Wary of installing mods that aren't override-only

Flashburn

In the past I've modded BG2 with many mods, and there have been a few occasions where I've completely borked the game because of them and had to re-install from scratch. Future patches to BG1EE and BG2EE are inevitable, but it's easy enough to take out files from the override folder, patch the game, and then put them back in.

My question is this, then:
If I install mods that use WeiDU or something else, will that screw up the game's integrity when a patch comes out? Or is there a way to safely install a patch without jacking up my game?

Lord_Tansheron

It depends. The newer mods may have been designed with patches in mind (like e.g. SCS), but the older ones likely didn't consider it. For years and years BG was basically a dead game with no ongoing support, so there was no need to worry about it. Unfortunately, unless you have explicit info from the mod makers themselves, there's probably no surefire way of telling what a patch will do to your mods, and vice versa.

My advice is to keep backup copies of your important files (especially saves) and just roll with things as they come. I don't think there really is another way, but I'm willing to be proven wrong by people with more intimate technical knowledge of the game and the various modding processes.

DavidW

If anything it's the other way around. Really simple mods that just dump files in the override can indeed be handled the way you describe. But most mods modify existing game files, not just overwrite them. In particular, that's true of any mod that changes any descriptive string or adds any text. That means almost any mod.

On the other hand, any WEIDU mod comes with an uninstall option. So the simple, safe thing to do is just uninstall, patch, and reinstall. In fact, in most cases you should be able to skip the uninstall process: except in very exotic cases, patching will just wipe your mods.