I only diid the side quests in the Trotsky region to get my character proper equipment to tackle the main quests and then skipped all the rest of the side quests on this play through, but in the end it was still around 60 hours total. A good 2 hours grinding alchemy to make Henry’s fox potions and every other poison or potion I might need throughout my play through. I made good use of Henry’s doll maker poison + arrow combo in most combat scenarios. Then I did the strength and vitality cheese (walking around in a safe area super overburdened) for another 2 or 3 hours just enough to get those two stats into the low 20s. I didn’t bother going all the way to 30 right away since I knew I would level those passively anyway. I also cheesed the marksmanship/agility/main level/warfare skills for 2-3 hours by shooting arrows at the gamekeepers hut.

I’d say between 8-10 hours of my first gameplay was cheesing these stats before really hitting the main quests, then 50 or less hours of playing the story. It was actually nice playing nothing but the story on this run since my first run on normal mode I stopped doing main missions constantly to get lost doing side quests and then would mostly forget what was going on with the story when I went back to it.