Courtesy of early access time and existing tools and knowledge from Divinity: Original Sin 2 modders, Baldur's Gate 3 has grown to a healthy modding scene. A look around will net you gameplay tweaks, new visual options, and a whole bunch of good old-fashioned cheats, like a bottomless barrel packed with all the weapons and armor in the game.
And now that official mod tools are here, it's grown even larger. Downloading mods can now be done through the game's in-game mod browser, though plenty of the big game-changing ones will still require some of the programs we reccomend below.
These are our favorite Baldur's Gate 3 mods so far. We'll flesh out this list as we continue to play and notice things we'd like to mod, and mods that mods them.
Best Baldur's Gate 3 Mod Utilities
Baldur's Gate 3 Mod Manager: Used for organizing and installing mods. See the mod installation section at the bottom of this article for more instructions.
Moonglasses (Discord Link): A replacement for the unlocked developer toolkit, adding a whole new suite of functionality to Larian's existing mod creation support.
Norbyte's Script Extender: A Patch-8 verified script extender often required for a lot of other mods to function.
Best Baldur's Gate 3 gameplay tweak mods
WASD movement: Pilot your TAV around like you're playing an MMO, emulating the gamepad movement for folks who still want to use a mouse.
Native Camera Tweaks: Gives you all sorts of new camera options, including a classical CRPG-style camera tilt.
Lone Wolf: Makes it easier to play the game as one to two players by giving you a bevy of buffs.
Party Size Begone: The opposite of Lone Wolf. This one raises the party size limit from four characters to eight. Only works in singleplayer at the moment.
5e Spells: Adds a ton of spells from the Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition tabletop system.
Better Inventory UI and Better Containers: Helps make the game's default inventory and containers UI more readable at a glance, including ticks for read books, rarity colours, and more. Will help you declutter your potions, scrolls, and other inventory bobbles.
Many More Monsters: Great for a second playthrough. Adds all sorts of nasty surprises to Faerun.
Best Baldur's Gate 3 visual mods
Custom dice mods: You can customize your dice in Baldur's Gate 3 (there's a little button in the bottom left of the screen when you're rolling) but the selection is pretty pitiful. Luckily, there are all sorts of folks on Nexus with custom dice mods ripe for the plunder.
Transmog Enhanced: Easier ways to play dress-up. It works with other item mods, too, so if you'd like to wear a cool set of player-made armour while adhering to the game's base ruleset, this mod lets you do that.
No More Dirt and Blood: Tired of scrubbing the grime off your party to make them look presentable? Problem solved.
Faerun Colours: Want more dyes? Try over 90 of the suckers, all with infinite uses, too.
Faces of Faerun: Adds a bunch of new heads to make your Tav the handsomest/prettiest adventurer in all of Faerun.
Best Baldur's Gate 3 cheat mods
Double XP: Does what it says on the tin: Twice as much XP.
Carry Weight Increased: Increase your carry weight by 1.5X, 2X, 3X, 5X, or 10X. There's also a 9000X version but that sounds... dangerous.
Feat Every Level: Wanna get bonkers overpowered? Grab a feat every level, instead of every four levels.
Mharius' "Unleashed" mods: Gives races and classes additional proficiencies, affinities, passive abilities, and more.
How to install Baldur's Gate 3 mods
There are three primary ways to install Baldur's Gate 3 mods. Consult each mod's installation instructions to know which is recommended or required.
- Using the Baldur's Gate 3 Mod Manager
- Manually adding a .pak file to your Baldur's Gate 3 mods directory
- Manually adding loose files to your Baldur's Gate 3 data directory
- Downloading mods through the in-game mod browser.
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The first two methods are similar. The unofficial Baldur's Gate 3 Mod Manager allows you to import mods (which extracts their .pak files into your Baldur's Gate 3 mod directory for you), select the order you want them to load in, and then generate a file called modsettings.lsx that tells Baldur's Gate 3 to load them. (Make sure you hit "Export Order to Game" in the Mod Manager's file menu to do that, otherwise your installed mods may not load.)
Some mods don't require installation through the Mod Manager, or don't work with it at all, and can instead be installed by manually copying a .pak file to the mod directory, no modsettings.lsx update required.
You can find the Baldur's Gate 3 mods folder in:
- C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Larian Studios\Baldur's Gate 3\Mods
When a mod is distributed as "loose files," that means it isn't set up for Baldur's Gate 3 to recognize it as a mod. Instead of a .pak file, you'll get one or more directories that contain a variety of files with extensions like .lsf and .gr2. To install loose files, copy them to your Baldur's Gate 3 install directory's "Data" folder, maintaining the folder structure the mod came with (eg, Baldurs Gate 3\Data\Public\Gustav\Content\[PAK]_CharacterVisuals\_merged.lsf). Loose files will be loaded instead of the files Baldur's Gate 3 would normally load from its .pak files.
If you own Baldur's Gate 3 through Steam, you can find the install directory by opening the game's properties in Steam and selecting "Installed Files > Browse."
Finally, you could also just use Larian's in-game mod browser. Given the power that script extenders like Norbyte's give to modders, your selection of mods here will be limited. Still, it's worth having a look around, since the one-click download functionality makes them very simple to plug in and play.
