Console gamers got mods for The Witcher 3 and a ton of bugs: one player was left with only Geralt's head and two swords

Mods usually promise to make a favorite game better, prettier, and more convenient. Sometimes they just make it thinner. So thin that all that remains of the main hero is a head, a white mane, and a pair of swords marching across Velen where the legs should be.

That is exactly the bug one player ran into in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, posting a screenshot on Reddit with a desperate plea for help. Geralt of Rivia's body vanished entirely: the head floats in midair while the steel and silver blades point downward like chopsticks. Reinstalling the game and rolling back to older saves did not help, and the entire inventory, Griffin armor included, disappeared without a trace.

The case is far from isolated. Complaints started piling up after the update that brought mod support to The Witcher 3 on consoles through the mod.io platform. Some players are losing faces and textures, some are watching NPCs freeze in a T-pose with their arms spread wide, and one had to fistfight an invisible bear and an invisible troll in Skellige.

The common denominator is almost always the same: mods installed on top of an old save, removed mid-playthrough, or left incompatible with the new version of the game. Suspects include an alternate look for the Cat armor, armor mods, and even a tweak that adjusts merchant prices based on item level.

There is no official fix yet, but a few workarounds have turned up:

• fully close the game, wait about 30 seconds, and relaunch; on consoles, a restart with the power unplugged helps

• turn off Quick Resume in the Xbox settings

• on PS5, boot into safe mode and clear the cache, which does not delete saves

• reinstall and re-enable the removed mod, such as the hooded one, then restart the game

• lower the number of background characters and the level of detail, which is especially relevant in Novigrad

• load the last save made before installing mods, or restore gear with console commands

While some players try to put the witcher back together, others have already dubbed him the "Chopstick of Rivia" and renamed the game "The Glitcher 3." One person was genuinely bummed that a "Geralt the Chopsticks" mod does not exist yet and suggested CD Projekt RED sell such chopsticks as merch. A philosopher showed up too:

Cat eyes, two swords. What else does a Witcher need?

The swords and the eyes stayed in place, but the body will have to be loaded separately.