Preparations

Preparations is a mod for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. General idea of the mod is to turn meditation into more meaningful process: it is no longer used to simply skip time and auto-refill your potions and bombs, you need meditation/campfire to manage your character skills, equipment and alchemy.

About
General idea of the mod is to turn meditation into more meaningful process: it's no longer used to simply skip time and auto-refill your potions and bombs, you need meditation/campfire to manage your character skills, equipment and alchemy.

The mod works both with vanilla meditation and with Friendly Meditation. The use of the latter is recommended for better, more immersive experience.

By default with the mod installed you can no longer buy or rearrange skills and mutagens in your skill tree while not meditating/not at a campfire. Same is true for performing alchemy and for repairing and upgrading your equipment. You can configure these restrictions via in-game menu.

The larger part of the mod is related to how you refill your alchemy items: you now need to do it on per item basis using alchemy menu while meditating (requires Friendly Meditation) or while near a campfire. By default refilling one item (restoring all its "charges") requires the same alchemical "base" you used to create it in the first place: Alcohest or Saltpetre, for example. Oils also have limited amount of usages and are refilled in the same way using corresponding base. Refill mode is configurable via in-game menu: you can set it to "full recipe" and refilling will require full set of ingredients (excluding lower tier version of the same item), "exclude mutagen" (for mutagen potions), set one single refill item per alchemy item type or switch the system off and return to vanilla auto-refill.

Meditation requirements and restrictions are also configurable via in-game menu: by default meditating away from fire is disallowed and you need to either use an existing campfire or, if you have Friendly Meditation installed, spawn a campfire of your own using timber. You can remove timber requirements or disable campfire requirements completely to be able to meditate anywhere at any time. And you can also set up harder requirements like disallow player spawned campfires to only use pre-existing ones, or disable meditation in interiors, in settlements, near non-allied NPCs.

Managing your skills and alchemy while meditating is not instantaneous and takes time: 15 game minutes by default to brew or refill a potion, buy or equip a skill, repair or upgrade an item. Time intervals are also configurable via in-game menu.

By default the mod also disallows eating and drinking in combat - both from the inventory menu and from quick item slot. And you can no longer apply oils in combat - use your witcher senses to prepare for what's ahead. You can disable both of these options in the menu or switch on even harder option - completely disallow inventory access in combat.

Note: The mod is compatible with existing saves, you can install and uninstall it at any point of the game with no risk of breaking your saves.

Installation
Unification patch is required for this mod to work properly.

It's recommended to use The Witcher 3 Mod Manager for automatic install/uninstall of the mod. If you prefer manual install, refer to manual install instructions from the readme.

IMPORTANT! When used together with Friendly Meditation mod don't forget to select "Friendly Meditation" presets for all Preparations mod menus (or configure mod settings manually)!