Baldur’s Gate 3has introduced some major new game-changing features, but the one that has the potential to be the most transformative won’t be found in any patch notes for the game. After a long wait, the fresh additions and tweaks toBaldur’s Gate 3come courtesy of Patch 7, which released on September 5 for PC and is set to come to consoles in short order. Many of the changes focus on bugs and improvements to animations, scripting, and more, but new content like extra evil endings andHonour Mode boss reworksare more immediately exciting.
As far as the official Patch 7 inclusions,the best new feature might be theBaldur’s Gate 3Toolkit, which brings official modding support to the game. As software that’s free to download on Steam, the Toolkit makes creating custom content like new items, cosmetics, and character options easier than ever before. The Toolkit doesn’t cover everything that fans might want to do withBaldur’s Gate 3, however, and that’s where the community has stepped back in to open up a new kind of opportunity.
Custom Maps Are Huge For Baldur’s Gate 3 Modding
BG3 Toolkit Unlocked Changes The Game
Within a few days of theBaldur’s Gate 3Patch 7 release, Nexus Mods userSiegfrehad already created a mod called “BG3 Toolkit Unlocked,” which addresses some of the biggest shortcomings of the official tools. Although theToolkit doesn’t support a few key featureslike level editing, it’s essentially a publicly released version of the toolkit that developer Larian Studios uses to work on the game, and some of that functionality was locked off rather than removed outright. Crucially,BG3 Toolkit Unlocked grants access to level editing inBaldur’s Gate 3, which could reshape the game forever.
10 Biggest Changes In Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch 7
Patch 7 makes a lot of great changes to Baldur’s Gate 3, and the biggest adjustments overhaul the game in ways that will be hard to forget.
A couple of great examples of how the BG3 Toolkit Unlocked mod is already being put to use come courtesy of Reddit user katszenBurger, who hasn’t wasted any time in starting to cook up new areas. OneRedditpost shows a tower by the sea, whileanotherreplicates the hellish landscape of Avernus, complete with a blood-red river.Both of these maps rely on existingBaldur’s Gate 3assets, showing just how versatile these building blocks can be, but it should also be possible to import others.
It won’t be possible to post mods made with BG3 Toolkit Unlocked on the official mod manager, meaning they won’t be accessible on console.
All the official features of theBaldur’s Gate 3Toolkit focus on tweaking the pre-existingBaldur’s Gate 3experience, whether that’s simply through cosmetic changes or through more significant overhauls to the way that characters play. Level editing, however, is one of the key elements necessary for crafting new experiences. Telling a completely new story would rely on a lot of scripting and plenty of other challenges, but being able to get around the Toolkit’s restrictions for level editing brings down one of the biggest barriers.
Larian Studios Already Set A Precedent For Level Editing
The Divinity Engine Did It All Before
It’s worth noting that Larian’s public toolkit for the studio’s previousDivinity: Original Singames, the Divinity Engine, did support level editing directly out of the box. Despite the popularity that the series gained after the release ofOriginal Sin, using the Divinity Engine for overhaul mods never took off in the way that something likeSkyrimmodding did. It’s possible that the difficulty of making large-scale mods inBaldur’s Gate 3will lead to a similar problem with momentum.
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Baldur’s Gate 3 was a big step up for Larian Studios, but not everything about its latest title was an improvement over Divinity: Original Sin 2.
Baldur’s Gate 3is also a smash mainstream success in a way that noDivinitygame has been, however, so there’s definitely a chance that things will take off this time around. As for why certain features are restricted in theBaldur’s Gate 3Toolkit compared to the Divinity Engine, the answer that the officialBaldur’s Gate 3Twitter account offered back in June was that"technical constraints and platform-specific guidelines"made it impossible to include them in the release.
BG3 Level Editing Could Be Great For D&D Adventures
An Unconventional Virtual Tabletop Solution
There’s also the complexity ofBaldur’s Gate 3’s status as a licensedDungeons & Dragonsproduct, and it’s possible thatDnDpublisher Wizards of the Coast and its parent company Hasbro aren’t especially enthused about the idea ofBaldur’s Gate 3level editing being offered up for free.DnDis gearing up to release a 3D virtual tabletop solution referred to as Project Sigil, which has beenadvertised usingBaldur’s Gate 3charactersAstarion and Karlach.
Baldur’s Gate 3 Will Finally Achieve Its Full D&D Potential, But There’s A Catch
D&D’s virtual tabletop is on the horizon, leaving many players with more questions than answers after the latest trailers featuring Baldur’s Gate 3.
Project Sigil will likely be a lot more user-friendly than theBaldur’s Gate 3Toolkit, but although it’s set to be free in some capacity, it’s also likely that many components will tie into complex systems of monetization. Using aBaldur’s Gate 3level editor to craft customDnDscenarios could be an exciting application for the tech-savvy, and it’s easy to see why Hasbro might have preferred not to officially back the feature. Any assumption of where and why the decision was made is fully speculative, however, so there’s no point in confidently assigning blame.
It’s possible that the companies behindBaldur’s Gate 3were simply concerned with opening any kind of Pandora’s box, orLarian might not have wanted to put resources into ensuring that the level editor was stable and easy-to-use, preferring to make the full scope of the official Toolkit more accessible. At any rate, considering how quickly an unlocked solution reached Nexus Mods, Larian doesn’t seem to have been especially concerned with fans taking their own initiative. It’s always possible that takedowns will happen in the future, but it’s not that easy to put the genie back in the bottle.
For those who aren’t as interested in transforming theBaldur’s Gate 3experience, there’s still plenty to enjoy in the standard Patch 7 updates and the officially supported modding scene. BG3 Toolkit Unlocked has blown open a whole new world of modding possibilities, however, and it’s an especially exciting time for anyBaldur’s Gate 3fans who like to tinker under the hood.
Sources:Siegfre/Nexus Mods, katszenburger/Reddit (1,2),Baldur’s Gate 3/Twitter
Baldur’s Gate 3
Developed and published by Larian Studios, Baldur’s Gate 3 is an upcoming role-playing game set to release in August of 2023. Players will create a character to embark on a large-scale journey and can do so solo or cooperatively with a friend. Combat is a turn-based style this time around.
