Before he was Cyberpunk 2's associate director and was just "employee #86," CDPR dev says it took him 46 tries to beat an infamous boss in The Witcher 2: "I was losing my mind"

The Witcher 2 boss Draug is such a beast that it took the CDPR developer in charge of beating him 46 tries to be successful.

Longtime CDPR developer Pawel Sasko, who these days is associate game director on the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel, shared his experience as "employee #86" during development of The Witcher 2: Enhanced Edition. It sounds like the Draug battle in particular gave Sasko a lot of grief.

"My task was to fix bugs & beat the game on Hard mode," Sasko said. "Killing Draug first time took me 46 attempts, I was losing my mind. Found few bugs, including memory leak, was so proud of myself!"

In the same Twitter chain, Sasko revealed the first script for The Blood Baron, often considered The Witcher 3's best quest, was 40 pages long before a single line of dialogue was even added.

Sasko has come a very long way from his time doing QA for The Witcher 2: Enhanced Edition, having served as lead quest designer on The Witcher 3 and later as quest director for Cyberpunk 2077. He said back in October that the initial response to Cyberpunk 2077 was bad enough that CDPR might "never" be able to win back some players, and now that he's at the helm for the sequel, this could be as much a test for Sasko as a chance for CDPR to redeem itself on the world stage.

Of course, one look at our guide to upcoming CDPR games proves Cyberpunk 2 isn't all that's happening at the studio.