Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Modding Not All Who Wander

So this week I'm going to open up the toolkit and begin working on bringing Aerie into BG3 as an NPC and possible companion. She's so closely associated with and such a huge part of Minsc and Boo's history that she clearly warranted far more than a mention in BG3, and ideally an appearance even if only a small one (like just showing up at the very end to check up on Minsc). I might try to import some assets from Poser / DazStudio, like the hair and tunic above. I'll have to check the licenses, but the models I use in renders have all been bought and paid for from Daz3D and Renderosity.


Right now there are lots of ideas; almost choice paralysis really. I think one of the reasons Aerie has such an enduring appeal for someone growing up autistic, but not being diagnosed until late, is that even though it's not so obvious from looking at her, she is in fact an outsider whose mind works subtly differently to others. She's lived most of her life as a minority of one, so exploring her otherness more is definitely one of the things to do. And of course this Aerie will no longer be the fretful, self-conscious kid healing from abuse and trauma she is at the start of BG2.

I'll have to use Moonglasses rather than Larian's official toolkit, which unfortunately will leave console players in the dark. We'll just have to wait and see if anything else happens in the future with the toolkit.

First thing is to work on her character model a bit more. For now I've just edited a vanilla hair and removed the bangs. Don't have to get all this stuff perfect right away; can always come back and work on it more later.

Although I'm still torn about the class. This stat distribution is about as close to her original stats from BG2 as I can get; obviously without magic buffs she's not much of a physical fighter, and it's a flip whether to put INT or WIS at 17. I've gone INT to make it clear she's meant to be multiclassed to a wizard. Although for cleric domain still torn between Nature, which fits Baervan, or Knowledge, which suits Aerie's character and the fact she's meant to be a Wizard as well as a Cleric. Leaning toward Nature as I feel the other might feel a bit redundant if she's dualing to Wizard anyway. I'll be honest though I've not really played much with the different cleric domains.



Anyway as I get to working on the bigger mod, you can still download the head mesh on Nexus or Mod.io.

I've done just about all the tweaking to the head and hair mesh and texture I'm going to for now. See links above if you would like to test for yourself with a Tav.

Now on to planning the real mod. Aerie likes travelling, exploring, and helping people, and indeed fits with themes of abuse, trauma, healing, identity, and has a century of history and experience over the Aerie in BG2. So lots and lots of possibilities for integrating her into the game. Obviously I'll try some simple stuff first then see where we can go from there.

Don't worry; I'm still working on this. I've just been busy with a lot of other things as well.

This isn't where I want Aerie to actually be when I finish the mod; this was just for testing. Also I'm using the unlocked toolkit. Creating a visual resource and then template is quite easy (although admittedly it took me longer than it should have to realize there was a box I needed to check to get her to wear her equipment) and at this point it would be quite simple to start adding dialogue and create a basic NPC. But we don't want that; we want Aerie to be a companion, and for that we need to start looking at scripts. Which always looks daunting at first when you open one in notepad and just see a wall of seeming nonsense, but by looking at how others in the game are put together we can slowly puzzle it out I'm sure.

Ideally we would want a cinematic intro for her as well. As I've said before, this obviously isn't the same fretful, traumatized kid as from the start of BG2. In BG2 Aerie is still healing from years of abuse and captivity. She's still an alien in the world having never ventured far from the circus. so naturally is quite dependent on the party. She's not really used to talking to people, is claustrophobic, using muscles she's never really exercised before... suffices to say there was a lot she needed to overcome, but by the end of it she mostly has, and now over a hundred years on she has the confidence and experience to match her high intelligence and wisdom. We might find out she has some all new issues later, but her intro should show her kicking some ass I think.