The aims of ESR Overhaul are:
1) Smooth gameplay in terms of difficulty, so that the game keeps stay challenging with a slow increase of the player’s power relative to the world around. This is achieved by the changes in levelup scaling system of Geralt and his enemies.
2) Balance between different battle tactics and skill builds. Achieved by the introduction of new combat mechanics and adjusting old ones. These changes allow to choose a gameplay style that feats you the best, and switch between different builds.
3) New features, that extend gameplay and make it more complicated and diverse (including alchemy/crafting, resources gathering and survival element). Significant difference between opponents' (monsters') abilities and characteristics forces the player to choose the most appropriate tactics/weapons/skills/alchemy to fight specific opponent type.
 
This overhaul is a combination of works of other talented moders, united with my own work 


The list of other works combined and included into this overhaul
1) “Ghost Mode” created by wghost81 – a brilliant overhaul itself, which provides a lot of bug fixes and a set of new mechanics. Some of these mechanics are included in ESR overhaul (note: the Ghost Mode is regularly updated by its author, so features from newer versions of this mod are not included, unfortunately).
2) “Combat Speed Mod” a unique work of acbatchelor, allows to speed up Geralt animations.
3) “EK Combat Jump” by euphoricknave included here to save your nerve cells.
4) “Lore-Friendly Economy” by stefan3372 is an extremely convenient tool to make the game lore-friendly and immersive in terms of economic system.
5) “Leveling Witcher and Relic gear” by katalysis is a very important addition to overall scaling system introduced in ESR Overhaul.
6) “Eating and Drinking animations” by erxv. This mod provided not just some new animations, but became an important part of gameplay – see alchemy section in the long description.
7) “Restoration Potion 'Fix'" by rfuzzo fixes an annoying original bug (or bad mechanics?).
8) “The Witcher 3 REDUX” by stellar7project provided additional riposte variants to expand combat system.
9) “Bashing Mechanics” by Reaperrz - now you can kick your annoyingly defensive opponent (see long description).

I express my gratitude to the listed authors for their works, and for permission to include them in this overhaul.
 
Installation
1) Download Unification patch for 1.32 - 1.31 - 1.31GOTY - 1.31A game versions (UPatch) from the official Nexusmods page and install it according to the instructions.
2) "Preparation" and "Friendly Meditation" mods by wghost81 are STRONGLY RECOMMENDED! Please, download them from the official Nexusmods pages, and install according to the instructions. These mods are masterpiece, and moreover, ESR Overhaul alchemy was balanced to work with these mods.
3) Download my mod archive and extract somewhere.
Put the content of "ESROverhaulMain" folder into your Witcher 3 directory (where your game is installed).
You will also find add_to_input.settings.txt file in the archive. Add the content of this file into …\Documents\The Witcher 3\input.settings (needed for Combat Jump).
Put the content of “ForModPreparations“ folder into your Witcher 3 directory, replacing files. This will enable ESR overhaul recommended presets in the in-game menu of Preparation mod (ru and en languages are only supported).
4) Use "Script Merger" to merge scripts of the mods. Set highest priority to ESROverhaul for .xml–s (it should already be so by default). There should be no conflicts between ESROverhaul, Preparation and Friendly Meditation mods.
5) Strongly recommended presets for ESRoverhaul are introduced into in-game MODS menu. You will find: Lore-Friendly Economy, Combat Speed mod, Friendly Meditation (if installed), Preparation (if installed), and Ghost Mode separate menus. Choose “ESR Settings” wherever it possible.
6) When updating a mod: first delete an old version of "modESRoverhaul" folder, then install a new one.
7) Whenever your game scripts are changed/updated (when you installed or updated some scripts containing modes, including this one), you will get a compilation window upon starting the game. In this case you need to restart the game to make it work properly.

NOTES:
“New Game Plus” is NOT supported!
For now, only ru and en languages are fully supported. For ar, br, cz, de, es, esMX, fr, hu, it, jp, kr, pl, zh  you will see english descriptions. 


 
What’s new in ESR Overhaul
New features are included into in-game descriptions, otherwise they mostly will be listed down here.
List of important changes:
 
1) Some skills are now passive (only learn them, and no need to put them into a slot).
2) Geralt gets 2 skill points each 2nd levelup (each even level).
3) Armor is calculated before damage modificators (similar to "Ghost Mode"). Enemies armor scales with level (so that there are no unbreakable enemies on early stages, and late game armors still have the same big influence). Heavy attack is good for penetrating armor (feature from the "Ghost Mode"); heavy attack armor reduction scales with level (see in-game description for exact numbers).
4) All items, like: swords, armors, edibles, trophies… were changed and adjusted in terms of balance.
5) Prices and overall economic aspect was adjusted. Also through "Lore-Friendly Economy" mod.
6) No inventory access during the combat (“inventory” is a horse bag actually, you can’t use it during the combat. Also, it was game breaking in terms of alchemy use).
7) New combat move. When in a guard(blocking) stance (holding right mouse button by default) you can kick an enemy, by using strong attack, when enemy is close to you (shift+attack by default – feature from the “Bashing Mechanics” mod). This attack costs 25 tamina and 0.5 adrenaline 
8) When in a guard(blocking) stance (holding right mouse button by default) your fast attacks are always of a short range, i.e. no long spinning animations. It helps to control in-combat behavior.
9) You can jump during the combat, by pressing run + jump (shift + space by default) – feature from the “EK Combat Jump” mod.
10) Fast swimming consumes stamina, depending on your outfit.
11) New "Cold Water" effect was added to make water travels in Skellige more challenging (hypothermia can kill the player; Killer Whale potion protects against hypothermia).

-    Melee fight:
1) Dismemberment chance (indicated in the player attributes in-game menu) now is a chance to instantly kill a low health enemy. HP needed to trigger a chance: <40% for humanoid size, <15% for big, <5% for some bosses.
2) Instant kill works as it was only for humanoid size enemies. Big opponents gets extra damage (x 3-3.5) instead of being instantly killed.
3) Life Steal effect is added to some relic swords. [These 3 features came from my old abandoned mod]
4) “Stagger” sword effect was improved (it was almost unnoticeable in the original game): now the game rolls from stagger/knockdown/heavy knockdown effects.
5) A new diverse use of adrenaline:
Adrenaline is absorbed when perform dismemberment (from line 1) and instant kill (from line 2).
Skills that increase your damage or decrease enemy protection based on your current adrenaline points were added.
Adrenaline increases your combat animations speed (from "Combat Speed" mod).
*Other new utilizations of adrenaline are listed in “Signs” section.
6) Each combat action costs stamina now. Armor +/- stamina regen bonuses were adjusted. You will most likely have no problem with this new feature while using light armors; some additional stamina regen sources might be useful when using medium armors; concerning heavy armors, you will certainly need additional stamina regen sources to use them efficiently.
Stamina / stamina regen sources were added/adjusted to fit these changes.
"Stamina cost modifier" for combat actions (excluding signs) was added to the "Ghost Mode" in-game menu (still, I recommend to set it as "0").
7) Geralt has 50% chance to deflect arrow while blocking by default.
8) New riposte variants were added (randomly selected in fight) – feature from "Witcher 3 REDUX" mod.
Time interval for successful counter attack was increased by 0.2 sec (it is easier to counterattack now).

-    Signs:
1) Stamina cost of signs was decreased (40 – 60 stamina points now, depending on specific sign, see in-game descriptions).
2) Signs usage now initiates a cooldown (during some time you are not able to use a sign; this time length depends on specific sign, see in-game descriptions).
3) A new ability to ignore sign cooldown, by using 2 adrenaline points.
4) Quen protection scales with level. Quen absorbs only 35% of incoming damage (can be increased through appropriate skill). Quen absorbs raw damage, before all the protection sources are calculated (so it is not influenced by your armor any more, it works before armor).
5) Alternative Quen gives adrenaline instead of healing.
6) Sign damage scales with player level, to keep being an important damage source through all the game (with appropriate signs-based skill builds of course).
7) Aard exhausts stamina of enemies,which greatly helps against certain enemy types (mostly against Insectoids).
8) Yrden adds specific bonus against wraiths and ghosts, decreasing their tremendous physical resistance. Tier 4 Yrden skill decreases physical resistance of all enemies in the trap.
9) Axii duration significantly increased. Affected enemies gain additional damage on the first strike (achieved with the appropriate skill).
10) Alternative Axii - puppets damage(done and taken) was adjusted to make this skill really useful.

-    Alchemy rebalanced, see in-game descriptions of skills and alchemy items. Just some of the changes:
1) Drinking a potion during the combat initiates an animation (“Eating and Drinking animations” mod). During a brief time interval you are not able to dodge and roll, so potions should be drunk in an appropriate moment.
2) Blizzard Potion grants 100% arrows reflection while parrying, decrease combat actions stamina cost.
3) Thunderbolt potion decreases chances for enemy to block your attack (useful against humans, vampiress and others who block a lot).
4) Black Blood potion now poisons Vampires and Necrophages when they hit Geralt.
5) Bombs(petards) damage is now scales with level, so that bombs (as a damage source) keeps to be useful from the beginning to the end of the game (with appropriate skill build again).
6) Food and drinks are good for restoring health between fights, but in-combat health regeneration from these sources is weak.
7) New item and new recipe "Sickness remedy" (located in food section).
* Note again: "Preparation" mod by wghost81 is strongly recommended. Adjustments in alchemy, in some recipes, were performed to fit this mod.

-    Enemies changes
1) Enemies scaling was balanced to make the game challenging at all the stages, from the beginning till the very end. Make sure enemy scaling is enabled in Ghost Mode in-game menu (use ESROverhaul preset).
2) Monsters are significantly different in their parameters now (resistances, HP, DMG…).
Some specific monster type weaknesses/strengths:
Insectoids are pretty strong and armored, but have low stamina regen. Exhaust them is a good tactic.
Different ghosts and wraiths have huge physical resistance (up to 65%). Physical resistance reduction is helpful here. Yrden reduces physical resistance of wraiths (dependent on spell power).
Vampires, unliving creatures, cursed and relics also have pretty big physical resistance.
Vampires and werewolves regenerate their HP rapidly. You might need sources that stop regeneration. Black blood is useful here due to the new added poison effect (against vampires).
Massive monsters usually have big armor. Opponents, that looks armored – most likely are armored :). You should use heavy attacks and armor reduction sources against them.
[perhaps I will add here more exact information about monster weaknesses/strengths later on]
3) Non-professional fist-fighters were weakened.
4) Some monsters now have a chance to cause "Sickness" - a new negative effect (lasts for a long time, causing minor health drain, decreasing stamina regen and damage, can't be skipped by meditation; can be cured with a new item - "Sickness remedy"). 
5) Bleeding and poison effects now more often applied by enemies, which makes corresponding resistances more useful (burning effect is still a rare case). Bleeding can be stopped with Swallow potion and poison with Golden Oriole potion. 
Some monsters attacks have pretty big chance to cause negative effects: for example Katakans and Ekimmas often cause bleeding, Arachas and Basilisks cause poison, so on. Monsters description was added as a separate file, which u can find in the mod archive.

To uninstall the mod
Delete "modCombatSpeed", "modESRoverhaul", and "modLoreFriendlyEconomyGhostMode" folders from ...\The Witcher 3\mods .
After that, menu options will still be displayed in the game, but they will do nothing. If you don't want to see these menu options, delete files: "LFE.xml", "modCombatSpeed.xml" and "modSignsConfig.xml" from ...The Witcher 3\bin\config\r4game\user_config_matrix\pc .

Compatibility
Mods that change same .xmls are not compatible. Mods that change same game aspects are not compatible. ESR Overhaul touched almost every aspect of gameplay (see description), so generally other gameplay mods are incompatible.
Graphic mods are compatible.
Apart from graphic mods I use: modEnhancedTargeting, modAdditionalStashLocations, modAlternateLSInteraction, modColoredMapMarkers_AQO, modFastTravelFromRoach, modMapQuestObjectivesFull, No GPS, Nonintrusive Compass Directions, modSensibleMapBorders, modTheAard, modWorldMapFixes, modYrdenIgniLightSource and my personal weather behavior mod.

Other recommended mods
Enhanced Targeting mod, Additional Stash Locations mod, Alternate Lightsources Interaction.
For onse who are playing the game not for a first time, and searching for new sensations, I would recommend to disable mini map and use No GPS and Compass mods. With these changes, the game is really felt in a new way.
 
Afterword
I recommend to start a new game, if you wish to try this overhaul.
If the game seems to be too difficult – just decrease game difficulty :).
If the game seems to be too easy – use health and damage multiplicators from the Ghost Mode ingame menu.
Once again, “New Game Plus” is NOT supported!
As english is not my native tongue, some in-game description could possible be improved. Feel free to share your opinion and report if you will find any bugs.
Hope you will enjoy this overhaul!
 
Special thanks to wghost81, not only for her brilliant mods, but also for comments introduced into the game scripts; they were really helpful!