Baldur's Gate 3 Console Players Fearful After Popular Mod Is Taken Down
If Baldur's Gate 3 Run Keeps Crashing For You, It Might Be Because A Popular Mod Was Just Deleted
If you’re experiencing problems with your modded Baldur’s Gate 3 run, you’re not alone. A popular mod was just removed from both Nexus Mods and mod.io, and while this isn’t so bad for PC players, it’s been disastrous for some on console.
Results may differ, but some are reporting game crashes, and others appear to be struggling to even load their saves prior to the mod being deleted. This will be particularly problematic on console, where players are prevented from loading a save without all of their previous mods installed - with seemingly no workaround for when one of these mods no longer exists.
Running Into Problems After Baldur's Gate 3 Mods Are Deleted? The Advice Differs Depending On Your Platform
The mod in question is Transmogs and Spelltheft from modder GabeCamomescro. They have now removed all of their mods from Nexus and mod.io after experiencing issues within the mod author community.
The mod allowed players to become NPCs, completely copying their appearance. They could also steal their spells to use themselves. You could turn back at any time, making it a great roleplaying tool if you wanted your character to have this ability in-universe.
As soon as the mod was deleted, anyone who had it installed - especially on Xbox and PlayStation - was fearful for their playthroughs.
If you have the mod on PC, you will probably be alright, as you can delete it and still boot up your old saves. On console, the game will ask you to reinstall everything that was on that save before you can reload; you can add mods to a save, you just can’t remove them. Larian would have put this in to stop newcomers to modding from accidentally bricking their saves, but unfortunately, it might now be the cause of some runs being rendered unplayable.
There are ways around this. For starters, do not remove the mod yourself on console. It seems that some are still able to access the files if they are already installed, but you won’t be able to reinstall them if you toggle the mod off. Unfortunately, that would probably mean having to include the mod in any future playthroughs, if you want to continue accessing past saves. If you do uninstall it, you will have to either reload to a save made before you installed it in the first place, or start over again.
An Xbox player has also recommended that anyone still making their way through the game should keep putting Baldur’s Gate 3 in quick resume, so they never have to reload their mods. This might not be totally necessary, but it is better to be safe than sorry.
The one thing working in everyone’s favour right now is that Larian is done with Baldur’s Gate 3 updates. Big official patches often mess with mods, requiring the mod author to release an update. If Larian were to drop another update, then Transmogs and Spelltheft might not be compatible with it, forcing players to abandon their saves.
If there is an update, hopefully it’s Larian allowing console players to delete mods mid-playthrough, so we don’t see this happen again. You could even have it as a toggle in the settings with a big fat warning against deleting mods mid-run. The only other alternative coming to mind is Larian preventing mod authors from deleting their work from the console database, but that would likely frustrate modders more than anything.