Key facts
- Cheapest right now
- € Standard · Global · Difmark
- Live offers
- 39 offers · 16 stores
- Our pick
- Standard · GOG Key · Global · Gamivo — €
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The Witcher 3 has been getting enormous fan-made mods for years now, some of them longer than games people pay full price for. Every time one gets a first-look video, the same question shows up in the comments: what do I actually need installed to play it? The mod half of that answer belongs to whoever built the thing. The buying half belongs here, and it comes down to a single number.
The complete edition costs about three euros more than the base game
That settles it. Buying the base game on its own to save money stopped making sense a long time ago:
| What you buy | Cheapest offer right now | What is inside |
|---|---|---|
| Base game | € (with coupon GCDKGamivo) at Gamivo | The main campaign, no official expansions |
| Complete edition | € (with coupon GCDKGamivo) at Gamivo | The main campaign plus both official expansions and the extra content |
Put the two prices side by side and the base game falls apart on its own. The gap between them is what a coffee costs, and it buys you Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine — two expansions that between them run longer than most of this month's full-price releases.
Do the big mods need the official expansions?
It depends on the project, and the only place that really knows is its own requirements page. Some are built straight on the base campaign. Others reuse regions, characters or systems that only exist once Hearts of Stone or Blood and Wine are installed, and when one is missing nothing warns you at launch — you hit a broken quest three hours in.
Which is why the arithmetic above ends the discussion. With the complete edition three euros away, the easy move is to own the lot once and never open a compatibility list again. You can buy The Witcher 3 key in its complete form for the amount above and stop thinking about it.
Steam or GOG, and why it matters here
Both kinds of code are sold for this game, at almost identical prices, and they are not interchangeable. A GOG code lands in your GOG library and a Steam code in your Steam one; neither unlocks the other, and the game files end up in different folders on your disk.
If you are planning to install anything substantial, that folder is not a small detail. Installation instructions are written against one layout or the other, and mod managers have to be pointed at the right install. Pick the platform your mods already live on, not the one that is four cents cheaper.
Complete edition prices, coupons already applied
Read the labels before the amounts: GOG and Steam codes sit next to each other here, and a couple of the offers are regional. If a shop means nothing to you, the trust panel below places it in a second.
- Cdkeys Com — 4.8 / 5 over 224,000+ reviews.
- YUPLAY — 4.8 / 5 over 2,000+ reviews.
- Instant Gaming — 4.7 / 5 over 833,000+ reviews.
- Kinguin — 4.6 / 5 over 120,000+ reviews.
- Driffle — 4.4 / 5 over 9,000+ reviews.
- K4G — 4.3 / 5 over 17,000+ reviews.
- G2A — 4.0 / 5 over 346,000+ reviews.
- Gamivo — 3.8 / 5 over 49,000+ reviews.
Questions that come up while planning the install
Will an old save still work?
Assume it will not. Big projects usually want a fresh start, and even the ones that say otherwise behave far better on a clean save. Copy the save folder somewhere safe before you install anything.
Is the upgraded version a separate purchase?
No. It arrived as a free update for existing owners, so a code bought today includes it either way. What changes is which build each mod targets, and documenting that is the project's job, not a second purchase.
Do I need the expansions installed, or just owned?
Installed. Having them on the account counts for nothing if the files are not on disk: a mod that reaches for a Blood and Wine asset will fail when it cannot find it, however tidy the licence looks.
The short version before you start downloading
Buy the complete edition rather than the base game, because the gap between them no longer saves you anything. Pick the store your mod setup already lives on. On a game you intend to modify, stay well away from shared accounts. And read the project's requirements page before you install, not when the first quest breaks.
I have been a gamer for as long as I can remember, and for the last 14 years I have been making life easier for other gamers. CEO and co-founder of Gocdkeys.
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