Baldur's Gate 3's highly anticipated Patch 7 has finally dropped, and the reception from players has been overwhelming, particularly with the mods, mods, and mods.
BG3 Modding Is “Pretty Big” Says CEO Swen Vincke
mod.io Founder Says Mods Surpassed 3 Million Installs
Baldur's Gate 3's Patch 7 rolled out over the past few days, and with it came the long-awaited release of Larian’s own Mod Manager. Following Patch 7 going live on September 5, over one million mods were installed, according to Larian Studios' Swen Vincke. "Modding is pretty big - we had more than a million mods installed in less than 24 hours," Vincke announced on Twitter (X). Adding to that, ModDB and mod.io founder Scott Reismanis shared that the number had surpassed 3 million installs and continues to grow, "Just ticked over 3m installs and accelerating," Reismanis said in reply to Vincke's post.
Patch 7 introduced a range of new content, including new evil endings and revamped split-screen gameplay, apart from the modding tools. These tools allows players to easily browse, install, and manage community-created mods without leaving the game.
The current modding tools are available as a separate app via Steam and allow modders to make their own stories using Larian's in-house scripting language, Osiris. Mod authors can also load custom scripts and perform basic debugging, with the option to publish mods directly from the toolkit.
BG3 Cross-Platform Modding in the Cards
Additionally, as spotted by PC Gamer, a community-made "BG3 Toolkit Unlocked"—uploaded by modder Siegfre on Nexus—includes a full level editor and reactivates previously disabled features in Larian's editor, according to the news site. Not all full level editor tools came with Patch 7—"We are a game development company, we're not a tools company," Vincke previously told PC Gamer, noting that while players have a great deal of creative freedom, not all tools from the development process would be supported for users.
According to Vincke, the studio aims to support cross-platform modding—a feature that Larian is actively working on, adding that the endeavor "is not the easiest thing in the world because we have to make it work on consoles and on PC." "We'll start with the PC version," he explained. "The console version will come a bit later because it has to go through a bunch of submission processes. It also gives us the time to see whatever goes wrong and fix it."
Aside from modding, BG3's Patch 7 brought a host of other features to the game. Players can expect a more polished experience with improved UI elements, new animations, additional dialogue options, and numerous bug fixes and performance optimizations. With more updates from Larian likely to follow, we may expect to hear more about the studio's plans for cross-platform modding.
Source:
Vincke and Reismanis Twitter exchange
It only took two days for someone to unlock a developer mode in Baldur's Gate 3's modding tools, opening up the possibility of custom levels and campaigns
