The Witcher 3 New Game Plus mode transforms Geralt's already sprawling adventure into a tougher, richer experience for players who want to relive the story with the power they earned the first time around. Whether you're returning after finishing the base game or diving in fresh after the next-gen update, understanding how New Game Plus works will help you plan your build, manage your inventory, and enjoy a genuinely different playthrough rather than a simple repeat.
What Carries Over Into Witcher 3 New Game Plus
When you start Witcher 3 New Game Plus, CD Projekt Red lets you bring forward nearly everything you accumulated during your first run. Your entire inventory transfers, including weapons, armor, crafting diagrams, alchemy formulas, ingredients, and Gwent cards. Your character level also carries over, meaning you begin the new campaign at whatever level you finished the original story, rather than resetting to level one. Skill points and unlocked abilities remain intact as well, so you can continue refining your build from where you left off instead of starting from scratch.
Notably, quest progress, choices, and the main story itself reset completely. This means you'll experience the same narrative beats, dialogue options, and decision points again, but this time as a significantly more powerful witcher. Side quests, Witcher Contracts, and Gwent games also reset, giving you a full second pass at content you may have skipped or rushed through initially.
Enemy Scaling and Increased Difficulty
The core challenge of Witcher 3 New Game Plus comes from enemy scaling. Monsters, bandits, and bosses are rebalanced to match your carried-over level, which is often 30, 40, or even higher depending on how thoroughly you explored the first time. This scaling ensures that fights remain meaningful instead of trivial, even though you're wielding endgame gear from the outset. Death March difficulty combined with New Game Plus is widely considered the most punishing legitimate way to experience the game, demanding precise potion management, Signs usage, and positioning even in early-game zones like White Orchard.
Because enemies scale to your level rather than the region, you'll notice that areas typically considered "easy" in a first playthrough, such as Velen at the story's start, now contain foes that hit considerably harder. This keeps combat engaging throughout the entire journey rather than becoming a stat-check you can ignore.
Best Builds for a New Game Plus Run
Since you're not rebuilding your character from zero, Witcher 3 New Game Plus is the perfect opportunity to experiment with hybrid builds you may not have tried before. Alchemy-Sign hybrids work particularly well because you already have access to high-tier mutations and decoctions. Players who favor aggressive melee combat often lean into Combat and Alchemy skill trees together, using Euphoria mutagens to amplify damage output while sustaining Toxicity through potions and oils. If you enjoyed a pure Signs build originally, New Game Plus offers a chance to pivot toward Igni or Yrden-focused crowd control instead, since your gear and mutagen slots are already unlocked.
Gear, Crafting, and Mutagens in the New Campaign
Even though your inventory transfers, it's worth revisiting your crafted gear once New Game Plus begins. Witcher gear sets like Ursine, Griffin, or Manticore armor scale in effectiveness based on your level, so upgrading diagrams to their higher tiers becomes a priority again. Fortunately, since you already possess the diagrams, tracking down materials is faster the second time through. Mutagen slotting also deserves attention: with a full skill tree unlocked, you can finally commit to greater and lesser mutagen combinations that synergize with your preferred playstyle, something many players don't fully optimize during their first run.
Should You Play Witcher 3 New Game Plus on Death March?
Death March combined with New Game Plus is the definitive endgame challenge for veteran players. Because you start with strong gear and skills, the difficulty spike feels fair rather than punishing for punishment's sake — you have the tools to survive, but the game demands you use them intelligently. If you're newer to the Witcher series or haven't mastered potion brewing and Sign combinations, starting on Blood and Broken Bones or standard difficulty for New Game Plus is a reasonable alternative that still preserves the increased enemy scaling without the harsher damage penalties.
Final Tips Before You Start
Before launching into Witcher 3 New Game Plus, sell or disenchant redundant early-game gear to free up inventory space, and stock up on ingredients for high-level potions since you'll want Swallow, Thunderbolt, and White Raffard's Decoction available from the outset. Save your game manually before starting, as the transition is permanent once confirmed. With these preparations, New Game Plus offers one of the most rewarding ways to experience CD Projekt Red's celebrated RPG a second time, blending familiar storytelling with genuinely fresh tactical challenges.