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Back during the early days after the official launch of Baldur’s Gate 3, fans have speculated about the possible DLC avenues that the game could take. While those rumours were squashed by Larian over time, many players kept dreaming of what could’ve been. Some usual suspects included the Upper City, a detour to Waterdeep or Icewind Dale, and the hunt for Hags… but one was prevalent over others – a descent to Avernus. This would’ve tied in neatly with one of the most common endings for Karlach and Wyll, with the group banding together again to help their hell-bound friends. With the release of the BG3 mod kit, a few brave modders have taken it upon themselves to bring a portion of that vision to life.
BG3 Modders are working to bring Avernus to the game
Access to a mod kit gives players to power to create what they want to see in a game. For Baldur’s Gate 3, this includes all sorts of mods – from tiny tweaks to ambitious overhauls, like the one this team is working on. KatszenBurger, one of the team members, has shared part of their progress on Reddit. The team is hard at work on creating the various biomes of Avernus, with progress images that fill us with hope and glee. There’s even a video showcasing some of the map-building highlights.
Of course, a mod of this scale is a work that will take time and effort, so we don’t expect to see anything concrete yet. The mod requires the use of more tools than the official mod kit allows, such as the Toolkit Unlocked 3rd party tool. As explained by the OP in one of the comments on the BG3mods subreddit, when asked about compatibility:
“Their [Larian’s] mod manager (the menu where you turn mods on and off) would not conflict with it, but just like with Nexusmods mods this would show as “third party” with that warning icon. But it would work. The problem is that you have to go to the Nexusmods website and download the file there, then put it in your Mods folder manually, as we won’t be able to publish stuff like this to the official in-game mod browser maintained by Larian.”
While this might make the availability more niche to mainstream audiences who only look for officially published mods, we’re hoping that word of mouth can spotlight this sort of effort. That is, when the project comes to fruition and we can delve into Avernus to experience more of the story. It will be interesting to see how the team tackles the level cap imposed by the game. For example, they could try to circumvent it, though that creates even more work in which all classes need more levelling options. The easy way out is to just increase the cap slightly and keep the game’s established abilities and spells. But the more ambitious version could see even more DnD elements added to the game – but that would be a ton of work for even a stand-alone mod, let alone one that’s already huge in scope.
It is too early to tell what sort of story will be tied to this project, but we’ll be keeping tabs on how it proceeds. Early signs point to a storyline involving Karlach and her quest to fix herself, but anything more than that is up in the air. We can’t wait to see what the mod team comes up with, and as mentioned, we’ll be following this mod’s development with keen interest.