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How To Install A Mod Manager
How To Install Individual Mods
What To Know Before Installing
Mods heighten the gaming experience. You may want to play your first playthrough without any though, because once you start adding mods you won't be able to stop. Baldur's Gate 3 supports mods, so you will have no trouble customizing your gameplay experience.
RELATED: Baldur's Gate 3: The Best Mods
If you have never added mods to a game before or are a bit rusty from your Skyrim days, we have compiled instructions on how to add individual mods to Baldur's Gate 3. Once you know where to go, the rest is history.
How To Install A Mod Manager
The best thing about this game is that the main mod manager is supported. Using a mod manager makes installing mods one hundred times easier. With a manager like Vortex, you do not need to go into game files and do everything manually.
All you have to do is install a mod manager and the mods themselves, and the manager will do the rest. Baldur's Gate 3 mods can be found on NexusMods.com.
Once you set up and launch the manager, you will have to click Games on the left side and find Baldur's Gate 3 among your list of games. Select "Manage" on the game cover to enable it for modding.
- Download Vortex Mod Manager.
- Set up the mod manager.
- Enable Baldur's Gate 3.
- Download mods.
How To Install Individual Mods
Since Vortex Mod Manager is supported, all you have to do is download a mod and NexusMods will send it straight to your Vortex Mod Manager for installation.
The mod manager will install the mod into Baldur's Gate 3 files automatically. You do not have to do anything once the website opens the mod into the manager for you.
Most Baldur's Gate 3 mods you find on Nexus Mods will support the Vortex Mod Manager, but some will still require a manual download.
How To Manually Download A Mod
When you select Manually Download on a mod file page, you will still need to use a mod manager, in this case the Baldur's Gate 3 Mod Manager instead of the Vortex one.
When you manually download a mod from Nexus Mods, inside the zip folder will be a couple of things. The items that end in "pak" are the mod files that must be transferred. Essentially, what you must do is transfer all the ".pak" files into the mod folder within your game files.
The mod folder in question is hidden by default. To find this folder, you must go to your main internal drive, select Users, your username, and then App Data. App Data may be hidden, in this case, select View at the top of the file explorer and then select Show and check off Hidden Items.
The pathway should look something like this: C:/Users/YourUsername/AppData/Local/Larian Studios/Baldur's Gate 3/Mods
Paste all .pak files into this premade Mods folder. Manage your mods using the Baldur's Gate 3 Mod Manager.
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What To Know Before Installing
Installing mods into any video game opens your game up to the risk of bugs and malfunction. The more support the game gives to modification, the less this is bound to happen.
When you open Baldur's Gate 3 after installing mods, the game will identify a change in files and inform you that there may be complications due to this change (mod installation). This is just a heads-up given to you if you didn't install mods or so that you understand why your file may have gotten corrupted.
You can simply "Close" the pop-up and continue as normal.
Another thing to note is that some mods require other mods or tools to be installed, in order for them to work correctly. For instance, the mod Tav's Hair Salon needs a specific Baldur's Gate 3 Mod Manager to be installed as well as Baldur's Gate 3 Mod Fixer in order to support the hair mod.
You can still download said mod without installing these extra tools, but the mod may not work in that case.
Next: Baldur's Gate 3: How To Open The Bank Vault In The Counting House
