Let’s mod The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition

Overview

A quick guide to mod The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition with some of the best mods I could find. Including all the mods I’ve used, mod installation order and so on… It’s the same guide as on: http://www.gamingboulevard.com/2015/05/special-lets-mod-the-witcher-2-assassins-of-kings-enhanced-edition/But that guide has working links and picture.

Introduction

Before we start, I want to mention that I have also posted this guide on GamingBoulevard[www.gamingboulevard.com]. That guide has working links to the correct mod pages and pictures displaying the different armor sets. I just copied my text from that website to steam, so I can help even more people.

Alright, time for a guide on how to mod The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. This guide will be quite different from my “Let’s mod The Witcher Enhanced Edition” because I haven’t been able to check a whole play through with these mods.

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings takes place almost immediately after the events of The Witcher. The games features a less linear storyline, with three independent plot lines, leading to the multiple endings. A year later, CD Projekt RED released the Enhanced Edition of The Witcher 2, featuring over 10GB of new content, including 4 hours of gameplay and 36 minutes of cinematics including a new intro created by Platige Image and outro. But they also made a totally new arena mode and a new tutorial, and fixes to gameplay and the interface.

Graphics Overhaul

Better Texture Environment: We start off with a mod that replaces all of the environment textures with new, high res textures.

Extreme Quality Flora: The Witcher 2 takes place in a world with a beautiful nature. Extreme Quality Flora gives nature the beauty it deserves by increasing the grass and tree moss rendering distance. Also included are full detail bushes/shrubs over entire fields, maximum quality trees at any distance and the wind influence on the flora as far as you can see. The mod also eliminates the grass pop-in completely. This all has of course a huge impact on your FPS. So if yo

Grass Color Fix: This bug was introduced with the enhanced Edition of the Witcher 2. White grass seems to be only loaded 2-4 feet in front of you. Just a mod fixing this issue.

Grass color fix for Vergen: A fix for the mod above, since that one didn’t included the grass of Vergen.

Battle Ravaged Geralt – Glowing Eyes and Lots of Options: At the end of The Witcher 1, I got hit quite a few times. When I came across this mod, I like the damage that Geralt has because of the last battle in The Witcher 1. Geralt isn’t a god, so I like it that he also has some damage.

Mechanics

Dynamic HUD: This little mod makes the HUD much more useful. Dynamic HUD reduces the HUD Elements, but also fades in & out HUD Elements when engaged in Combat (or outside). Extremely useful!

Comfy Couch: To be honest the text used in The Wichter 2 is incredibly small. The pure white text on dark background doesn’t really help much either.This mod changed the size & color of all the UI text, from the Main Menu to NPC One-liners to the Journal.

CEO – Complete Equipment Overhaul: CEO completely alters all the statistics of every equipable item in the game, to bring a more balanced difficulty curve that steadily starts going down once you’re finishing up the first act. This mod goes hand in hand with Better Combat. NOTE: Due to the changes CEO applies to Mutagens, the Tutorial section of the game can not be completed. Not many use CEO for their first play through and fewer still choose to go through the Tutorial every time they start a new game, but here’s your disclaimer: If you want to play the Tutorial of the game, do it without CEO installed.

Better combat for EE with Darkness: A mod to further improve combat and magic. Since this mods works wonderful together with CEO, we couldn’t miss this one.

Mutagenology: Simple mod that allows you to combine lesser mutagens into more powerful ones (e.g. three Minor Mutagens of Power gives one Mutagen of Power). Combining requires also some additional ingredients.

Armour

For this next section I am going to give you a lot of screenshots. But those are all on my other website[www.gamingboulevard.com], since that’s the original location of the guide. It would take to long to upload each individual screenshot here again, same as for each hyperlink.

Why I have used picture instead of a description is easy: Because there are a lot of different looks for the same piece of armour, you can now personalise your next play through of The Witcher 2. There are mod that alter the same file, those will be marked by Roman numbers. You have to choose one of those mods, because both together won’t work.

Quest

Kinship of the Wolves: After you have finished The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, you might want to install this mod. It’s a new quest for the Witcher, but I haven’t had the time to play it. But it seems to be good.

ENB

Last part are 2 ENB’s. An ENB gives a huge visual improvement, but at the cost of FPS. So only use one if your computer can handle it. Be sure to check the mod pages, to see which one you like and download that one. There is an installation guide for each one below.

EnVision ENB: Please go to GaminBoulevard[www.gamingboulevard.com] to see some screenshots

Requiem ENB: Please go to GaminBoulevard[www.gamingboulevard.com] to see some screenshots

Still not sure for Requiem, check then

Comparison – Requiem ENB vs Vanilla TW2

[imgur.com]or this

The Witcher 2 – Requiem ENB Version 1.0 [W.I.P]

[imgur.com].

Installation Order

You should have a map called “CookedPC” in your Witcher 2 folder (C:Program Files (x86)SteamSteamAppscommonthe witcher 2CookedPC). If not, make that folder. The next list is the download and installation order as I did it. Once again, this part of the guide is not completely tested for the whole game. So, IF you run across problems, please tell it in the comments.

Note: Due to compatibility issues I have removed the mod ♥♥♥. This means the shown screenshots might be different then what you have

CEO – Complete Equipment Overhaul – Download: CEO – unpacked and Mutagenology – CEO-compatible – Installation: Extract the CEO- unpacked-89-1-6g.rar file. Place the content of that in your “the witcher 2” folder, not inside the CookedPC folder. You should merge both CookedPC folders. After that do the same for “Mutagenology – CEO-compatible” and when asked to overwrite, say “Yes”.
Better combat for EE with Darkness: – Download: Better combat for EE with Darkness – Installation: Extract the archive. Place the content of the “Better combat” folder inside your “the witcher 2” folder and overwrite the files from CEO.
Mutagenology Update for 3 4 EE : No need to download or install this, we did this with the compatible patch of CEO.
Dynamic HUD & Comfy Couch – Download: ComfyCouch v09b includes Dynamic HUD v12 from Comfy Couch – Installation: Extract and place it in the CookedPC folder. This file contains both mods.
Better Texture Environment – Download: Better Texture Environment and High Texture Weapons – Installation: Extract both and place the content in the CookedPC folder.
Extreme Quality Flora – Download: The Witcher 2 – Extreme Quality Flora – Installation: Unzip the downloaded file. Go to the folder: C:UsersYourNameDocumentsWitcher 2UserContent. Place the folders called “extreme_quality_flora” in that “UserContent” folder.
Battle Ravaged Geralt – Glowing Eyes and Lots of Options – Download: CreativeMode_v06 – Installation: Extract the files the rar “Updated Battle Ravaged Geralt-21-1-2” from and place those in the CookedPC folder.
Grass Color Fix – Download: MAin – Installation: Extract in the CookedPC folder. Overwrite when asked
Grass color fix for Vergen – Download: Grass color fix for Vergen – Installation: Extract in the CookedPC folder. Overwrite when asked
For all the armour and weapon texture mods, it’s the same prinicple. Download the version you like and extract the content of that file in your CookedPC folder. When asked to overwrite, say “yes”.

This concludes the download/installation guide for the mods. Now we have to configure the game a little bit.We are going to increase the standard rendering distance of both foliage and mesh! Makes will bring out the most of the game

First, open documentsWitcher 2Config folder
Open the “User.ini” with a notepad editor
Look for the header [Rendering], and search for the following two fields:
FoliageDistanceScale=
MeshDistanceScale=
If they’re there, edit them. If they’re not there, add them. And in either case, make them look like this
FoliageDistanceScale=3
MeshDistanceScale=3
Save the file and close. The standard settings is 1. 3 is a nice improvement and offers a great balance between look/performance. But if you wish to improve your frame rate, you can use 2 instead. Or if you want to render even further, try 5.
Note: if you ever open up the config menu in The Witcher 2’s launcher, make changes and save, you may need to redo this step in the User.ini file, as the launcher config has a tendency to overwrite custom data.

Before you start, you have to activate the mods in the launcher. Start The Witcher 2 Launcher and click on Mods, select everything and click “Save and run”

Unpack the mod files to: “/Documents/Witcher2/UserContent” directory;
Open “UserContent/KotW/strings” folder and copy the file that matches the language of SUBTITLES of your Witcher 2 game;
(e.g. If your game’s subtitles are in french, copy “fr_user.w2strings” file. If you’re not sure what file to copy, choose “en_user.w2strings” file and make sure that your subtitles language is set to english)
*Mod is in english only, but this “.w2strings” files pretend to be in your chosen language*
Paste the copied file to “/Program files/Witcher2/CookedPC” directory
“Kinship of the Wolves” adventure should be now available in the “Mods” section of the Witcher 2 launcher. Deselect everything else and just tick “Kinship of the Wolves” and click “Save and run”
To play the adventure choose New game -> User Content -> Kinship of the Wolves;

Lastly, as promised, a quick guide install the Reqiuem ENB:

Download this file: ENBseries Binary File – The Witcher 2
Once downloaded, extract it in a temporary folder
ONLY copy the d3d9.dll for the folder “WrapperVersionbin” and paste it into the “SteamSteamAppscommonthe witcher 2bin” folder
After that, download “Requiem ENB – Version 1.0” from the mod page of Requiem ENB
Extract that file in a temporary folder as well.
Go to the “SteamSteamAppscommonthe witcher 2bin” folder and copy all the files from the Requiem ENB – Version 1.0.rar file in this “bin” folder. Overwrite when asked.
Launch The Witcher 2’s launcher
Make sure Anit-Aliasing is on, vignette is on and ubersampling is off. If you don’t do this, the ENB fail to work properly.
Turn off steam overlay for the Witcher 2, because it causes glitches

And now a quick guide install the EnVision ENB:

Download this file: ENBseries Binary File – The Witcher 2
Once downloaded, extract it in a temporary folder
ONLY copy the d3d9.dll for the folder “WrapperVersionbin” and paste it into the “SteamSteamAppscommonthe witcher 2bin” folder
After that, download “envisionenb02” from the mod page of EnVision ENB
Extract that file in a temporary folder as well.
Go to the “SteamSteamAppscommonthe witcher 2bin” folder and copy all the files from the envisionenb02-746-0-2.zip file in this “bin” folder. Overwrite when asked.
Launch The Witcher 2’s launcher
Make sure Anit-Aliasing is on, vignette is on and ubersampling is off. If you don’t do this, the ENB fail to work properly.
Turn off steam overlay for the Witcher 2, because it causes glitches

Know Issues

* Some players (including me) have problems with the mouse on the main screen. Because this is a quite common bug, follow these steps to prevent the bug from happening.

When steam gives you your CD-Key, press the “don’t show it next time” option. This should disable the steam overlay, which might be causing the bug, but I have read some conflicting statements regarding this.
On your first start up of a new installed game, watch every cinematic completely. Not doing so will trigger the bug.
On the main menu, press and hold “shift” to move the mouse.

I didn’t do any of those thing, and I had to reinstall the game completely because non of the option worked (due to some weird way)

* If you have any visual problems like these 2 (last one is when you cast the Yrden spell). Head over to GamingBoulevard [www.gamingboulevard.com]to see the screenshots.

These graphical bugs are both caused by the Better Texture Environment. Delete the following two items to resolve the issue:

CookedPCitemsworkremains_human_01 (folder) – if this folder is active when Gerald stands against a background of water a few black annoying artifacts appear.
CookedPCitemsgeraltgeralt_signsyrdentrap.w2ent (file) – if this file is active Yrden trap creates big colorful texture block.

Conclusion

I hope that you have a wonderfull next playthrough with The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition. I want to say that this guide still is a work in progress, I haven’t been able to confirm is everything works correctly for the whole game. But please do tell me when there are some problems in the game. And feel free to leave any kind of comment or suggestion.

I want to mention an extra time that I have also posted this guide on GamingBoulevard[www.gamingboulevard.com]. That guide has working links to the correct mod pages and pictures displaying the different armor sets. I just copied my text from that website to steam, so I can help even more people.

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition Guide