It only took two days for someone to unlock a developer mode in Baldur's Gate 3's modding tools, opening up the possibility of custom levels and campaigns

Just two days after Larian released Patch 7 for Baldur's Gate 3, a massive update that included official mod tools and an in-game mod browser, modder Siegfre on the Nexus uploaded BG3 Toolkit Unlocked. This mod reactivates disabled features of the toolkit, including a full level editor. It's early days yet, but this could open the possibility for custom areas or even standalone campaigns made using Baldur's Gate 3's engine.

In the lead up to the release of BG3's modding tools, Larian was clear that they would give users extensive freedom, but some things were off the table. «We are a game development company, we're not a tools company,» Larian CEO Swen Vincke told me at this year's GDC, explaining that the company did not have the bandwidth to officially support all of its development tools being in the hands of end users, and pointing to the lack of adoption of Divinity: Original Sin 2's level editor.

Baldur's Gate 3 modding is also complicated by its eventual console support, with separate processes and approval from Sony and Microsoft likely being required. The official tools are limited to significantly tweaking other aspects of BG3's campaign, including classes, items, balance, new NPCs and more⁠—which has already proven popular enough in its own right.

According to BG3 Toolkit Unlocked's readme, the mod «unlocks all the disabled features and enables write permissions for the BG3 Toolkit, including level editing, save editing, and more.» It seems clear, then, that the tools Larian released are only a slightly modified version of its in-house Divinity Engine 4.0 editor, just with advanced and unsupported features locked down by default.

The level editor is 100% the big deal here, giving modders the ability to add new areas to Baldur's Gate 3's existing campaign, or even create new, standalone modules and campaigns. The former doesn't excite me as much as you might think: Larian has been pretty clear that most of the areas or plotlines excised from BG3 like the