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The 10 Best The Witcher 2 Mods (Ranked)

Published

9 months ago

July 28, 2023

What are the best The Witcher 2 mods:

The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings is well-loved for its storytelling, not so much for its combat system and game mechanics.

Unfortunately, while this game has a solid foundation, it sometimes feels like development was rushed to the detriment of gameplay.

Fortunately, the modding community hasn’t abandoned this game, and thousands of mods have been created to really make this game shine!

The 10 Best The Witcher 2 Mods

There are a ton of mods for The Witcher 2 on Nexus, but not all of them are essential for making this game the best it can be.

The mods we’ve chosen to highlight have been selected based on the impact they have on gameplay, their ratings, and how stable they are.

So, before you take up the mantle of Witcher once more, take a moment to enjoy our list of the 10 best The Witcher 2 mods:

10. The Witcher 2 Tweaker

Kicking off our list, we have a mod that allows you to turn Witcher 2 into something resembling the best games like Skyrim, at least in terms of graphics!

With The Witcher 2 Tweaker, you will now have the ability to change most of the graphical settings so you can really make your game stand out.

This mod also allows you to save your settings to share with other users or import graphics options created by others.

You can even select a performance profile from this mod depending on how powerful your rig is, so that you don’t render your game instantly unplayable.

Some advanced graphics options you can change include texture size, shadow size, anti-antialias, uber sampling, depth of field, and sharpening.

If you’re able to run this game with ultra settings, you can really bring it to life using this mod, and we highly recommend giving it a try!

9. Better Texture Environment

Speaking of textures, the Better Texture Environment is one of the most popular on Nexus, and it makes some very impressive changes.

This mod changes the in-game textures to high-definition alternatives that really make Witcher 2 look gorgeous.

With Better Texture Environment installed, the world around Geralt will have much more depth, sharpness, and clarity.

There is even an optional mod that adds high-resolution weapon textures, all of which look absolutely amazing.

The Witcher 2 may be over a decade old, but with this mod, it can look just as nice as some of the best Xbox One games, which is a huge improvement!

We highly recommend downloading this mod ASAP if you want your next playthrough of Witcher 2 to look as good as possible!

8. Extra Talents Per LV

One thing that has always bothered us when playing Witcher 2 was that, at his max level, Geralt could only have 34 skills out of 102!

Seriously, nothing is worse than being told how much of a badass you are only to walk out of town to immediately be killed by the first Drowner you come across!

This hardly allows Geralt to become the legendary monster slayer that he’s supposed to be, so this mod was created to fix things!

Extra Talents Per LV works by giving players more talent points with every level up so that you can max out all your skills by the time you’re at level 35.

With this mod, Geralt will no longer feel strangely weak compared to his other iterations, and you can really wear the title of Witcher with pride!

While it’s a tiny change in the grand scheme of things, this mod has a huge impact on gameplay, and we highly recommend trying it out!

7. Better Shop Sale Prices

When you really think about it, Geralt gets ripped off when he sells things in shops, and outside of main quest rewards, it is really difficult to make money in this game.

In the vanilla game, the average price merchants will buy at is 1/24 of an item’s total value, which is absolutely abysmal!

Thankfully, this mod changes the buy price to 1/5 of an item’s value, so you no longer have to farm Nekkers and Drowners just to pay for the bare essentials!

Now, when you walk into a shop with a mystical silver sword, the shopkeeper won’t do his best Rick Harrison impression and tell you the best he can do is one oren.

We don’t know what it is about the best fantasy RPG games that makes shopkeepers stingy, but we’re thankful that mods like this exist to fix things!

6. Weightless Recipes And Schematics Plus

Item weight in Witcher 2 often doesn’t make very much sense, as books can weigh literally nothing, but pieces of paper can weigh 0.1.

Seriously, books in the vanilla version of this game had a default weight of 0, which is baffling, seeing as recipes and schematics have weight!

As the name suggests, this mod takes care of this oversight by making books weigh 0.3, while all recipes, letters, and schematics weigh nothing.

This makes so much more sense, especially given that these items are often just single pieces of paper that really shouldn’t impact encumbrance.

While this is a relatively small change, when you have a limited amount of weight you can carry, every little bit adds up.

Of course, you could also just use Graxster’s Carry Weight Mod which gives Geralt infinite carry capacity if you really don’t want to bother with inventory management!

5. Better Combat

Unlike the best games like The Witcher 3, this sequel was really lacking where combat was concerned.

Better Combat, as you might assume, is geared toward making the combat in the game more balanced and dynamic.

It changes quite a bit about the gameplay, including making it so Geralt’s mixed approach to combat can really stand out.

With this mod, blocking no longer offers complete damage immunity, and different combat paths unlock unique benefits.

For instance, the swordsmanship path now provides more damage to backstab and a chance to instantly kill an enemy.

Steps have also been taken to provide a smoother difficulty curve as you grow stronger throughout the course of the game.

Additionally, certain overpowered abilities have been changed so that they are more balanced, giving you a reason to use different ones.

This mod is an absolute must-have, in our opinion, and it fixes a lot of the complaints that players have about the combat in this game!

4. Experienced Geralt

Jumping into Witcher 2 from the first game, one thing we’ve always wanted to do was kick off things with a fully-specced out Geralt.

While we understand why the game doesn’t do this, it would be nice to kick things off as a Witcher who lives up to his reputation right off the bad.

Well, that’s exactly what this mod does, and needless to say, we absolutely love it! It really shakes up gameplay in an interesting way.

Basically, this mod adds the ability to start a new game with a Geralt who is fully experienced in kicking monster ass.

There are four versions you can choose from that determine which skills are maxed out when you begin.

So you can be a master alchemist, master of magic, or the ultimate swordmaster, with all skills in the corresponding tree unlocked.

Of course, the fourth option is the “Geralt of Rivia” version, which unlocks all of the trees, so you can literally start out as a master of everything!

Geralt is one of the most popular video game characters of all time, thanks to his general badassery, and this mod finally lets you experience it firsthand!

3. Geralt’s Improved Quality of Life

This mod, aside from sounding like it’s giving Geralt a well-needed vacation, is one of the largest collections of QOL fixes on Nexus.

What this mod does is compile a ton of quality-of-life mods into a single one that is an absolute must-have for every player.

Although there are too many changes to cover here, some of the biggest tweaks come from other well-known mods.

These include the Enhanced Mod Compilation, Better Combat for EE with Darkness, and the Complete Equipment Overhaul.

Some of the changes we love the most are the better inventory management system, the enhanced camera, and the ability to learn abilities without meditating.

Additionally, climbing ladders, opening doors, and other traversal animations have been sped up, as have the meditation and drinking animations.

Geralt’s Improved Quality of Life is basically your one-stop shop for all of the QOL fixes you could ever hope for!

It has certainly earned a permanent spot in our load order, and we highly recommend trying this mod out if you haven’t already.

2. Complete Equipment Overhaul

Also known as CEO, this mod completely overhauls all of the statistics of every item you can equip in The Witcher 2.

Like some of the best Fallout 4 gun mods, this mod aims to balance out the insane difficulty curve that this game is known for.

This mod is designed to work with the Better Combat mod we mentioned above, and we’d highly recommend using them both together.

While everything this mod does would take ages to explain, the gist is that everything you can think of has gotten an improvement.

Although the main goal of this mod is to make the game constantly challenging, it also aims to make each piece of equipment feel unique.

In the vanilla game, there was an insane amount of overlap between many items, which this mod gets rid of.

With the Complete Equipment Overhaul, you will actually have a reason to closely weigh the pros and cons of an item to decide which one is the best for you.

What we really love about this mod is that it makes it so that your equipment suits the environment of the game, so you’re not too weak or completely overpowered.

This really shines if you use this mod in conjunction with Better Combat, as the difficulty curve works perfectly with the updated equipment.

CEO is something that Witcher 2 sorely needed, and it really helps make up for everything that the vanilla equipment was lacking.

1. Pirouette Dodge

Taking our number one spot is a mod that helps Geralt become even more of a monster-slaying badass!

In the vanilla game, when you want to dodge an incoming attack, you make Geralt roll around on the ground like he’s been set on fire.

While this does technically work, rolling in the dirt isn’t really the most impressive move to pull on the battlefield.

Fortunately, modders Rustine and Flash have created a mod that ensures Geralt will no longer have to roll around like an over-eager gymnast.

This mod introduces the Pirouette Dodge, which completely gets rid of the rolling mechanic while turning Geralt into a whirling storm of death.

Now, if you make Geralt dodge, he will spin out of the way while slashing his sword through the air to counter enemy attacks.

The only “flaw” this mod has is that the talent “Feet Work” that increases dodge distance will no longer work.

However, that’s a very small price to pay for this amazing dodge mechanic that makes dodging both a way to avoid an attack and a way to deal damage!

If you’re tired of watching Geralt roll his way to victory, do yourself a favor and download this mod!

Summary

We hope you’ve enjoyed our list of the 10 best The Witcher 2 mods and found some that have given you a good reason to replay the game!

While the vanilla game is by no means bad, these mods really help improve many of the mechanics that felt rushed.

Better Combat, CEO, and the Pirouette Dodge, especially, completely transform the combat in Witcher 2, which was previously one of its weakest features!

Here’s a quick recap of the 10 best The Witcher 2 mods: