Baldur’s Gate 3’s new modding toolkit is a door to endless possibilities

Michelle Cornelia
Baldur's Gate 3 Physical Deluxe Edition

Baldur’s Gate 3’s separate mod toolkit tool finally being in the hands of talented mod creators is set to kick down the door with near-infinite possibilities.

When I first heard the news Larian wasn’t going to make any DLC or even a Baldur’s Gate 4 sequel, like many others, I was devastated. Larian made a game so amazing that I couldn’t help but fall in love with it, no matter how many hours I’ve sunk into it or how many runs I have made, it’s still calling to me.

While that’s the case, the game’s modding community has been cooking even before Patch 7 dropped, making all sorts of new races, classes, and even spells available, adding to the game’s replayability in a big way.

But now that we have the official mod support and the separate Baldur’s Gate 3 mod toolkit, I think things are about to get far more interesting.

Mods add so much flavor and replayability in Baldur’s Gate 3

Alfira can join the party TEMPORARILY, just like Larian promised
A permanent Alfira companion mod in Baldur’s Gate 3 would be amazing.

For the uninitiated, let’s take you back to how things were before all these additions came. Prior to the game’s official mod support dropped, it was already possible to install mods to the game. The only problem is that you had to go through a ton of hoops for them to work.

Let’s say you wanted to add the new races or party limit mod to your game. You couldn’t simply just copy and paste these files in the Baldur’s Gate 3 mod folder to be able to use them.

First, you had to download either Baldur’s Gate 3 Mod Manager or Vortex and fiddle around with the settings. Once that was all setup, you still needed to download other mods from different authors to make the ones you want to install work properly in the game. 

Overall, it was a long and tedious process that could be discouraging, especially if you didn’t have the time to bother with all that and just wanted to play immediately. 

With how easy modding is now in the game, many more players will be driven to install them and perhaps go all the way to support the talented mod creators, which is a good thing. After all, with the right mods, you can even experience a completely different game.

Larian has also released Baldur’s Gate 3’s modding toolkit to enable the community to unleash their creativity like never before.

Baldur’s Gate 3’s modding toolkit is the best addition yet

The way this works is that modders can use this separate software to develop their own mods using Larian’s in-house Osiris scripting language. In the patch notes, Larian mentioned how this will allow players to “reload their own scripts, handle build errors, and also carry out basic debugging.”

Baldur's Gate 3: All races & subclasses available in official mods
A Baldur’s Gate 3 mod makes Genasi a playable race in the game.

So, whether you want to tweak your companions and make them into halflings or have a displacer beast as a pet in-game – that’s all possible and now easier than ever. Or maybe you want to add new hairstyles and clothing? Well, the options are seemingly endless.

Here’s the exciting part, though. For a while now, it’s been made known that the toolkit can’t be used to make more stories. Even Larian confirmed that creating new levels or quests wouldn’t be possible due to “technical constraints” via a comment on X.

Yet, it’s only been two days, and mod authors have already figured out a way to unlock essentially certain features to tweak the game in a more advanced way. Some modders have claimed that thanks to these features, it’ll be possible to edit levels, create quests, and much more.

Assuming that doing these things is possible in the long run, we could be seeing whole new campaigns in the game and even homebrew ones.

Someone talented enough may also be able to reconstruct the entire Upper City, something that’s missing from the game and one that a lot of players have been hoping to be added.

Not just that, imagine the different ways you could play the game. At one point, someone might even recreate locations from previous Baldur’s Gate games. That’ll make so much sense, seeing that Gortash was initially supposed to have his own location in Candlekeep but was scrapped.

Of course, there’ll also be challenges when it comes to adding these things in terms of the lack of mocap and voice acting and such. However, I’m curious what things people will come up with with later on.

Will Baldur’s Gate 3 be the next Skyrim? There’s a possibility for sure, and only time will tell. For now, you can already enjoy all sorts of mods directly from the game and even the new evil endings. Though console players will have to be patient just for a little bit.

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