Even the best Witcher 3 mods have to contend with its legacy. The Witcher 3 remains one of the best RPGs ever made, and the thought of tweaking with it may seem like messing with perfection. Yet even the tastiest meat can be improved with seasoning, and there are plenty of was The Witcher 3 can be made more convenient, or at least different enough to shake things up for a replay.
Our list of the best Witcher 3 mods includes minor bug fixes, dramatic texture replacements, quality of life boosts like automated looting, and the superhuman ability to frolic through shallow water. We’ve also listed some popular combat overhauls that both subtly and not-so-subtly rework one of the Witcher 3’s most divisive elements. You can even use mods to make Geralt look more like his Netflix counterpart, Henry Cavill.
Mods that have been added or significantly altered in the most recent update are marked with a ⚔️.
Utilities and fixes
All of the Witcher mods live on NexusMods, and Vortex (formerly the Nexus Mods Manager) is the default way to download and install mods from there. If you’re already using it to mod another game, like Skyrim for instance, you may as well use it for The Witcher 3 as well. Note that The Witcher 3 isn’t as mod-friendly as Skyrim, however, and you’ll often need to resort to a manual install. Read each mod’s description and carefully follow its instructions.
When you first set up Vortex to manage Witcher 3 mods it should download Script Merger automatically, otherwise you’ll need to get it separately. This is a vital tool for managing conflicts when multiple mods try to alter the same files.
If you’d rather have a bespoke mod manager rather than repurposing one you may well be using for other games, that’s what The Witcher 3 Mod Manager offers. It’s still in beta at the moment, and you’ll still have to read mod descriptions to find out how compatible they are and what other steps are required.
If you install 30 or 40 mods all at once and your game breaks, the Mod Limit Fix can bring it back from the edge. If you’re planning to go wild and install hundreds of mods at the same time, you may need the more hardcore Mod Limit Adjuster. If you are installing a lot of mods, do it just like your mother taught you: go slow, take it easy, and say your prayers.
A wonderfully self-aware set of fixes for minor, yet annoying issues. Patches of skin showing through glitched clothes, weapons floating off their wearers’ hips, ship’s masts disappearing, monsters being incorrectly labeled—that kind of thing. It also gives Keira Metz shoes, rather than walking around barefoot yet with her feet angled as if she’s got heels on. God bless the nitpickers.
In a similar spirit, Brothers in Arms – TW3 Ultimate Bug Fix Collaboration is focused more on quest and dialogue fixes, though it includes plenty more beside, and NPC Script Fixes should at least partially resolve the issue with sorceresses looking like they’re still casting a spell after they’ve finished, which could leave Yennefer with glowing magic hands all the way through a sex scene.
Interface and travel
Geralt’s world has dozens of signposts for fast travel, but sometimes you’ll still find yourself coaxing Roach across countryside for ages to reach the nearest one. If you’re not down for that sometimes humdrum bit of roleplay, this mod lets you teleport to any fast travel point from anywhere. If that doesn’t sound fun to you, let us suggest the exact opposite: the Long Journey mod will cancel all fast travel routes, except for a few that hop between regions.
Use your new fast travel abilities with caution and don’t get too hasty: overriding the existing system reportedly causes problems with a tiny number of quests. This one isn’t being updated anymore, so it does have some issues with newer mods. When all else fails, try to resolve conflicts with the Script Merger.
Hidden in The Witcher 3’s game files is an entire glossary, like the first two games had, written in-character by Dandelion. The Witcher Lore collection restores the glossary, as well as a bunch of documents that were seemingly cut during development—including bestiary books and entries that are otherwise unobtainable. You can finally fill the bestiary to 100% for every monster.
Here’s a mod that lets you enable additional mutations, and lets you slot over 100 skills simultaneously. It comes in three versions, depending on whether you want to keep things balanced, or go all-out enabling all the mutagens at once. Note that it’ll conflict with other mods that change mutagens, should you be using any.
While it’s nice that the map isn’t thickly cluttered with icons like some sort of Ubisoft-produced hellscape, trying to remember where the herbalist is can be pretty annoying. This mod adds every map icon to the map all the time, including nearby merchants and any quest objective for any quest in your journal. If it’s too much, you can always customize and hide any markers you don’t need.
Want to know how close you are to unlocking that Humpty Dumpty achievement, which you get by hurling 10 opponents off cliffs to their death with Aard, or the Master Marksman achievement you get by scoring 50 headshot kills with the crossbow, Achievement StatTrak is here to help. It adds a book that shows your progress toward achievements, with a toggle to hide achievements that might count as spoilers.
Your Stash is accessible from a few places around the world, but this mod asks: Why not more? Installing this will add eight new stash locations and relocate two of the standard stash locations to more convenient areas. This is especially handy if you’re using a realism mod that adds carry weight to money.
The Witcher 3’s UI can feel a bit cluttered, but turning parts of it off can make the game difficult. This mod has several features, available in separate downloads if you only want one or two, that improve the on-screen issues. From holding a key down to enter meditation without using the menu, to hiding quest markers unless you’re using your Witcher sense, plus HUD elements that can individually be toggled on and off without having to open your menu, and lots more.
Some of us—we’re not naming names or anything—would be happy to feed Dandelion and his stupid mouth into a woodchipper. Since there are no woodchippers in the Northern Kingdoms, this mod that disables those storybook narration videos that you have to listen to over and over again will have to do.
Oh my god, finally.
Combat
One of the best parts of the early Witcher game is feeling like you need to do your homework before any big contract. You brew up Specter oil for the first time and make sure you’re stocked up on Moon dust, you meditate, and you sharpen your silver sword.
This mod recaptures some of that old magic by making meditation a more meaningful process. You need to meditate to spend points in your skill tree, refill alchemical items and oils, and repair items. By default, eating and drinking during combat isn’t allowed with this mod, so you really need to make sure you’re all set before the Noonwraith hits the windmill.
If Preparations Mod sounds like more trouble than fun, check out Friendly Meditation. You still get all the potion refilling benefits of vanilla meditation, but you don’t have to look at a boring old menu. Instead, the HUD falls away and you get a nice view of the clouds zipping past, the stars rotating, and the sun rising over the mountains.
Sometimes, a Witcher just needs to take a damn minute, you know? Just don’t forget the Community Patch Base on this one.
If you’ve ever felt The Witcher 3’s combat lacks a certain cinematic flair, be sure to pick up this gem. It slows down the action when Geralt lands a critical hit, allowing you to gape in awe at how perfectly that bandit’s head flew from his shoulders. If you’re feeling particularly vicious, modder KNGR also made a version that combines this with his popular More Blood mod.
One of the finest bits of roleplaying in The Witcher 3 is its system of weapon oils, as there’s some genuine satisfaction in knowing the right mixture for the job. But after hours and hours of digging in Geralt’s bags and applying them, even the most dedicated roleplayer among us would be hard-pressed to deny it gets tedious. That’s where Auto Apply Oils comes in. Once you’re in range of an enemy type specific to a certain oil, it’ll automatically apply the oil and leave you to the business of hacking at it with a slab of silver.
Sick of rummaging through corpses after every battle? This mod automatically picks up all the area loot, regardless of whether Geralt’s just been battling rotfiends or digging through drawers in Oxenfurt. That’s welcome enough in itself, but what makes Auto Loot so great is that it also ensures that Geralt doesn’t accidentally steal valuables in his auto-looting frenzy, and it lets you customize what he picks up and what he leaves behind.
As your out-level quests, you receive reduced experience points for them. Your game difficulty and whether you’ve completed the main story or not also modifies the amount of experience you get. If you’re sick of ticking off a quest and getting a measly handful of XP, this mod has a few degrees of tweaks to either ensure you always get the maximum amount, or only your chosen difficulty setting is taken into account, and several other options.
If you crave a stamp of official approval in a mod, the FCR3 mod was developed by a senior gameplay designer at CD Projekt Red. It’s a huge list of minor tweaks, nerfs, and buffs that rebalance the world. If you’re looking for a general overhaul that will work invisibly in the background, this is your mod. Be warned that it does make werewolf regeneration pretty obnoxious.
There’s no new art or anything to look at, though, so we’re just using a random picture of Geralt as the picture for this one. Any old, random picture we happen to have around.
For some long-time Witcher fans, there was once a golden era. All the wine was sweet, all the swords were sharp, and every ghoul was slow and stupid. They call this time: E3 2014. There are several E3 2014 mods that change this or that to more closely resemble how Witcher 3 looked when it was demoed at that happier, simpler time.
We’re not big on nostalgia, but the E3 dodge system was pretty sweet. Geralt is much less acrobatic, and he keeps his feet on the ground and his sword pointed forward. This is a good mod for players who want a combat system that plays pretty much the same, but without all the Cirque du Soleil showiness.
Plus, if you have a second to breathe in combat, Geralt will flex his hands and idly twirl his sword to stay loose. Menacing!
Gwent
It’s tough to travel all the time for work and travel for fun at the same time. Eventually it all starts to feel like work, right? If your Geralt loves a good round of Gwent but just doesn’t feel like climbing into the saddle again to go find cards, The Gwent Dealer will save him a lot of Frequent Roach Miles. This mod turns the Baron’s quartermaster into the all-playing, all-dealing Gwent collector of Velen. He sells all his usual wares and almost every card in the game.
A handful of Gwent cards have art that’s in the game files, but is never used in the game. This mod adds the missing art back in, and makes some tweaks to your starting deck as well (notably adding a ballista and a siege tower). If you install it halfway through a game it’ll only affect your opponents’ decks, however.
If you find it confusing you that Geralt plays a card game which features him and his pals on the cards, Fantasy Gwent replaces them with more generic theming. It’s not just the art that’s replaced either. The cards have different abilities, and this version of Gwent should play faster too. Some of the new cards do feature references to gods from Earth’s mythology, like Anubis and Athena, so if that’s more harmful to your immersion than Geralt playing the Zoltan card, you may not want to bother.
Go in the other direction to Fantasy Gwent and get a little Night City in your Novigrad with this mod, which replaces the artwork on 12 Gwent cards with pictures more reminiscent of Cyberpunk 2077. Triss looks like a nomad, Geralt wears V’s jacket, and Ciri, er, doesn’t wear much of anything. That’s cyberpunk, yep.
If that’s all way too much Gwent for your liking, then here’s a mod that lets you instantly win any match by pressing the N key after you’ve started playing. As suggested by the mod’s description you can pretend you’re using the Axii sign to win if you need to stay in-character, but this is really a mod for anyone who wants to complete their collection without actually having to sit through every single game of Gwent.
Gear and trade
Geralt can already carry quite a bit considering he’s just a guy with sweet leather getups and two cumbersome swords, but if you’re the sort of hoarder who can’t bear the thought of tossing away a collection of Witch Hunter’s Swords, then this is the mod for you. The resulting weight limit? You guessed it, Vegeta. It’s over 9,000. Now you’ll (almost) never have to worry about whether you should hang on to that trophy that’s taking up so much room but has an extremely situational bonus. Just do it.
The game may be called Wild Hunt, but hunting creatures and monsters isn’t a great way to make a living. If you’re tired of bagging a bunch of deer and walking away with little to show for it, the Increased Creature Loot mod will up your chances of animals dropping meat, hide, and other ingredients.
It’s annoying to cart a load of loot into town and find a vendor so poor he can’t afford to buy it all. This mod gives vendors some deeper pockets, and gently encourages them to pay you more for your goods.
Just like the Gwent Dealer mod, this mod turns a humble innkeeper into the world’s greatest Witcher quartermaster. The innkeeper in Dandelion’s tavern now sells every Witcher potion, oil, bomb, rune, mutagen, and arrow. Unbalanced? Yes. But you can’t argue with convenience.
Ugly gear. It’s a shame, but it happens to the best of witchers, no matter how hard we try to color-coordinate. If the new mastercrafted sword set you’ve been working toward for hours turns out to have a hideous teal scabbard set that clashes with the rest of your ensemble, just download Black Scabbards to settle the problem. We’re told that black goes with everything, especially more black, so this should get you sorted out.
On the one hand, this is minor cosmetic change that doesn’t matter at all. On the other hand, this is the most amazing mod ever designed. It’s a fact that looking cool is the single highest priority in a singleplayer RPG, and Geralt absolutely looks cool as hell wrapped in a thick wool cloak. Most importantly, new key bindings will have Geralt raise or lower his hood, depending on the weather and your mood.
There are more gear set mods out there than you can shake a silver sword at, but one of our favorites is the Sezon Burz gear. Based on descriptions from the Andrzej Sapkowski book Season of Storms, this set fits right in with the Witcher lore and world design while being totally new. Plus, it comes in several level and power options so you can wear it throughout your Northern Kingdom adventure.
Depending on your personality, some parts of the Witcher’s day-to-day can become interminable—especially after a couple hundred hours of adventuring. If spending time and money repairing your gear is getting tedious, Indestructible Items pulls the entire weapon degradation system out of the game. It’s a small change with big effects.
Is it a big deal? No. But it sure does look nice. This mod adds a little hanging lamp to your little sailboat. Adorable. Look at that Witcher go.
Visuals
Currently a work-in-progress, this mod for playing in first-person works in movement and combat, but has some bugs in the cutscenes and it’s recommended to switch back to third-person for the bits where you play as Ciri.
This graphical overhaul is a 9.3GB beast of a download that gives you better, crisper, more detailed models and textures. Rocks, trees, crates, roofs, walls, waterfalls, furs, and floors have all been overhauled with increased resolutions and brightness. The video above gives some great transition examples so you can see the difference yourself.
Everyone has two faces. That’s not a parable, in The Witcher 3 it’s literally true. Characters have a head that loads during dialogue scenes, which is high-res, capable of lip-flapping, and has high-res shadows, and a less impressive head they wear the rest of the time. This mod forces everyone to look their best all the time.
This handy tool lets you transform Geralt and Roach at the touch of a button, adding cloaks, new haircuts and changing the appearance of armor that you can combine to create presets that you can switch between instantly. All the changes are cosmetic, so you can give yourself the best-looking gear in the game straight away without breaking the game balance.
This mod makes Geralt look a bit more like a mutant, with paler skin and more striking, feline eyes, along with some other touches that make him look a bit more like his counterpart from the books and earlier games. If the hot dad look isn’t doing it for you, try this on for size.
Unhappy with the camera placement while you’re running, fighting, riding, or swimming? Absolute Camera doesn’t just change the camera distance and angle but gives you over a dozen completely customizable options for camera placement during Geralt’s many activities. In this video you can get a look at just how flexible the new camera tools are.
If you’re looking for a better weather experience in Novigrad and environs, then be sure to pick up this relatively recent mod. It places a heavy emphasis on fog, but it also brings other treats such as more snow in Skellige and better light rain animations. If you think it overdoes it, the description page has a list of settings you can freely change with console commands.
Want to take some awesome screenshots of Geralt in action? This mod provides a toggle button that lets you freeze the game at will, then fly your camera around in 3D space to line up the perfect picture. There’s also a toggle for making yourself invisible and an option to spawn fog and mist to make your shots more atmospheric.
Looking for a more lush and colorful look? The Fantasy Graphics mod removes some of the bluish tint from the game and makes some tweaks to the lighting to provide more of a high fantasy look.
The Northern Kingdoms, especially Velen and Novigrad, are filthy places full of muck, but you can’t do any decent photography with a dirty lens! Wipe them on your pants to get them clean, just like the pros do. No Dirty Lenses removes the old water spots and dirt effects from the in-game camera, but you’ll still get water on the screen from splashing through a river or looking up at the rain.
The Witcher 3 is good. Great, even. But what if it was more like a Tarantino film? More Blood adds bucketloads of blood and blood trails. Geralt gets covered in blood, blood sprays off of swords, demons spray out black blood, it’s a bloody blood good blood time.
If your rig has the horsepower to spare, consider using this mod to ramp up the draw distance. The wide open world of the Witcher is huge, after all, but it’s even better if you can see miles of it at once. This mod comes with a whole range of options from a little boost to a huge, miles-long vista view. Fair warning that you’ll probably see your performance drop if you turn on Ultra mode in Novigrad—unless your computer is beefy enough, that is.
Filing once again to the department of “If your rig can handle it,” More Shadows adds dynamic shadows to many in-game light sources. Torches on walls will cast their own shadow over the sconce below them, and large braziers in cities will throw all kinds of harsh angles across cobbled streets. Patrolling guards carrying torches will also cast shadows, but this can be a little wonky. If you run into problems, there’s an alternate version that removes shadows from guards’ torches.
Just like the More Shadows mod, except exactly not like that. The opposite, in fact. Most NPC vampires, being the unnatural creatures that they are, cast no shadows even though they walk in the sun! Chilling.
⚔️ Henry Cavill and Anya Chalotra
This graphical mod does the inevitable: turns Geralt of Rivia into Henry Cavill as he appears in The Witcher TV show, and as of a recent update, turns Yennefer into Anya Chalotra too. Check out the mod’s page for a list of other Witcher 3 mods to assist in turning Geralt into the biggest, TV-ready version of himself possible.
Overhauls
Need a few more weapons and armor options? This mod makes NPC weapons, like Imlerith’s giant mace and several others, available to Geralt either through merchants or by crafting. New schematics in shops will allow for even more weapon options, and upgrades are available for relics as well.
Be careful: this one makes a lot of changes, so it’s a bit of a doozy to install.
We’ve written about this one in more detail: it’s a complete reimagining of The Witcher’s combat systems. The biggest change is that it removes autotargeting. Instead of twirling around between enemies like a demented pinball with a sword, Geralt’s acrobatic attacks just go wherever you point him. This means you can charge and flip behind an enemy or around an enemy’s shield.
It’s a big change, but it doesn’t even begin to describe how much stuff TW3EE changes. There are new animations, new ways to parry, and different ways to charge over distances. Every attack has a chance to cause an injury, so you might need to finish a fight with a crippled arm or a broken leg. The changes are so big that they bleed over into leveling, alchemy, signs, and items.
If you’ve played through New Game+ a few times and you’ve just seen and done everything The Witcher 3 has to offer, then the enhanced edition might be your new excuse for reinstalling. It’s best to use a clean, un-modded install for this one, then gently add in other mods one at a time.
Ghost Mode is no less ambitious than the Enhanced Edition, but it uses a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer. It doesn’t throw out the vanilla game, but it polishes all those little things that weren’t quite right. You can’t find rare dimeritium plate on a poor peasant’s bookshelf, all ingredients weigh something (but you’ll need less of them for alchemy), non-Witcher gear sets are more useful and powerful, descriptions and typos have been cleaned up, enemies have new armor bonuses and limited stamina pools, and on and on and on.
If you think The Witcher 3 is busted and needs a total overhaul from the roots, head to the Enhanced Edition. If you think it needs a solid two years’ worth of careful balancing and polish from a talented QA team, then Ghost Mode will be more your speed.
Again, use a clean, un-modded install for this one before you start to tinker with other mods.