The Witcher 3 mods

[Perkel]

Another thing i noticed. Apperently this mod includes all Witcher 2 armors. I found 2 already:

 

[Sodafish]

Why does Geralt look like a crack addict in those screens?

 

[Perkel]

Why does Geralt look like a crack addict in those screens?

Mod. Never liked how TW2 and TW3 made geralt into good looking guy. Especially eye areas were retarded with literally black shadows, eyeliner etc that made no sense and i always cringed when i saw that. For example in TW3 Gerlat has black brows which makes no sense.
Same with other witchers. So there are two mods "fixing that" and you "get" why he was called "white wolf".

https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/3092
https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/3133

It is not quite TW1 but it makes Geralt and other witchers much more what they were in books and tw1:

 

[Perkel]

W3EE combat tutorial (pretty good summary of changes and what W3EE allows with changes). It is for 2.0 not 4.0 but most of this stuff is the same while 4.0 only expands on that:

 

[Merlkir]

"Fight like a witcher, not like a whirling idiot."

...
...
Dark Souls were a mistake.

 

[CrunchyHemorrhoids]

Perkel You can fix those cyan-colored Kaer Morhen boots with https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/1536 or the alternate version of Nitpicker's.

 

[Old One]

I added a mod that gets rid off falling damage and one that removes the zoom-in effect for witcher senses.

 

[Old One]

I finished this a few days ago. I enjoyed it quite a lot, but a lot of the criticisms have merit.

In retrospect I'd say what makes it good is the realization of the setting and characters. Put simply, it's fun to be Geralt trapsing around Middle-Poland killing monsters and banging chicks.

You spend stamina by dodging and rolling. Cant roll more then once or twice per fight.
Cant open inventory in the fight. Drinking potions or eating has their own animations so its pretty difficult to do it while fighting.
Crafting is limited to meditation, which requires fire, alchemy too.
Crafting requires more fancy and mythical ingredients for cool stuff and costs a lot of money.
Also has W2 armors. No level restrictions for weapons and armor but you cant find or get or craft high level items early anyway. No red skull enemies, but the combat is harder.
You have to prepare in advance and use everything to win some fights.

That stuff sounds pretty good. Unlimited dodging and rolling makes Geralt nearly invincible.

 

[Perkel]

Whatever W3EE or that mod they both change combat system a lot, making it less floaty and more deliberate.

 

[retinoid]

The only essential mod that someone should need is this one from an actual senior gameplay designer on Witcher 3. https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/2788

It fixes tons of shit that were originally going to be in the game before being changed to cater to the casual manchild reviewers at IGN, etc. Also gets rid of terrible scaled loot, so if you are badass enough to kill a level 20 monster at level 3 or some shit, you'll get a level 20 sword or equivalent armour. Gourmet also got a huge nerf so you can't abuse that nonsense either.

Check the change log, there's TONS of changes all for the better.

 

[retinoid]

I'm retarded and forgot to include these other two as essential as well (can't edit my post due to time limitations):

Volumetric Clouds over Skellige: https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/1302 Why this wasn't in the game in the first place I have no fucking clue.

Smoother XP Curve: https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/1825
"In Witcher 3, the amount of XP you get for completing a quest is fixed for that quest, unless Geralt's level is 5 or more higher than the quest level, in which case you get nothing.
With this mod, the amount of XP you get also depends on the difference between your level and the quest level. If you have a higher level than the quest, you get less XP for it (but always more than 0). If you have a lower level than the quest, you get more XP for completing it. The exact XP gain follows the formula: XPTotal = QuestXP * 1.07^(QuestLevel - PCLevel). This leads to the XP curve you can see in the image.
For instance: If you are 40 levels above the quest level, you get ~7% of the normal quest XP. If you are 20 levels above, you get 26%. If you are at the quest level, you get 100%. If you are 15 levels below the quest level, you get 276% of the normal quest XP."

This incentivizes doing harder, higher level quests first. Combined with the mod I posted in the post above that removes loot scaling, this makes doing difficult quests in comparison to your level actually worth completing.

 

[retinoid]

FCR3 doesn't remove level requirements for equipment.

• Loot item level is now upscaled to highest enemy level in the area if enemy level is higher than player level. Fighting higher level enemies guarantees high level drops now.
• Increased random range of item levels rolled for quest rewards. You might end up with an item you cannot use yet, but at least you'll get a guaranteed upgrade on level up.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

What's the consensus here on Ghost Mode mod? From the available ones, this one seems the best in terms of combat. Enhanced Edition advertises itself as "fight like a witcher" but every video i see of it actually looks worse than vanilla combat. Geralt twirling around like a ballerina, no pushback from the enemies at all.

Ghost mode doesn't address everything either, but it has some good things. Enemies defend more and are more aggressive when they attack, so this seems like it would force the player to do more than just spam attack. Also the armor penetration and counter/stamina changes seem interesting.

 

[Perkel]

Very impressive UI rework, Though i don't think it is compatible with W3EE and other overhaul mods:

 

[Gerrard]

Still has the same shitty potion/oil icons that tell you nothing, so absolutely pointless.

 

[Perkel]

Still playing W3EE.

My god i hurt for money. I have TW1 flashbacks where i barely scrape by.
After playing like 20 hours i finally earned up enough to cover for one upgrade to runemaker, silver sword with ability to switch of specters regeneration permanently and viper steel sword....

I unlocked vineyard from B&W and when i looked at 1000 bill for basic upgrade i said "fuck it", my witcha is too poor.
Now exploration really fucking matters because buying all those ingredients is really expensive and getting that glowing ore for Moon Dust bombs or something else is major pain in ass if you want to actually be in green instead of red.

Witcher contracts also now make a lot of sense. Getting that 100 coins really makes a lot of difference.

The more i play with alchemy the more fun it is. While making basic versions of stuff is fairly easy and inexpensive, making enchanced and superior version + secondary is where games is at. Getting that superior potion with secondary effect costs fortune but effects are really noticeable especially when they induce less toxicity so you can really go your way out to drug geralt like on some Jamaican festival.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

How is the combat in W3EE? The videos look so bleh... Seems like all you do is use different distance attacks, and get around everything.

 

[Perkel]

How is the combat in W3EE? The videos look so bleh... Seems like all you do is use different distance attacks, and get around everything.

Much better because it is much more systems oriented than just action and action changes are much better than vanilla.
TW3 is action oriented system while W3EE is stat driven system equally as action system.
There are so many changes that it is very hard to even start talking about changes.

So the main changes:

Stamina - Unlike Vanilla it is used for physical combat now like in Dark Souls, so simply attacking, dodging etc you can deplete it very quickly. Game doesn't go completely Dark Souls but you can't just play like vanilla anymore and you need to take into account stamina

Poise - New stat not existing in vanilla. Like in DS it handles stagger and your ability to counterattack and defend your self as well as your ability to stagger opponents outside of depleting their stamina. If you go for poise build you will be able to block and counter every attack in the game.

Animation rework - much more predictable, less flair. Stances govern how geralt attack so if you are away from enemy and you actually want to attack that enemy then Geralt for 100% will use long winded attack that will get you close to enemy. If you are very near then attack will be quick. That doesn't sound like much but it is in fact crucial as game feels less janky. Riposte/defense is a lot reworked and you can defend from almost all sides aside from directly behind you same with riposte.

Kicks/special attacks - you can easily execute kicks and other special attacks to do different things like sap enemy stamina, make extra damage etc.

Dodge/Roll revisited - looks normally but behaves a lot different. Roll doesn't have any i frames and dodge has but those iframes don't start instantly like in vanilla. Also there is now new stat covering safe angle of dodge which can be decreased/increased by gear so just dodging around will not really give you advantage with huge group of enemies.

Preparation - You can't drink while in combat, potions and oils last much longer. Drinking and applying oils while you meditate TW1 style gives them additional bonuses to time and effectivness.

New control scheme - If you are pad user like me then you will apreciate it. R1 light attack, R2 strong attack, L2 block/riposte. Insta casting without swithcing spells: L2 + square = ard, L2 + L1 = igni itd. Specials: L2 + R1 = kicks. L2+R2 = heavy double attack. There is new camera for K users but i play on pad so vanilla camera and targeting are best for me.

No levels - No monster levels, no gear levels, no skill levels, no xp, no nothing. Game is entirely flat. With your first common longsword you can finish whole game if you really want it. Drowners are drowners, gryffins are griffins etc. This also means you can go straight to skellige or any place and try to beat it square without feeling like game is to easy to hard because you are to early here or to late. No exp either so you earn skillpoints only when you find places of power or when you use abilities you have, drink potions, make oils etc. The difference here is that each sword type, weapon type, armor type etc have its own uses which enables you to create interesting builds from get go. So one type of sword might give you chance to freeze someone, other type of sword might give you huge mallus to fast attacks but huge bonus to strong attacks etc. Basically all stuff are enablers.

Unique stuff is unique - You dwell into abyss, do 30 minute dungeon and at the end of dungeon you find "relic" sword that looks like just any other sword you have. IN W3EE if you find relic weapon most of the time it is actually "ruined" and you need weaponsmith to refurbish it for you. Then once you shill out huge sum of money and materials you will get your weapon and it will have unique abilities. That doesn't mean "better" but more like tools. For example i have my new silver sword that switches off specters regeneration ability permanently for duration of fight BUT it does overall 40% less damage. So this silver sword is pretty shit for everything other than specters but it absolutely murders specters. Armors are much more alike as there are far more of them but they still work like tools.

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Overall combat and whole process around it is much more enjoyable. You don't need to spec into Queen if you want to go full frontal with pack of enemies because blocking/riposte works really well in combat and in fact it is much more preferable way of doing things than both as long as you can pull it off. You can also go into heavy armor and poise so you won't be staggered around like crazy in vanilla TW3. The bigger groups of enemies are problem but you can pop up blizzard which will slow down time before every strike and riposte/prance around in full group of enemies which was not really possible in TW3 vanilla.

What i described isn't really full either. Imho the strongest point of mod is that it enables shitload of builds compared to vanilla and you can really create interesting builds. Virtually no part of combat and systems around it was untouched.

 

[Perkel]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/557658942151327774/557659123630604366/Witcher3_walk1.webm

edit:

codex doesn't support webms from discord

Waiting for DarkUnderlord to say something about it.

 

[Perkel]

I still can't believe how good looking TW3 is at times, especially dusk.
IDK why CDPR wanted this shitty fog everywhere as when you remove it game looks a lot better:

 

[Perkel]

W3EE changes:

- shields support (requires additional mod files)
- capes
- helms
- Witcher 2 armor sets

And nostalgia overload in picture original Witcher 1 Raven armor:

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Perkel in the W3EE notes, it says that counters are manual, so like the slash counter is the short distance one, the shoulder is middle distance, and the kick is the long distance. But is there a fucntional difference, beyond animations? Like, why would you use one over the other?

 

[Perkel]

Perkel in the W3EE notes, it says that counters are manual, so like the slash counter is the short distance one, the shoulder is middle distance, and the kick is the long distance. But is there a fucntional difference, beyond animations? Like, why would you use one over the other?

Kick - can trip enemy, can stagger enemy, huge stamina decrease for enemy which can lead to no stamina and enemies would stagger constantly effectively stunlocking them. Thanks to this you can also handle shield guys as kick doesn't stagger you when you hit shield.

Shoulder is the same as kick but it closes distance to enemy wile kick is mostly stationary and require you to be very close to enemy. Framkly speaking i never even used one of those yet.

Counter - does damage, time well enough and you will be countering left and right not even pressing any button. Imho best way to use it is to cover it with block. So you block and just before hit you quickly disengage and engage block causing counter, though you need to watch out on stronger hits if you are not specialized

The point of all of this is to change TW3 gameplay which resolved around non stop dodging to the sides. IN W3EE even at start you can actually go into group of enemies and as long as you know what you are doing they will not be able to stun lock you like in vanilla which is why tw3 gameplay was what it was.

edit:

i was wrong about shoulder smash. It has change of knocking enemy down but doesn't incurs huge stamina penalty on enemy, kick CAN trip someone but only when their stamina is depleted and it is chance based.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Which mod (w3ee or ghost mode) makes enemies parry/dodge more? That's one of the major issues with vanilla combat, you can just spam attacks, because the enemies barely defend (even though the code is there). It's a mystery why CDProjekt never made that code work.

 

[Perkel]

W3EE for sure. IDK about ghost mode.