As if The Witcher 3 didn’t already have enough stuff to keep track of, a recent mod adds hunger, dehydration, and sleep as new challenges to be managed.


The mod, spotted by PC Gamer, is called Primal Needs and it’s quite extensive, not just making Geralt more sloppy in battle if he fails to get some shut eye every once in a while, but even going so far as to augment the way the Witcher’s bodily needs affect him based on his current vitality and toxicity levels. “Primal Needs tries to increase the immersion of the game by adding hunger, thirst and fatigue as well as few other elements into the game,” write the mod’s creators. “It tries as much as possible to make the needs interesting and enjoyable, while also not ruining the action combat experience. However, by adding these new elements into the game the whole thinking about the combat and preparation changes according to your stats.”

Image credit: Primal Needs


With hunger, for instance, Geralt will slowly loose health once it hits critical levels unless he gets some grub. Finally all those cheese wheels and roasted apples have a used! Interestingly, different foods will reduce hunger at different rates, and the mod even assigns each one a different expiration date, meaning its usefulness will change depending on how long its been sitting in Roach’s saddle bags.



Thirst, meanwhile, affects Geralt’s stamina, so Each one of them affects different things and rises at different speeds and rises much more quickly, meaning that you’ll have to keep some fresh water on hand if you want to keep spamming Quen. And finally fatigue will affect what maneuvers Geralt can employ. Go too many nights without sleeping and you’ll no longer be able to sprint, dodge, or roll, and in some cases even block incoming attacks.

Image credit: Primal Needs

Best of all, in my opinion at least, the side-effects for hunger and thirst are mostly negated by high toxicity levels, so if you’re like me and like to continually self-medicate on the fly, Primal Needs should offer some especially interesting trade-offs to play around with.




This sort of mod is common enough in open world games, with the Fallout and Elder Scrolls series having their fair share of them. The Witcher 3's world has always felt more alive and vibrant to me, however, so it’s nice that while these survivor elements add some more challenge and realism to the game, they don’t make an already desolate and foreboding environment feel that much more, well, desolate and foreboding.

You can see the complete list of changes the mod makes over at Nexus.