[SOLVED] Game says mods disabled, but they are enabled in BG3MM. Please help.

[Drake1132]

As the title indicates, I have a number of mods installed and activated in BG3MM. I use Vortex to download, install, and update mods (at least for those that can work with Vortex, which is most of them), and then I use BG3MM for my Load Order and to export my modsettings.lsx file. But when I try to load my most recent save game file (after updating a small handful of mods), the game now reports that *all* of the mods used for that save game are disabled. I have checked, and re-checked, and they most definitely *are* enabled in BG3MM, and are also present in the modsettings.lsx file.

 

This only just started happening after the Hotfix #10 patch. Did Larian change the location of the modsettings file so that it's reading the wrong one?

I would very much appreciate any help and insight that can be offered in order to help me resolve this issue.

Thanks,
Drake

Edited November 12, 2023 by Drake1132

[Drake1132]

OK, upon further investigation I have determined that the modsettings file is being completely overwritten each time I start up the game. Exporting the Load Order from BG3MM *after* starting the game does not allow the game to read the mod loads. This indicates to me that the mods are loaded or not loaded based on the modsettings file at the start of the game only, and the game ignores changes after that initialization. Since the game is re-writing the modsettings file to automatically be an empty default at the time of game startup, I attempted to deal with this issue by setting the file to Read-Only mode after exporting the Load Order from BG3MM. Although this did prevent the file contents from being overwritten, the game still refuses to recognize that any mods are enabled. I also attempted to copy the BG3MM output modsettings file content to the modsettings file in the Global profile at "C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Larian Studios\Baldur's Gate 3\global", but this also failed to resolve the issue.

At this point, I honestly don't know where the game is getting the mods data from, or why it is failing/refusing to get the information from the modsettings file like it's supposed to.

I could really use some help with this pelase.

Thanks,
Drake

Edited November 10, 2023 by Drake1132

[Drake1132]

I have been continuing to try and figure out this problem. As such, I have completely uninstalled and removed the game, Vortex, and BG3MM and reinstalled them. I also deleted the modsettings file from both the Larian App Data player profile directory and the Steam user data profile location, and completely deleted the Larian "global" profile folder, which contained only a modsettings file.

 

I then started a brand new game, in order to get the game to create the modsettings files as brand new files. It did *not* recreate the global profile, so it only created two new files, one in the Larian player profile for the Public profile (standard location), and the other in the Steam userdata for the game for that same player profile.

 

I then closed the game, opened BG3MM, and loaded a mod Load Order from my most recent savegame file, and exported the modsettings.

I then ran the game again, and attempted to load the game, with the same result as previous. In other words, this did *not* reslove the issue.

Additionally, I re-exported the modsettings from BG3MM and then set all of my modsettings files to Read-Only mode and ran the game once again. This did not resolve the issue either, but I did receive the following error message:

 

Failed to copy file
\\?\C:\users\<username>\AppData\Local\Larian Studios\Baldur's Gate 3\Player Profiles\Public\modsettings.lsx.tmp

to

\\?\C:\users\<username>\AppData\Local\Larian Studios\Baldur's Gate 3\Player Profiles\Public\modsettings.lsx
Access is denied.

This error message makes some sense, since you cannot overwrite the modsettings.lsx file when that file is set to Read-Only, but it raises the following question: Why is a modsettings.lsx.tmp file being created, and why is it being used to overwrite the contents of the modsettings.lsx file?

I am now going to try forcibly copying the contents of the exported modsettings.lsx file into the modsettings.lsx.tmp file and see if the game will leave the modsettings content intact in that way. Failing that, I will save the exported modesettings content into both files and set all copies of modsetings.lsx and modsettings.lsx.tmp to Read-Only and try again.

If anyone else has any information or insight that could help with this, it would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Drake

[Drake1132]

OK, that also failed to work.

While setting all of the modsettings.lsx and modsettings.lsx.tmp files to the same content and to Read-Only mode did eliminate the error message, the game itself still refuses to acknowledge that *any* mods are installed and loaded at all.

 

Additionally, I deleted all of those same files again, and started a brand new game (no mods) once again, then went back to the modsettings files. I found that the game had not created a modsettings.lsx.tmp file. This was most likely the case in the previous attempt as well, but I didn't notice. I carefully tracked the folder contents at each step of the way and found that the modsettings.lsx.tmp file is not created by either Vortex or BG3MM, but rather by the game itself, but apparently only if there are mods installed and a load order present in the primary modsettings.lsx file. This still doesn't resolve the issue, of course, but knowing this allows me to make an informed guess that the issue is being caused by *the game itself*, not Vortex or BG3MM.

It would be useful to me to hear from other players who have been able to successfully play the game *with mods* during this past week, and are still able to do so.

Thanks,
Drake

[Drake1132]

Update:  Note ::  The following may not always work.  Please see the additional responses posted on April 29, 2024, and May 11, 2024 immediately below this post for more information.

...

So I finally got things to work (sort of... mostly).

For some reason, Plus Subclasses Previewer is still being flagged as missing, and some of my mods don't seem to be working correctly, even after re-installing them. I haven't tried this with a new game yet, and maybe they will work fine there, but they aren't working for my old savegames from Sunday, the 5th. Nevertheless, I can now load those saves without the game crashing, and so far they seem to be working and intact.

So, for anyone running into the same problem who would like help getting things working again, here's what I did...

1. Backup Mods directory to another location (default location of the Mods directory is "%LocalAppData%\Larian Studios\Baldur's Gate 3\Mods").
2. Backup Savegames directory to another location (default location of the Savegames directory is "%LocalAppData%\Larian Studios\Baldur's Gate 3\PlayerProfiles\Public\Savegames")... this step isn't really necessary, but not a bad idea anyway.
3. Clear the game cache (and other game files) by following this guide.
4. Start the game and create a New Character.
5. As soon as the New Character escapes their pod on the Nautiloid (first post-creation autosave), exit the game.
6. Copy Mods backups back to the cleanly created Mods directory.
7. Open Vortex and allow it to Deploy your mods.
8. Open BG3MM and Export your Load Order.
9. Delete the modsettings.lsx file from "%LocalAppData%\Larian Studios\Baldur's Gate 3\PlayerProfiles\Public". Yes, this does, in fact, delete the very same Load Order you just exported, so you can probably skip Step 8, but this is the order I did things, so this is the order I'm listing them.
10. If you're like me, then attempting to run the game at this point will result in a Crash to Desktop, so move on to Step 11...
11. Go to your Steam Library, Right-Click BG3 and Click on Properties. Then Click on Installed Files. Then Click the button to "Verify integrity of game files". If you're like me, it should need to replace 1-2 files. ***NOTE: If you aren't using Steam, you may need to reinstall the entire game at this step. Doing so should ensure that all files are clean and correct, just the same as a file integrity check would do. This will depend on whether or not your game implementation allows for a file integrity check in a manner similar to the way Steam does. If you can do a file integrity check, then that's the way to go. If you can't do a file integrity check, then you might need to reinstall the game, but try to run the game first and see if it crashes before you do a full reinstall.***
12. If you want to use Native Mod Loader for any reason, then reinstall Native Mod Loader. This will be necessary for this particular mod because its primary file is one of the ones that re-verifying the game integrity will replace, which means that Step 11 just uninstalled the mod, so go ahead and get it back again.
13. Open Vortex and allow it to Deploy your mods. Yes, this is a repeat of Step 7. Do it anyway.
14. Open BG3MM and Export your Load Order. Yes, this is a repeat of Step 8. Do it anyway.
15. Run the game and check to see if you can now load your Savegame.

At this point, things were working for me. If they are still not working for you, then I probably can't help you (sorry), but hopefully someone else can. One thing to consider trying would be to roll back the game version to an earlier patch version. To do that, please see this guide.

It's also worth noting that for those running mods, it is generally recommended to disable the game's ability to update (see this guide for how to do this in the easiest way possible). Technically speaking, you aren't actually preventing the game from being updated by Steam, but instead are just creating a secondary copy of it. The secondary copy will not be updated even when the main copy does get updated. I don't recommend that until you have a fully working set of mods, though, because you also will be limiting your ability to update mods. Additionally, if you choose to do this, make sure that you keep all of your Mod zip and pak files backed up in case you need to reinstall a mod at some point.

Good Luck,
Drake

Edited May 12 by Drake1132

[TheGrandAdvisor]

Frequently what this means is that one of the mods is broken. If BG3 detects this at start up, it disables ALL mods, since it doesn't know which one causes the breakage. It does this even if your mod isn't in the mod list (i.e. is inactive in BG3MM), but does have a PAK in the Mods folder, so you have to delete the mod with BG3MM. I'm currently developing a mod and actually use this feature to quickly determine if my mod is broken or not at startup, rather than waiting for all the very slow loading.

[Drake1132]

On 4/29/2024 at 7:50 AM, TheGrandAdvisor said:

Frequently what this means is that one of the mods is broken. If BG3 detects this at start up, it disables ALL mods, since it doesn't know which one causes the breakage. It does this even if your mod isn't in the mod list (i.e. is inactive in BG3MM), but does have a PAK in the Mods folder, so you have to delete the mod with BG3MM. I'm currently developing a mod and actually use this feature to quickly determine if my mod is broken or not at startup, rather than waiting for all the very slow loading.

That's interesting to know as well.  Thank you.

In addition to that prospect (which I will keep in mind in the future), I have also found in more recent game versions that the same problem also sometimes comes up when there is an issue with the load order.  I suspect that this may be related to the broken mod issue you mentioned, in that a mod may *become* broken if there is a problematic conflict in the load order.

For any other people having similar issues in the future, my fix guide that I originally posted may not always work.  If it doesn't, then it is probably a problem with either a broken mod or a broken load order.  In such a case, the best thing to do is to use a binary search algorithm to determine which mod(s) are causing problems.  If you aren't sure what that means, there's a half-decent article for it on Wikipedia.