21 Great Witcher 3 Mods for Returning Players

Let’s say you already played The Witcher 3 a ton on console back when it came out in 2015, maybe even platinum’d it - plus the DLC, obviously - then moved onto other games. Then, I dunno, maybe you started reading the books... you watched the Netflix series. You played Thronebreaker and platinum'd that, too. You considered playing the Switch edition and thought better of it - but you still feel a powerful hankerin’ for more Witcher, all the same.

So you downloaded it on PC, and you start playing it on max settings and holy s#!t is it ever, like, 1000x better looking than you remembered. But some parts of it are a little janky, right? Some things about it are still a bit tedious? Maybe you start thinking about all the stuff that sorta bugged you and wasted your time in the vanilla version, and you say to yourself, why not mod this thing to hell and back? That’s what I did, at least, and let me tell you: it was worth it.

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Check out our picks in the video above, or if you'd rather just see them in slideshow or list format, scroll on down.

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Visual Enhancement Mods

The Witcher 3 HD Reworked Project by HalkHogan

This is the classic visual overhaul mod, in three parts, that every PC Witcher player should have installed. It will make your eyes bleed, it is so beautiful. This mod alone will make you feel like you are playing an entirely new game, and is almost worth the duplicate purchase of the game all on it’s own.

HD Monsters Reworked by Denroth

Why not update those monsters while you’re at it? This mod gives a nice little update to the visual appearance and animations of a few of your favorite Witcher critters. There can’t be Witchers if there aren’t monsters, is the way I see it, so go on and upgrade those boys, will ya?

Smooth Grass by Maidenfan724

Everyone is always so focused on water in video game. Water, water, too much water! Forget the water. The water is plenty realistic. I’m looking for hyper-realistic grass, baybee! Smooth, supple grass, as far as the eye can see. Now that’s a mod I can get behind.

Blood by ramccoid & Ultra Gore 2 by YoseppyArmineppy

If you’ve found yourself thinking, you know what? “There is not enough blood in the Witcher 3”, then this mod is for you. Download this lil mod and you’ll practically be drowning in the stuff, like a regular Dracula. There is a companion mod that makes every combat encounter end with a gruesome finisher, if you really wanna take the gore thing to the next level, you lil freak, you.

Quality of Life Enhancement Mods

Fast Travel From Anywhere by JupiterTheGod

This eliminates like 25% of wasted time in the game, looking for the next-nearest signpost. Absolutely essential to feel like you can get just about anywhere, from anywhere, though you still need to teleport TO the signposts at the very least.

Over 9000 - Weight Limit Mod by GlecuMan

Weight limits are great for immersion the first, maybe even second time you’d played through a sprawling RPG like The Witcher 3. But there comes a time where you just wanna blaze on through, and not having to worry about carry weight, pretty much ever, makes the game a breeze.

More Money For Traders by Tommy1984

What good is carrying around 9000lbs of shit if the goddamn traders don’t have enough coinge to buy any of it from you! This handy mod gives them all a bonus purse of 5,000 extra gold nuggies to give to Geralt in exchange for a few hundred rusty Novigradian swords or whatever.

2x Quest Reward Money by uglydemon & More Xp - x1.5 by Tahira

I’m not saying I wanna be so OP that the game is not fun, but on  your second or third playthrough, it’s good to have things progress at a slightly tighter clip. You can also increase the amount of XP gained, but I found 1.5x to be the sweet spot for tearing through the story without necessarily being godlike straight away.

Auto Loot by JupiterTheGod

Every time you kill an enemy, Gerlat auto-loots the corpse so you don’t have to fiddle around with that and touch all those dead bodies and stuff. It’s called social distancing, people. This mod also seems to auto-loot objects with multiple items to save you the extra step of clicking “take all”. With 9000-carry weight, it’s all about efficiency.

Auto Apply Oils by SheepDarklord

At first I was worried that this mod would blow through all my oils too quickly, but then once I started using it, it was so convenient that I sorta just rolled with it.

Infinite Roach Stamina by Zur13 & Galloping in Settlements by JupiterTheGod

Why canter when you can gallop, is what I always say? Now this mod doesn’t make Roach less of an idiot, but it certainly takes some of the edge off horse-traversal.

Increased Creature Loot by mindkiller213

Sometimes you need a certain amount of Lurker droppings or Leshen bits, and they aren’t manifesting as frequently as you’d like. This mod takes care of that, and can even be further manipulated to give even more resources than the base mod does.

Indestructible Items by Wask

Always having to worry about equipment condition is cool for your first VERY immersive and extremely realistic playthrough of a game where you’re a mutant that slays creatures from beyond the veil and hangs out with elves and dwarves, but on our PC sightseeing journey, it’s nice to have little things like weapon and armor maintenance handled for you.

Just For Fun Mods

No Fall Damage by Wask

This one is sorta superfluous, but fun. I can’t think of many times that I fell to my death in The WItcher 3, but I can now think of about a hundred times that I climbed to the top of the highest point I could see just to jump off it and see what would happen, thanks to this lovely mod.

Friendly Wolves by Apomorph

This is also kind of just for fun, but it rules to just run around in a pack of wolves and have them treat you like one of their own instead of attacking you for no reason.

Jump in Shallow Water by Zhior

This is dumb, but I just always want to jump in muddy puddles, and now I can. Look at me! Yeah! I'm doin' it!

Auto-Win Gwent by kucingkucing & The Gwent Card Dealer by mangekyoumadara1987

I love Gwent, and as a completionist, I like to collect every Gwent card in the game. Some, however, are locked behind matches that you have to win in very specific windows on the course of missions that you might be in a hurry to complete. This mod lets you skip Gwent and automatically receive the reward for winning, if you’re just not in the mood to play. You can also find a dealer with tons of cards at the Bloody Baron’s fort with this companion Gwent Card Dealer mod, if you’d prefer to play it straight(ish).

What do you think, are there some mods you love that aren’t on this list? Are you into alternate looks like this awesome Henry Cavill mod by Adnan4444, or even SEXY mods like this sublimely horrible freakshow by Jatodude1?

Let me know in the comments below what mods everyone should try, and for all things Witcher-y, keep it locked to IGN!

Ok, so if you’re still reading this, but you’re not a super-experienced PC modder-type person, you might be thinking, how in the hell do I even do any of this? Normally, I’d tell you: It’s easy! But in this case, you may have to go through a few extra steps in order to make these mods work.

Here’s the trouble with this game in particular: CD Projekt Red are just about the most consumer-friendly developers in the world. They are constantly updating and patching their games for years after they release. Which is awesome. And which also completely fucks half the mods you’re trying to use.

If you want a little primer for how to get mods rolling on this notoriously finicky game, stick with me here for another sec and I’ll walk you through it in:

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An (Actually Honest) Beginner’s Guide To Modding The Witcher 3

Method 1 - Just The Story (Easy) - Just use the Workshop mods on Steam

This is hella easy and works great for Divinity: Original Sin 2, and Pillars of Eternity: Deadfire but isn’t supported by The Witcher 3, so that’s out. Whomp whomp.

Method 2 - Sword and Story (Normal) - Install Nexus Mods and activate them there

In theory this is almost as easy as subscribing to mods on Steam, except it inexplicably didn’t work for me at all (at first). How it’s supposed to work, at any rate, should be as simple as installing Nexus Mods’ ‘Vortex’ app to your PC and then installing the mods you want to use directly to that program. I did that and most of my mods didn’t work or seemed to break the game. So I moved on to...

Method 3 - Blood and Broken Bones (Hard) - Download and manually install the files on your PC

In order to get any of these to work on my machine, I had to manually download and install them. To do so you simply navigate from your drive to Program Files (x86), Steam, Steam Apps, common, then Witcher 3. Create a file called “Mods” here and move all of your downloaded and unzipped mods into this folder. Many of these have specific instructions on how or in what order to install them (like the beautiful ‘Witcher 3 HD Reworked Project’ mod that has to be installed in three parts, for example), so read the notes on Nexus Mods very carefully. There are also a mod manager and a script merger available that can help you to eliminate conflicting or unnecessary mods, which you might want to install as well.

In my experience, most of the mods worked, some didn’t. A few of these mods simply don’t work with the latest updates, although most of the popular ones are pretty regularly updated so I’d see this as temporary. Others still are so specialized that it may be awhile before you encounter the specific situation in which they are meant to become useful, so it may be awhile before you know for certain if you bungled it or not. You PC people are masochists, man!

Inexplicably, after doing all this, Vortex just started finding the mods all of the sudden and working as advertised. After throwing myself out the window in a fit of rage, I picked all the broken glass out of my flesh and just settled for the fact that getting any of this to work was a small miracle. In this particular case, it was about the destination, and not the journey.

Method 4 - Death March (Very Hard) - I dunno, learn how to code and make your own mods I guess?

If you know how to do this, please make a mod that let’s you play as Roach and ride around on Geralt, and send me a link, because that would fucking rule. Jato, I’m looking at you here, buddy!

Anyway, thanks for sticking through all that with me, fellow baby PC modders on a journey of self-discovery. And for all things modded to all heck, keep it locked to IGN.

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