Baldur’s Gate 3 will add official mod tools this September, making it even easier to play dungeon master

Mods are to Baldur’s Gate 3 what butter is to bread, that unreadable squiggle-font is to death metal bands or wheels are to the bottom of trainers when you’re a kid: not necessarily essential, per se, but so harmonious and well-suited that they feel essential. In the case of the D&D CRPG, it’s a natural extension of playing dungeon master around the table, crafting the world and its characters as you see fit – typically by making everyone in Faerûn even hornier somehow.

There are no end of Baldur’s Gate 3 mods to find out there to satisfy your every desire to tweak the game’s visuals, gameplay and more – or even make it an entirely different game altogether. To date, those mods have been crafted by enterprising creators finding their own way to play around with the game’s files, but developers Larian plan to throw open the doors so that anyone can create a killer salami sword and mess around with your party’s fashion choices.

Official mod support will come to Baldur’s Gate 3 in September, the studio announced, expanding the existing (but unofficial) implementation of third-party mods with proper support that aims to smooth out the risks of instability or incompatibility. Larian are quick to reassure that their official mod.io platform won’t replace support for other third-party mods – for example, those that use more complex scripts, veer too far away from the game’s official D&D licence or, ahem, are too NSFW to pass official moderation – but will sit alongside the manual approach as a more user-friendly experience.

“We understand and appreciate the hard work and dedication of the modding community, and have no plans to limit modding to our official pipeline,” Larian wrote in their blog post detailing the plans. “We are committed to supporting the modding community as comprehensively as we can, and can’t wait to see what ideas you bring to life!”

The incoming toolkit will include a dedicated mod editor, level tester and in-game mod browser, built on the studio’s own development tools to allow creators to mess around with things like textures and models. (The official mod platform also means PC-made mods should then be usable on console.)

While the mod tools will roll out to everyone later this year, Baldur’s Gate 3’s Patch 7 is already being tested with a small set of mod makers in a limited alpha test ahead of the wider release. In July, that test pool will be expanded again with a closed beta open to anyone via 1,000 additional sign-up spots.

As well as the mod tools, Larian teased that they’re working on a photo mode, crossplay and additional fixes for future updates, along with some “anniversary extravagance” to mark a year since the game’s full release in August.