With the exception of a few tough fights toward the end, you can get away with quite a bit of button-mashing in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. But that’s not the case with a mod called The Enhanced Edition, which retools enemy stats and completely changes the way fighting happens in the game. The final version of the mod, 3.30, is available for download now.
Find out why The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is on our list of the best RPGs available on PC.
One of the biggest changes the mod introduces is removing level scaling from all NPCs. Enemies don’t scale anymore, instead each one is given a particular set of stats and abilities, varied enough so that they aren’t carbon copies of each other but that they still manage to make sense with their position in the world and its lore.
Combat itself is a completely different beast with the Enhanced Edition mod. Designed with keyboard and mouse in mind, the mod adds a staggering amount of depth to The Witcher 3’s combat encounters by giving Geralt a new range of moves – you’ll have to choose whether to attack at close, medium, or long range, and these attacks will allow you to move around the combat space in a way that makes more sense.
But you’ll also have to be managing your stamina meter very carefully, because it won’t just refill quickly – if Geralt becomes exhausted, he’s easy pickings for enemies, who are now substantially more lethal and will press the attack rather than slowly circling around waiting their turn. There are new animations for oiling blades and drinking potions, meaning you won’t be able to instantly quaff a Sparrow potion in the middle of combat.
Tons of changes have been made to the meditation, alchemy, and sign-casting systems as well. It’s a massive amount of changes, so much so that it won’t work with any existing save games – you’ll have to start over if you haven’t been playing with version 3.0 or later of the Enhanced Edition mod.
That all makes its slim download size, just 56.9 megabytes, a bit of a surprise. If you do decide to try it out, bear in mind it’s a bit of a hassle to install – you’ll have to fiddle a bit with settings and keybinds files scattered around your HDD.
The mod is available at NexusMods. See our list of all the best Witcher 3 mods, and check PCGameBenchmark to see how well your PC matches the Witcher 3 system requirements.