Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Decline Yet Another Witcher 3 Mod Pack (deprecated)

Joined
Nov 29, 2016
Messages
1,832
Dedicated to PorkyThePaladin

Tagging in people who showed interest in this:
Grauken
Haplo
Beowulf
Storyfag
moraes
hivemind
RoSoDude
Jinn

DISCLAIMER AND CREDITS

***This is a compilation of other people's mods with my own tweaks and compatibility patches that allow them to be used together with the latest version of the game. I do not claim authorship of any of the below mods. If any modder whose work is a part of this pack wants me to take this pack down, please shoot me a PM on this forum and I will do so as soon as I am able.***

Minus my own changes, this pack consists of the following:

-Atmospheric Nights by olegkuz1997 (https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/1305)
-Better Combat Evolved 3.0 by ETI & etisvoloch (https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/1686)
-Witcher Book Collection by KasparsBITELV (https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/1265/)
-Boostrap by rmemr (https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/2109/)
-Crossbow Damage Boost and Balance by Fnts (https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/1126/)
-Custom Localization Fix by uacvax (https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/897/)
-Enemy Scaling & Gameplay Overhaul by nolenthar (https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/1185)
-No GPS by leethx (https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/1562/)
-No Instant Kill on Knockdown by Siniath (https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/1451)
-Primer by SkylineR390 (https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/1318)
-Random Encounters by erxv (https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/785/)
-All NPC Scabbards by eguitar01 (https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/1569/)
-SharedImports by rmemr (https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/2110/)
-Nitpicker's Patch by chuckcash (https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/2117)

These guys deserve all the credit, I'm just the stupid monkey who put all this shit together and smoothened some rough edges to ensure different changes don't conflict with one another.

I go over the major, foundational changes in the manual, but for a full breakdown of what each mod does feel free to check out their respective nexus pages.

INTRODUCTION

Do you wish Witcher 3 had more (or any) meaningful systems? Do you mourn the progressive destruction of Witcher 1's excellent alchemy system throughout the series? Do you have autism? Well boy do I have a mod pack for you. I call it the "Last Wish Edition" because the last wish I am going to make before slitting my fucking wrists would be to never have made this pack in the first place.

Jokes aside, I think I've put together a combination of mods, held together by my own tweaks and compatibility patches, that substantially improves the game. My philosophy was for every change to either fix existing issues (including some major bugs that have, for whatever reason, survived to the latest version of the game thanks to CDPR not being very good at things) or introduce changes that would introduce meaning and depth to systems: combat now requires some tactics as opposed to merely decent timing, alchemy is restored to its former glory, nights are no longer just reskinned days, etc. At the same time I avoided changes that introduced entirely new systems to the game, as the more radical the change, the more likely said change is to be a bad one.

The pack comes with a fairly comprehensive manual noting installation instructions (please follow them carefully), going over modded features, and so on. Please read the manual. I had originally made this pack for myself and a few friends and decided to upload it here on a whim, so the documentation of the new features isn't terribly extensive (again, refer to individual mod pages if the summary of what this mod does is not sufficient), however the documentation of various considerations and instructions is.

Many parts of the modpack are customizable, but you don't have to figure out the most optimal settings but yourself. I have provided the suggested settings to use in the manual.

Finally, I recommend playing using the regular New Game start and the Deathwish Difficulty. This mod should work on an existing save, as long as you drink a clearing potion in game to reset Geralt's abilities and reinitialize all of the mods, however this is sub-optimal and I am not going to be held responsible if your saves get corrupted or something.

INSTALLATION

Please refer to the manual for installation instructions. The process is relatively painless and only slightly more complicated than dragging and dropping the modded files into the game's directory. Afterwards you will have to edit/add a few lines in the game's input.settings ini file. Finally, after starting a new game, you will have to configure the mod options using the recommended settings I provided which should take a few more minutes.

FEATURES:

Again, rather than list every single change I am going to go over the major, foundational areas of the game and explain how they have been overhauled.

Tacticool Combat
All you need to win in vanilla Witcher 3 is a light attack, the step-dodge, and a functional spinal cord. That is because you can chain attacks forever, and dodges cancel your animations allowing you to evade attacks at absolutely any time, even mid-swing. All you need your stamina bar for is the ocassional sign use, which will be Quen in 80% of the cases or Yrden/Axii for wraiths/alghouls respectively or Igni if you are going for the brainless sign builds. The game's "challenge" comes from tackling monsters 5+ levels above you, who get bonuses which massively bloat their HP and damage output beyond what their higher level actually gives them, and is more of a pain-in-the-ass war of attrition than a genuine challenge.

The changes in this modpack change this dynamic considerable. First of all, every single action now has an associated stamina cost. Meanwhile signs cost ~66% of the stamina barThis happens to make a world of difference; in the vanilla game, over-extension and positioning are rarely concerns, but with the mod they are one of the many tactical considerations that are on the player's mind most of the time. Since you can't dodge forever, powerful solitary monsters can wear you down and hordes will utterly gangrape you unless you actually use your brain and employ various tactics. Debuff or thin out the enemy with bombs and the crossbow, use signs to create vulnerabilities and chokepoints, always reposition yourself to avoid becoming surrounded, and come prepared with the right potions and oils. Every melee attack now has a role - fast for dodgers, heavy if you have the stamina for it, rend against armored opponents, and whirl against tightly-packed groups - and are available from the start, along with alternate sign modes, so that you have all the basic combat options from the very beginning of the game.

The three armour classes now come with new sets of bonuses and maluses. For example, Heavy Armour dramatically increases vitality and attack power, but decreases stamina regeneration while increasing stamina costs for actions, making you move like a tank while hitting like a truck. Meanwhile, Light Armour turns you into an agile glass cannon. Having tested several builds, I can say that using the armour of different weights actually makes the gameplay wildly different.

A small but crucial change is the removal of the autolock (it can be turned back on if you wish). This means that every attack needs to be manually aimed. This removes the annoying and often lethal occurrence of attacking the wrong target. There is an added element of challenge as you actually must track moving enemies with your mouse/gamepad as the game won't do it for you; however, thanks to greater precision, it is also a possible to benefit from this change by making attacks from angles that do not expose you or even by hitting multiple enemies with a single heavy attack.

Higher-level monsters no longer have bloated stats. They are still benefit from being higher level, but their difficulty is not artificially inflated.

Unfucked Upscaling
Upscaling is necessary to Witcher 3 as it is too easy to overlevel the main quest. However, the vanilla alogrithm is strange and annoying. When upscaled 20+ levels, many enemies would turn into HP sponges. Infamously, Rats and Djinn turn into deathmachines when upscaled. In the Blood and Wine expansion pack, Geralt would often level past 50, which meant that Toussaint enemies would match his level and severely overlevel end-game gear, forcing the player to either be stuck with cool, statistically inadequate shit or switching over to level-scaled generic items which is no fun at all.

So I configured ESGO to produce the following scaling formula: Enemies 5 or less levels below Geralt are scaled to his level. Enemies 6-14 levels below Geralt are scaled to be exactly 5 levels below him. Finally, enemies 15- levels below Geralt are scaled exactly 10 levels below him. This means that enemies lower than Geralt in level are still relatively weaker but still pose a challenge and are, for the most part, not reduced to a one-shot fodder as is the case without upscaling.

You can customize the upscaling formula in whichever way you wish through a convenient in-game interface if you are unsatisfied with my preset.

Real Alchemy for Real People

This mod pack includes the Primer which I consider to be the single greatest mod made for the entire Witcher series. Simply put, it tries to recreate the Witcher 1 alchemy system as faithfully as possible. Alchemical preparations need certain base substances to be created, however each base substance can be derived from 10-20 different ingredients, so its never a matter of grinding for the single correct material. For instance, Rebis is a base substance that can be found in Celandine (a common plant) as well as Drowner Brains and about a dozen other things. What this means is that acquiring ingredients is no longer akin to mindlessly fulfilling a checklist like in the vanilla game or GM but rather the natural result of exploration and combat. While potions are harder and more expensive to make than in vanilla, they also last for the better part of the day with some skill investment, which means that potion use is less of a temporary buff and more of a major mechanic you actually need to approach with some planning and forethought. Witcher 1 alchemy is wonderful because it creates a very engaging and, for the lack of a better term, """immersive""" gameplay loop of exploration and preparation before major combat encounters. For example, after taking on a witcher contract and identifying the monster in question, you may have to actually return to an alchemist/settlement or set up a campfire in the wilderness and take a second to brew the right oils/potions/bombs for the job, which rarely happens in the vanilla game as typically you have all the resources you need at all times.

Instructions for how the new alchemy system are included in the manual.

Meaningful Day/Night cycle

Remember nights from Witcher 1? The quiet rural landscape would transform into one of those horror slavic tales I was read as a kid, full of ghouls and ghosts. That is why, much like the monsters they hunt, Witchers come out at night. Geralt prepared at day and hunted at night, almost like a nocturnal animal.

In vanilla Witcher 3, on the other hand, night is just a reskinned day. So I attempted to recreate the day/night dynamic of the original game using several mods.

First of all, Geralt now starts the game with an ability that grants a bonus to passive health renegeration in daytime and a bonus to stamina regeneration during nighttime. This simple change turns the time of day into a serious consideration. Daytime is more suited for exploring, where long-term health regeneration is a factor, but for long, critical fights one could benefit from the nighttime bonus. In other words, just like in Witcher 1 there is an incentive to explore during the day and hunt during the night.

Of course, the world in W3 is very static and there aren't, to my knowledge, new enemy spawns or behaviors during the night save for a few nocturnal creatures becoming marginally more powerful. So I found a mod which I configured to randomly spawn various nocturnal monsters (wolves if you are lucky, ekkimma if you are not) some distance away from Geralt at random intervals, ONLY at night and in the wilderness. These monsters actually act dynamically by hunting passive creatures but will wander towards Geralt's initial position at the time of their spawn, so that you will have a choice of hunting or evading them.

Finally, nights are now dark. Like, really dark. Cat potions are your friends.

If you hate the idea of dark nights and random encounters, that, too, can be changed or disabled in-game.

Better Economy

Buy prices have been multiplied, sell prices halved. Free loot in civilized areas has been dramatically reduced, as has the availability of valuable and rare shit like alchemy bases or dimeritium ores. Basically, Geralt should now be relatively poor throughout his journey into Velen, as opposed to the vanilla game where poverty ended soon after White Orchard. Of course, your mileage will vary by the amount of looting and side-objectives you do; I am a completionist and grab every single question mark on the map, and managed to afford every late-game moneysink while floating 20-30k by the end of the game, however I was reduced to below 1k gold several times throughout the playthrough, even after level 20.

Better Economy, Reprise

I created an additional, optional mod that is installed over the mod pack.

The purpose of this mod is to take inconsequential stealing opportunities out of the game. Tripping over rare materials in villages while getting crap loot in treasure chests is ridiculous.

What it do:
-Made all generic sacks, crates, and barrels unlootable.
-Revised common chests to contain common and useful gear.
-Human enemies now have more diverse loot tables and a higher chance of
dropping more stuff.
-Doubled all loot in dungeons, caves, and mines.
-Caves contain an inflated chance of containing alchemy ingredients;
-Mines contain an inflated chance of containing metals and ores;
-Dungeons have diverse loot tables.

In theory and in the period of time I spent testing this, there should no longer be free loot in civilized place except for common chests which are rare and/or hidden and no longer contain rare items.

I have NOT TESTED THE ENTIRE GAME using this mod. I have no idea what long-term ramifications for the game's economy these changes will bring. Use at your own risk.

This mod is compatible with existing saves. See bottom of the post for download link.

EDIT: I should mention that Toussaint is unaffected and uses vanilla loot tables. The main reason for this is that the loot categories in the .xml files are rather unintuitive for Blood & Wine so I'd rather not touch anything rather than break everything by accident. I suppose Toussaint is meant to be a land of milk and honey...


THE UGLY

As I had originally planned to assemble this pack for myself and a few people who weren't really concerned with modding the game themselves, I have taken some...shortcuts in implementing my fixes and changes. If you are familiar with the way the scripts are merged for this game, I kinda injected the majority of my changes into the merged files as opposed to creating a new mod and merging that with the rest of the mods. In other words, I did something quick, easy, and absolutely inelegant. Does this affect the actual game? Not really. However, if you plan on modding the game, pretty much anything that alters a script, .ws or .xml file has a pretty good chance of undoing my changes during the script merging process and fucking a bunch of things up. The game might still be playable, but one or more things are going to be broken under its hood. So as a rule of thumb, try not to install any more script altering mods on top of this pack. Graphical mods and everyone's favorite nudity patches should probably be fine, though.

While I am quite serious when I claim that this version of the game has less balance and technical issues than fully patched vanilla game, there are some issues to keep in mind. The vast majority of them are rather minor, like the descriptions of a few abilities being different from their actual effects. There is also a few issues in the early game, for example you have to choose to skip the combat tutorial with Vesemir to progress. These issues and their solutions are all documented in the manual.

To the 1.5 people that actually play this, please let me know if any bugs or issues pop up.

FOOTAGE

720p and youtube's large player recommended as lossless video compression is a secret to me.


Pardon the 5:4 resolution (old monitor) and shitty youtube compression.

This is a very early and fairly challenging Lvl5 fight at a bandit camp situated on an island south of Crow Perch.

I used basic hanged man's venom on the Viper Steel Sword, bottled water (which heals you for a very small amount over a long period of time in this mod pack as opposed to basically being a healing potion), basic Thunderbolt and Maribor's Forest potion to do as much damage as possible in a short period of time. Since I am taking toxicity damage, I keep White Honey in slot 4 which ends up saving me.

I chose to fight during daytime so that the increased passive health regeneration would offset some of the toxicity damage I was taking. I made a few retarded mistakes, like misjudging the range of the initial heavy attack, but I also got lucky with one of the arbalists nailing the halberdier in the back. I figured showing this footage of an imperfect play would be a better representation of the game than a flawless run.







You can compare and contrast with the light armour video or even the parry video by Crunchy on page 2. A more grounded fighting style with emphasis on heavy attacks and parries is more preferable with heavy armour's glacial stamina regen rate, plus you are stacking a lot of bonus damage % which is a must when fighting DLC enemies. At the same time the AI is much more aggressive than in vanilla so you can't right click your way to victory - sorry, Crunch. Still, there are mistakes and/or sloppy parts - I should have popped way more free Quens during blizzard's slow-mo to take advantage of my set bonus, there was a lot of shitty parry timing, etc (in my defense, my main playthrough is a light armour build in which I rarely parry.) Oh well, the aim of these videos is not to demonstrate my skill (or lack thereof).

This build is heavily focused on adrenaline and vitality with euphoria mutation (mutated blood/skin may have synergized better with how tanky this build is).

Besides Blizzard, I used Swallow (unnecessarily increased toxicity for the second round of combat but whatever), Full Moon (maximum vitality, maximum tankiness) and Tawny Owl (with this mod pack heavy armour very hard to use without tawny owl. I would walk around in medium armour until I found an opportunity to pop TO and switch to a heavier set. Think of it like power armour in Codex' favorite RPG, Fallout 4)

You might notice that I sharply turn my mouse when power attacking adjacent enemies to hit several of them. This is possible thanks to the softlock is being disabled. A more advanced version of this is performing a heavy attack that not only damages the enemy but also moves you out of the range of their attack - not sure if I performed any in the above runs but definitely fun to land, though very risky. Something like a Witcher version of a Talhoffer masterstroke.

What is much less risky is the Whirl rapechain. Although I have since changed the Blizzard slowdown duration, so effectiveness of Blizzard-assisted whirl is no longer representantive. There are two ways to maintain a very long/infinite Whirl attack, being an adrenaline-focused build or the use of Superior Blizzard. I had both, of course. The former entails 3+ enemies consistently and the latter killing someone every 6 or less seconds to keep the slowmo going, so you still need to set up the whirl chain by getting a good chokepoint going and preferably softening up enemies with bombs or debuffing them with aard or yrden, and getting rid of shields/polearms/archers first. It is a bit of a double edged-sword, as you need a thick group of enemies to keep the whirl going but that many can typically score free, so changing directions and distributing damage more or less evenly is a must. Quen shield, especially when used with ursine armour, does help a lot in being more aggressive with your whirls. It should be noted that enemies can still hit you when doing a charge attack from behind, so its not an unbeatable strategy although it is still ridiculously effective against massive groups compared to alternatives, as I suppose it should be.

Naturally, this hanse base is particularly well suited to Whirl due to its staircase.

Lastly, I mostly ignored the archers as late game + heavy armour render them more or less an inconvenience, although they still staggered me. When I ended the video there were still a few of them left plus the guy who lit the distress beacon, but at that point my victory was certain.

(Incidentally, I might redo the light armour video given the quantity of sloppiness in it. Maybe even base it in this base to showcase how two different late-game playstyles tackle the same challenge? We'll see.)



DOWNLOAD THE MOD PACK:


MEGA Link for Modpack:
https://mega.nz/#!L3BiCZ4L!YcPk5jDfSqwxNH-1VSnEHXvr1Jl9OeT8275bhJRkOfg
MEGA Link for Loot Rebalance:
https://mega.nz/#!7ypzwCLA!GsgimWuFC8KKS21XuXaXnCzlVK0zdd67io_wI-4o1w8
 
Last edited:
Joined
Nov 29, 2016
Messages
1,832
one question:

have you tried playing with this combat mod? https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/2521/?

if yes how would you say it compares to the combat changes in your pack?

You actually asked the opposite question of Perkel when he created the thread for EE, lol.

I considered EE as the base for the mod pack months ago when I was putting it together. I can't remember if I actually got around to playing that mod but I decided against it. Bear in mind that it was different months ago from what it is now.

Basically, at the time at least, it was a complete overhaul that changed the game. I was wary of it for a few reasons. Firstly, many of the changes focused on realism for realism's sake: health and weight carried affect Geralt's stamina regeneration, silver and steel swords do almost the same damage but the former break much quicker, etc. Poise and combo meters have been added to the game for some reason, gear and monsters were virtually deleveled - the sheer scope of the changes made me think the chances of them being good ones were slim considering this is the work of a single person and not a team of modders. I also saw that there were some game-breaking problems with later DLC enemies that had not been addressed and according to other posters, the mod pretty much expected you to constantly tinker with settings and adjust the game to taste, rather than providing a set of suggested settings. At the time EE also had a shitty alchemy system and had not addressed the economy in any way - not certain if that is still the case.

As I said in that thread, I could very well be talking out of my ass since I never got around to playing the entire campaign through with EE, whereas I did beat the game with BCE and Primer so I could be certain of the latter's quality, so take this with a grain of salt.
 
Joined
Nov 29, 2016
Messages
1,832
Here is some footage:



Pardon the 5:4 resolution (old monitor) and shitty youtube compression. Watch in HD and windowed for best results.

This is a very early and fairly challenging Lvl5 fight at a bandit camp situated on an island south of Crow Perch.

I used basic hanged man's venom on the Viper Steel Sword, bottled water (which heals you for a very small amount over a long period of time in this mod pack as opposed to basically being a healing potion), basic Thunderbolt and Maribor's Forest potion to do as much damage as possible in a short period of time. Since I am taking toxicity damage, I keep White Honey in slot 4 which ends up saving me.

I chose to fight during daytime so that the increased passive health regeneration would offset some of the toxicity damage I was taking. I made a few retarded mistakes, like misjudging the range of the initial heavy attack, but I also got lucky with one of the arbalists nailing the halberdier in the back. I figured showing this footage of an imperfect play would be a better representation of the game than a flawless run.

In the future I will be uploading some footage of heavy armour fighting, which feels and looks completely different.
 

RoSoDude

Arcane
Joined
Oct 1, 2016
Messages
723
Carrying over the comment chain from the original thread. Underlining is mine.

Alright, pack will be uploaded in a few hours.

This game has been sitting in my Steam library for a good while now -- I was considering trying it sometime with the Ghost Mode mod. How does your setup compare? I'm not so concerned with how vanilla things are, because the vanilla mechanics and systems didn't impress me. The caveat to this is that some modders don't know what the hell they're doing, and this shows the more that they change; Enhanced Edition seemed cool at first but ultimately looked bloated and too motivated by "muh realism" over sensible gameplay design.

Ghost Mode seems like a really good effort and probably the most polished and problem-free overhaul. IMO it doesn't go far enough in two major areas:

1. Combat: while certain porcine pilgrims may disagree, as long as one has a rudimentary sense of timing, the entirety of Witcher 3 can be beaten by spamming left click and occasionally pressing the step-dodge button to interrupt your attack animation and evade the enemy. Now, some enemies have movesets that are trickier to dodge, and large groups will require you to dodge more often, but as long as you can follow the rhythm of a tribal drum beat you don't really need to change anything about your playstyle. You may even cast some sort of sign whenever your stamina bar fills up if you feel particularly inclined, but in 90% of encounters that is not even necessary. The point is that most of the time you are trying different strategies, tactics, and builds because you are too bored of left clicking everything all the time, not because different situations actually push you to diversify your playstyle (with the exceptions of certain enemies that typically require 1 sign to be made vulnerable, like axii vs alghouls and yrden vs wraiths)

BCE fixes this by introducing stamina costs to every action, from dodge to attacks, and making it impossible to do said actions if your stamina is too low. Think Dark Souls. This happens to make a world of difference; in the vanilla game, over-extension and positioning are rarely concerns, but with the mod they are one of the many tactical considerations that are on the player's mind most of the time. Since you can't dodge forever, powerful solitary monsters can wear you down and hordes will utterly gangrape you unless you actually use your brain and employ various tactics. Debuff or thin out the enemy with bombs and the crossbow, use signs to create vulnerabilities and chokepoints, always reposition yourself to avoid becoming surrounded, and come prepared with the right potions and oils. Every melee attack now has a role - fast for dodgers, heavy against parry-happy foes, rend against armored opponents, and whirl against tightly-packed groups - and are available from the start, along with alternate sign modes, so that you have all the basic combat options from the very beginning of the game.

2. Alchemy. Unfortunately GM is designed to work with Preparations, which emulates the dickless alchemy system from Witcher 2. I use Primer which I consider to be the single greatest mod made for the entire Witcher series. Simply put, it tries to recreate the Witcher 1 alchemy system as faithfully as possible. Alchemical preparations need certain base substances to be created, however each base substance can be derived from 10-20 different ingredients, so its never a matter of grinding for the single correct material. For instance, Rebis is a base substance that can be found in Celandine (a common plant) as well as Drowner Brains and about a dozen other things. What this means is that acquiring ingredients is no longer akin to mindlessly fulfilling a checklist like in the vanilla game or GM but rather the natural result of exploration and combat. While potions are harder and more expensive to make than in vanilla, they also last for the better part of the day with some skill investment, which means that potion use is less of a temporary buff and more of a major mechanic you actually need to approach with some planning and forethought. Witcher 1 alchemy is wonderful because it creates a very engaging and, for the lack of a better term, """immersive""" gameplay loop of exploration and preparation before major combat encounters. For example, after taking on a witcher contract and identifying the monster in question, you may have to actually return to an alchemist/settlement or set up a campfire in the wilderness and take a second to brew the right oils/potions/bombs for the job, which rarely happens in the vanilla game as typically you have all the resources you need at all times.

I share your caution in regards to overly ambitious mods and EE, by the way. I tried to look for elements that would fix specific problems or implement specific features that were lacking rather than just add new shit just 'cause.

I really appreciated the underlined comments -- that's exactly what I was hoping to hear. Without fail, I bore of any game that doesn't actually push me to engage with its mechanics and systems. If the only incentive to experiment is to stave off boredom rather than actually stay alive and conquer challenges, I'll probably just sleepwalk through the game or uninstall completely. So, this is all very good news for me, as someone who was on the fence about playing this supposedly mindblowing GOAT 10/10 hiking simulator that I got on sale a few months ago.

You also answered some of my other questions with this: notably, whether your modpack included the option to turn off autolock, and if there's been anything done to keep the player from going into everyone's houses and raiding all of their possessions. I think I'll wait for that looting update and give it a shot then.

Just one last question: as someone who's never played the vanilla game, how intuitive are the updated systems? Are most tooltips accurate, communicated, etc? It's going to suck if I have to sift through the documentation of multiple mods because something differs from vanilla in a way that prevents me from looking it up.
 
Joined
Nov 29, 2016
Messages
1,832
I really appreciated the underlined comments -- that's exactly what I was hoping to hear. Without fail, I bore of any game that doesn't actually push me to engage with its mechanics and systems. If the only incentive to experiment is to stave off boredom rather than actually stay alive and conquer challenges, I'll probably just sleepwalk through the game or uninstall completely. So, this is all very good news for me, as someone who was on the fence about playing this supposedly mindblowing GOAT 10/10 hiking simulator that I got on sale a few months ago.

You also answered some of my other questions with this: notably, whether your modpack included the option to turn off autolock, and if there's been anything done to keep the player from going into everyone's houses and raiding all of their possessions. I think I'll wait for that looting update and give it a shot then.

Just one last question: as someone who's never played the vanilla game, how intuitive are the updated systems? Are most tooltips accurate, communicated, etc? It's going to suck if I have to sift through the documentation of multiple mods because something differs from vanilla in a way that prevents me from looking it up.

Yeah, the sleepwalking vs engagement thing is something I am very cognizant of. Vanilla Witcher 3 felt like an interactive movie, but the modded game incentivizes you to interact with meaningful systems and actually engages you as a result. I tried to reinforce the latter as much as possible when choosing which mods to integrate into the pack.

The altered abilities, gear, etc. have updated descriptions. One ability and two mutations have wrong descriptions and the correct ones are listen in the manual.

I have provided instructions for the new alchemy system in the manual, but it is not very difficult to get the hang of, particularly if you've ever played Witcher 1 or even 2.

There is little in the way of entirely new systems, so I can't really think of anything that is unexplained or oblique. If you review the considerations and primer sections of the manual as well as the abilities Geralt has at the start of the game, you will be okay.
 

anvi

Prophet
Village Idiot
Joined
Oct 12, 2016
Messages
7,522
Location
Kelethin
None of this stuff will make the combat any less boring. Modding only seems to go so far, and it isn't any way near far enough.
 

Sentinel

Arcane
Joined
Nov 18, 2015
Messages
6,590
Location
Ommadawn
Does this collection address the HP bloat enemies have? I'm all up for reworking stamina and enemy damage but if each individual bandit takes 7 hits to kill I'm passing.
 
Joined
Nov 29, 2016
Messages
1,832
Does this collection address the HP bloat enemies have? I'm all up for reworking stamina and enemy damage but if each individual bandit takes 7 hits to kill I'm passing.

Well a lot of variables go into that: relative level, enemy type, player build, mutagens/potions/oils used, etc.

For example, in the video above you can see that the level 6 bandit leader is tankier than the rest of the dipshits in gambesons.

Statistically, regular human enemies in the mod have less health than in vanilla but armoured enemies (example: Knights of the Flaming Rose) have more. The damage multiplier for the heavy attack has increased making it more efficient against those types of enemies. Of course, Rend also works wonders against armour and shields and you have that ability from the very start of the game now.

I would say that the video gives you a pretty good idea of human enemy HP - 2-3 power attacks vs 5-6 light attacks. However I cannot in confidence extrapolate that to every single encounter in the game as it depends on too many factors.

If you are concerned about 500% hp bonus higher-level enemies get, that has been entirely removed.
 

a cut of domestic sheep prime

Guest
If you are concerned about 500% hp bonus higher-level enemies get, that has been entirely removed.
Yeah, this was probably the most annoying thing in Witcher 3.

I'm all for punishing a newb who takes on a level 31 quest, but to make it comically unwinable at level 25 and easy as pie 5 levels later is just boring.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed certain enemies having dark souls tier health bars, but when it comes down to just taking the quests in the wrong order, it feels pretty cheap.

My most challenging fights in vanilla were with the quest with two wyverns and the royal wyvern, and some random forktale I stumbled upon in the woods. Then I started taking quests in order and all the challenge disappeared.

Oh, and nothing breaks immersion like slaughtering a group of level 7 bandits easily, but coming up against a level 9 bandit that soaks damage like his skin is adamantium.
 
Joined
Nov 29, 2016
Messages
1,832
If you are concerned about 500% hp bonus higher-level enemies get, that has been entirely removed.
Yeah, this was probably the most annoying thing in Witcher 3.

I'm all for punishing a newb who takes on a level 31 quest, but to make it comically unwinable at level 25 and easy as pie 5 levels later is just boring.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed certain enemies having dark souls tier health bars, but when it comes down to just taking the quests in the wrong order, it feels pretty cheap.

My most challenging fights in vanilla were with the quest with two wyverns and the royal wyvern, and some random forktale I stumbled upon in the woods. Then I started taking quests in order and all the challenge disappeared.

I tried to do the Missing Brother contract (lvl 31 Arachas) at level 12 just to test how tough high level enemies are without the artificial difficulty. I was pleasantly surprised. The monster was tough and I didn't bother to beat it, but I could see that it was clearly possible with all the proper buffs, preparation, and nailing the timing on its attacks. So now it is certainly possible to play in the "wrong" order for extra challenge, while the upscaling should keep lower-level enemies competitive without turning them into HP sponges.
 

a cut of domestic sheep prime

Guest
I tried to do the Missing Brother contract (lvl 31 Arachas) at level 12 just to test how tough high level enemies are without the artificial difficulty. I was pleasantly surprised. The monster was tough and I didn't bother to beat it, but I could see that it was clearly possible with all the proper buffs, preparation, and nailing the timing on its attacks. So now it is certainly possible to play in the "wrong" order for extra challenge, while the upscaling should keep lower-level enemies competitive without turning them into HP sponges.
I use either your mod or a mod that does the same (I forget) and, yeah, it works as you say and I doubt I would have been patient enough to replay the game without it.

I tried going extra cheese and removed the level requirements from the items on my last run too btw. Which instantly made me realize that most of Geralt's damage potential is determined by what sword he picks up and not any stats. Kind of lame for an RPG if you ask me. Especially one with a line like "it's not the sword but the hand that wields it" (paraphrasing).

Random thoughts:
My ideal mod to fix Witcher 3's combat would be:
remove all level scaling
redefine every enemy's damage, HP & stats with limiters based on racial type rather than quest level - no super wolves, no random bandits that could go toe to toe with the heroes of yore, no weak forktails that fall like they were really big pigeons
refine the player's stats based on the his race rather than his level - HP cap etc so he's never an unkillable HP juggernaut to lower level monsters.
redefine item stats based on item type and materials used rather than player level required
make quest reward items actually a decent improvement compared to random world loot - like the cheap piece of junk Hanzo forges for you
make the potion system more powerful while lowering the number of uses per potion and greatly increasing the default toxicity of each potion (because even on max difficulty I can use a ton of them without any points in potion toxicity)
deflect arrows is always a skill per witcher lore, points in the skill just give you between a 25%, 50%, and 75% chance to passively auto block them.

it'd either be a massive failure in the end or something like gothic meets dark souls :M
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Joined
Nov 29, 2016
Messages
1,832
I have uploaded the additional mod I promised. It is meant to be installed over the modded game.

The purpose of this mod is to take inconsequential stealing opportunities out of the game. Tripping over rare materials in villages while getting crap loot in treasure chests is ridiculous.

What it do:
-Made all generic sacks, crates, and barrels unlootable.
-Revised common chests to contain common and useful gear.
-Human enemies now have more diverse loot tables and a higher chance of
dropping more stuff.
-Doubled all loot in dungeons, caves, and mines.
-Caves contain an inflated chance of containing alchemy ingredients;
-Mines contain an inflated chance of containing metals and ores;
-Dungeons have diverse loot tables.

In theory and in the period of time I spent testing this, there should no longer be free loot in civilized place except for common chests which are rare and/or hidden and no longer contain rare items.

I have NOT TESTED THE ENTIRE GAME using this mod. I have no idea what long-term ramifications for the game's economy these changes will bring. Use at your own risk.

This mod is compatible with existing saves. MEGA download link:

https://mega.nz/#!7ypzwCLA!GsgimWuFC8KKS21XuXaXnCzlVK0zdd67io_wI-4o1w8

EDIT: I should mention that Toussaint is unaffected and uses vanilla loot tables. The main reason for this is that the loot categories in the .xml files are rather unintuitive for Blood & Wine so I'd rather not touch anything rather than break everything by accident. I suppose Toussaint is meant to be a land of milk and honey...
 
Last edited:
Joined
Nov 29, 2016
Messages
1,832
Hey, here is something everyone already knows:

CDPR are a bunch of useless retards.

I tried to fight a fiend today. I write "tried" because the dude just stared and circled me slowly. He would occasionally do a charge attack and sometimes swat at me but otherwise behaved like a house cat would around a vacuum cleaner.

Naturally, my first thought was that I must have broken something.

NOPE.

Turns out update 1.22 introduced a bug that broke fiend and chort AI. This has not been officially fixed and since 1.31 is meant to be the final update, it never will be. Yep. In the game's FINAL GOLD GOTY PLATINUM ENHANCED EDITION, two of the most powerful creatures in the game are lobotomized. Good job, seedy-pee-ar. You pack of dumbfucks.

Anyway. I reuploaded the pack which now includes Nitpicker's Patch, a compilation of graphical fixes that also happens to integrate a fix for this particular issue. If you have already installed the mod pack, you can download Nitpicker's patch from this link. Put the "modNitpickersNoArmorsWellCooked" folder from the .zip into the mods folder in your Witcher 3 game directory.
 

anvi

Prophet
Village Idiot
Joined
Oct 12, 2016
Messages
7,522
Location
Kelethin
Does this collection address the HP bloat enemies have? I'm all up for reworking stamina and enemy damage but if each individual bandit takes 7 hits to kill I'm passing.
Last time I played all the bandits died in a few hits, and that was on the highest difficulty. Can't remember which mod did that but it made it a lot easier. It was supposed to be a sign balance mod but it just made the game dumber than it already was.
 

Sentinel

Arcane
Joined
Nov 18, 2015
Messages
6,590
Location
Ommadawn
Does this collection address the HP bloat enemies have? I'm all up for reworking stamina and enemy damage but if each individual bandit takes 7 hits to kill I'm passing.
Last time I played all the bandits died in a few hits, and that was on the highest difficulty. Can't remember which mod did that but it made it a lot easier. It was supposed to be a sign balance mod but it just made the game dumber than it already was.
I asked that question because my preferred difficulty scaling is one where the player deals x% more damage but takes x% increased damage in return. I can't remember ever having fun in a system where changing difficulty only upped enemy's health pools.
 
Joined
Nov 29, 2016
Messages
1,832
Does this collection address the HP bloat enemies have? I'm all up for reworking stamina and enemy damage but if each individual bandit takes 7 hits to kill I'm passing.
Last time I played all the bandits died in a few hits, and that was on the highest difficulty. Can't remember which mod did that but it made it a lot easier. It was supposed to be a sign balance mod but it just made the game dumber than it already was.
I asked that question because my preferred difficulty scaling is one where the player deals x% more damage but takes x% increased damage in return. I can't remember ever having fun in a system where changing difficulty only upped enemy's health pools.

Yeah, generally making the combat more lethal for everyone is preferable to bloating enemy HP. Not that the majority of devs seem to know that. The hardcore difficulty setting in Dark Messiah, for example, was a massive chore because it took like fifteen hits to kill a single orc to the point where just kicking everyone into pits was much more efficient and boring.

Anyway, I checked since you asked me and the mods also lower the HP bonus every enemy gets in Deathmarch to the Blood and Broken Bones value, so there should be less hp inflation at the highest difficulty level.
 
Joined
Nov 29, 2016
Messages
1,832
Haha, holy shit!

I must have uploaded my personal, customized version of the pack instead of the Codex-Ready version after I added the Nitpicker patch. Whoops. Gonna reupload in a second.

EDIT: Yep. I have both versions of the pack zipped up in the same folder for posterity so I guess I must have dragged the wrong one into Mega. Goddamn this gave me a laugh.

Reuploaded the correct file. Needless to say it this one does not the following folders: ModNewVaginas, modCiri_Bath_Bandage_Removal and modRemoveLingerie. Simply deleting the respective folders from the mods folder in Witcher 3 game directory should remove said mods. Or, you know, keep them. Its on the house. Low-poly tits and ass are on the house.

EDIT 2: File Mix-Up Boogaloo:
Also noticed that the links for the Loot Rebalance thing were broken. They have now been fixed.
 
Last edited:

Jimmious

Arcane
Patron
Joined
May 18, 2015
Messages
5,132
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I'm more impressed by the fact that you guys have time to replay the whole Witcher 3 than anything else.
*Also LOL for NewVaginas mods
 
Joined
Nov 29, 2016
Messages
1,832
Everyone has a weakness and every man has a vice,
Mine are virtual waifus and their pixelized thighs.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom