Witcher 3 - Fresh start with Main Quest completed (Base and NGPlus versions)

I always felt bad about accepting witcher contracts and going treasure hunting while Ciri is missing and/or the world might end at any moment. So, I decided to create a fresh save (kinda), in which all of the three main questlines are already completed but all of the sidequests (that are not tied to the main quest line) remain untouched. Depending on whether you prefer the Base Game or New Game Plus, Geralt starts either at level 3 or 48 already being the owner of Corvo Bianco. One can imagine that the witcher has won the vineyard in a game of Gwent only to realise that it is a near-ruin and it will need a substantial investment to restore it. Presumably, he will venture north to find some lucrative contracts with the war going on there...

I tried to do as little disruption to the game as possible beyond what is necessary to complete the main quests. So, the map is largely unexplored and there are only a few quests that are active (e.g. Avid Collector, since it starts automatically during the Hearts of Stone main quest). While going through the main quests, I looted the areas that either become inaccessible later on or are too out of the way for me to revisit them (e.g. the Sunstone cave). In these inconvenient areas, I also picked up the Places of Power. Bottom line, Geralt has:

• []18 free Ability Points (80 in the NGP version)

  []bunch of alchemy ingredients and crafting materials

  []a couple of potion recipes and crafting diagrams

  []magic lamp, Count Romilly's figurine, van Rogh painting and some other mildly useful junk

• a bunch of failed quests in Journal, which I simply did not bother with (Cabaret...)

The gaming experience is quite different without the apocalyptic main quests looming around. Here, the witcher can ply his trade, explore the landscape, and collect treasures without looking over his shoulder to see whether the Wild Hunt, the Beast, or Gaunter O'Dimm are after him. To be sure, a lot of role-playing is lost, but at the same time, a lot of nuisance is gone as well: there is no more of Avallac'h's superciliousness, Ciri's outbursts, General Voorhis' lisp...

One complication is that without the experience from the main quests, Geralt will tend to be somewhat under-levelled for many of the enemies, especially in Toussaint. Personally, I use the fantastic No Lvl Diff Adjustment mod, which stops the game from applying those ridiculous buffs on enemies that are significantly above Geralt's level. This way, the gameplay is quite fun and also balanced. I would also recommend Item Levels Normalized so that Geralt's gear scales to his level and you can go through the whole game with the starting equipment if you wish.