The Witcher 3 Console Commands: How to Enable Them

Type additem('Aerondight',1) into a hidden text box and Geralt is holding one of the best swords in the game before he has finished the tutorial. No menu option turns that box on. CD Projekt Red's own instructions for switching it on live in the REDkit User Guide, its documentation for modders, and the full function list the wiki points to was extracted from the game files by the community rather than published by the studio.

This is not a mod list and it is not a trainer. It is the debug console CD Projekt Red's own developers used to test the game, shipped in the game but switched off by default. Here is how to turn it on, the one syntax rule that trips up everyone the first time, the commands worth actually knowing, and the honest answer to the two questions that matter most: does it break your achievements, and what is actually known about it on the Remastered build.

What the console actually is

The official Witcher wiki states it plainly: console mode is not enabled by default with a regular installation. You switch it on by editing a config file, not from the game's options menu. It is a developer tool, and CD Projekt Red does document it, for modders. The studio's REDkit User Guide, the official documentation for its Witcher 3 modding toolkit, has a page titled "WS: Enable debug console in-game" that gives the same general.ini edit covered below and says to open the console with the ~ key. CD Projekt Red's REDkit page links that guide as "Explore REDkit User Guide".

What that guide does not give you is a list of commands. Its WitcherScript language page explains that executable (exec) functions in the game's scripts are exposed to the debug console, which is a modder's view of the tool, not a player's reference. The wiki's advice for finding the full set of what it accepts is to browse the game's own script files: temp.ws, one of the game's internal script files, is described as containing "basically debugging- and cheat-related commands only," and the wiki also links a full function list extracted from the game files. Everything below is drawn from the console mode page's own command tables, cross-checked against the game's item and skill code lists on the same wiki.

How to turn it on

The switch lives in a plain text file, not a menu. Open bin\config\base\general.ini inside your game's install folder in any text editor and add:

DBGConsoleOn=true

That is the whole method, and it is the one CD Projekt Red's REDkit guide gives. It works identically whether your copy is on Steam, GOG or Epic, because it is editing a file inside your own install folder rather than anything the storefront controls. The wiki's alternative is a community mod such as the Native Debug Console, built for the original 1.32 patch — if you go that route on an old install, the wiki says to follow the mod's instructions for removing old console-enabling files from the game folder.

The next-gen build is less cooperative

If you are on the next-gen build — the free 4.0x update released in December 2022, which was the live version of the game until Remastered replaced it on 29 September 2026 — the plain ini edit is noticeably less reliable than it used to be. GamerGuides' own walkthrough for the next-gen console is upfront about it: "it also doesn't work for many, no matter what they try," even after adding the line correctly.

Players troubleshooting it on the Nexus Mods forums and in GamerGuides' own comments report the edit getting silently reverted after a later launch or update, undoing the line they added — we found no CD Projekt Red explanation of that mechanism, so treat it as an unverified but widely repeated troubleshooting report rather than a documented fact. What is confirmed is that the problem is common enough to have its own dedicated fix: Debug Console Next Gen, a small Nexus Mods package built specifically for the 4.0x next-gen game. If the plain ini edit stops sticking for you, that is the mod to reach for rather than repeating the same edit and hoping.

Opening it, and the one syntax rule

Once it is on, the key is the tilde, in the same corner of the keyboard as the number 1 — the wiki notes this shifts on non-English keyboard layouts, so if tilde does nothing, try the key physically in that same spot.

Then the rule that wastes everyone's first ten minutes: commands are case-sensitive, and arguments go in parentheses. god works. God does nothing and gives you no error to explain why. A command that takes an argument needs the parentheses even for a single value — healme needs none, setlevel(15) does. Strings can be wrapped in single or double quotes, and the wiki notes you can usually skip the quotes entirely unless the text contains something unusual, but quoting item names is the safer habit since several of them contain spaces.

The commands actually worth learning

The full set runs to hundreds of entries across character, inventory, combat, weather, map and Gwent categories. These are the ones that actually solve a problem instead of just being possible.

One limit before you use them: the wiki's command tables were written for the game before Remastered. CD Projekt Red's Remastered patch notes say the skill system was rebuilt into a tree with three ranks per skill and some skills were renamed, and its REDkit changelog says Gwent moved from index-based to name-based logic. We have not confirmed that the skill and Gwent commands below behave the same way on the Remastered build.

Two of the entries above are worth a second look. addskillpoints hands you the points, not the build — you still have to slot the ability manually, which is the whole subject of our general skills guide and build guide. And the wiki lists a separate pair of commands, addfact and removefact, that toggle the internal story flags quests check against — flip the wrong one and you can desync a quest state the game never expects a player to reach outright, so they belong to script debugging, not to a normal session.

The internal names are not the in-game names

Pull up the wiki's own item code list to build an additem call and one thing jumps out immediately: the witcher school sets do not use their shipped names internally. Griffin School Gear is filed under Gryphon School in every single code — Gryphon School silver sword 1 through 4, Gryphon School steel sword, all of it. Cat School Gear is filed under Lynx School the same way. Bear, Wolf and Viper keep their real names in the code; only Griffin and Cat use different internal names, which the game's item codes never updated to match the shipped names.

That is not a rumour or a datamined leak — it is sitting directly in the same code tables our witcher gear guide draws its set names from, and it means anyone building an additem list from memory of the in-game menu will get a "command not found" on Griffin and Cat specifically until they know to type Gryphon and Lynx instead.

What it costs you

Two costs are real and confirmed. Two more are genuinely unsettled, and no amount of forum searching turns up a straight answer, so here is the honest state of each rather than a guess dressed up as a fact.

It is PC only. The switch is a line in a file inside a PC install folder, and there is no equivalent general.ini edit on PlayStation, Xbox or Nintendo Switch. Console commands in the literal sense only exist on the platform that also has "console" as a computing term — the one bit of naming irony this guide couldn't resist pointing out.

It is a developer tool, not a game setting. CD Projekt Red documents DBGConsoleOn in its REDkit User Guide for modders, but the switch is not in the game's options, and none of the Remastered patch notes, the Remastered FAQ or the support article on the new mods menu mentions it. Nothing we found promises it keeps working from one update to the next, and the next-gen (4.0x) reliability problems above are the visible evidence that it already has drifted once.

Whether it disables achievements is a genuinely open question. Search this and you will find players confidently asserting both directions — some reporting achievements unlocked fine with the console enabled the whole session, others reporting the opposite, and dedicated community guides exist specifically for using console commands to farm particular achievements, which would make little sense if the console reliably blocked them. We found no CD Projekt Red statement resolving it either way. If your Steam or GOG achievement list matters to you, the only safe move is backing up a save before you touch the console, not trusting either side of that argument.

Using addfact/removefact or spawning quest-tagged NPCs can break a save in ways nothing else on this list does. Everything else here is additive or cosmetic. Those two touch the same internal state your actual quests read from, and the wiki does not promise it is reversible.

Does any of this survive Remastered?

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered launched on 29 September 2026 as a free upgrade on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2. CD Projekt Red's patch notes list a native DirectX 12 renderer and changed PC system requirements among the changes. Our Remastered saves and mods guide covers what it did to saves and mods.

On the debug console itself, the CD Projekt Red post-launch material we checked is silent. The Remastered patch notes, Patch 5.00b, Hotfix 5.00c and Patch 5.01 do not mention it, and neither does the Remastered FAQ or the support article on the new mods menu. The REDkit guide page that documents DBGConsoleOn was last edited on 6 June 2024, more than two years before Remastered, so it does not speak to the new build either way.

The one direct report we found is third-party. games.gg's console commands guide, published the day before launch and updated on launch day, says the debug console works on the Remastered PC version the same way it did before, with the same general.ini path, and that its commands were "verified against the current build." That is one outlet's report, not a CD Projekt Red statement.

Two things are confirmed from CD Projekt Red's side. Its mods support article says mods containing xml files, script files or w3strings stopped working with the update unless they are updated through REDkit, so check that Debug Console Next Gen or any other console helper mod has a Remastered version before you rely on it. And if the console will not work for you on the new build, the Remastered FAQ says that, depending on your platform, you can revert to an earlier version of the game. Our Remastered mods guide covers which Steam branch holds which build.

Quick Action Checklist

• Add DBGConsoleOn=true to bin\config\base\general.ini inside your install folder. Works the same on Steam, GOG and Epic.
• On the 4.0x next-gen build, if it stops working after an update, that is a known issue, not a mistake on your part — try the Debug Console Next Gen mod on Nexus Mods instead of re-editing the same file.
• Remember commands are case-sensitive and need parentheses around any argument, even a single one.
• Use additem('Gryphon School silver sword 1',1) for Griffin gear and Lynx School for Cat gear — the in-game names do not match the item codes.
• Back up your save before using addfact/removefact or spawning quest-tagged actors; those touch real quest state.
• Back up your save before using the console at all if your achievement list matters — the community is split on whether it still unlocks them, and we found no CD Projekt Red statement settling it.
• Do not expect any of this on PlayStation, Xbox or Switch. It is a PC-only file edit.
• On the Remastered build (out since 29 September 2026), CD Projekt Red's patch notes and support articles do not say whether the console still works. If it fails, check that any console helper mod has a Remastered version, or revert to an earlier build where your platform allows it.