Hello,

the question may be dumb, but I do have a problem. A short while before I asked about save compatibility, the question was answered.

But: I still have the first 'classic' form of the game, i.e. Witcher 3 as it came out, last patch 1.31 (1.32 did only change something with Chinese localization, AFAIK).

The version I have is still installed and works fine.

Now I am thinking about downloading the NextGen version. I will NOT delete the original 1.31 Witcher 3 installation, since I have a lot of saves and are unsure, if the NextGen version will work to my satisfaction on my PC. (It should, I have a RTX 3080Ti, Windows 10, and a i910900X with 32 GB memory).

But which version should I download? I have both the older Witcher 3 original with all DLCs and the newer GotY version. The GotY version is, according to the developers as it came out, identical to the first version, but has a slightly different file structure since the DLCs are integrated.

I want full save compatibility, and seem to remember, that there was a problem with the saves if one used the GotY version with older saves from the 'classic' version - or is this wrong?

The downloads are of nearly equal size, so it does not matter. I will in any case do a new install of the game, and rename may old classic 1.31 version, so I can go back to it, if necessary.

I will use the downloadable installers als I always do - I am not using GOG Galaxy.

Thank you for hints and help!

EDIT: Will answer this myself, since I tried it:

I used the GOTY 4.01 offline installers. Somehow they managed to make them 80GB big, the game after installation only uses 67GB. I also took the time to let the offline installer verify itself and its files, to be sure that there are no problems.

I had the Classic version 1.31, all saves are compatible, and can be loaded into Next Gen GOTY without problems. I did not update, but renamed my old installation folders (the program folder and the Documents folder for the saves and settings), and did a new install, which created the program folder and the documents folder.

Now I have both versions, to use the old version I would need to rename again. Simple.

While the new Next Gen version 4.1 runs and looks good (RT on, DLSS, 30 fps capped in the game) it sadly is not stable. I probably will deactivate it and change back to my stable old version. In around 4 hours of playing I had 4 crashes (sent in the dumps) and one reboot. Maybe it is the DX12, but with Windows 10 22H2, i9 10900X and a RTX 3080 Ti this should not happen, at least not that often.

There are no visible reasons for the crashes, sometimes Geralt stands still and does nothing, on time the game was stopped with ESC and in the background, one time I called Roach and he came to stand on a fence, and one time it just crashed during the cut scene in Heatherton with no interaction at all.

It just seems to crash after a while, and I save often. After restarting the game and loading the save, and doing exactly the same thing it works.

It seems the game needs more patches, before it is usable. Btw. I use the latest NVIDIA driver, and no mods.