getting the game, and being rather giddy about the Path ahead. I hope you're all doing relatively well despite the takeover, and that people won't lose their jobs or anything of that sort. --— Pangaearocks (talk) 21:50, 21 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm really glad to hear you finally get to play this fine game! So far, the merger is going well and I am hopeful that once we work through all the processes, we will emerge a better company for both sides. Feel free to drop me a line here if you'd rather not get spoilers and i'll try to help you in a spoiler-free manner. Great to hear from you, btw! — Game widow ( talk ) 22:02, 21 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Thank you, that is kind of you :) The interesting thing now, with a game I know next to nothing about, is that I can approach a wiki from a reader/user perspective rather than as editor/admin. I try to look up things I wonder about. Sometimes I find it, but sometimes I actually don't. Do you have a page with basic gameplay or terms explanations? Some or all of this will be in the in-game tutorial section, but some things I tried to look up here is (item) durability, adrenaline, stamina, whether mutagens are permanent, whether runestones are not, stuff like that. Came over the adrenaline rush page, but that is for Witcher 2. There is a page for stamina, but it's for the first game. Can't really find anything about adrenaline. Soon enough it will probably become very obvious (it sort of is), but if there isn't some type of beginner's explanation page, maybe that could be an idea -- even if the game is a few years old now? For instance, it took a long time until it suddenly dawned on me what that hammer-icon was about for items/armour. About non-spoiler advice, what is a sensible approach to recipes, ingredients and what to sell/keep? Should I buy all recipes at vendors, or will I find most of them by exploring? Such an awesome game though (if a little awkward with mouse+keyboard, especially in menus). I'm amazed at how GOOD it looks. The details on armour and especially faces blows my mind. Not at all used to such quality from the games I play (admittedly I don't play a ton of new games). Only up to level 4 and about to leave White Orchard, and it's been a ton of fun so far. Can't wait for the rest. Must remember to eat and drink this weekend, haha! — Pangaearocks (talk) 09:15, 23 February 2019 (UTC)


 * I am by nature a packrat when i play games, so my advice might be lacking there. Where recipes can be found for free seems to vary (or at least no one has reported consistently finding any given recipe anywhere in particular), but where they are sold appears constant, so if you have sufficient crowns, and you want a recipe, i'd say to just buy it when the opportunity arises. I try make sure I have all the substances recipes asap but i don't immediately worry about mutagen formulae, you can find a lot of mutagens by looting corpses. I, of course, loot every single corpse and container i come across and initially, i swap out my equipment if i find anything better until i can upgrade my starting armor and swords. Once I find diagrams for actual Witcher armor and weapons, i begin to upgrade those and stick to them and proceed to sell or dismantle any armor or weapons i find unless they are strictly better than my current set. It's up to you which school of armor you like but in general, all Witcher armor and weapons are better than "regular" armor and weapons.


 * Mutagens, runes and glyphs are permanent (unless you actually remove them or destroy them) while oils and potions are temporary. I've never worried about adrenaline, i simply try to keep all my status bars as full as i can and if that adrenaline bar gets close to zero, i stop running or leave combat and wait for it to replenish. That's it for now, but I'll add more information later and try to make searching easier, thanks for the good feedback. — Game widow ( talk ) 14:52, 23 February 2019 (UTC)


 * I totally missed this whole sale to Wikia story, so this is a complete surprise for me. What does it mean for the future of the Gamepedia Witcher wiki? Will it be adopted instead of Wikia one (which I see as a worse version), or it will be forced to merge with it, what will happen with design, previous restrictions that caused the whole split to begin with, and so on. May be it was all explained somewhere, but I was totally not paying attention :) I'm back to finally playing TW3 now (also on Linux), so I'm back to contributing there. — Gilrond (talk) 01:27, 29 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the advice above btw, User:Game widow. Despite not replying I took it to heart. Don't know more about the details, User:Gilrond. Thankfully the design has stayed for now, although I do see some wikia-related sites are hooked into this wiki (easy to see when you use the excellent NoScript extension/add-on). Hopefully all these (once) Gamepedia wikis aren't put down, as I see them as much better than what they have at Wikia. But I'd love to know why their stuff has the far superior SEO. Typically I have to add "gamepedia" to get this wiki up in hits. It's pretty sad. — Pangaearocks (talk) 02:07, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

Source for a warning poster?
Hi! Do you know if this poster is found somewhere in the game data? I didn't find it in the bundle you gave me a while ago for decoding. — Gilrond (talk) 01:20, 29 April 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm sure it is, but i deleted that stuff a long time ago, so i'd have to extract it all over again to check — Game widow ( talk ) 02:37, 29 April 2019 (UTC)
 * But that's at least the second image i want to find, so i will probably redo the extraction — Game widow ( talk ) 16:00, 29 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I looked into extraction before for the purpose of getting the list of audio tracks from game files, but that was a while ago (some results here). It's possible in Wine using modkit. I can take a look again. — Gilrond (talk) 16:49, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
 * I did keep the guards farting and "pamparan" tracks locally, if you want them :D — Game widow ( talk ) 17:00, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Hehe, I was more interested in the background music that plays during Gwent (as a motivation to write the script). It's not in the official soundtrack found on GOG. But there are a ton of such tracks there, I didn't go trough them yet, there are just so many. I'll probably revisit my script and pair it with track names from the XML, so it will save files and name them at the same time to make it easier to navigate the result. — Gilrond (talk) 17:03, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
 * That sounds great! It would be a nice addition to the wiki, too — Game widow ( talk ) 17:19, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Oh! and while i think of it, if you are extracting icons, i'm sure there's one for Yennefer's omelet, but i can't find it on my hard drive anymore. If you aren't extracting icons, i'll probably do that on the weekend — Game widow ( talk ) 17:20, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
 * I haven't looked at icons before, I was mostly focused on music since it was obviously in the soundcache files and I was figuring out how to produce actual playable audio files + track names. Putting some details on the wiki about it is a good idea. Probably once I'll bring it in better shape with track naming. — Gilrond (talk) 17:24, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

DPL for status effects etc
Don't know how DPL works as I was on the Cargo side back when I was an admin, but I see it is used on for instance The Witcher 3 silver swords. Is this something that can be applied for pages such as Bleeding and various other status effects and suchlike? Maybe weapons and other equipment too? I would think making such lists for what creatures and equipment is tied to e.g. bleeding would be pretty brutal to do manually -- as seems to have been done for the first two games. Bound to be heaps of weapons and other equipment that apply various effects, or reduce the effect's damage (mitigation). Just a thought. — Pangaearocks (talk) 02:20, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

About the wiki on mobile
Sometimes I check out Recent Changes while on the cellphone in bed. If I check out the change on a particular page (diff/changes) and have the phone on the side (so it's easier to read), a bottom bar with the last editor (user) fills up half the screen, making it rather awkward to read. Seem to recall this happening on other wikis too, so it's perhaps a site-wide thing. Also seem to recall looking into this way back on the Pillars of Eternity wiki, without finding anything that would sort it out (but I'm not an expert on the inner workings of CSS). Is this something that can be done on the CSS side? — Pangaearocks (talk) 02:30, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

About Poem extension
Just created a new page, Poem, as I couldn't see it in the wiki, and used as I saw the extension is part of the wiki. But after many, many attempts I couldn't get the formatting right because the space in the beginning (from : ) didn't "take". It seems to break up poem, so I have to use ... on each line. Are you able to fix this so the spacing in the article looks right? — Pangaearocks (talk) 15:13, 9 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Fixed and i added the French, Italian and Polish pages — Game widow ( talk ) 11:57, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks :) — Pangaearocks (talk) 15:53, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Vandalism
The user (and his/her IP) that was temp banned for 3 days earlier is now back and vandalising the same pages again. Seems such a strange thing to do. Harsher measures may need to be put in place. I've reverted the changes for now, but I don't expect that to last. It's on the pages of Shani, Yennefer and Triss Merigold. — Pangaearocks (talk) 18:17, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I blocked that vandal. — Gilrond (talk) 02:54, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
 * And it continues... Reverted Triss for now. — Pangaearocks (talk) 23:19, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Not sure if blocking IPs is effective. The vandal IP is from Poland btw. I think in general, the wiki should forbid any edits without registration. — Gilrond (talk) 23:27, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Blocking IPs is a tricky affair, as they tend to change frequently, and then you risk banning an innocent party. If this continues, it may be needed to change the protection of the affected pages, to autoconfirmed users for instance. There is merit in unregistered people being able to edit, so they can fix spelling mistakes and so forth. On an active wiki like this, vandalism probably isn't much of an issue, as somebody will drop by within hours and revert it. — Pangaearocks (talk) 22:35, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

I have the same thing on the French wiki. There's nothing we can do about Game widow?--— Gwynbleidds (talk) 18:43, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
 * If it is the same IP as before, you can institute a longer ban, like a month, then see if they come back again — Game widow ( talk ) 20:10, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I suppose we should ban the IP across the whole Gamepedia and Wikia, this user seems to spam just everywhere witcher-related — SMiki5five (talk) 17:48, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
 * There is still no common tool that works on both Gamepedia and Fandom, but if the user is doing the same thing on both platforms, contacting VSTF at Fandom is a good idea — Game widow ( talk ) 11:18, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Ingredients from dismantling
I needed acid extract to craft enriched dimeritium ore, which is needed for the (Griffin) legendary mastercrafted gear in NG+. Then noticed some of the dismantling info is incorrect (apparently haven't gotten Kikimore discharge yet, so can't check that one), and have updated those pages now. With a couple of them incorrect, I naturally wonder if more pages are incorrect as well. Do you have a tool or script of something for checking that? Or is it easily accessible in some game files? Otherwise it might be quite the pain to check. The game only lists the ingredients, but not the amounts. One slow way to check is therefore to dismantle each and every ingredient, and take screenshots of the pop-up results. Did that for the couple of pages I changed. The vast majority is probably correct, but figured it may be a good idea to make sure they're all right. As a little aside, it seems a little odd that acid extract is so rare, but maybe it's meant to be super rare because it's used in the very, very late game Witcher gear. — Pangaearocks (talk) 04:52, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
 * You can try looking at the xml files for the game to find ingredients. I found them very hard to decipher — Game widow ( talk ) 14:10, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Would need to "uncook" the gamefiles as they all appear to be in various bundles. And this probably wouldn't be straightforward given that I'm on a Linux-only system. I found some info here and there, about a tool called wcc_lite.exe, but this would be a lot of work. But if I happen to find other pages that are incorrect, I'll update them. — Pangaearocks (talk) 20:17, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
 * It's no easier for me. — Game widow ( talk ) 22:37, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
 * wcc_lite.exe works in Wine. — Gilrond (talk) 01:48, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
 * This is related so will put the query here. Have finally managed to extract the files, at least the XMLs, and am looking over items and monsters, which makes me wonder: How did you do it when you entered all that info here on the wiki? Did you make an overview in Excel or something, and then started entering it all on the wiki? If that or something similar was the case, would it be possible to use that when planning to work further with it? I am thinking about for instance: what ingredients drop from what monsters (with drop chance), what can they be used for, from what items can they be gotten from dismantling, what items are they used to craft, and whatever I forgot.


 * This is where an extension like Cargo would come in handy, but as you know I've been down that road before, and it was brutal work. I'm therefore trying not to do that again. However, I do think it would be cool to have such cross-references of sorts about what's used and dropped where. For instance, right now I'm looking at monster bone (it's needed for specter oil in Ghost Mode mod). It can be gotten from quite a few monsters, but the drop chance is generally rather low. Wish I was better with scripting, as it must be possible to go through the game files in some way and output the data in a sensible fashion. Doing it manually from scratch will be slow.


 * Hope this made some sense. If you have some type of material it would be possible to expand upon, that would be great. Or if you have advice more in general for how to do this effectively. Cheers. — Pangaearocks (talk) 05:06, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I would heavily discourage the use of Cargo, mainly because I have no experience with it directly and it is very difficult for new users to grasp. All it does is make things more difficult to edit — Game widow ( talk ) 11:54, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * That it does, I totally agree. And frustratingly often it doesn't behave like it's supposed to, with heaps of double storage and missing rows. Does my head in. When it does work, it makes cross-references much easier and it can easily make tables (like for weapons) with various forms of filtering and data selection, but I'm certainly not going to try to convert thousands of pages and hundreds of templates here to Cargo. It would be the end of me :D However, doing everything totally manually would be awfully slow as well, so I wondered if you have any advice or prior stuff we could rely on -- if I were to for instance do like for monster bone on all the other pages. I spent almost an hour just on that page, looking through .xmls and noting it down by hand. — Pangaearocks (talk) 12:06, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I have always just done things "the hard way" ... i load 50 tabs at a time and make mass changes that way. for stuff like just adding a field to a template, i use AWB — Game widow ( talk ) 13:16, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Cheers, that takes some dedication and patience :) If I really go forward with this, I can try to do some of it semi-automatically with AWB, but that would first require a giant overview in Excel (csv file iirc). Tagz taught me a neat trick back when I made heaps of pages for the Pillars of Eternity wiki. Maybe I can relocate notes from then about how to do it. — Pangaearocks (talk) 13:33, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I can't promise to always have the time to help, but if i can, then i will. Just ping me with a link to whatever file you are using and we can split things between us — Game widow ( talk ) 13:42, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks, will keep that in mind :) — Pangaearocks (talk) 14:03, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Grandmaster legendary gear stats
I'm working on locating these diagrams in the NG+ I'm playing (first time playing the expansions, woot), and noticed that many (possibly all?) pages for this gear on the wiki is missing effects and/or stats. Do you want me to update them? Stats and level requirements is probably higher than when you played and edited loads of pages, which is why I ask, since it may seem a little "off". The level requirement for my legendary mastercrafted gear is 68, while for legendary grandmaster (the last "tier") is level 74. Some of the pages has them listed as level 65 currently, such as Grandmaster legendary Griffin steel sword. — Pangaearocks (talk) 05:39, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Any missing information is appreciated — Game widow ( talk ) 14:10, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I've updated the grandmaster legendary pages. — Pangaearocks (talk) 11:39, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks, but i get an email whenever any page is edited, so i was well aware — Game widow ( talk ) 11:41, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Long term plans for the Wiki?
I saw this page that mentions plans that were obviously caused by Fandom buying Gamepedia. Does it have any specific resolution for the Witcher wiki? It mentions case by case basis. I've noticed a lot of regular contributors stopped editing here, is it due to concerns of the looming merge? — Gilrond (talk) 06:52, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes and no. The "official" Netflix stuff went to the Fandom wiki. However, the wikis will only be merged if the two communities agree to merge — Game widow ( talk ) 12:19, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
 * So Fandom basically now requires all Gamepedia staff to stop contributing here (at least on recent topics)? I guess we could expect that, but it's still sad to hear. — Gilrond (talk) 15:25, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Not at all, but they made a deal with Netflix and Netflix chose the Fandom platform — Game widow ( talk ) 15:27, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Oh, I see. — Gilrond (talk) 15:29, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Hope that will remain the case, so that this wiki will remain no matter what Wikia get up to (I can't write their other name without rolling my eyes, it's such an embarrassing name). Related to this query, I checked the Community portal and the roles in the bar to the right. Is that correct and updated? Have you stepped down as admin of this wiki? Doesn't look like it from actual user rights, but it left me a little confused, also because you changed the template yourself last summer. All in all I'm a little concerned about what's been going on since the takeover, and about the future of this wiki (and everything else Gamepedia related for that matter). — Pangaearocks (talk) 20:48, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I will always have a soft spot for this wiki and still consider it "mine", but i don't have the time to really take care of it anymore. We are looking for new local administrators and Tagaziel has stepped up to be the staffer on a more reliable basis — Game widow ( talk ) 20:51, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Gotta admit that I'm more than a little concerned about this whole process, and can't help to wonder if you have stepped down because the wiki's downfall is looming in the horizon, and you don't want to oversee your "baby's" demise. As per recent edits to the admin noticeboard, I've looked around at other wikis for inspiration and possible code, and checked out the Fallout Vault. To my shock I see it has been archived and (soft) forwarded to wikia with a giant site notice. That's one of the biggest wikis and most popular wikis for Gamepedia from what I recall and see on the main domain overview. If the alternative is the same here, either in the near or more intermediate future, I'd prefer to move the entire wiki's content to an independent domain to be honest.


 * In my inner eye there are many things that could be added to the wiki. I'm looking over lots of xml files now, after finding that archive - since I sadly am not able to uncook the files myself. But it would be lots of work and entering of data, editing of templates or making new ones, lots of work. I'd hate to start on something like that and then see the whole thing flushed down the drain by the overlords in wikia/****dom. Don't know if you can say anything more about these concerns, but if you can, can you please shed some more light on the situation and likely future, or offer some advice for us? — Pangaearocks (talk) 07:06, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Independent domain might be an option in the worst case, but there are tricky issues here I suspect. I.e. such as use of copyrighted materials and etc. While someone like CDPR or Netflix might be tolerant to the "official" wikis, would they be OK with something else doing the same thing? — Gilrond (talk) 19:14, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Before panicking and envisioning worst case scenarios, work is being done to unify the platforms, taking the best of both. So being all fatalistic about how Fandom/Wikia used to be, why not sit back and wait to see what it becomes. No one is going to close this wiki in favour of the Fandom wiki anytime soon and certainly not without consulting with the community editing here. The Vault / Fallout wiki voted as a community to reunify and freely chose to do that on Fandom. Nothing was forced on them and the entire process was held in public via wiki discussions and the fallout wiki Discord. — Game widow ( talk ) 12:33, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Can you clarify please, when you said work is being done to unify the platforms, do you mean someone is already working on merging the content, or the code of the wikis in some way (design or something else)? — Gilrond (talk) 14:49, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Not merging content, creating the underlying platform that supports the presentation of all the wikis, not just this one. Right now, Gamepedia and Fandom use quite different platforms, even though both rely on MediaWiki. The work being done is to create a single platform, still based on MediaWiki which supports both Gamepedia and Fandom as they are right now. Once that is in place, then the work will being on the creation of a unified skin — Game widow ( talk ) 15:10, 3 February 2020 (UTC)