Do any of the private modding of Witcher 3 via Nexus work with the NEW GOG Galaxy system? Just curious if I should even bother with Nexus any more.

Chief

This answers my question ... thanks

Chief

Yes. They work great. Mod Manager isn't even Necessary most of the time. There are some great mods out there to improve visuals. Customize Lighting, Customize Camera angles, More blood, better Weather effects, better looking rain and splashing. Make Swamps look foggy. For gameplay you can adjust how much experience you get for kills and quests. You can have the trophies give you better and more varied buffs. You can customize enemies to show up randomly and pick which enemies and how often they show up. I have all of that, none of it effect my FPS.

As you are delving into the world of W3 modding, make sure after each mod you install (recommend you use the Nexus Mod Manager, as CDPR's patches tend to break mods, and NMM supports mod profiles using virtual directories, so you can be in the days long process of updating your mods as they are updated in one profile, while still playing with the old versions while waiting to patch your game until the all the mods you use are updated with your original profile, not to mention the fact that some mods use NMM install scripts to let you configure them, and it makes a simple task even easier!, but to each his own) run the Witcher 3 Script Merger and merge any script conflicts. This will eliminate virtually every problem that occurs with running multiple mods. Seriously, I spend a lot of my free time on the Witcher 3 Nexus Forums and over 99% of people's problems stem from them running conflicting mods and not merging the scripts.

Get the script merger here: http://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/484/

The only reason that I don't use mod manager is that for some mods you still have to going into the guts of the game folders and add and replace file add keybinds and things like that. That and the fact that I never got the hang of actually using the program. Thought it was kind of complicated. Also a lot of the mods are not being updated but completely scrapped when a patch breaks them and are completely redone and have to be installed in a different way. The good thing about this game is that you don't have worry about "load order." The only thing you need to worry about is script merger, which I actually haven't had to do yet and those dang patches.

Thanks to vulchor & ReadR00ster for their help and tips ....

Chief

That's actually pretty misleading to tell a new comer. There may be one or two mods left that still function that require you to make changes to files in your game folder, but really the number is so small that it is hardly worth mentioning. These mods should be avoided as well, because they'll likely stop working after another patch. Virtually every single one of the mods made in the old style that required you to replace game files before the modkit was released have been updated or remade in the modkit to work with Nexus Mod Manager, as CDPR has been very helpful supporting the modding community at NexusMods, and the Nexus Mod Manager is CDPR recommended for Witcher 3 modding.

Keybindings are NOT in your game folder. Even the one or two mods that are new but require making changes to your game folder (mods that add custom options menus for instance) are made to install with the mod manager, and then there's one more step of downloading the binaries.

You saying that you haven't used the script merger yet means either you only have very few mods installed and were super careful to make sure that they don't share the same script file, or that your very few mods are installed using the old way and not the mod directory, otherwise that statement worries me immensely that you will have problems.

It's also quite misleading again to say you don't have to worry about load order. Load order is very important in this game, almost as important as it was in Skyrim. The game loads mods alphabetically and anytime mods share a file (lets assume we're talking about files other than scripts, because if those are shared you better be using the Script Merger or you have bigger problems) the first loaded mod's version of the file is loaded and after that the game will ignore all other instances of the same file. You can create a mod.settings file in your Witcher 3 User directory to set load order, or you can rename your folders alphabetically. Script Merger uses the latter tactic as its whole basis of functioning, as it sets up a directory called mod0000_MergedFiles which should load before all other mods (except in the rare case a mod has an underscore character right after "mod").

You may know most or all of this, or feel like I am criticizing you, I don't mean to. I spend hours almost every day helping people on the Nexus Forums who can't get mods working because they are trying old versions of mods, they try to install them the old way, they dont' want to use the Mod Manager for whatever reasons, they don't think they need Script Merger, and the worst offenders are those that patch the Witcher 3 immediately when a patch is released (or worse have the game set up to auto-patch!) so I try very hard to educate people as to the best practices of installing mods for this game.

I know there is nothing wrong with using the mod manager. I am not telling people they shouldn't use it. I just don't want to bothered with it right now for various reasons. I'd rather use the mod manager when the game is more complete.You are right I was choosy in picking my mods, making sure they didn't use the same file. I installed a bunch of new mods today and I DID use the script merger, which was no big deal because I am now up to about 20 mods. I don't know if that to you is a lot or a little but I figured with that many I should start checking it and making sure, and yep, I had to merge a few files.

Right now I do use a few mods that don't even use the mod folder and use .bat files and I don't want to do without them because I like them even though they are "old". Some of those .bat mods were broken by later patches and were replaced by something better, but some still work and plan to keep using them as long as they do or until what they do can be replaced by another mod. Because a bunch of the mods I have to add files like .xml and other files to it. And because for those .bat mods I have to initiate type "force" and I have my own custom .xml files for some of them. And because I still have to go to input buttons in the input settings which (I consider to be in a a game folder despite it's location because the game creates it to store settings) still have to be done with or without mod manager. The question becomes for me. How usefully is mod manger to me right now, compared to just putting the mods in the mod folder? And why should I bother learning how to use this mod manger program when I am really only modding and playing this one game at this time? Just putting the mods in the mod folder is so easy I have a shortcut to the folder on my desktop. I don't have to wait for loading or anything. I don't what mods you are using that you need to load in a certain order like with my modding experience with Fallout 3, but I not having any issues with having to put mods in order and I like it not being a pain in my neck having to look up time and time again which mod goes where in a list. One day when the game is done being patched I'll start using the mod manager and if I need help I will look for you.

And don't worry. I don't do auto-patch. In fact I wasn't even using Galaxy until a week or so ago.