Larian Studios’Baldur’s Gate 3 has one of the most active modding communities of the generation with fans working on massive custom campaigns for the CRPG adventure as Larian works on its upcoming Divinity game.
Of all of the game’s mods, Path to Menzoberranzan, a full custom campaign that takes players back to BG2’s Athkatla, is by far the most extensive. Currently in development with an alpha release on the way, the upcoming mod has seen a large portion of the game’s modding community band together to solve a number of issues with the currently available mod tools.
You see, Larian gave players a lot of avenues to create Baldur’s Gate 3 mods with the release of the game’s official modkit. However, the official mod tools are far from perfect with fans cracking the kit wide open to be able to support new custom maps and full campaigns, and there’s quite a few annoyances still left behind-the-scenes.
Speaking to FRVR in a recent interview, the team behind Path to Menzoberranzan explained that modders are constantly working together to create clever workarounds and optimisations to keep creating bigger and better mods. Nevertheless, there are certain quirks which fans have not been able to fix yet.
One issue with Baldur’s Gate 3 modding right now is using ladders, a mechanic in Baldur’s Gate 3 that fans have often complained about. “Oh my God, don’t get me started on ladders,” Path to Menzoberranzan community manager Andrew Simone told FRVR. “Ladders are the bane of my existence in the way that the engine works.”
As they exist right now, introducing ladders into a custom Baldur’s Gate 3 map is a major pain point. If you’ve ever wondered why few custom maps use ladders, you now know why. “You have to be so specific,” Simone continued. “It’s like trying to solve the answer to the universe in order to just get the ladder to say, ‘yes, I can connect to this part of the cliff face or whatever you do.”
The modding team explained that these little complications are minor barriers that are constantly being solved by modders, although ladders still remain one of the most frustrating parts of creating a custom map.
Another issue that modders have come up against in the past, but have since fixed, was the introduction of furred characters and creatures in Baldur’s Gate 3. While existing characters look great, introducing new entities with the game’s fur shader “There’s a particular thing about the fur shader that I still have nightmares about,” PR director Gwen Wark explained. “
“Our art director was one of the people who sat in there with me,” they continued. “We tried to figure this out together, and that documentation went out into the wider community because I said, ‘Okay, well, this is how this is put together or, you know, how I stuck it together with duct tape, basically’”.
As one of the most active modding communities going right now, Baldur’s Gate 3 fans are always solving minor issues that fans who are solely players would never know about. As Larian moves away from BG3, there’s no way that something like ladder placement will be made easier for modders, that’s up to modders, but also that drive to make these processes easier only happens to games that are desperately loved, and Larian’s RPG may be one of the most-loved games around.
