The Witcher 3 Next-Gen Extreme Graphics Mod Goes Above and Beyond; New Official Hotfix Out Now on PC

The free The Witcher 3 Next-Gen update landed last week on PC and next-generation consoles, delivering massively improved visuals compared to the vanilla version of CD Projekt RED’s masterpiece.

The PC version goes one step further, thanks to the ray traced effects (global illumination, shadows, ambient occlusion, and reflections) and the Ultra+ graphics preset. However, we always imagined modders wouldn’t be content for long, even with the updated graphics, before tinkering further.

In just a few days, we already have the first graphics mod that pushes The Witcher 3 Next-Gen beyond the developers’ vision. NexusMods user A100N found working additional parameters for all the following settings:

• Number of background characters +1 setting
• Shadow quality +4 setting
• Terrain quality +1 setting
• Water quality +3 setting
• Foliage visibility range +2 setting
• Grass density +3 setting
• Texture quality +1 setting
• Detail level +1 setting

As you can see in the video above, the result is quite impressive. The Extreme settings mainly enhance the LOD and detail of meshes and foliage over the default The Witcher 3 Next-Gen version. Additionally, the ray traced effects such as reflections take advantage of the enhanced range, enabling awesome sights on lakes and open waters.

Of course, this will make it even harder on your PC to run the already heavy new version of The Witcher 3. Still, the mod’s creator provided a DX11 file for those willing to forego the ray tracing for improved performance. Installation is supposed to be pretty simple, too, requiring users to merely paste the “BIN” folder into the main directory of the game. In case you get the double graphics menu bug, delete the graphics_ORG.xml or graphicsdx11_ORG files and copy the original ones.

In other The Witcher 3 Next-Gen news, CD Projekt RED released another hotfix today on PC, further improving the overall stability and introducing fixes to photo mode, Arabic language in the game, toxicity bug, Steam Deck, and more.