Random Encounters – even more dangerous trail. The best mods for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – January 2017 Edition

If you ask me, I’d say The Witcher 3 certainly doesn’t lack the opportunities to fight and kill something – monsters and bandits are looming behind almost every bush. Despite that, I’ve taken interest in Random Encounters – it’s a whole new barrel of fun for those of you who’d like their travels to be interrupted in a classic RPG manner: by random battles, or for people for whom too much combat is a blessing instead of an issue.

Although the premise may seem a bit trivial, the creators of the mod have treated it professionally. The mod’s config menu features a variety of settings for the encounters – you can set encounter rates for various types of opponents (land creatures, flying creatures, humans, Wild Hunt), separately for night- and daytime. What’s more, you can disable random encounters in towns or make it possible to gather trophies from the random enemies you defeat. You even have a long monster list, from which you can select which species may or may not assault Geralt. The mod also encompasses creatures from the Blood and Wine DLC.

1. Random Encounters on Nexus Mods
2. Updated mod version included in Unofficial 1.30–1.31 Mod Update Project
3. Download this mod from Gamepressure.com

Installation guide

1. As the mod is incompatible with the 1.31 version, it would be best to download it not from the official website but from the Unofficial 1.30-1.31 Mod Update Project package – find and download „modRandomEncounters – for patch 1.30.7z”.
2. Place the archive contents inside your „Mods” folder in The Witcher 3 main folder (or simply use the Nexus Mod Manager)
3. Copy the „bin” subfolder into the main game folder.
4. Copy the „DLCRandomEncounters” folder inside the “DLC” folder in the main game folder.
5. Copy the contents of the „inputs.txt” (two lines) and paste them at the top of contents of the „input_azerty.ini”, „input_qzerty.ini”, and „input_qzertz.ini” files, which you can find in the bin/config/r4game/legacy/base folder.
6. Copy the following lines:

<!-- modRandomEncounters -->

<Var builder="Input" id="RefreshRESettings" displayName="mod_menu_settings" displayType="INPUTPC" actions="RefreshRESettings"/>

1. ...and paste it just above the line „<VisibleVars>” in the „input.xml” file (open it with Notepad), you’ll find it inside the bin/config/r4game/user_config_matrix/pc folder.
2. In the game, a new option should appear inside the „Key mapping” menu – „Refresh Random Encounter Settings” – bind it to a key of your choice.
3. Finally, open the „Random Encounters – mod” menu, under the „Mods” tab, and configure it according to your preference (or simply choose the “Default” option). Remember that every time you make some changes here, you’ll need to confirm them by pressing the key you’ve bound with “Refresh Random Encounter Setting”.