OK, finally found the ONE blacksmith in White Orchard and now have the Viper Steel and Silver swords, as well as a Disglair Silver sword that is rated about 100 damage higher than the Viper silver, but I have to go from level 6 to 12 to use it. I had them crafted after I did the underground quest with Kiera, which I had to manage on a silver sword that was damaged down to mid 20s condition.
Some of the underground locations are just horrible when it comes to lighting. I immediately figured out you have to jump into the water to search for Ciri's horse sign on Kiera's quest, but it was so friggin dark, I had to raise in game gamma to 100%, and even my TV way up past 75%, just to see where to go underwater. That is pathetic if you ask me. Then you have all these dark areas with gas that explodes where it's too dangerous to use a torch. Yeah I know there's a potion to make you see better, but seriously, should I have to use a friggin potion every time I'm in a dark place?
Other annoyances are the game seems horrible for KB/M controls. This was one of Angry Joe's biggest gripes, even though he scored the PC version 10/10. My main problems control wise, are 1) Geralt often will put his sword away in the middle of battle, and I have to keep spamming 1 or 2 to draw it. Otherwise he's punching with fists like an idiot. 2) Geralt often won't hold his weapon in block position, even though I'm holding down RMB, this results in taking lots of damage. 3) annoyingly, sign selection will often change out of the blue from Igni to Quen or Avard. 4) Often time Z won't make Geralt lock onto one enemy, or when I want him to move freely, he'll move like he's locked on, even though he isn't.
Movement and action response in general is clumsy and slow. When he stops running, he keeps going when you stop and runs into things. He's slow and awkward at turning, doing large clumsy loops, and often times just pulling a weapon or using it feels like there's heavy input lag. I doubt it's frame rate, because the settings I'm at now yield mostly 60 FPS. Is it true that the game just sucks on KB/M, because if that's the case, it could be a deal breaker for me. There's a lot to like about this game, but on KB/M, there's also a lot to hate, and makes me think it's overrated. Plus CDPR themselves are touted as devs that care a lot about PC, but if they force you to use god awful gamepads just to get smooth controls, that doesn't appear to be the case to me.
In summary, the game's main flaws as I see it so far are:
1. The level designations are misleading. You can easily kill bandits 5 or 6 times your level early on, but some creatures only 3 times your level seem nearly invincible by comparison. Plus they start throwing 30 something level quests at you when most players are at best level 5-10. They even try to force a DLC quest that's rated level 33 when you get to Velen, supplanting a level 6 one with it.
2. Most armor early in the game looks terrible, but it's the only way to get ones with good stats and slots to use.
3. Weapons and armor damage too quickly, and repair kits are to rare and even the best ones only repair 40% of the damage.
4. Controls on KB/M are a joke. Movement is sluggish and clumsy, and response time of actions is too laggy.
5. Geralt often puts away his weapon in battle, and won't hold it in block position when he DOES have it in hand.
6. Sign selection often randomly changes out of the blue to something you've not equipped.
7. The lighting is not well balanced, esp in dark places. You shouldn't have to use a potion just to see in the dark, and I doubt they even thought it was necessary anyway, since I've never seen a hint for it. They clearly did not play test adequately for lighting on PC. Their gamma setting screen doesn't even work. The only time I see that image they talk about is when I click out of the screen, where it shows plainly for a brief moment.
So yeah, there's a lot to like about this game creativity and content wise, but these are also some serious problems that hamper gameplay experience a lot. Skyrim had no such problems. Sure it had it's bugs, but there were easy workarounds that once used, were a do it and forget it situation. The only slight annoyance for me with Skyrim, was some skills took a while to grind to level up, but even that was only if you were too impatient to spend many many hours of gameplay achieving the same thing, which many were OK with.