Baldur's Better Aesthetics 1.0 — Baldur's Gate 3

[SniperChris]

Baldur's Better Aesthetics is an attempt to make Baldur's Gate 3 look more like Faerûn as we know it. More Dwarves will have beards, more Duergar will be bald (including the women!), and fewer Githyanki will be sporting big ol' whiskers. You will also notice fewer people from Chult, but more from Calimshan, and there will no longer be ANY Half-Orcs with pink hair. Please note, these changes aren't universal. A couple of Dwarves have assimilated and gone clean-shaven, and a few lore-accurate descendants of Chultan foreigners remain (like the legendary Duke Ulder Ravengard). But you will certainly notice a difference!

Installation Instructions: Download the provided .zip and extract its contents directly into the "Data" folder located inside of your "Baldur's Gate 3" folder. For Steam users, your Baldur's Gate 3 folder can be found at Steam/steamapps/common/Baldur's Gate 3. The English.pak file is not necessary, but it fixes some typos in dialogue and changes the names of certain NPCs (like female guards turned male).

MOD FILE:https://f.rpghq.org/HDEBT1PcZqWp.zip?n= ... hetics.zip

Dwarves of Faerûn

If you are like me, I trust you made a double-take or two at the sheer number of shaved Dwarves wandering around the city as if they were not by their very presence in public bringing great and lasting shame on their ancestors. Babyface Dwarves? This mod addresses this scandalous situation. With this mod installed, most of the male Dwarves you encounter across Baldur's Gate will now be sporting big, bushy beards, as one would expect of the Dwarves across Faerûn and other fantasy worlds.

In addition, fans new to Dungeons & Dragons and Faerûn may not know that the Duergar (or "Grey Dwarves") are famous for being almost universally bald - both men and women! And while the team at Larian largely kept true to this vision, there were still plenty of Duergar sporting voluminous manes of bouncy, breezy hair. Simply unacceptable! Most of the Duergar you encounter in the Underdark (and elsewhere) will now be bald.

Githyanki of the Astral Planes

I've made some other less noticeable changes, such as reducing the amount of beards on Githyanki men (according to the lore, Githyanki men have sparse facial hair) and reducing the amount of normal hairstyles among Githyanki, in general - topknots and fauxhawks abound!

People From Far-Away Lands

First she's from Kara-Tur! Then, she's from Chult! Now, she's a Baldurian.

There will also be decidedly fewer people who look like they are from Chult (the southern jungles) or Kara-Tur (basically China). Baldur's Gate may be a trading metropolis, but the Sword Coast is still largely a Renaissance + Magic level of technology. There is no ubiquitous and cheap international travel to bring all of these people here. While they have not been removed entirely, you will certainly see fewer of them.

Figaro actually looks like he could be named "Figaro," now.

Ulthred now looks like an "Ulthred."

Jeorna the Druid no longer sticks out like a sore thumb.

Thadwick as a proper Dwarf.

And there are many other changed NPCs that you will notice! There will also be fewer pink-haired Half-Orcs.

Going forward, I've had several people suggest that I make Drows darker. I was expecting that Starfield would distract me, but right now that game is... not getting great reviews. So, who knows! Maybe I'll come back and make the Dark Elves look like they were supposed to in older editions of D&D.

[The_Mask]

@rusty_shackleford - I'm not sure if this is legit, or not, I just approved it just now. But if it is, and this user is serious, they may need access to the Vault, and so on...

[SniperChris]

@rusty_shackleford - I'm not sure if this is legit, or not, I just approved it just now. But if it is, and this user is serious, they may need access to the Vault, and so on...

I am serious. I was provided a link to this forum by a DM from a supporter on Nexus after my mod was placed under review there. I am currently appealing the review, noting that this is not a "whitewashing" mod as several prominent Chultan NPCs remain Chultan (such as Ulder Ravengard and Wyll Ravengard). I just do not have a lot of hope for that appeal.

[rusty_shackleford]

@rusty_shackleford - I'm not sure if this is legit, or not, I just approved it just now. But if it is, and this user is serious, they may need access to the Vault, and so on...

Vault invite sent, using the site should be self-explanatory(I hope!) Welcome, @SniperChris.

[The_Mask]

Welcome, bro.

[SniperChris]

Thank you both!

[Shillitron]

@rusty_shackleford - I'm not sure if this is legit, or not, I just approved it just now. But if it is, and this user is serious, they may need access to the Vault, and so on...

I am serious. I was provided a link to this forum by a DM from a supporter on Nexus after my mod was placed under review there. I am currently appealing the review, noting that this is not a "whitewashing" mod as several prominent Chultan NPCs remain Chultan (such as Ulder Ravengard and Wyll Ravengard). I just do not have a lot of hope for that appeal.

Gondians up to their old tricks again.

[General Reign]

HQ enters a new era.
I respect people that appreciate lore.
Mad props.

► Show Spoiler

[Luckmann]

This is just fucking amazing.

10/10

[ArunnyE]

Welcome! ^^/ I love the premise and promise of this mod, this all looks amazing!

Going forward, I've had several people suggest that I make Drows darker.

I would absolutely love this! One thing that immediately hit me when starting the game and after seeing a lot of screenshots was how dusky and pale all the drow looked. Drow are supposed to be obsidian stone, black sapphire, pitch tar resin, and truly charcoal ebony, sometimes with faint hues bordering on blue-to-violet - and almost invariably with white or light grey hair, and red eyes.

But for some reason a lot of them in BG3 are... just grey, a dusky pastel purple, or a muddy sky blue. It is very odd. It honestly bothers me more than a strange dwarf without a beard, because a dwarf can theoretically just cut their beard if they for some reason would want to, but Drow are supernaturally cursed as an entire race. They can't just choose not to be black.

[Reichspepe]

@rusty_shackleford - I'm not sure if this is legit, or not, I just approved it just now. But if it is, and this user is serious, they may need access to the Vault, and so on...

I am serious. I was provided a link to this forum by a DM from a supporter on Nexus after my mod was placed under review there. I am currently appealing the review, noting that this is not a "whitewashing" mod as several prominent Chultan NPCs remain Chultan (such as Ulder Ravengard and Wyll Ravengard). I just do not have a lot of hope for that appeal.

Hey there,

it's the guy from Nexuscucks HarrySmierleb here.Great to see you here! And looking forward the the Drow

[Tweed]

In a few years Baldur's Gate 3 might be something you'd show in public.

[Luckmann]

MOD FILE:https://f.rpghq.org/IinzN2pFC9q1.zip

What's changed in the English.pak, by the way? That's a fairly major blanket replacement to make (and once they actually fix the mods, it shouldn't be necessary to make such blanket replacements). The mod one is also considerably larger than the base game one: ~13 MB vs. 73 MB.

I recommend maintaining two .loca's; one with only the changes, for a future in which the game actually reads \mods\ .pak-files correctly, named the same way as the mods and folders using it, and one merged english.loca that is unfortunately strictly necessary right now because mod localization files aren't read/applied correctly.

Edit: I extracted the English.pak, and it contains both the .xml and .loca files, which is fine (it's nice for modders to not have to go through the extra step of converting .loca to .xml, so it's fine if mods keep both), but it also contains another 35 MB English.pak, which also contains a full set of .locas and .xml files. My brother in lore, what did you do?

Edit 2: I compared the english.loca/.xml I recently extracted/converted from the last Patch 1 patch (I hate that they don't do proper patch notes these days, they just call things "Patch 1" and "Patch 2" even though there's a bunch of patches in-between. Developers don't even seem to know what a hotfix is anymore) to the one in the mod, expecting to see some small differences, but I can only assume that your edited english.loca is based on an earlier version (or patch 2?), because damn.

[SniperChris]

MOD FILE:https://f.rpghq.org/IinzN2pFC9q1.zip

What's changed in the English.pak, by the way? That's a fairly major blanket replacement to make (and once they actually fix the mods, it shouldn't be necessary to make such blanket replacements). The mod one is also considerably larger than the base game one: ~13 MB vs. 73 MB.

I recommend maintaining two .loca's; one with only the changes, for a future in which the game actually reads \mods\ .pak-files correctly, named the same way as the mods and folders using it, and one merged english.loca that is unfortunately strictly necessary right now because mod localization files aren't read/applied correctly.

Edit: I extracted the English.pak, and it contains both the .xml and .loca files, which is fine (it's nice for modders to not have to go through the extra step of converting .loca to .xml, so it's fine if mods keep both), but it also contains another 35 MB English.pak, which also contains a full set of .locas and .xml files. My brother in lore, what did you do?

Edit 2: I compared the english.loca/.xml I recently extracted/converted from the last Patch 1 patch (I hate that they don't do proper patch notes these days, they just call things "Patch 1" and "Patch 2" even though there's a bunch of patches in-between. Developers don't even seem to know what a hotfix is anymore) to the one in the mod, expecting to see some small differences, but I can only assume that your edited english.loca is based on an earlier version (or patch 2?), because damn.

This was all sloppiness on my part. I will remove that extra English.pak file which certain should not be inside the other English.pak file. The loc file is based on the most current Patch 2 loc file.

Please expect an update shortly that fixes that part of the issue.

As for what it does: as I explain in the OP, it is not necessary and mainly fixes annoying typos and changes the names of NPCs whose gender I changed in the mod. You may have noticed while playing the game that once you reached Act 3, almost every Flaming Fist guard patrolling the city was a woman. Many of these have been changed to men. In the future, I would like to change them all to men, but some of them have voiced lines of dialogue, meaning I will have to wait until I have more experience with generating AI voices and can replace the lines entirely.

[SniperChris]

Welcome! ^^/ I love the premise and promise of this mod, this all looks amazing!

Going forward, I've had several people suggest that I make Drows darker.

I would absolutely love this! One thing that immediately hit me when starting the game and after seeing a lot of screenshots was how dusky and pale all the drow looked. Drow are supposed to be obsidian stone, black sapphire, pitch tar resin, and truly charcoal ebony, sometimes with faint hues bordering on blue-to-violet - and almost invariably with white or light grey hair, and red eyes.

But for some reason a lot of them in BG3 are... just grey, a dusky pastel purple, or a muddy sky blue. It is very odd. It honestly bothers me more than a strange dwarf without a beard, because a dwarf can theoretically just cut their beard if they for some reason would want to, but Drow are supernaturally cursed as an entire race. They can't just choose not to be black.

The reason for this is baked into D&D's development as an IP. There is no lore explanation - it was just a retcon over time; partly driven by the fact that it is hard to paint people who are black as midnight and still retain detail. In addition, with the popularity of Drizzt, D&D's policing of its IP was pretty relaxed. At first, Drizzt isn't even dark - he's just brown. Then he's a dark purple. Then he's black. Then he's a light grey. And now he's dark grey/black again. You will find exceptions to the "black as midnight" skin as far back as 2e. But they are exceptions.

Drizzt in D&D's Dark Alliance promotional material.

A dark elf from 2e.

Nevertheless, I agree that most Dark Elves have always been shown to be black as midnight or some slight variation, so I will see about changing that in future releases.

[Reichspepe]

Many of these have been changed to men. In the future, I would like to change them all to men, but some of them have voiced lines of dialogue, meaning I will have to wait until I have more experience with generating AI voices and can replace the lines entirely.

Didn't even know that. And that's a great idea, "war is the province of men", after all. Do you plan on explanding this to others like the harpers, as an example? Or basically any that would fit, like goblins perhaps, if they way they're portrayed in the game is a "modern" depiction and hasn't been this way before.

And about the drow, luckily there are good options in the game, somehow they're just not really used at all. I'd argue an exception for very few could maybe be made, like Minthara from the top of my head being a bit lighter, with the rest looking more like this at least, if not darker.

[J1M]

I also thought the drow looked pastey and there were a lot of dwarves that looked like they were imported from Dragon Age.

The point where the gender split became too jarring was the criminal guild showdown. It felt gross helping 20 women murder each other so I reloaded the save and avoided the area.

[GhostCow]

Regardless of lore, I have to say that inkies look pretty sexy with blue or ash grey skin so I always though it was a great change

[SniperChris]

@GhostCow, I have to agree, which is why I didn't bother with fixing this inconsistency. I like Night Elf-colored Dark Elves. Big whoop! Wanna fight about it?

@J1M, this is true for the Zhentarim, but concerning the Guild - it was obvious that they were going for a "thing," where the female leader of the Guild, Nine-Fingers Keene, only used female bodyguards. It reminded me of Gaddafi hiring an all-female ninja bodyguard in real life.

@Reichspepe, as I do not want to play the entire game over again for a third time... if someone could start compiling a list of Dark Elf characters to change (as well as examples of Dark Elf characters with skin colors you like), please do so!

[Norfleet]

Welcome! ^^/ I love the premise and promise of this mod, this all looks amazing!

Going forward, I've had several people suggest that I make Drows darker.

I would absolutely love this! One thing that immediately hit me when starting the game and after seeing a lot of screenshots was how dusky and pale all the drow looked. Drow are supposed to be obsidian stone, black sapphire, pitch tar resin, and truly charcoal ebony, sometimes with faint hues bordering on blue-to-violet - and almost invariably with white or light grey hair, and red eyes.

I've always figured this to be an art thing: Nothing black-black is ever black-black in art. Everyone "knows" Batman dresses in black, but in the comics he's a sort of dark blue or purple. This is ilkely because drawings and vidya are incapable of rendering a proper black, at least not without completely destroying all visible detail. Between the fact that monitors suffer a restricted spectrum, especially noticeable in the red range where the NIR range is totally absent (people can see NIR, but this range is normally drowned out by the much stronger presence of the more normal visible spectrum), yet this range is particularly important for the perception of very dark things, and the fact that monitors are typically being viewed in an environment with high ambient light levels, you just can't see anything when the game tries to render darkness.

[rusty_shackleford]

Wonder if the cost of ink had anything to do with not representing drow as dark black in printed media.

[Reichspepe]

@Reichspepe, as I do not want to play the entire game over again for a third time... if someone could start compiling a list of Dark Elf characters to change (as well as examples of Dark Elf characters with skin colors you like), please do so!

Off the top of my head I'd say True Soul Nere, Minthara is a bit light as well (though I don't find it too bad), the drow prostitutes Sorn Orlith and Nym Orlith . But I think Viconia DeVir, Ver'yll Wenkiir the hireling, "asian drow" Dhourn and Araj Oblodra the "we wuz drow" alchemist are examples of characters having a fitting colour, and I'd say going from the character creator that these in general are good colours: Lichen 6-10, Dawn 6-10, Ash 6-10, Ice 6-10. Perhaps they could also be used on the more generic drow enemies, like the ones in the spectator fight in the underdark?

If I find new examples, I'll post them.

Something I also wondered about is elf hair length. Is it normal for elves in the lore to also run around with short hair and weird combed back locks like Sorn Orlith has, or is this a Larian thing? If so, all elves having long hair in the future would be great ( at least shoulder length ).

[J1M]

No, it's a dyke developer thing. There are some decent hairstyles in the character creator, but not really present on NPCs.

[SniperChris]

@Reichspepe, I looked into the Dark Elf prostitutes when you DM'd me on Nexus, and I think the reason why the man has neck-length hair is because his outfit has a huge collar on it. Long hair would clip through the collar. It's the same reason I couldn't put big beards on the Flaming Fist Dwarves wearing helmets. The facial hair would clip through the cheekguards.

Given the division of opinion (and lore) on the Dark Elves, if I add darker dark elves, I think it will be as a separate file.

With regard to the generic drow enemies - do they have names? It's easier to find their Visual Data in the files if they have names that I can cross-reference with the localization file.

[Reichspepe]

@Reichspepe, I looked into the Dark Elf prostitutes when you DM'd me on Nexus, and I think the reason why the man has neck-length hair is because his outfit has a huge collar on it. Long hair would clip through the collar. It's the same reason I couldn't put big beards on the Flaming Fist Dwarves wearing helmets. The facial hair would clip through the cheekguards.

Given the division of opinion (and lore) on the Dark Elves, if I add darker dark elves, I think it will be as a separate file.

With regard to the generic drow enemies - do they have names? It's easier to find their Visual Data in the files if they have names that I can cross-reference with the localization file.

Fair enough about the drow, it's not a must, but would be great nonetheless, the hair is bugging me more, with so many short haired elves around especially in Baldur's Gate. About the long hair, I'd say ponytails/shaved sides with ponytail hairstyles and even knots should be fine for elves as well, to avoid clipping, too.
Concerning the generic drow I sadly don't have a save file with which I could look this up anymore. If someone else could provide this info, that would be great.

[ArunnyE]

I don't know if you've figured something similar out, but I've just realized an excellent way to find specific characters throughout the files, and I need to share it somewhere, and I felt like this would be the place to do it, since this mod concerns editing a wealth of specific characters. It was actually the English.pak/english.loca thing that made me think of it.

You may already be doing it or something similar, but I'll structure it like a step-by-step for anyone reading it and being interested in the process.

• First, use Norbyte's LSlib Toolkit's "PAK / LSV Tools" to extract the relevant .pak's. This isn't always obvious, but let's focus on "random people in the game world", so we extract Gustav.pak, the .pak that contains most campaign-specific data for the main campaign, to an arbitrary location, a work folder.
• We know that the vast majority of characters for the game are in here somewhere, in one of the _merged.lsf files. But we can't read those files yet. So we use the Norbyte's LSlib Toolkit's "LSX/LSB/LSF/LSJ Tools" to batch convert everything we have extracted. We take the folder we extracted the game into and use as both "Input" and "Output", and then we select Input Format as "LSF (binary) file" and Output Format as "LSX (XML) file". We hit convert and it will convert all LSF files in all the subdirectories into LSX files we can work with.
• We now go to do this; we open up the start menu in Windows 10/11, we search for "Indexing Options". We pick "Modify" and add the folder that we extracted to and then converted everything in. We then go back and pick "Advanced", and then the "File Types" tab at the top. We then "Add new extension to list" in the form of "lsx" and make sure that the extension is set to "Index Properties and File Contents".
• At this point, we give the computer time to re-index everything it needs to index. We're potentially talking about thousands of files, or tens of thousands. But just give it some time.
• We made sure that we have a readable english.xml/english.loca for reference purposes. Just use Norbyte's to extract the English.pak, and then the "Localization" tab in the same program to convert english.loca to english.xml, and then open it up in Notepad++ or whatever you want to use.
• We find an unsuspecting NPC. For the purpose of this demonstration, I have chosen Aradin.
• We check english.xml. We know that Aradin is Aradin because this is his name that shows up both in dialogue and when we hover over him in the game, and because this happens, we know that this has to be referenced by a unique ID in the game; it's just how the game functions. So we search english.xml for a string that ">Aradin<"; if we search for just "Aradin", we will get a bunch of false positives. By including the brackets, we know that that is the entire string. Voila: Aradin's contentuid is "h86de77a5g9ce1g4070ga46fgf3c95f059488", on row 116116 (for me).
• Knowing this, and having let Windows index all the files in the extracted folder, and reading the content of all the .lsx files, we can now search for "h86de77a5g9ce1g4070ga46fgf3c95f059488" through Explorer, then go to the file, and open it up in Notepad++ or equivalent.
• We can then search that file specifically for "h86de77a5g9ce1g4070ga46fgf3c95f059488", again, the localization contentuid we know Aradin has.
• And there we have it. We now know that Aradin's internal name is "DEN_AdventurerLeader" and/or "S_DEN_AdventurerLeader".
• Knowing this, we can now search the appropriate .lsx files for this name. I forgot to include these folders for conversion and indexing earlier because I'm a stupid fucking idiot, but it's almost invariably either \Public\Gustav\Content\[PAK]_CharacterVisuals\_merged.lsf/.lsx or the exact same except \GustavDev\.
• So we open up the \Gustav\ one, search it for DEN_AdventurerLeader, and.. boom! There's all the cosmetic settings for Aradin.

I am not entirely sure how to select specific pieces of hair or head models and so on, but overriding hair color, eye color, skin color, etc., should be trivial, even if it in some cases would require copying sections from other characters (in the case of Aradin/DEN_AdventurerLeader, it seems he doesn't have a setting for skin color or eye color, but copying those sections from somewhere else should make one override the preset settings, assuming Custom is set to True.

I have yet to see any good guides on this sort of editing or where to find stuff or how to edit certain aspects of the character visuals, which is why Wyll mod still relies on completely replacing the model for the hair he is using instead of just changing what hair he actually uses.

[SniperChris]

@ArunnyE, this is exactly the method I used. With regard to replacement hair, beards, etc., I found characters whose traits I liked, tracked down those characters using the same method, and then copied the Fixed String for the Visual Resource into another Notepad++ file. So I've got a bunch of saved strings for beards, hair, hair color, eye color, skin color, heads, etc.

[junior]

Best look for the Drow is on this box art:

[ArunnyE]

@ArunnyE, this is exactly the method I used. With regard to replacement hair, beards, etc., I found characters whose traits I liked, tracked down those characters using the same method, and then copied the Fixed String for the Visual Resource into another Notepad++ file. So I've got a bunch of saved strings for beards, hair, hair color, eye color, skin color, heads, etc.

Hah, it hadn't occurred to me to just start building a library of pieces from scratch by myself, but that's actually a great idea.

I think I'm putting this part of my own modding on ice for now, though, until Larian actually (re-)fixes mod .pak's not working properly when it comes to some many folders/files/models, because it renders mods incompatible with each other. I want to change Duke Ulder Ravengard, for example, for my Wyll mod. But if I do that, just a few lines under a single node in one of the _merged.lsf/.lsx's, it would by its very nature replace every change you're making with this mod, because I can't just change that one node, I must replace the entire file and put it as a loose file in the installation directory.

I was hoping they'd fix it in Patch 2, but I haven't been able to test it yet (I install through GOG and have slow internet). It's extra frustrating because it worked on release (My Wyll mod was originally just a regular .pak mod; I had to make it a loose \data\-mod because some patch made it so that having literally any other file in the \mods\ folder would break the new models, and then another mod broke the new .lsf's).

[SniperChris]

@ArunnyE, this is exactly the method I used. With regard to replacement hair, beards, etc., I found characters whose traits I liked, tracked down those characters using the same method, and then copied the Fixed String for the Visual Resource into another Notepad++ file. So I've got a bunch of saved strings for beards, hair, hair color, eye color, skin color, heads, etc.

Hah, it hadn't occurred to me to just start building a library of pieces from scratch by myself, but that's actually a great idea.

I think I'm putting this part of my own modding on ice for now, though, until Larian actually (re-)fixes mod .pak's not working properly when it comes to some many folders/files/models, because it renders mods incompatible with each other. I want to change Duke Ulder Ravengard, for example, for my Wyll mod. But if I do that, just a few lines under a single node in one of the _merged.lsf/.lsx's, it would by its very nature replace every change you're making with this mod, because I can't just change that one node, I must replace the entire file and put it as a loose file in the installation directory.

I was hoping they'd fix it in Patch 2, but I haven't been able to test it yet (I install through GOG and have slow internet). It's extra frustrating because it worked on release (My Wyll mod was originally just a regular .pak mod; I had to make it a loose \data\-mod because some patch made it so that having literally any other file in the \mods\ folder would break the new models, and then another mod broke the new .lsf's).

I can't take credit for that catalogue idea. I was watching Pamde4000's BG3 modding tutorial videos on YouTube and she mentioned saving the UUIDs for various things you found while searching the files.