Baldur’s Gate 3, the critically acclaimed fantasy RPG from Larian Studios set in the world of Dungeons & Dragons, is getting a major, seventh update in September that will be bringing not only evil endings, various fixes, quality of life improvements, and more to the game, but also what the developer says is the Baldur’s Gate 3 Toolkit, a subset of internal development tools that will effectively usher in official modding support for the game. A closed alpha for Patch 7 kicked off this week, while sign-ups for a further closed beta is being planned for July, capped at roughly 1,000 players.
Platform limitations, per Larian:
- “…while you will be able to browse, install, and use player-created mods, the official modding tools themselves will not be available to those playing on console.”
- “PC players will have access to the Baldur’s Gate 3 Toolkit to create their own mods.”
- “An internal curation process will determine which of these mods become available for those on console.”
The new toolkit will allow Baldur’s Gate 3 players to:
- “Access the editor to create your own mods.”
- “Upload mods directly to mod.io servers.”
- “Load levels read-only to look at all the local entities, as well as the setup, and test your mods in-game while creating them.”
- “Get access to our internal editors for supported asset types such as textures and visual models, allowing you to override them directly in your mod through the developer interface.”
- “Publish your mod via the editor where it will be moderated and made visible in the in-game browser, or pack your mod locally to upload to a third-party site.”
- “Mod UIs through file editing. We will provide documentation that will explain how our internals are set up to solve mod loading/compatibility issues.”
- “Within Baldur’s Gate 3 itself, you’ll be able to:”
- “Download and manage your mods directly.”
- “Manage multiplayer and save game files through a verification UI.”
Larian echoing the news on X with some modding ideas:
Whether you plan to turn fireballs pink, boost the attack damage of a hand-wielded sausage, or bestow all citizens of Faerûn with a personal handgun, the Baldur’s Gate 3 Toolkit will allow you get creative within the Forgotten Realms! https://t.co/q0h6BPpAdJ
— Larian Studios (@larianstudios) June 3, 2024
As for how mods are curated for PC and console:
On PC, general stability and Terms of Service checks will be carried out before a mod becomes available in the game’s browser. On console, an additional curation process confirms which of these PC mods become available for cross-platform support. While not all PC mods will become available for console, we’ll be sure to publish guidelines to help you understand what kind of content will pass our necessary checks – without blocking any unsupported creative mods on PC – so that we can continue supporting the modding community both inside and outside our official pipeline.