You can now play Witcher 3's entire campaign in multiplayer, which is a perfect excuse to return to The Continent with pals

I remember when The Witcher 3 first clicked for me. It was my third attempt to crack the game, so I switched the difficulty down to medium (thank goodness we don't have a comments section), completely ignored the alchemy mechanics, and just experienced it as a story-first action game. I quickly fell in love with The Continent, the characters (not Dandelion), and the environmental storytelling, and haven't looked back since. However, not all of my friends have followed me into Geralt's boots. Thankfully, a new multiplayer mod might be the perfect way for me to introduce them to the grumpy witcher we know and love ahead of The Witcher 4.

As open-world games go, The Witcher 3 is up there with the best for me, especially since the 'next-gen' graphics update. Whether your friends are grizzled, veteran monster slayers or, like mine, don't know their Riverwood from their Rivia, this is the perfect opportunity to jump back in and decapitate another griffin or two.

Witcher Online is a mod created by 'rejuvenate' that allows you to join online servers to play The Witcher with friends. You can play through the entire story with your posse of Geralts, and, while it isn't detailed in the mod description, it seems from the screenshots that five of you can play in the same world at the same time. As you can see in the trailer, which features 'Sean Bean' and 'Matt Damon,' among others, rejuvenate has also added a text chat that hovers above players' heads, presumably for those who don't have Discord.

Not wanting things to get too samey, the mod supports the Custom Player Characters mod so you can customize your character, and the Chill Out mod so you can all hang out in a tavern after a long day of playing Gwent.

The mod works in much the same way as CyberMP, a Cyberpunk 2077 mod which puts multiplayer into CD Projekt Red's most recent RPG.

You need your own copy of Witcher 3 to play, and it needs to be updated to version 4.04 or newer. It doesn't matter if you're playing via Steam or you bought it through GOG, though. You also no longer need to host your own server, and will automatically connect to the official Witcher Online server upon launching your modded game.

The Witcher 3 Online multiplayer mod is available now. You can download it from Nexus Mods here.

Whether you need a hand slaying the Toad Prince or just want to get some pals together to sink a bottle of Erveluce or two, install this mod and set a date to meet at the Cockatrice Inn. Saturday night's alright for fighting.