The Witcher 3 is, for the most part, a stunning experience, but you can’t please everybody. That’s what mods are for.
Despite only bewitching (and therefore, de-wizarding) players for a few days, The Witcher 3’s PC version already has some pretty sweet mods. You can’t, like, play as white-haired version of The Incredible Hulk yet, but I’m sure it’ll happen with time (unless The Witcher 3’s mod scene sparks and fizzles like The Witcher 2’s did).
For now, the centerpiece of the mod selection is the CineFX graphics mod, which—among other things—lets you crank the game’s resolution until astronauts can see Geralt’s beard stubble from space. If you want it to look like the infamous video from a couple years back, this is probably your best bet—at least, from a sheer detail perspective.
Here’s a video of it in action from FeuerTin:
The other early Witcher 3 mods emphasize quality of life over sexy good looks. First up, there’s the Over 9000 weight limit mod, which allows Geralt to carry up to 9999 Witchy Weight Units of stuff. Given how much stuff I’ve looted from kind, unsuspecting villagers’ houses in the game’s first few hours, I can see the mod being super handy.
There’s also the Wealthy Vendors mod, which does exactly what it says: makes vendors obscenely rich. Instead of retiring to islands that aren’t crawling with monsters and apocalypse zeppelins, however, they give you more gold for your goods before running out. Pretty fucking saintly of them, if you ask me.
Lastly, there’s the Lower XP Thresholds mod, which makes Geralt level up a teensy bit quicker. It’s not meant to turn the game into a cakewalk, but for those who balk at the idea of only being level five after six hours, this one might not be such a bad idea.
Now, a couple disclaimers: 1) These are pretty simple mods, largely created by changing values in the game’s files. Given time, modders may well change The Witcher 3 to the point that it’s unrecognizable. This is a trickle. Fingers crossed for a flood. 2) A new patch dropped a few hours ago that might render old versions of these mods useless. If that’s the case, you may need to wait a little bit for new versions to be released.
Now then, question time: what do you want to see from future Witcher 3 mods? What sorts of utility features? Anything crazy or outlandish or Literally The Hulk?
To contact the author of this post, write to nathan.grayson@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @vahn16.