Do Baldur’s Gate 3 mods still disable achievements?

Developer Larian Studios embraced its modding community early on, but all Baldur’s Gate 3 fan-made tweaks aren’t without consequence. In BG3, modding does disable achievements — kind of.

The answer gets tricky depending on what you’re installing. Some mods trigger a warning from the BG3 launcher, while others get a pass. In theory, the reason is that it would be possible that some mods would deliberately make it easier to gain achievements. If anyone can get the achievements just by installing a mod, it would cheapen them from those who approach the challenges as they were intended. However, it’s not entirely possible for the developers to know what is being modified in every instance, so it’s easier to just disable them wholesale if the player wants to use mods. On the other hand, within the same logic, the developers won’t be able to tell if that modification flag has, in turn, been modified.

So, perhaps inevitably, there’s a mod to reenable achievements if you’ve installed mods, modception, if you will. Below, we’ll explain what does and what doesn’t turn your achievements off. Plus, the fan-made tools working around the toggle.

Do BG3 mods disable achievements?

Yes, some BG3 mods do disable achievements. This is accurate as of the patch number available as I’m updating this article (Patch 7). If you use a mod manager to install custom content for BG3, you’ll likely see the error. Larian explains how to import mods on your own, but some folks prefer the ease of a file management tool.

How do you know if BG3 mods are turned off? The game tells you through the launcher:

“We’ve detected a data mismatch, which may be caused by unsupported mods, corrupt files, or unknown data. This could cause crashes or issues running the game. Please see our support page for more information.”

Note the mention of “unsupported” mods. Larian’s definition there isn’t entirely clear, but this rule applies for both console and PC versions of the game. It’s common for some games to disable your achievements after installing mods, but not all of them do. For now, even more harmless changes like updated hairstyles, custom dice, and other UI tweaks turn these off. However, there are others that don’t affect them at all, and the difference isn’t obvious.

How to reenable BG3 achievements

Larian’s official explainer on “The Launcher Has a Data Mismatch Error” is up on its official support site. If you’re uninstalling mods via a mod manager and the error still appears, try checking the folders Larian mentions. In the Mods and Public folders, delete ‘\Baldurs Gate 3\Data’ and ‘modsettings.lsx‘ in your player profile directory.

If you want to keep your mods, there’s a fan-made workaround. It’s an, admittedly, grey zone in the community. However, since the most barebones changes immediately toggle your rewards off, the enable achievements mod is not quite as nefarious as players may assume.

Achievement Enabler by dukethedropkicker on Nexus Mods is one such option to enable BG3 achievements again. This tool will not enable achievements you’ve missed while using mods already, and it does not provide direct ways to easily add them yourself.

Also, to reiterate, this only works for PC where you can get mods outside of the ones on BG3’s official mod service. Console versions are restricted to the ones provided by Larian. As of right now, it seems that there is no way to re-enable the achievements on console versions of Baldur’s Gate 3.

Regardless, modding Baldur’s Gate 3 is an easy way to break saves, so install any addition like this with care. I’ve got experience in weird junk caused by custom content myself, but I’m quite a fan of the game’s creative modding scene. If you’re looking for even more mods to try out, consider checking our lists of Best Companion Mods and Best Weapon Mods.