Mod creates a spreading monster infection in The Witcher 3

I worry about the people living in the world of The Witcher 3. They're basically surrounded by horrible monsters at all times, building their towns next to lakes filled with Drowners and watching the skies for griffins and wyverns they have no hope of killing. And, things are about to get much, much worse.

After ten seconds, it will attack Geralt. Or, if you're the type of Witcher who spawns the monster next to a guard and then runs away, it will attack the guard. I have to assume guards are used to being attacked by all sorts of monsters, but Infection Mode is a little different. The moment the creature lands an attack on the guard, the guard turns into a monster himself. So, now there's two of them, both looking for a fresh victim.

I happened to be outside the town of Blandare, and with both of those monsters looking to carve off a piece of Geralt, I decided it was a great time to sprint into town and run a few errands. The monsters followed. People began screaming. Some tried to fight, others began to flee, many just shrieked and cowered. There really wasn't much of a difference, because everyone who was touched became a monster and touched someone else.

Within a minute or two most of the town had been infected. It appears the game will spawn more and more guards to replace those that have fallen, or maybe they just run in from other locations, but there always seemed to be a new pack of soldiers trying to fight off the infection, only to become stricken themselves.

I hate to say it, but even the children of Blandare became infected, turning into horribly adorable tiny monster kids. One scaly little boy turned, ran down the road past me and some cowering farmers to attack a group of soldiers. It infected one, which infected another, and soon everyone had come down with a nasty case of the monsters.

I eventually ran away, and fast-traveled to a different part of the world, then came back to see how everyone in Blandare was dealing with the problem. I would have to say... not well.

Needless to say, as well as not being great for the health of the NPCs, having roughly one million creepy naked monsters on your screen may result in some adverse effects. Twice, when the population of Blandare rose to roughly a hundred monsters, the game crashed. And, quite frankly, I was relieved it did, because gross!

I also don't know what this will do to your game if you save it in this condition, what with everyone in town becoming monsters and presumably unable to give quests or buy your pocketfuls of collected detritus, so I'd have to advise against saving your game while using this mod, or at least create a new save file for it.

To run the mod you'll need to have the updated debug console mod installed. I'm also pleased to see the Nexus Mod Manager now supports The Witcher 3 mods made using the toolkit, which makes installing mods much, much easier. You can find the Infection Mode mod here.

Just be careful. It didn't end well for any of us. Not the townspeople, not Roach, not all those cows in the field, and not Geralt.

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.