The Witcher Calculator

Congratulations, Witcher fans! Your two-year-long wait has finally been rewarded. Soon, on December 17^th, season 2 of Netflix's second most popular original show of 2019 is finally premiering on Netflix. It's been a long pause, so many of us might feel the need to freshen up on the adventures of Geralt before sitting down to watch the new episodes. There's a lot of different content to go through, but don't worry - this calculator was designed to help you plan your full Witcher experience.

Thanks to Netflix, the world went absolutely crazy for Geralt of Rivia and his adventures. It can be clearly seen in the sales of the already tremendously popular video games. Sources report an all-time record of 100,000 people buying and playing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt since the release of the Netflix series, and that's just on Steam alone! The books from Andrzej Sapkowski's The Witcher saga are also benefiting, being translated and sold in record numbers. They even beat out J.K.Rowling on Amazon's most popular authors charts. The Witcher's American publisher announced a return to press of the whole series, with additional an 500,000 printed copies of the series to meet the rapidly growing demand!

If you found yourself terrified by the thought of waiting for The Witcher's second season - don't fret! As you can see, there's a lot of The Witcher content to keep yourself busy with, and our calculator will help you plan it all out! Use it to see how long it will take you to read The Witcher books, estimate the time it should take you to play through the games and learn in what order you should do these things to get the most fun and enjoyable experience. Thanks to this The Witcher calculator, you can bet that the mid season gap will pass before you know it!

So you found yourself drawn into the universe of The Witcher, and want to consume as much content as possible before season 2 premiers. Or maybe you want to get to know the source material before binging the show in the first place? Either way, you're probably wondering how much time you'll need to set aside - which is what our calculator is for! Follow these short instructions to find out how long it should take you to fully acquaint yourself with the world of The Witcher. In addition, we will show you the recommended order you should follow, based on your preferences:

1. Start by choosing which medium you're interested in. Are you a reader, a gamer, or both? Your choice here will determine what you'll see in the remaining parts of the calculator.
2. Pick the date on which you are planning to embark on your great adventure.
3. If your plan is to go for the books only:
   • Estimate how fast you can read. A normal reading speed is about 0.5 pages per minute. In our calculator, you can either pick an estimated reading pace or manually input your own!
   • State how much time do you read each day?
   • Pick your preferred order of reading. There are four ways you can go - by publication or by the events in the books, or you can restrict yourself to short stories only or the saga only. Whichever suits you best!
4. If you'd rather play the video games:
   • What's your play style? You can choose from focusing on the main story only, doing a balanced run with a little bit of everything, a meticulous completionist experience, or a speed run.
   • Do you plan to include the expansions?
   • Estimate how much time do you plan to spend playing each day.
5. And for a full The Witcher experience, consider doing both the books and the games. In this case, all of the above applies, with one additional twist - you need to choose the order you want to go with. You can do:
   • book firsts, games later (which allows for an exquisite easter egg hunt),
   • games first, books later (perfect if you like to have a clear image of what everything looks like in your head),
   • or what we think is the optimal experience (see paragraph below).

As you can see at the bottom of The Witcher calculator, there's quite a lot to catch up on. But boy, is it going to be worth it! Now that you have a game plan to go by, all that's left to do is prepare a nice hot cup of tea or a refreshing cold drink with a help of the chilled rink calculator or the tea brewing calculator, get cozy, and read (or play) away! 📚🎮

Halt! Be warned that this paragraph contains a little spoiler regarding the games. It's really, really tiny, and should not influence your experience in any way. But hey, we'd rather be safe!

If you want to do both the books and the game, we recommend that you go for what we believe is the optimal experience.

If you pick that option in The Witcher calculator, you will notice that the calculator urges you to play the first two games first, then read the books, and finish your adventure by completing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. It seems a little convoluted at first, but it's all justified!

You see, if you follow this order, your experience will be faithful to that of our main character. Naturally, the books come first, but Geralt does not remember their events through the course of the first two games. By The Witcher 3, however, his memories are back. Hence, taking a break from playing for the books' sake between Assassin of Kings and Wild Hunt is guaranteed to give you the most immersive experience that you can get!

It all started in 1986 when a Polish speculative fiction magazine, Fantastyka, decided to hold a writing contest. Andrzej Sapkowski had never had his writing published before, but he decided to submit a short story titled Wiedźmin (Polish for "witcher"). For a literary debut, the story of the white-haired monster hunter dealing with a Striga did exceptionally well. Sapkowski scored third place in Fantastyka's contest, and from then on until 1990, the magazine printed several other adventures of Geralt, which ended up being published as a single tome in 1990.

The rest, we could say, is history. Over the 90s, The Witcher saga became a nationwide phenomenon in Poland. It was even adapted for TV by Telewizja Polska in 2002. The show, albeit canceled after 13 episodes due to rather poor critical response, remains vivid in the minds of the Polish fans, and can nowadays be watched for free at TVP's website.

The turning point for the series's popularity was the release of the first Witcher video game by CD Projekt in 2007. With overwhelmingly positive reviews, the game was followed by The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings in 2011 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt in 2015. CDPR's games became universally acclaimed in no time, scored numerous prestigious rewards, allowing The Witcher to gain tremendous popularity worldwide, effectively making way for the Netflix adaptation to come into being.

As of 2020, The Witcher has never been more popular. With books being translated left and right and deals for more season of the Netflix show being signed, there's never been a better time to get into it! We hope our calculator will help you get the most of your The Witcher experience!