Witcher 3 Remastered Difficulty Levels and Bard's Ballad Explained

For a first run of The Witcher 3 Remastered, Story and Sword! is the safe default, Blood and Broken Bones! is the pick if you want alchemy and preparation to matter, and Death March! is only worth starting if you want the hardest run or the Walked the Path achievement. If combat is not why you are here, Just the Story plus the new Bard's Ballad accessibility preset removes most of the chores.

This guide is built on CD Projekt Red's official Remastered patch notes and FAQ, Steam's global achievement data, and difficulty figures documented by the community (Gamer Guides and G2A News). Checked against the Remastered launch update on 1 October 2026. We have not played it, so nothing below is a hands-on impression.

What does each Witcher 3 difficulty level change?

There are four levels. CD Projekt Red has never published the exact multipliers, but the values below have been documented by players for years and two independent guides list the same figures. The biggest jump is between the middle two: from Blood and Broken Bones! upwards, meditating no longer refills Geralt's health, so you heal with food, potions or Quen's active shield instead, according to Gamer Guides.

Two things follow from the table. Death March! does not just make enemies tougher, it also trims experience, so you level more slowly against monsters dealing more than three times their base damage. And Blood and Broken Bones! is closer to Death March! in how it plays than the numbers suggest, because losing meditation healing changes how you prepare for every fight.

Did the Remastered update change the difficulty?

Not on paper. The patch notes contain no line about difficulty values. What they do say is that CD Projekt Red polished the combat behaviour of many non-boss monsters, including attack patterns, counterattacks, movement and how they apply effects, and rebalanced the new skill tree. Both can change how a fight feels even if the multipliers are identical.

Player reports are split. In a 1 October r/witcher thread, a Death March player on an older New Game Plus save says they are dying far more often since the update, while other replies say they have noticed no change. Nobody has published re-measured values for Remastered yet, so treat the table above as the best available figures rather than confirmed ones. The skill changes themselves are covered in our guide to what changed in Remastered.

What is the Bard's Ballad preset, and what does it switch on?

Bard's Ballad is new in Remastered. CD Projekt Red describes it as a preset designed to reduce cognitive load for players who experience mental fatigue or have difficulty concentrating, by simplifying some mechanics and disabling others. It lives in the new Accessibility section of the Settings menu, which also collects the older accessibility options. You can enable it when starting a new game on Just the Story, or during a playthrough from that menu, and each option can be switched on or off individually.

Several of these replicate popular mods, a point TechRadar also made, and PC Gamer singled out the preset among the update's accessibility changes. One thing the patch notes do not spell out is whether turning Bard's Ballad on mid-game also locks you to Just the Story; the wording only ties Just the Story to enabling it at the start of a new game.

Can you change the difficulty mid-game, and where is the option now?

Yes. Players on r/witcher who could not find the setting after the update traced it on 29 September: it is in the pause menu under Settings, then Gameplay, at the very bottom of the list. It is not in the Settings menu reached from the main menu, and replies in the same thread say it disappears while you are in combat. One player could not scroll past the telemetry option until the cursor came unstuck, so if the list seems to end early, try again outside a fight.

Do difficulty changes or Bard's Ballad affect achievements?

Your existing achievements and trophies are safe: CD Projekt Red's FAQ says they remain unaffected by Remastered, including those from Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine. Three achievements depend on difficulty.

Whether lowering the difficulty during a Death March run voids Walked the Path is disputed. Gamer Guides says to keep Death March! set for the whole run, or at least until the main story ends, and G2A News says lowering it can invalidate the requirement. Guides on TrueAchievements say the opposite: setting a save back to Death March! keeps the achievement available. CD Projekt Red has not clarified it.

Bard's Ballad is murkier still. The patch notes and FAQ say nothing about achievements and accessibility options, and while replies in a 30 September r/witcher thread insist the options do not disable achievements, none links to a statement from CD Projekt Red. Until someone documents it, assume nothing.

How many players actually finish on Death March?

Very few. Steam's global stats show that 22.0% of players have finished the game on any difficulty, but only 3.6% have done it on Death March!. Put another way, roughly one in six Steam players who reach the credits did it on the hardest setting, and about three in ten (6.5%) did it on one of the two highest. These figures cover the game's entire life on Steam, not just Remastered.

For context, Remastered has brought a lot of new and returning players: our report on its Metacritic score and Steam player numbers tracked the launch-day surge, and the release time and download size explainer covers who gets the upgrade.

Which difficulty should you pick?

• Story and Sword! if this is your first time and you want fights that ask something of you without the meditation change. G2A News calls it the best-balanced setting for a first run.
• Blood and Broken Bones! if you have played action RPGs before and want potions, oils and Signs to matter. It also unlocks Ran the Gauntlet.
• Death March! if you want Walked the Path or the hardest standard run.
• Just the Story, with Bard's Ballad options as needed, if you are here for the story, are returning after a long break, or find inventory and durability management tiring.

You can always lower the setting later from the pause menu, which is the main argument for starting one notch higher than you think, unless Walked the Path is your goal. Everything else we publish on the game, including the new skill tree and PC requirements, lives on our The Witcher 3 hub.