What are the best Witcher 3 mods? With a next-gen update overhauling visuals, as well as game mechanics, there has never been a better time to get into The Witcher 3. With mods, you can customize and enhance your experience even further.
The best Witcher 3 mods refresh the gameplay for you and, for veterans of the series, can inspire another playthrough of one of the best RPG games of all time. Modding is now a fairly simple process and can be done with ease once you know how. As always, exercise caution when downloading and installing anything on your computer.
The best mods for The Witcher 3 are:
Project Next Gen Edition
Take your Witcher 3 visuals to the next level with the Project Next Gen Edition mod by Hawk Hogan. After four long years, the wait is finally over for this project that rewords and improves upon many of the Witcher 3’s game assets, introducing thousands of changes to make the experience feel more detailed and realistic.
As our news writer Will Nelson explains about the texture mod, “Hogan has reworked many of The Witcher 3’s textures to be 4K, while every minute detail – from the moss on rooftops to the polygons in a wheel – has been improved. Whether you’re looking at the RPG’s world up close or from afar, everything appears more detailed. Hogan even says that everything is “consistent with the original CDPR artistic vision of The Witcher 3,” and you can tell.”
Tales of The Witcher
The REDKit was by far the best thing to happen to The Witcher 3 in a long time, giving modders access to the tools they need to add more content to the game. The Tales of The Witcher mod from Gerwant takes place in Cintra in a time before the events of the Witcher games. This mod features two chapters so far, but the creator plans to add more to it with time.
Built from scratch, Cintra and its world has been designed for the Witcher to do what they do best: killing monsters. Tales of The Witcher promotes a slower, more immersive experience that has you taking your time with monster hunting contracts. You don’t have any quest markers or even a map to rely on, instead you’re going to have to pay attention as you learn more about your objectives and how to complete them.
Blood and Steel (Combat Enhancements)
The combat in The Witcher 3 is great, but when you look at the game’s promotional material, the Witcher should be able to move a little more gracefully on the battlefield. Thanks to Riyusso’s Blood and Steel mod, you can drastically alter the combat by making fights more realistic. The mod features new animations to introduce some attack variety, an additional dodging style, and a whole host of changes to add some fluidity to fights.
The Great Arena
It’s not enough to pummel on unsuspecting bandits and dangerous animals out in the wild, sometimes you’ve got to prove to everyone that you’re the strongest person around. Test your battle skills in glorious combat with the Great Arena mod by Drunk_Steep. Featuring 20 fights, including a dramatic boss fight, players can take on multiple opponents as you fight for rewards, experience, and most importantly, respect.
Darker Nights
Utilize the revamped lighting system from the next-generation version of The Witcher 3 with the Darker Nights mod, originally made by shaedhen and ported to the new version by teresatige. This mod is even better if you have an HDR-capable display to make the light sources in the game shine brighter. If you’re still using the last-generation version, the mod’s creator has noted that an update will be coming soon to support the old version.
Custom Player Character
The Witcher 3 is almost a decade old at this point, and while most agree it’s one of the best RPGs of all time, returning players will understandably want to try something different. This is where the Custom Player Character mod by nikich340 comes into play, allowing you to switch out Geralt for a fully customizable player model, featuring unique voice lines for both male and female characters.
While that sounds impressive in its own right, the mod goes a step further by letting you choose between the Witcher or Sorceress archetype. The Sorceress is brand-new to the game, complete with a new magic combat system and a separate quest line. This mod is also compatible with several custom quest mods, so you can play what is essentially a new Witcher game inside Witcher 3.
Quest Tweaks
The Witcher 3 features plenty of excellent quests to get through, but there are certain quest lines that you can be locked out of without your knowledge. There’s nothing more annoying than having to completely restart your save to see everything a game has to offer.
The Quest Tweaks mod by MerseyRockoff modifies five quests, ensuring the player can experience everything the quest has to offer. It stops certain missions from being locked to the player once they’ve completed quests.
Over 9,000 Weight
This Witcher 3 mod is another absolute must for anyone doing a lengthy playthrough. Sure, it’s more realistic to not be able to carry every single thing under the sun, but it’s much more enjoyable. Plus, Witchers are supposed to have superhuman strength… right?
Over 9000 Weight also means you’ll have a much easier time earning money in the game, as you can loot the hell out of bandit camps for low-level swords and armor, before selling them en masse to the nearest merchant.
E3FX
Now that ray-tracing is available thanks to the next-gen update, more realistic shader mods aren’t going to be as game-changing as before. That said, if you don’t own an RTX-compatible GPU, or you just want further changes to the realism and smoothness of your surroundings, then there’s still a place for these mods in the action-adventure game.
The E3FX mod is one of the most popular shader modifiers in the community, but if you’ve not experienced it yet, it’s one to try — ray tracing or not. E3FX tweaks the color and look of White Orchard and the other Wild Hunt locations. This shader was inspired by the TV show, with different variants to choose from making the world appear brighter or more autumnal, and adding to the game’s fantasy feel.
1,000 Times Better Reshade
In contrast to E2FX, 1000 Times Better makes the entire game look much more balanced, removing the weird lighting colors of the vanilla game and giving the whole presentation an updated look.
Lamp on Player’s Boat
This is a simple Witcher 3 mod that does what it says on the tin. It adds a lamp on the player’s boat. But we quite like having a nice little lamp on our boat when I’m sailing the Skellige seas in the dead of night, thank you very much. Not just useful, but aesthetically pleasing, too.
Disable Storybook Loading Screens
If there’s one thing that gets annoying when you’re testing mods, it’s the storybook loading screens that have Dandelion summarizing the story so far. This is the best Witcher 3 mod to get rid of them, and it’s easy to install – no mucking around with .ini files like some other mods.
Geralt Hairworks Colors and Styles
OK, so this might be a bit lore-breaking, but it’s still one of our favorites. Of course, Geralt is a silver fox, and we wouldn’t have him any other way – well, not permanently. But just like we’ve tried a rainbow of hair colors in our time, it’s nice to try something new once in a while, and so we have the Geralt Hairworks mod. This mod gives up a multitude of options to change up the look of our protagonist, from dark hair, red hair, white eyebrows other color changes, to more realistic hair, and different ways of wearing it.
No Dirty Lenses
The dirty lens effect in The Witcher 3 is gross. We said it. It’s gross. And this mod removes it entirely. No more wandering through Velen or White Orchard, only to have this otherwise beautiful game muddied up like a mountain bike after a ride through the English woodland. No, no, no.
Eternal Hunt
The Eternal Hunt mod is a content pack that adds a mind-boggling array of new features, including quests, items, weapons, animations, and more that we don’t quite have the room for here. Eternal Hunt is described as being an overhaul, but one that is built to play nicely with other mods, meaning you could use this as a base and build around it from there. Very cool, and a must-install for those going back for their nth playthrough.
Better Torches
A tiny tweak, but something useful if you’re doing a lot of exploration and climbing. Better Torches allows Geralt to ride Roach, fight, climb small ledges, as well as grab onto things while jumping, without putting his lit torch away. There are even new animations for it. He’ll still put it away while climbing ladders (he’s not a miracle man) but it’s still an improvement on the vanilla game.
Geralt Cloak
Give Geralt the look he deserves with the Geralt Cloak mod so you can wander the plains gutting monsters in style. This mod adds a cloak that can be customized on the fly, with dedicated buttons to put the hood up and down (although surely up is always the right option), and to furl and unfurl the cape. Lovely stuff.
How to install Witcher 3 mods
The Witcher 3 mods can be a little fiddly, so you must follow the install instructions that come with each mod. Where you need to put files can change from mod to mod, so read the instructions carefully. Generally, though, you’ll need to unpack the mod’s files into the Mod folder in your Witcher 3 directory. If you have the game on Steam, this is likely to be found at:
C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\Common\The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt
Or something similar. If you bought the game from Good Old Games, search for ‘GOG Games’ on your hard drive to find the directory.
They’re the best Witcher 3 mods for your first, second, or even third playthrough of this epic fantasy game. If you’ve exhausted this list of Witcher 3 mods, catch up on all The Witcher 4 release date news, though be prepared for quite the wait.