DLC #140 - The Witcher 3 : Wild Hunt - Hearts of Stone

As a general rule of thumb, I do always try to acquire the Platinum trophy for a game prior to completing any DLC there may be for it. This naturally makes sense, and for the most part, is followed to these standards, but situations do arise where the necessity to deviate from the norm arises.

So, without the Witcher 3 : Wild Hunt Platinum trophy in tow, comes the first of two DLC packs for the game in Hearts of Stone.

Just for clarification purposes, I didn't deem the "Munchkin" trophy, awarded for Reaching character development level 35, in the main list, within reasonable enough grasp for the content I had remaining in the main game - Thus, I turned to the DLC content knowing that the new questlines within would give me the experience points required to also achieve level 35 simultaneously whilst going through this pack.

Hearts of Stone is a stand-alone, story-driven expansion which follows Geralt through a brand new questline to fulfil the requests of both protagonists Gaunter O'Dimm and Olgierd Von Everic.

Geralt fulfils an early Witcher contract for Von Everic, which turns out to be a set-up for the Witcher to get caught up in a pact with Gaunter O'Dimm after being captured pending death, where O'Dimm frees Geralt for a promise to return the favour in exchange. This leads to the revelation that Von Everic and O'Dimm are closely associated, and the returned favour is fulfilled through a series of tasks to be completed for Von Everic, driven by his debt to O'Dimm. It's an interesting plot that takes various twists right up until the finale, and maintains one of the games key strengths throughout, in it's excellent story-telling.

There are 13 trophies on offer within this pack, which is a fairly large quantity for any DLC offering.

Whilst there are no trophies to really specifically call out for the difficulty or length, there are 6 related to the main story, though these are a little bit more than just standard progression-based trophies. Out of these 6 trophies, 2 of them are awarded naturally, where the other 4 require you to fulfil specific tasks that are considered missable throughout the main story quests, which means, despite being story-based, aren't necessarily guaranteed.

This is an approach that unfortunately blighted the story a little bit, purely because I had to read up on the requirements of all missable trophies, which naturally contained spoilers. Under normal circumstances, I would approach story-driven games blind and then focus on trophies for subsequent playthroughs, but without the necessity to play through this DLC more than once, I reluctantly had to expose myself to the spoilers contained within the trophy descriptions, so this in itself is important to point out.

The remaining 7 trophies aren't actually related to the content. They just seem to be added to pad out the trophy list, requiring you to complete a string of relatively simple tasks. Combat, Crafting/Buying equipment and Gwent are all covered off within these remaining trophies, so they span across a varied range of elements of the game.

The questline is around 8-10 hours in length, and is not bound by difficulty, so you're free to play at your own pace. Due to the fact the main trophy list requires you to beat the game on "Death March" difficulty, which is the hardest difficulty setting in the game, I carried this story on from where I left off with the main game. Death March difficulty can be quite challenging at times, and I did struggle on the very first quest because you have a boss fight thrown straight at you which instantly peaks the challenge. Aside from this section of the DLC, it wasn't too bad throughout the remainder, though you don't need to worry about the consequences of toning the difficulty of the game down, because the trophies here are not difficulty sensitive.

Upon completion of the questline, the remaining trophies will probably take 2-3 additional hours, perhaps longer depending on your level of success with the "Killed It" trophy, awarded for winning a round of gwent with a total strength of at least 187. This is luck based to an extent because it'll depend on the draw of your cards within a deck, but ultimately still achievable without hopefully too much trial and error.

Providing you're fully aware of the missable questline trophies, this is a very casual completion - An unnecessary way to do them, in my opinion. Why not just make them naturally progressive, to avoid giving away spoilers for those that don't want to have to potentially miss them and replay the story again - Nobody else does it this way...

Once you've wrapped up the story, the rest is just a very standard clean up process, and should take no longer than 15 hours total. I did manage to grab a few more trophies towards the main list too, so will also re-assess how plausible the Platinum is before beginning the final piece of DLC now I've managed to reach level 35.