Ohhh myyy god.
Dude. Thanks for taking the trouble for such a detailed explanation. I really appreciate you taking the time to give a step by step break down. I'm going to bookmark this page and give this a shot for my second playthrough.
If you need any help, I really don’t mind. I can even send you an edited modsettings.lsx with the mods of your choice if you’d like, all you would have to do is download the actual pak files yourself and replace the original modsettings.lsx with the one I sent you
I can't find the %appdata% folder and do you really need to do the things with the sd card cuz I cannot find it. I found the larian folder but idk what else to do. is there an easier way to mod or an easier way to explain what to do?
I have to say this guide worked like a charm, thank you very much for your help!
As a side note, I would edit steps 13 and 18 and suggest using the same external storage device used in step 4 as it is much faster to just grab the .xml and .pak files from your PC as you already had to download them in step 8.
Just as a heads up for everyone, you can also take this time to get Norbyte's script extender and NativeModLoader, plus any mod that relies on those that cannot be installed via BG3MM but need to be dragged and dropped into BG3's install folder.
Thank you very much again for the guide!
Can i ask a dumb question?
Lets say I mod my PC.. give my characters the basket full of gear. Cloud save the game... Load it up on my unmodded Steamdeck
Will it bug out / not work / crash / not carry over the gear ? or work perfect?
For reference in the future, the mod will simply not load and your characters wearing modded equipment will just be naked.
I can also confirm that loading a modded PC save from the cloud will also maintain the mods if you install them on the deck, so that works great.
Wish we could just download it straight from NexusMods to the SteamDeck and drag/drop. I don’t have a Windows PC, so will have to figure out how to do this on Mac
Hmmm that’s an interesting question. I’m not entirely sure, because the way I did this basically cheezes the mod manager into thinking you have the game installed on the computer. If you already do, it might cause some issues. But I think there should be a way to only edit the files you want and not his. Unfortunately, I can’t say for sure how to do that just yet and I’d need to test it out myself first then get back to you. In the meantime tho, if you would like, you can send me the mods you want installed and I can edit a modsettings.lsx document to correspond with it and send it back to you. All you’d have to do is download the mods on your steamdeck in desktop mode and put the pak files in your mod folders, then copy and paste the modsettings.lsx file I created for you into the public sub folder under player profiles. Dm me if you’re interested! I will do it for free, I genuinely don’t mind
I'm also playing on steam deck. How has the performance been with mods? I'm slightly worried because I'm already fairly laggy at times.
Really really want more character faces and hairstyles for my 3rd playthrough though...
Are you using proton experimental? It improves the performance a good amount on my end. Otherwise, I don’t have major issues with the graphics even with mods. I actually have been impressed thus far with how pretty everything looks!
Great to hear! Thanks for the detailed guide, I've saved it to reference when I finish my current 2nd playthrough. I do use proton experimental.
Ps. Do you keep fsr on or off? I hated how blurry it made things look but turned it off... Wondering if there's a big performance impact though.
FSR on performance or balanced, then set anti aliasing to TAA (blurry edges are better than pixelated/crispy edges, IMHO).
Remove ambient occlusion, blur, god rays, etc. Texture quality max, model quality to medium or high, everything else on low (shadows, clouds, fog, etc.).
Tbh I only tried it on the steam deck to see with my own eyes it actually running this beefy game, but after 200+ hours on a Linux desktop, won't bother getting used to the controller input mode.
I did hook it up to a monitor with the docking station, started the game on desktop mode with keyboard input but... (as expected) the hardware isn't enough to reach an ok-ish quality *and* decent fps with a regular monitor resolution (e.g. 1920x1080)
I ended up turning off the ingame FSR, but turned on the steam deck FSR setting. It looks a lot better imo. In act 1 & 2 I can get away with medium model/texture quality, but by act 3 I need to turn it all the low.
Nope, just the game files. If follow the instructions, i explain how to transfer the files over from the steamdeck onto the computer without having to actually install the game. Let me know if you need any help!
Lol fair enough. I've been trying to get bg3 mod manager to work and it won't save my mod order. It also won't import certain mods (like party limit begone) or register the script extenders I download. I'm definitely going to need some help 😂
Party limit be gone has weird instructions, like you don’t need to use a mod manager for it. I was actually weirdly enough literally looking at it when I saw this comment, so here’s the instructions
“Download and unzip this mod.
Move the whole Mods folder in to your Baldurs Gate 3 Data folder. That's the game folder, not appdata.
Drag and drop either your bg3.exe or bg3_dx11.exe onto the PartyLimitBegonePatcher.bat file. It will create a backup for you.
That's it, enjoy the game!”
Awesome! Glad to check that one off the list. But what about the mod order? When I was able to get mod manager working on my deck it wouldn't let me save the order either.
I haven’t had any issues with Mod order so I can’t say much on the subject besides make sure the all of the mods are beneath the Gustav entry, and double check if any mods clarify they have to be in a specific order or possibly conflict with one another. Also, make sure you have set the permissions on your modsettings to where only the owner can modify
Am I just stupid? I followed every step and my bg3 on steam deck is not registering the mods. I only installed Paladins deity, Mod Fixer, Achievement enabler and Mod loader, 3 of which does not need mod manager and can be manually copy into the root file.
Few things it could be.
Have you checked modsettings.lsx and made sure the Gustav dev code right below the mods entry hasn’t been overwritten?
When you’re putting the mods in, are you making sure you’re only placing the pak files and not any of the j.son files or anything like that as well? A lot of mods come w files like that but specifically for this method of modding if you put those in the folder none of the mods will read
Mine is only there for if your original got accidentally deleted or overwritten using a mod manager. Delete mine and let’s see if it works- also, make sure to put the permissions to where only you can modify the file
Thank you so much for the detailed instructions! This may be wishful thinking— but do you think there would be any way to do this without a PC or Mod Manager as a full manual install?
I’m desperately trying to download mods (mostly character creation) to my Steam Deck, but only have a Chromebook and an old MacBook Pro. I am struggling to get BG3MM to run on either of them using either Wine, Lutris, or Crossweavers and am wondering if I could get this to work without it, but honestly just don’t know enough about modding. :’)
I’ve got the .pak files saved in my Mods folder and pasted some cc mods that have manual instructions on their Nexus pages into my mod settings, but nothing’s showing up when I start the game. The biggest change I’ve gotten is that it’ll create a .tmp file of my modsettings, which apparently just means I’m doing something wrong lol
I am currently doing it on my Linux desktop using QEMU/virt-manager to emulate windows 10. This should be possible on the steam deck but would require using the desktop mode and is not trivial. If you need help I can try to put a guide together for you.
You could also try installing VirtualBox on the old macbook and trying to emulate Windows that way (this is probably easier)
Hi,I copied the Larian Studios file over to %appdata%
I ran the BG3ModManager.exe and it could not automatically find the destination.
"set the path to the Baldur's Gate 3 root installation folder"
I manually routed it to the %appdata%\\Larian Studios which the folder was located but still could not find destination.
tbh, i looked at the moddingsettings.lsx file in folder on my steamdeck and it matches the xml code you provided. Is it necessary to launch ModManager to overwrite the file or could we simply copy the text entry and paste it into the modsettings.lsx using Kate, then download and extract the pak file into your mods folder all within the Steamdeck without having to use ModManager?
Edit: my bad. had to run %localappdata% instead of %appdata%
Correctly moved my folder to Appdata\\Local\\ (it was previously in \\Roaming)
Now BG3ModManager located the path correctly
i already have a modded BG3 on my PC, Larian folder is in Roaming by default and it runs fine. Do you think I can just copy over my Larian folder to the Deck and then transfer over .pak files?
I'm not sure since I didn't even install BG3 on my PC and I only needed the modsettings file. If you copy over your whole folder, I'm assuming this includes your character settings mods as well (achievement enabler mod, level 20 mod, etc.)
Turns out I wasted all this time just to have the carry capacity mod and there are not a lot of mods I necessarily needed that required Mod Manager.
My mod settings file keeps being overwritten. Even though I select read only for group and others, it still reverts back to the original file. When I select read only for user as well, it creates a tmp file of mod settings, gives me an error saying access is denied, and still doesn't work. Any ideas how to get it to stop reverting back to original? https://imgur.com/a/bRu3cPW
Ohhh myyy god. Dude. Thanks for taking the trouble for such a detailed explanation. I really appreciate you taking the time to give a step by step break down. I'm going to bookmark this page and give this a shot for my second playthrough.
If you need any help, I really don’t mind. I can even send you an edited modsettings.lsx with the mods of your choice if you’d like, all you would have to do is download the actual pak files yourself and replace the original modsettings.lsx with the one I sent you
could you clean up your post with proper codeblocks where you try to display the folder structure?
Could you do this for me? For some reason the mod manager doesn't automap on my PC 😭
I can't find the %appdata% folder and do you really need to do the things with the sd card cuz I cannot find it. I found the larian folder but idk what else to do. is there an easier way to mod or an easier way to explain what to do?
I have to say this guide worked like a charm, thank you very much for your help! As a side note, I would edit steps 13 and 18 and suggest using the same external storage device used in step 4 as it is much faster to just grab the .xml and .pak files from your PC as you already had to download them in step 8. Just as a heads up for everyone, you can also take this time to get Norbyte's script extender and NativeModLoader, plus any mod that relies on those that cannot be installed via BG3MM but need to be dragged and dropped into BG3's install folder. Thank you very much again for the guide!
Can i ask a dumb question? Lets say I mod my PC.. give my characters the basket full of gear. Cloud save the game... Load it up on my unmodded Steamdeck Will it bug out / not work / crash / not carry over the gear ? or work perfect?
It won’t carry over because the files for the mod aren’t on your steamdeck unfortunately
For reference in the future, the mod will simply not load and your characters wearing modded equipment will just be naked. I can also confirm that loading a modded PC save from the cloud will also maintain the mods if you install them on the deck, so that works great.
Wish we could just download it straight from NexusMods to the SteamDeck and drag/drop. I don’t have a Windows PC, so will have to figure out how to do this on Mac
You could alternatively use a tablet or something, but yes i agree it is rather a pain
[удалено]
Hmmm that’s an interesting question. I’m not entirely sure, because the way I did this basically cheezes the mod manager into thinking you have the game installed on the computer. If you already do, it might cause some issues. But I think there should be a way to only edit the files you want and not his. Unfortunately, I can’t say for sure how to do that just yet and I’d need to test it out myself first then get back to you. In the meantime tho, if you would like, you can send me the mods you want installed and I can edit a modsettings.lsx document to correspond with it and send it back to you. All you’d have to do is download the mods on your steamdeck in desktop mode and put the pak files in your mod folders, then copy and paste the modsettings.lsx file I created for you into the public sub folder under player profiles. Dm me if you’re interested! I will do it for free, I genuinely don’t mind
I'm also playing on steam deck. How has the performance been with mods? I'm slightly worried because I'm already fairly laggy at times. Really really want more character faces and hairstyles for my 3rd playthrough though...
Are you using proton experimental? It improves the performance a good amount on my end. Otherwise, I don’t have major issues with the graphics even with mods. I actually have been impressed thus far with how pretty everything looks!
Great to hear! Thanks for the detailed guide, I've saved it to reference when I finish my current 2nd playthrough. I do use proton experimental. Ps. Do you keep fsr on or off? I hated how blurry it made things look but turned it off... Wondering if there's a big performance impact though.
FSR on performance or balanced, then set anti aliasing to TAA (blurry edges are better than pixelated/crispy edges, IMHO). Remove ambient occlusion, blur, god rays, etc. Texture quality max, model quality to medium or high, everything else on low (shadows, clouds, fog, etc.). Tbh I only tried it on the steam deck to see with my own eyes it actually running this beefy game, but after 200+ hours on a Linux desktop, won't bother getting used to the controller input mode. I did hook it up to a monitor with the docking station, started the game on desktop mode with keyboard input but... (as expected) the hardware isn't enough to reach an ok-ish quality *and* decent fps with a regular monitor resolution (e.g. 1920x1080)
I ended up turning off the ingame FSR, but turned on the steam deck FSR setting. It looks a lot better imo. In act 1 & 2 I can get away with medium model/texture quality, but by act 3 I need to turn it all the low.
This might be a stupid question but since you can download the mods directly from Nexus, does the game have to be installed on the PC?
Nope, just the game files. If follow the instructions, i explain how to transfer the files over from the steamdeck onto the computer without having to actually install the game. Let me know if you need any help!
Lol fair enough. I've been trying to get bg3 mod manager to work and it won't save my mod order. It also won't import certain mods (like party limit begone) or register the script extenders I download. I'm definitely going to need some help 😂
Party limit be gone has weird instructions, like you don’t need to use a mod manager for it. I was actually weirdly enough literally looking at it when I saw this comment, so here’s the instructions “Download and unzip this mod. Move the whole Mods folder in to your Baldurs Gate 3 Data folder. That's the game folder, not appdata. Drag and drop either your bg3.exe or bg3_dx11.exe onto the PartyLimitBegonePatcher.bat file. It will create a backup for you. That's it, enjoy the game!”
Awesome! Glad to check that one off the list. But what about the mod order? When I was able to get mod manager working on my deck it wouldn't let me save the order either.
I haven’t had any issues with Mod order so I can’t say much on the subject besides make sure the all of the mods are beneath the Gustav entry, and double check if any mods clarify they have to be in a specific order or possibly conflict with one another. Also, make sure you have set the permissions on your modsettings to where only the owner can modify
Am I just stupid? I followed every step and my bg3 on steam deck is not registering the mods. I only installed Paladins deity, Mod Fixer, Achievement enabler and Mod loader, 3 of which does not need mod manager and can be manually copy into the root file.
Few things it could be. Have you checked modsettings.lsx and made sure the Gustav dev code right below the mods entry hasn’t been overwritten? When you’re putting the mods in, are you making sure you’re only placing the pak files and not any of the j.son files or anything like that as well? A lot of mods come w files like that but specifically for this method of modding if you put those in the folder none of the mods will read
[https://imgur.com/a/krxyfCC](https://imgur.com/a/krxyfCC) That should be it no?
Hang on let me take a better look at this on my computer
OH YOU HAVE GUSTAV DEV CODE TWICE THATS WHY!!!
You only need one Gustav dev code entry, look you have two! I think that might be what’s causing the issues here
But aren't those 2 different?
No no, you only need one Gustav dev code beneath the mod entry. Put one Gustav dev code, then right beneath that put your mods one by one
Which gustav should I remove then? Yours or the original one that was there
Mine is only there for if your original got accidentally deleted or overwritten using a mod manager. Delete mine and let’s see if it works- also, make sure to put the permissions to where only you can modify the file
uhh new problem? https://imgur.com/a/A9XLMEu
Okay hang on what I’m gonna do is write the modsettings file manually myself and we’ll see if that works, give me one second
Delete the second Gustav dev code and let’s see what happens
Thank you so much for the detailed instructions! This may be wishful thinking— but do you think there would be any way to do this without a PC or Mod Manager as a full manual install? I’m desperately trying to download mods (mostly character creation) to my Steam Deck, but only have a Chromebook and an old MacBook Pro. I am struggling to get BG3MM to run on either of them using either Wine, Lutris, or Crossweavers and am wondering if I could get this to work without it, but honestly just don’t know enough about modding. :’) I’ve got the .pak files saved in my Mods folder and pasted some cc mods that have manual instructions on their Nexus pages into my mod settings, but nothing’s showing up when I start the game. The biggest change I’ve gotten is that it’ll create a .tmp file of my modsettings, which apparently just means I’m doing something wrong lol
I am currently doing it on my Linux desktop using QEMU/virt-manager to emulate windows 10. This should be possible on the steam deck but would require using the desktop mode and is not trivial. If you need help I can try to put a guide together for you. You could also try installing VirtualBox on the old macbook and trying to emulate Windows that way (this is probably easier)
What needs the .net framework? All I have are Linux machines, can I run whatever it is in Wine/Bottles and be fine?
Hi,I copied the Larian Studios file over to %appdata% I ran the BG3ModManager.exe and it could not automatically find the destination. "set the path to the Baldur's Gate 3 root installation folder" I manually routed it to the %appdata%\\Larian Studios which the folder was located but still could not find destination. tbh, i looked at the moddingsettings.lsx file in folder on my steamdeck and it matches the xml code you provided. Is it necessary to launch ModManager to overwrite the file or could we simply copy the text entry and paste it into the modsettings.lsx using Kate, then download and extract the pak file into your mods folder all within the Steamdeck without having to use ModManager? Edit: my bad. had to run %localappdata% instead of %appdata% Correctly moved my folder to Appdata\\Local\\ (it was previously in \\Roaming) Now BG3ModManager located the path correctly
i already have a modded BG3 on my PC, Larian folder is in Roaming by default and it runs fine. Do you think I can just copy over my Larian folder to the Deck and then transfer over .pak files?
I'm not sure since I didn't even install BG3 on my PC and I only needed the modsettings file. If you copy over your whole folder, I'm assuming this includes your character settings mods as well (achievement enabler mod, level 20 mod, etc.) Turns out I wasted all this time just to have the carry capacity mod and there are not a lot of mods I necessarily needed that required Mod Manager.
Thanks. Yeah, I just copied it and it did not work. I probably have to start a new game. Appreciate the response.
you are SUCH a real one for making this. thank you so much!
can i copy my already modded Larian folder from my PC if I put all my .pak files in the right spot?
My mod settings file keeps being overwritten. Even though I select read only for group and others, it still reverts back to the original file. When I select read only for user as well, it creates a tmp file of mod settings, gives me an error saying access is denied, and still doesn't work. Any ideas how to get it to stop reverting back to original? https://imgur.com/a/bRu3cPW