I think CDPR really screwed up with patches 1.2 and 1.3, regarding mutagens drop rate and quality.

Unless we can replace the little shitty ones we may decide to use until we find better (and IF we find better now) or unless we can mix the shitty one and craft a better one (pretty much like the gems of Diablo 2), mutagens could be ultimately removed from the game because there is no way I'm going permanently use a shitty mutagen on my Witcher!

If CDPR did that because some frakers made a cheating mod that adds mutagens to all abilities or even the crafing greater ones from lesser, I think it is a minority of gamers that are willing to use cheats and a majority of gamers would approve a official patch giving us the ability to 1) replace mutagens and 2) craft better ones from lesser quality ones.

They may be a little overpowered for an Alchemist with Impregnation level 2 but hey, not all players go alchemists and alchemists have other drawbacks. True, the mixed swordsman/alchemist with all greater power mutagens can make the game cheesy, like we can see on a YouTube video but, again, if a gamer wants to screw his experience by cheesing the game, it is his problem and I believe that most might do it for one run but keep it balanced for their other playthroughs because cheesy is not much fun after a while.

CDPR could instead fix the Impregnation skill to give 35% on mutagens instead of 100% as it is now. (A Greater crit mutagen goes from 3% to 6% with the skill level 2)

Not ONE greater mutagen at level 27... *sighs* .. and it is a new playthrough, started after installing 1.3. Guess that says it all.

Nops, no mods whatsoever altering gameplay. Only mods I use is for looks, like Mage's Pants with black leather trouser texture, black kayran armor, stuff like that. (good looking witcher rules! hehe)

Well, that rules that out, at least. I hope to start a new playthrough soon (it will be the first in 1.3), so I'm curious to see how it feels. Not having found a single Greater mutagen at level 27, sounds quite strange, but maybe they intentionally made it so that you won't find them until the final chapter? Again, it's pointless to have different tiers if they can never be removed once slotted, and if there's no way to somehow level them up manually.

1.3 did adjust the drop rate of all mutagens down, and the drop rate of Greater mutagens down by a lot. I think you'd need to do significant monster farming to get a good number of Greaters; I now see maybe two in a game.

I suspect the developers thought the drop rate of Greater mutagens was excessively encouraging character optimization.

Oh I do farm a lot, specially in Act 1. Well, level 30 now and found 2 Greater Vitality mutagens.. the worst greater mutagens I can think of. Blergh. Plenty normal ones and when I tried to respec with the Operator, it added the very same mutagens I already had spent on the slots... not very good ones...

WTF they did with the Operator's respecializaton?

Well, I've finished my first playthrough with 1.3 yesterday and found a decent number of Greater Mutagens. Most of them were Strength or Vitality though, only 1 Critical Effects and another Range were Greater. The others were all normal or lesser mutagens of all kinds.

But that was in a game that took me almost 70 hours to finish.