Witcher 3 Hearts of Stone [Add-On] in combination with NG+ [Official DLC]

Today the Witcher 3 Add-On released.

There are three ways of how you can access the story's begin:

1. Start from beginning:

  • No Savegame required.
  • Starting with the first quest to Hearts of Stone immeditely after Prolog of the main game.
  • Recommended level is 30.

2. Starting from current save game:

  • If you are midway through the main game, after installation of Hearts of Stone you also receive an entry in your quest log like above if you load this save game.

3. Only Add-On:

  • You are even able to only play the Add-On.
  • Starting with a preconfigured Character on Level 32

Now my Question: The first and second way would mean, that you complete the main game (or get until around level30) and then start with the Add-On, but what if you have completed the main game and started a New Game +? Can I instantly begin with Hearts of Stone or is the difficulty raised, so that I have to play parts of the main game again, too?

This is my case since I uninstalled Witcher 3 and only have a savegame with very high gere and in the begin of New Game + left.

Furthermore the second way is no compromise as nearly every RPGer would understand since you did not achieve anything by yourself ;-)


You can instantly begin, as long as you are done with the Prologue. The difficulty will either scale with your level 30 character, or your level of difficulty in NG+.

In your case, after you are done with the Prologue, you'll start the game with a quest in your journal and the enemies will be associated with your difficulty level at the time the journal entry was created.