The Witcher 3 Remastered Accessibility Settings & Bard’s Ballad Explained
The Witcher 3 is more accessible than ever before
The Witcher 3 Remastered introduces a dedicated Accessibility menu alongside a new preset called Bard’s Ballad, giving players more control over some of the game’s more difficult and time-consuming mechanics.
What Is Bard’s Ballad in The Witcher 3 Remastered?
Bard’s Ballad is an accessibility preset that applies several settings that simplify gameplay systems and reduce item, resource, and durability maintenance.
Rather than simply lowering enemy difficulty, the Bard’s Ballad preset removes things like equipment durability, carry weight limits, and Geralt’s underwater breath meter. It can also boost Vitality regeneration and make Witcher Senses easier to use.
However, you don’t need to use Bard’s Ballad as its own difficulty mode as it can be customized. Every option included in the preset can be individually enabled or disabled, so you can change it to suit your preferred experience.
For example, you could remove equipment durability and carry weight while leaving Geralt’s normal Vitality and breath mechanics unchanged.
How to Enable Bard’s Ballad
There are two ways to enable Bard’s Ballad in The Witcher 3 Remastered.
- When starting a new game on ‘Just the Story’ difficulty, you will have the option to enable the Bard’s Ballad preset.
- You can also change it at any time during an existing game by opening Settings > Accessibility
This means you’re not locked into the Bard’s Ballad setting even if you start with it and can turn the difficulty up or down as you please.
The Witcher 3 Remastered All Accessibility Settings
The Witcher 3 Remastered includes a broader set of accessibility options, including the new Bard’s Ballad setting preset.
| Setting | What It Does |
|---|---|
| Vitality Regeneration Boost | Gives Geralt additional Vitality regeneration and lets you adjust when it activates and how quickly health regenerates. |
| Infinite Breath | Prevents Geralt from running out of oxygen while swimming or diving. |
| Unlimited Item Durability | Stops weapons and equipment from losing durability, removing the need for repairs. |
| Unlimited Boat Durability | Prevents boats from being destroyed. |
| Ignore Item Weight | Removes the normal inventory weight restriction, preventing Geralt from becoming overburdened. |
| Faster Boats | Increases boat travel speed. |
| Toggle Witcher Sense | Lets you toggle Witcher Senses on and off instead of continuously holding the input. |
| Color-Blind Friendly Witcher Senses | Changes Witcher Sense highlighting to make important objects, tracks, and other clues easier to distinguish. |
| Witcher Senses Fish-Eye Effect | Lets you disable the distorted fish-eye visual effect used while Witcher Senses are active. |
| Automatically Apply Blade Oils | Automatically applies the appropriate blade oil when entering combat against an enemy type with a matching oil available. |
| Manual Sword Draw/Sheathing | Gives you direct control over when Geralt draws or sheathes his swords instead of relying entirely on automatic weapon handling. |
| Quick Corpse Looting | Speeds up looting by reducing the amount of interaction required when collecting items from defeated enemies. |
| Minimap: Hide Herbs | Removes herb markers from the minimap to reduce visual clutter. |
| Minimap: Hide Corpses | Removes corpse markers from the minimap to reduce visual clutter after combat. |
The Witcher 3 All Bard’s Ballad Accessibility Settings
Selecting the Bard’s Ballad preset enables the following settings:
- Toggle Witcher Sense
- Vitality Regeneration Boost (Activated below 50% Vitality, 50 Regeneration multiplier)
- Infinite Breath
- Unlimited Item Durability
- Unlimited Boat Durability
- Ignore Item Weight
- Faster Boats
You can enable other settings or disable and tweak these, which changes your preset to ‘Custom’.
Should You Use Bard’s Ballad?
Bard’s Ballad is worth experimenting with even if you don’t want to make The Witcher 3 easier because a few options add a lot of quality of life convenience.
For example, the ‘Toggle Witcher Sense’ setting and ‘Faster Boats’ reduce friction while exploring without meaningfully decreasing the difficulty of combat and exploration.
Since every Bard’s Ballad setting can be toggled separately, the best approach is to find your own custom preset that lets you enjoy the game at your own pace. However, you can also choose to just leave it be and get the originally intended experience.
The Witcher 3 Remastered also moves its existing accessibility-related settings into its new dedicated Accessibility section, making these options easier to find and adjust in one place.
Check out all the other differences in The Witcher 3 Remastered and learn everything about mod support on PC and Console.
