Larian Studios’ critically acclaimed D&D RPG Baldur’s Gate 3 has had a vibrant and active modding scene since its launch day in August 2023, bit it really started taking off late last year. That’s because Patch 7 — the most recent major update for the game that released in September — saw the addition of an official in-game mod manager on PC, with a console version of the feature then coming to Xbox and PS5 a few months later in November. Simple to use and complete with nifty options to search for specific add-ons, easily enable or disable individual mods, and sync mods with friends in multiplayer, the mod manager makes installing mods far, far easier than it was before.
The manager was so explosively popular that Larian reported it had been used to download over 1 million mods in the first 24 hours it was available, and since then, it’s continued to be put to good use by the Baldur’s Gate 3 community. In fact, on Tuesday morning, the developer announced that the RPG has hit a colossal new modding milestone: 100 million mod downloads. The news came in a post on social media that you can view below.
Hilariously, both the post’s “you are modding naturals” caption and its attached image reference one of the silliest and most frequently memed on mods for Baldur’s Gate 3: Withers Big Naturals. The mod does exactly what it sounds like it’d do by giving the undead camp companion quite a large bust — something the aforementioned picture cheekily touches on by placing the zeros in “100” directly over each half of his chest.
In a reply to the post, Larian also pointed fans towards the modding playlist on its Channel From Hell YouTube channel that includes helpful explainers on using mods on console, general modding best practices, and more. “Whether you’re looking to cheat your way through, throw on a fancy outfit, or simply give Withers some big naturals,” it’s definitely worth setting aside a few minutes to watch these.
Of course, there’s more than just raunchy chest add-ons and simple cheat mods out there. This late into Baldur’s Gate 3’s life cycle, you can find a mod for pretty much anything, including everything from custom dice and user interface tweaks to D&D subclasses missing from the base game, creative new ones that spice up gameplay, loot placement adjustments, custom difficulty and balancing changes, and more. Faerûn is your canvas, and the sky’s the limit.
I’ve only dabbled with mods a little bit — I want to finish my 100+ hour vanilla playthrough before I do a heavily modded run — but I’ve used them while joining multiplayer sessions with my friends, and have had zero performance issues with mods whatsoever. The mod manager does a great job of making sure everything gets installed properly, and pretty much the only way I think you could run into serious trouble is if you try to use two mods that are stated to be incompatible with one another. Make sure you’re reading every mod’s description carefully!
Baldur’s Gate 3 in general is still going very strong for an RPG that’s been out for nearly a year and a half, with 60K-100K players in-game on Steam at any given time according to SteamDB data and thousands more likely diving in on Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and GOG. Modding has undeniably helped keep the game fresh for many, but honestly, there are so many different options for roleplaying and buildcrafting that the vanilla game alone has enough to keep folks entertained for years.
That’s partially thanks to all of the major content updates that Larian has brought to Baldur’s Gate 3 post-launch, and notably, there’s actually still one more on the way: Patch 8. It’s slated to drop at some point this year, and players will soon have an opportunity to stress-test the patch this month. When it comes out, it’ll add a new subclass for all 12 character classes, an advanced Photo Mode for the digital photographers out there, and fixes for remaining bugs in the game.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is undoubtedly one of the best games ever made, and is definitely one of the best PC games and best Xbox games to play if you’re an RPG fan. You can get it for less than its $59.99 MSRP if you wait for a sale, but honestly, it’s worth every penny at full price. For how much content there is in this Faerûn adventure, I’d be willing to pay more.
