The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

School of the Roach Edition



WELCOME TO THE OPEN BETA!



The Witcher 3 - Wild Hunt: School of the Roach Edition (or S.R.E. for short) is a complete overhaul of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt , covering everything from weapons, armor, combat and skills, to alchemy, meditation, potions, bombs, and oils, to re-balancing the economy and adding new craft-able armor, stopping at every little place we could think of along the way. S.R.E. is a very, very big mod - with dozens of new meshes and textures, thousands of lines of code (in over 60 files), and more XML edits than we have thus far been able to shake multiple sticks at (and they were big sticks, too). Please understand that a full list of how all of our features work is impossible on a single Nexus page. We will go over them all briefly, however (with plenty of info to get you started), and if you'd like more information you can refer to the user's manual that came with your download*.







Please note: The Witcher 3 - Wild Hunt: School of the Roach Edition is currently in an open beta test. What does this mean for you? Well, it means that we've managed to get all of the primary features planned for the mod finished and put together, and now we're looking for input on how those features work - how things can be streamlined and perfected. This mod was made with you, the TW3 modding community in mind, and as such we're also looking for suggestions from you for future features. So if there is anything you want to see included in S.R.E., please speak up! That's what the comments page is for! You are, of course, free to use this mod as you would any other and be happy with it how it is, but we would very much appreciate any questions or comments (that aren't silly flames about how you don't like the color we chose for a certain texture or that you think the encumbrance system as a whole sucks worse than not seeing Iorveth in TW3, etc. - those kinds of things will be deleted), and will give each one posted consideration moving forward.

Please also note: As S.R.E. grew as a mod, it became impossible to keep it compatible with some other popular mods. Rather than making users choose between the mods they love and S.R.E. we've integrated these into S.R.E. as a whole (with full permission from the original authors). These mod authors worked hard on their mods and were extremely kind in allowing us use of their work/assets, so please take a minute to go thank them on their original pages. We would not be here without them. (A full list of contributing mod authors can be found in the credits section.)



As always, read installation instructions carefully before installing.

Gameplay



Greatly increased difficulty: Let's face it, the vanilla game was too easy and pretty unbalanced. We've spent a very long time increasing the difficulty in many ways while retaining a fun, balanced, lore-friendly game that rewards strategy and smarts in combat. S.R.E. difficulty levels do what they say on the box. You will get bloodied and broken on Blood and Broken Bones, and you will continually march to your death on Death March.





All enemies are possible to kill: We've removed the ridiculous buffs and vitality of monsters well above your level. Now, if you have the skill to kill it, it's possible.





Improved swordsmanship: Remember how heavy attack and other stuff used to be pretty much useless? Well, now it's not. Heavy attacks have been balanced to fit in well as a part of your combat, as have counter-attacks (which will hurt a lot now), and everything else. Your best bet is to use all of Geralt's skills and resources in tandem - the way a true Witcher would.





Economy overhauled: Like in the books, Geralt will always be poor. You want that new custom armor you just found a schematic for? Sure, but prepare to have it cost you. Things cost a lot more now, and crafting new armor isn't a simple matter of 30 gold.





Brand new "Encumbrance System": Gone are the days when Roach's saddlebags magically allowed Geralt to carry around a dozen suits of armor in his pockets. Every object in your inventory will weigh you down, slowing your movements and making it harder to swing your sword, use your Witchers' signs, and even walk around. But don't worry, because we have...





Real, working saddlebags: That's right! You can store all that loot in your saddlebags, attached to Roach. Simply press a hotkey when you're close to your stalwart, equine companion and it will bring up your Stash/Saddlebags. Put all those goodies in there and let Roach do the carrying.





Realistic horse-whistling: You will only be able to call Roach when Geralt is close to a fast travel signpost, a city or village, a campfire, or in eye shot of the mare herself. You'll need to actively bring Roach along on your adventures if you want to make use of all she has to offer.





SOTR's Patented "Smart Leveling" System: We've gotten rid of that pesky downward difficulty curve. Now your game should be balanced, as difficult as your setting makes it, and rewarding all the way through.





No more level requirements: Always wondered why that awesome-looking armor you just had made magically won't go on your body? We did too. No more level requirements. Instead, there are organic restrictions in place, such as requiring rare crafting ingredients in order to make higher level equipment.





Individually re-balanced enemies: Some enemies were far easier than we remembered them being in the books. We've tweaked the ones we felt needed an edge against Geralt, in order to increase the drama and bring about a real sense of danger. Be prepared when facing vampires (especially at night), werewolves (especially during a full moon), leshens, and anything concerning the Wild Hunt.

Full integrated RCR: Ranged Combat has been Redone. Crossbows are now useful weapons, complete with bolt effects and rune slots. (Slightly modified version of original mod.)





Overhauled trophies: Monsters came from a magical event in the world's history. They are magical beings, and as such infused with The Power. Trophies will now enhance your stats in a lore friendly way, giving your signs bonuses based on which monster they came from. (For those of you worried about losing the other stats they provided, we've got you covered in other areas. SOTR has your back, as always!)

Real quickslots: Why have quickslots if you can access your inventory during combat? We've turned that off, so now Geralt will only be able to access what is within his reach during combat. You'd better be prepared, Witcher!



Alchemy

Complete overhaul of all potion/oil/bomb effects, costs, and durations (This feature is loosely based on WGhost's original work: "Preparations" Thank you, Ghost! SOTR loves WGhost 4-eva!)

Real-time potion drinking animations: You want to use that White Raffard's Decoction? Better plan it out. Geralt will actually drink the potion, and he needs to be in a safe place to do so while in combat!





A return to the good old days: Geralt now needs to individually create each alchemy item. (No more magic bottles of booze refilling your bombs! Hooray!)





SOTR's patented alchemy dilution system: The first the you craft any given alchemy item, it will require the normal vanilla ingredients. The second time, you will be able to dilute that item with a 'Dilutor'. A dilutor is an alchemical ingredient that will allow Geralt to dilute his potions, bombs, and oils.





Dilutor crafting: Dilutors are crafted in the alchemy menu, and can be crafted using common ingredients found throughout the game wold. (No longer is White Orchard the only place you have to gather herbs. Keep an eye out, Geralts!)

A few new oils Geralt will be able to apply to his swords that give more general bonuses.





Alchemy takes concentration: You will no longer be able to go through the arduous process of alchemy in the middle of a busy Novigrad street or while going toe to toe with a fiend. You'll need a campfire present in order to do all of the heating and boiling involved. But don't worry, because you'll be able to make your own campfire via a hotkey. (You'll need wood, of course, in order to make it.)



Skills



Complete overhaul of all Geralt's skills: All of the original, vanilla skills have been re-worked and re-balanced in order to provide a fun, challenging, and rewarding combat experience for all the Geralts out there, regardless of play-style. This includes all four categories of skills.

Five all new skills: State of Rage : Enabled via a hotkey when the adrenaline bar is full, this skill lets Geralt unleash that pent up rage in a cinematic way! Lethal Blow : Rend + bleeding = Lethal blow. When you rend opponents with full adrenaline, lethal blow will make sure those wounds never close! Aard Freeze : When Geralt's adrenaline is full, using the alternate Aard sign will momentarily slow time, freezing all enemies in its radius with the power of that Aard push like a cold wind! Axii Blast : When at full adrenaline, every enemy around you that is susceptible to Axii will be affected by it! And Heliotrope Sign : Heliotrope allows Geralt to go into an adrenaline enhanced state of perfect reaction, shutting down all non-essential senses and concentrating on his improved speed and reaction times, making the world around him seem to slow down until the effect ends.

All vanilla skills available from level one: No longer will you have to spend skill points on unnecessary skills in order to get the one you want in a particular tree. Geralt is a versatile warrior and can choose which skills to improve without needing to first improve unrelated ones.

All skills can be active at once: Ever wonder why Geralt had to forget how to do one thing in order to do something else? We did too. Now you can use all of Geralt's skills in tandem. And you'll need to!

Skill tree changes/upgrades during meditation: It requires a bit of quiet time to concentrate on what you've learned. You'll need to meditate in order to spend that skill point you just earned.





New Armor System/Encumbrance Expanded

All new system of encumbrance based on armor weight: Ever wonder why you got random bonuses/penalties based on what type of armor you were wearing? We did too. S.R.E. has its own system in place, wherein wearing light armor will make you move faster and give you full range of motion in combat, providing bonuses to: speed, attack speed, sign speed, attack, and stamina regeneration, but at the cost of protection. Heavy armor will do the exact opposite, providing much more protection and a vitality bonus, but at the cost of speed and flexibility. Medium armor is a direct intersection of the two, providing decent protection without slowing you down too much. Relic armors are, in fact, relics and will provide special bonuses of their own as well.

New craft-able armor: S.R.E. started because we were fed up with finding cool-looking schematics, then being completely disappointed by the way the armor looked and its stats. So instead of all that old, boring stuff, Geralt now has access to all your favorite armor from The Witcher 2 in our new crafted armor system. Each one has its proper name, visual representation, and custom-made icon! The stats have been improved as well, making all craft-able armor viable options to wear, even after you've found your Witcher gear. But we're not going to make things easy on you. Finding the ingredients to craft that armor can get difficult! Which brings us to...

New crafting ingredients: Because of the upgrade craft-able armors have gotten and the lack of level restrictions, there has to be something balancing it all out, right? We've done this in a myriad of ways, most notably the introduction of brand new crafting ingredients that can found throughout the game world. You'll need at least one of these to craft that awesome armor you want so badly. Each one has its own custom icon and has been designed to fit seamlessly into the world of The Witcher.

Crafting costs: Geralt of Rivia is a poor Witcher. In vanilla TW3, however, by mid-game, he's got more money than most nobles ever see and can freely spend it with abandon. No longer! You'll have to save up that gold, and one of the things you'll be saving for is the much better balanced armor crafting. Witcher gear is designed to be light-weight and provide protection, and as such is it expensive and difficult to make. Think hard before spending willy-nilly!

S.R.E. Menus

We've added a system of MCM-like menus for S.R.E., with sub-menus for applicable included mods (FriendlyHUD). You can find these in the game's main menu under School of the Roach.

Camera options: Choose the camera angle that best suits you for each situation with our camera menu sliders! Want a new combat camera on the fly? No problem!

Enable/Disable soft-lock targeting: Ever get sick of randomly sticking your sword out at a drowner that's behind you and to your left instead of the one you're looking at? We did too. This adds a bit more strategic difficulty to combat, so turn off at your own risk!

Enable/Disable "Smart leveling": A little too tough for you? Disable smart leveling and enemies will be a bit easier to handle.







Going Forward - The S.R.E. Roadmap:



Revised alchemy system

Player's Handbook (explaining all features in detail)

Ranged Combat edits - possibly a return to throwing knives

Random encounters and dangerous meditation











S.R.E. Default Hotkeys:

8 - Equips/Un-equips your cloak & hood

U - Opens your saddlebags when near Roach

Left CTRL - Uses your new adrenaline finisher skill







Download all files from the 'Files' section of this page. In another window, navigate to your Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Installation folder (Something like C:/Program files x86/Origin/Origin games/Witcher 3) If there isn't a folder called 'Mods', create one. Using a zip program (such as WinRar or 7zip) extract everything in the 'School of the Roach beta v1.1' zip to your main Witcher 3 installation directory (the one containing the folder called 'Mods'). Overwrite when asked. Extract everything from the 'Input settings and xml' file into a folder of your choosing. (For exmaple: I made a folder on my desktop called "SRE text stuff" and extracted the files there.) Open the file called "SOTR_paste_to_input_dot_settings.txt" with a text editor (such as Notepad or Notepad++) and copy all of the text. Navigate to your Documents/The Witcher 3 folder and open the 'input.settings' file. Paste everything you got from "SOTR_paste_to_input_dot_settings" onto the first line. Save that file and close it. If you want to use the FriendlyHUD hotkeys, open the "input.xml" file you just pasted into the same folder as "SOTR_paste_to_input_dot_settings" and follow the instructions at the top of the file. If using other script or xml mods, merge with Script Merger (though it isn't recommended - merges can get very messy very quickly and S.R.E. was designed to work all by itself.)





Please note: This mod is currently not available for NMM, but you can still install it manually. It's even easier than learning how to use NMM.



Please also note: We will be posting an installation video very soon, for those who prefer pretty pictures to nasty words.

Thanks for your patience.

-SOTR





How to install:



<Coming soon.>



Combat and Encumbrance:



Alchemy/Meditation + Crafting/Armors videos:











The School of the Roach team is:

Richie Kray (Concept/Design, Textures)

Thibaudv (Concept/Design, Scripts, XML)

Mordek (Concept/Design, Scripts, XML)

Holgar (Meshes, Design)

Erxv (Scripts, Design)

Susurrusilous (Textures) Marjon (Scripts) Andy Bell (Scripts) BlackRaven (Meshes)



Contributing mod authors and people we couldn't have done it without (thank you so much!):



Wghost81, aka: The Wasteland Ghost, aka: SOTR's hero. Without her we would have wandered around clueless in the dark for many weeks. Plus, she was nice enough to let us include FriendlyHUD and any other code she wrote. She is a hero and you should go tell her so!

KNGR, aka KNGRNSM, aka SOTR's other hero. KNGR was nice enough to let us include any of his code as well, and he's our other hero. Without KNGR we wouldn't be here today and that's a fact. Guess who should go tell him how awesome he is? You!

Orpheus. We couldn't call it a complete overhaul without his fantastic Ranged Combat Redone included, now could we? Orpheus didn't have much to work on by the time he joined the team, but he'll be with us in the future - so get those ranged combat comments ready!

Scacikpl: Scacik is always ready to help anyone having trouble and is one of the most valuable members of our community. Without Scacik, his code, we wouldn't have been able to make those consumable animations you love so much. Go thank him!

Vinh1998: Thanks for the scabbard fix, buddy! You're a champion.

FoxhoundSWE

Uacvax

Rustine

We also want to thank all of the short-lived team members who contributed in small ways but didn't stick around, provided pre-made assets for us to use as resources, or ended up simply not having time to really join the team. Your efforts are NOT forgotten and you helped make this thing happen too! Also, another big thank you to all of the closed beta testers, whose help, questions, comments, ridiculous observations and general good attitude helped shape what you guys are downloading right now. Thanks guys - stick around, things are about to get interesting!*User's manual is a WIP (Work in Progress), as this is an open beta test of the mod. Please post any questions or comments regarding it the same way you would the mod itself.