The Witcher 3 Remastered Settings: Bard's Ballad, Loot, Map

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered lets you switch off item weight. Item durability too, and boat damage, and Geralt's need to come up for air. Those four sit inside Bard's Ballad, a seven-option accessibility preset CD PROJEKT RED added on 29 September, and you don't have to take the preset to get any one of them. Every option in it can be switched on or off by itself.

Bard's Ballad is the headline, but the Remastered patch notes list more settings further down: a window that gathers nearby loot into one list, a feed of what you just picked up, minimap filters for herbs, boats and corpses, a sensitivity slider for Roach, and a Photo Mode CDPR describes as "vastly expanded". Nintendo Switch 2 owners get four control playstyles on top, and Patch 5.01 began rolling out on their version on 19 October.

Here is what the new options do, where each one is in the menus, which ones stay off until you find them, and what CD PROJEKT RED hasn't explained. PC graphics settings are a separate job, covered in our Remastered PC requirements guide.

Where the new options live

Every location below comes from CDPR's Remastered patch notes, posted on 28 September.

One rename to know before you go looking: the old HUD Configuration section is now called Interface. And Prima Games' screenshots of the PC Accessibility tab show two of the minimap toggles there as well, as Minimap: Hide Herbs and Minimap: Hide Corpses. If you can't find one, check both places.

Bard's Ballad: seven switches, one preset

CDPR's notes say Bard's Ballad is "designed to reduce cognitive load for players who experience mental fatigue or have difficulty concentrating". It streamlines the game by simplifying some mechanics and disabling others. In the menu, per Prima Games' screenshot, it sits in a row labelled Accessibility Presets under the full name Bard's Ballad: Focus & Rest.

There are two ways in. Start a new game on Just the Story and the game offers the preset. Or open Settings → Accessibility at any point in a save and switch it on there. Prima Games adds that once you change any of its options, the preset label switches to Custom.

The name was deliberate. Karolina Niewęgłowska, CDPR's Director of Player Experience and Safety, said on the studio's gamescom livestream that she wanted to give the options a name because "people sometimes are shy to use accessibility settings", as PCGamesN reported.

Four of those rows are worth a closer look:

• Vitality Regeneration Boost has two sliders. CDPR calls the second one Regeneration Intensity; Prima Games' screenshot labels it Regeneration Multiplier, and shows both sliders at 50 with the preset applied. Neither CDPR nor the screenshot says what the multiplier's 50 means in Vitality per second. On Blood and Broken Bones! and Death March!, meditation doesn't restore Vitality, per the Witcher wiki, so this option matters most on those two difficulties.
• Unlimited Item Durability replaces repair kits. Without it, a Master's armor repair kit restores 90% of an armor piece's durability, per the wiki. Our crafting guide has all three kit tiers.
• Ignore Item Weight makes carry-weight bonuses moot. In Remastered, Strong Back gives +20, +40 or +60 inventory weight by rank, per the wiki's Remastered General tree, and saddlebags exist to raise the same limit, per its horse equipment page. With this option on, neither does anything for you. Our Remastered skill tree guide has the rest of the General tree, and our horse gear guide has the saddlebags.
• Toggle Witcher Senses ends the hold. The game's journal entry tells PC players to hold the right mouse button to use Witcher Senses, per the wiki's Witcher Senses page.

Prima Games picks Toggle Witcher Senses and Faster Boats as the two worth trying even if you don't want an easier game, and the reasoning holds up: neither changes a fight, and both cut a chore out of exploring.

Does Bard's Ballad cost you achievements?

CDPR's written patch notes don't say. Push Square, in a 30 August report on CDPR's gamescom livestreams, wrote that the studio says enabling accessibility options won't stop you earning trophies. That is a report of a pre-launch stream, not a line in the notes or the support FAQ.

The two achievements to think about are the difficulty ones. The Witcher wiki's achievements list gives Walked the Path as finishing the game on Death March! and Ran the Gauntlet as finishing on Blood and Broken Bones! or Death March!. CDPR's notes let you switch Bard's Ballad on mid-game from the Accessibility section without naming a difficulty, and they don't say whether doing so affects either achievement.

The Remastered achievement restriction CDPR has put in writing is about mods: its Cross-Platform Mod Support article says that on consoles, trophies and achievements are disabled on modded save files. Its Remastered FAQ separately confirms that achievements you had already earned carry over. Our Remastered mods guide covers it, and our achievements guide has all 78.

The rest of the Accessibility tab

CDPR's notes say existing accessibility options moved into the new section. Prima Games' screenshots of the PC tab show seven toggles there that CDPR's notes don't list as part of Bard's Ballad:

Automatically Apply Blade Oils is the one to watch if you played before Patch 5.01. Until Patch 5.01 (8 October on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, 19 October on Switch 2), the setting only worked if you had switched it on during the current game session, per CDPR's notes. If you rely on it, check that your oils are actually going on after you update. Which oil beats which monster is in our monster weaknesses guide.

Loot, map and HUD

The loot and map changes, from the same patch notes:

My read: switch on the grouped loot window first. It ships switched off, so you won't get it unless you go looking.

Controls: a slider for Roach and a way out of a fight

• Horse control input sensitivity. A new slider in Settings → Controls. CDPR's notes also list polished animations for mounting, dismounting, cantering and galloping, and updated collision avoidance while riding, none of them listed as a setting.
• A quick exit from combat. Hold the dodge button (Alt on keyboard, Circle on PlayStation, B on Xbox) to unlock from your target, then press sprint (Left Shift, X or A) to run away.
• Stick sensitivity. Right Stick Sensitivity can now be changed when you open the settings straight from the main menu, which it couldn't before. Per the same notes, Stick Sensitivity can now be set to 0.69.
• Two new cameras. A new exploration camera with a wider field of view and a new dynamic combat camera. The notes don't say whether either can be switched off.

Photo Mode: what was added

CDPR's notes list a redesigned Photo Mode UI and 16 additions under it. Grouped:

On Switch 2, touch screen input also works in Photo Mode.

Switch 2: four playstyles and the 19 October patch

The Remastered notes list these Switch 2-specific features, most of them control settings:

A Motion Controls tutorial can be replayed at any time from the Main Menu or the Pause Menu.

Patch 5.01 reached Switch 2 on 19 October, eleven days after the other platforms. CDPR says it was rolling out in most regions that day, with the Japanese version to follow once it passes certification. The settings-related changes in it:

• New graphics options: Bloom, Light Shafts and Depth of Field, the same three PS5 and Xbox got on 8 October.
• Sharper image: adjustments to image sharpening and resolution for visual clarity.
• Fixes: Automatically Apply Blade Oils now sticks between sessions; HD Rumble on ladders no longer plays only in the left Joy-Con 2; map pins can no longer be placed on the black bars around the map; and you can no longer throw a bomb with the option disabled.

The same Switch 2 patch carries the gameplay changes the other platforms got on 8 October, including damage reflection on the Exploding Shield skill and the fix for rewards missing from a Vizima chest you had already opened. Our skill tree guide and Remastered rewards guide cover those two.

Settings bugs the patches fixed

On PC, 5.01 also fixed the GTAO Quality setting resetting after a restart and changed the default Dynamic Resolution Scaling setting to off. Those PC graphics changes are in our PC requirements guide.

Two side effects to expect. Both 5.01 notes say that, because of backend issues, the policy consent screen will appear again and you'll need to confirm your preferences once more. And if you play on PS5 and your settings kept reverting at launch before 8 October, set them once more after updating: the notes fix the reset, but don't say they restore what you lost.

What CD PROJEKT RED has not said

• In writing, whether Bard's Ballad affects achievements or trophies. The closest thing to an answer we found is Push Square's report of the gamescom stream.
• What Faster Boats does in numbers, or what the Vitality Regeneration Boost's multiplier of 50 means.
• Whether the new exploration and combat cameras can be switched off.
• Which option the 5.01 bomb fix refers to. The notes say only "the option".
• What Quick Corpse Looting and the two Witcher Senses visual options do. They appear in the Accessibility tab, but the Remastered notes don't describe them; the one-line descriptions above are Prima Games'. Manual Sword Drawing/Sheathing is the exception: CDPR's Patch 1.20 notes in 2016 describe an option to disable automatic drawing and sheathing of the sword.
• When the Japanese Switch 2 version gets 5.01. CDPR says only "as soon as it passes certification".

Quick Action Checklist

• Open Settings → Gameplay and switch on grouped loot. It is off by default.
• Don't want the loot feed on the left of the screen? Switch it off in the same menu.
• Clean up the minimap in Settings → Video → Interface (formerly HUD Configuration): herbs, boats and corpses can be hidden.
• Try Toggle Witcher Senses and Faster Boats from Bard's Ballad even if you don't want the full preset. Every option works on its own.
• Playing on Blood and Broken Bones! or Death March!? Look at Vitality Regeneration Boost: meditation doesn't restore Vitality on those two, per the wiki.
• Going for Walked the Path or Ran the Gauntlet? Leave Bard's Ballad off until CDPR confirms it in writing.
• Using Automatically Apply Blade Oils? Update to 5.01 so it stays on between sessions.
• On PS5, re-check your settings after 5.01 if they kept resetting before 8 October.
• Learn the quick exit: hold dodge, then sprint.
• On Switch 2, pick one of the four playstyles first, then set Motion Control Patterns and gyro aiming, which each have two modes.