Ten years after launch, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt now has a new multiplayer mode thanks to a fan-made mod.
The Witcher has always been primarily a single-player experience. The three main games that form the RPG trilogy can only be played alone as Geralt, with no opportunities to share your playthrough with other players.
However, one mod seeks to change that, thanks to a group of dedicated players who want to transform The Witcher 3 into a group experience.
Created by Witcher modder rejuvenate and their friends, the Witcher Online mod adds co-operative multiplayer to the 2015 RPG, featuring servers for you to link up with other players in their own worlds.
Here, you can relax in taverns, chat with strangers, and perform emotes to roleplay with other people. Although there are still a few issues that rejuvenate is in the process of fixing, they say that the entire game is able to be played “from start to finish”.
As rejuvenate says, the focus of the mod is “to allow you to see other players on their adventure exploring throughout the world,” meaning that you should be able to connect with other players no matter where you are in the story.
Here’s a video demonstrating some gameplay from The Witcher Online mod, showing off some movement, combat, and interactions between players.
The Witcher 3 Online Is A Fun Mod If Still A Little Buggy
It’s clear that this is not the intended way to experience The Witcher 3 for the first time, but for players who have extensive experience with the game that want to share that with other fans, it’s a neat way to approach a new playthrough.
I spent a few hours trying to install the mod, and was eventually able to get it to work. It’s iffy in places, and has a lot of hoops you need to jump through in order to get it to work, but it does work rather effectively well once you’re on the other side of it.
Of course, since every player is playing as their own Witcher 3 character, you end up seeing a lot of Geralts walking around in each server. That’s where the Custom Player Characters mod comes in handy.
Custom Player Characters is a separate mod which changes your appearance so you can look like other characters that appear in The Witcher 3.
The mod supports changing the character’s face, hair, clothing, and other visual attributes, so you’ll be able to join Witcher Online servers without feeling like you have to play as Geralt.
I was able to explore the world, interact with other players, and even had a limited number of interactions with them. Then, I tried to go off and do a quest while other players were around, and the game promptly crashed.
So, a good effort, but still very buggy in places. Still, I can commend the effort and can’t wait to see more from the mod in the future.
If you’re interested in checking out The Witcher 3’s multiplayer mode, you can download it now from Nexus Mods. Be sure to also join the mod’s Discord server so you can find other people to play with.
