I'm really loving this game, but by and large with RPGs I like to play and progress but really not die too often as that breaks the sense of flow and story progression. Unfortunately on easy it's practically impossible to die and on normal one hit from any enemy kills you outright.

Does anyone have a good idea as to how I could make easy harder or normal easier? For example I was thinking of reducing Geralt's health down by a factor of 5 on easy but that might just make Quen even more overpowered. Or I could triple his health on normal but then I'd have to tweak the abilities that increase vitality. Or I could add in some 50% damage resistance trousers, but if DR is additional as opposed to multiplicative that would make him indestructible if I found DR50% armour.

Once you've spent some time getting into the rhythm of the game, Normal is very easy. I don't think the game cries out for an intermediate level. If you're not interested in combat, play Easy. If you want to learn the game's system of combat, and get enough feedback to learn it well, play Normal.

The usual reason for getting killed quickly on Normal is you turned your back on an enemy, or let yourself get surrounded. The feedback the game is giving you is don't do that. If you had a difficulty where you didn't get hammered for doing that, you wouldn't get a proper feel for the game, and the enemies at higher levels would beat the crap out of you.

Thing is the game isn't doing any of that, the yawning chasm between normal and easy just doesn't allow for it. On easy you can stand in the middle of a group of enemies for an hour and a half while you go and have dinner and not die. On normal you die long before enemies even get a chacne to get behind you. There needs to be a setting where getting flanked is a problem, getting surrounded is deadly, but just getting hit is something you can survive.

I understand your point, but I'm trying to come up with the enemies that could be one-hitting you on Normal. Normal should be playing the way you are requesting: fight reasonably well, you'll prevail; make a mistake in combat, you get hammered.

The patches make the game easier at the outset; have you been keeping up with the patches?

Another possibility is that the game does not get enough frame rate on your system; this makes it harder to control Geralt in combat.

I'd like to be able to make the odd mistake in combat because that's only natural, I'm not particularly skilled so it's going to happen and I'd like to learn my lesson by seeing my HP tanking as opposed to reloading.

As to what's killing me in one shot it's Nekker Warriors, Endryaga Warriors and Wraiths, Nekkers and Wraiths doing so outright, Endryaga via the combination of initial damage and poison. Those are the only enemies I've actually encountered since ramping up the difficulty and I'm facing most of them in numbers of around a dozen or so at once. I don't know if I've wandered off path and am facing them too early, I'm level 6 at the moment but it doesn't seem like there's anywhere else to go for now.

I found these posts baffling, as the game to me was quite easy even played at Hard.

Halfway through Act 1 I changed from easy to normal and found I'd gotten used to the combat mechanics and it wasn't all that hard compared to before.

Though, I used a couple of 'cheats' to make the normal mode 'challenging, but fun' rather than 'challenging and sometimes very frustrating'. Namely the 'All Abilities Mutagen slots' mod, which enabled me to use lesser mutagens and stack up the benefits into a significant boost for Geralt.

Well, that and I hunted down/crafted the best equipment I could find. The Price Rebalance mod is another thing that helped out since I didn't have to grind for money or ingredients as much in order to craft or buy special weapons or armor.

Wraiths are actually quite vicious opponents early on as they do quite considerable damage per hit, your early armor doesn't absorb very much at all, and you can't put additional points into Quen for the first several levels unless you cheat. I'm not sure about being one-hit by them, but it's definitely possible to die in two hits.

Off-hand, you should avoid the ruined hospital and the swamps in the SE corner of the Act I map until later on (and Melitele's Heart, but the requirements mean that you *can't* do that one really early). The Malena quest also can use some preparation (bombs and/or potions) if you're attempting it early.

I do suspect that you're not rolling backwards nearly enough. You're not playing a knight in high-end plate armor who can afford to shrug off most attacks, so don't act like one.

Yrden works against wraiths pretty well, along with Dancing Star. Also doing a Quen just before getting surrounded helps.

I think a lot of it is in doing sidequests before fighting the Kayran, I went from 6 to 9 in that fight which meant a ton of HP, faster rolls and more effective signs right off the bat. Even so I modded in an additional 100hp to keep the flow going and that pretty much got things to where I wanted. In truth I haven't gone below it all that often but the difficulty is decidedly "spiky" in the first chapter, main quests are pretty manageable even on basic health but a lot of the sidequests are ferocious.

On normal getting surrounded isn't an option, even with a thousand extra hp you'd just get killed, but before picking up combat roll it's incredibly difficult to keep yourself from getting flanked and your low level hp just aren't enough to keep up with it.

The other problem is Aether seems to be incredibly rare, so you can't afford a bunch of it to to make the bombs needed for when you get completely swarmed.

I never had any problem getting ingredients for bombs. Certainly not in Act 2, what with the many plants growing everywhere in Lobinden and the forest.

Maybe you should try a different bomb recipe(available from Cedric) with different ingredients? Or consult the wikia to see what aether ingredients there are.