Baldur's Gate 3 mods enjoyed a new set of tools last year as part of its seventh patch, tools which it only took erstwhile modders two days to unlock. These untapped kits allow these expeditionary tinkerers to create whole new campaigns, in the vein of Skyrim's ambitious mods. At least, in theory.
In practice, it's a little more complicated than that. Since Larian has not officially recognised or condoned these unlocked toolkits, modders have been left on their own to muddle through without proper documentation. I talked to one of said modders, SquallyDaBeanz aka Brandon Giles, who is hard at work on two projects—restoring some "cut" content from Act 2, and remaking WoW's Forsaken starting zone.
"The main challenges working on a custom campaign is the lack of certain toolkit features and documentation," Giles explains. "The community has done an amazing job delving into all the different systems that Larian used to make their game, but even with tutorials slowly making their way to Discord and YouTube now, it's still quite a learning curve! If you hit a roadblock, you have to hope you can figure it out yourself or someone already solved a similar issue."
I've been touring one of these Discord servers myself, and the amount of cooperation here is lovely to see—it also highlights just how complex of a machine Baldur's Gate 3 is, especially if you're trying to reverse-engineer it. Here's a video on how to make a quest by YouTuber Crucible Gaming, and it's enough to make my head spin.
"There have been huge strides from the community working on unlocking parts of the toolkit that weren't functional before," Giles says. "The big one, of course, being custom maps that serve as the basis for new campaigns.
"A lot of art assets for custom maps have also been made functional. The modding community leaders that have figured out how to add these features are amazing. It's pure wizardry from my perspective, but I'm extremely grateful that I can now work with the full potential of the tools. I see a lot of progress being made in custom cutscenes and dialogue too, with several people working on adding entirely new companion characters."
As for when we can expect to see some of these projects come to life, Giles has a feeling it'll be within the year. "Most of the systems are already here, so I think we'll see many of them refined, improved, and released this year. Once these tools are more wide-spread, I think we'll see new levels and lands comparable to the Skyrim modding community!"
That has me more than pumped, to say the least. I mean, look, Big Naturals Withers will always have a place in my heart, and I've already been enjoying gameplay mods like the roguelike mode, but in terms of longevity? Campaigns are a tall order, but once the documentation's all out there and accessible… well, I think we've only seen the tip of the tarrasque.
