The Witcher 3

The author

You can skip this part if you don't care about who i am. I'm not going to present myself, but instead i plan to show who i am in the modding community to prove that i'm not completely ignorant. Although you should not consider this article as the one and only guide to modding, but instead you should see it as one new article on the subject.

I [Aeltoth] am the author of a few script based mods:

Coding stuff is my thing, i don't do texture mods, i don't do UI mods, only script mods. That's why this guide will explain how to install script mods. Which is a good thing because once you understand how to install a script mod, you understand how to install any type of mod.

Vocabulary

Any specific term this article will use is written here. It is important to understand most of them.

The game directory is where you installed The Witcher 3
A mod is what modifies the game
A dlc adds content to the game
A menu, often paired with a mod allows you tweak values inside the mod
A script is always inside a mod. This is the code for this mod.
A merge is the resulting script of two combined mods
A script-merger is a little tool whose job is to simplify the merging process. It will detect what needs merging, it will even merge them for you. But it's not perfect, sometimes if two mods modify the same part of the game, it will create...
A conflict, it's when the script-merger you used could not determine which version to pick. Should it use mod A or mod B if both touch the same part of the game? He can't decide for you and will then ask you to decide.

Requirements

You will need a few tools to install mods. Some of them are not necessary but you may waste hours if you don't use them.

The game and its version

some mods, or even guides, will ask you to downgrade the version of your game to "ensure better compatibilty". You should know this is completely wrong because there is no difference between the latest version 1.32 and the one often claimed to be more compatible 1.31.

I personally checked by doing a git-diff (a tool made for spotting differences between two versions of a software). The only change from the two versions was the move of a 5 lines function from one file to another. From my point of view it's a change they forgot to ship with 1.31 and chose to wait for 1.32 because the fact this function is in file A instead of B makes literally no difference.

The only difference between those two versions is the added chinese support. So save yourself an hour and don't downgrade.

The tools

Mod manager

The Witcher 3 is a game that was not developped with modding in mind, this means that modding the game is much more rustic and complex than other games like Skyrim or Valheim. It is so complex that the few mod managers you can find for the game cannot realistically handle all the steps you'd have to do when installing mods. This creates one big issue, mod managers will sometimes stop working correctly and will cause mayhem in your current modlist.

This is the reason i will suggest you not to use a mod manager and instead rely on your good old brain. The fact a mod manager will fail one out of the two cases adds so much randomness to the process it is simpler to do it manually. With mod managers you will have to learn the worflow of the manager but also know the manual workflow to confirm it did not break your game.

This is not an enjoyable modding experience.

Script Merger

The only tool you will need as a mod user is a script-merger. If you're wondering what a script merger is, please read the Vocabulary section. The most commonly used script merger is this one: Script Merger on NexusMods. If you want an alternative that is open-source, you could use my implementation of a script merger. But it won't be as good & intuitive as the first one i linked.

Mod limit

As i said earlier the game was not made with mods in mind, and you will quickly notice that. After you've installed a few mods you will hit what is known as the mod limit. Once you reach the limit, sometimes after 10 mods, sometimes after only 1, the game will randomly get stuck during loading screens.

To fix that inconvenient issue, you need to patch the executable with a mod limit fix. You can find such a tool here: Mod limit fix on NexusMods

The most important tool

Patience. Every minute you'll save by not reading the install instructions of a mod will be this time multiplied by ten trying to fix the mess you made in your game. Or this could be said differently, take a minute or two to read the install instructions to save you hours of troubleshooting.

My mods comment sections (and not only mine, all of them) are filled with people asking questions that were answered in the documentation. They had to wait ten hours only to be redirected to the documentation, where they eventually solved their issues by doing what they could have done right at the beginning.

Installing

Now that you have your tools all setup you can start installing mods. To guide you through the process i picked three mods i think will be perfect candidates. Not because they're cool mods but because one is big in terms of scripts and includes a menu, the second is small but includes scripts, a dlc, and a menu. And the third one is big, contains scripts, DLCs and menus and most importantly it has a high chance to create conflicts during the merge

From there, you are not expected to follow along but the article will do as if.

Download

Start by downloading the mods. The three mods we picked are simple, they are not split in two, all well organised in single zip archives. But you may have noticed something different with Friendly HUD. It has a requirement, or a dependency as we call it in software development. It means Friendly HUD won't work without its dependency: Community Patch - Base, so download it as well.

Community patches and Shared mods

It's important we talk about these mods. You may be wondering why would a mod have a dependency, the mod author could just include the other mod with his mod. Including a mod with another mod creates many issues, let's say both mod B and C require mod A. If both B and C included A, you'd find yourself with two versions of A installed in your game. The script merger would then see conflicts everywhere because both now mods have the same edits in their code.

That's where depenencies like the community patches and sharedutils shine, when a mod uses one of them you know it will at least be compatible with other mods that also depend on these. Also once you have installed a shared mod, you no longer have to install it for the other mods that need it. It makes mod management simpler.

Installing the mods

Let's start by the simplest of the three: Combat Skills. Navigate into the archive until you see three folders: mods, dlc and bin. Installing a mod when the folders are organised like this is dead simple, open the game directory and drop the three folders directly into your game directory folder.

Combat skills is now installed. You could launch the game now and everything should work as expected.

Now for a more complicated one: Friendly HUD. The way Ghost (the author of FHUD) packs her mod is a bit different than the others but it is still pretty simple. Open the archive and you will see a folder named modFriendlyHUD, because it starts with mod you know it should be dropped into your mods folder inside your game directory.
Once you have done that open the modFriendlyHUD folder and you will notice a bin folder in it, if you remember how we did for CombatSkills you should already know what to do. Bin folders are supposed to be dropped into your game directory as well, so take it and drop it inside your game directory.

Now is a good time to remind you to read the install instructions of the mods you are installing, especially the Friendly HUD ones. Friendly HUD needs the Community Patch - Base to work. So download it and open the archive, you will see two folders in it: mods and content. This is again the same process, drop these two folders inside your game directory. Accept when prompted to replace a file.

Let's move on to the third mod: LEGO. This one is a bit different because it is actually a collection of mods. But you will see it is again the same process: three folders mods, bin, dlc that you need to drop into your game folder.
And that's it.

The Witcher 3 Notes

A gentle introduction to modding The Witcher 3

Summary