It’s coming up on three years since the sequel to Darkest Dungeon hit early access, and over a year since it exited early access into 1.0. That means, however you count the days, it’s been a long time coming for one of the original game’s features to find its way into Darkest Dungeon 2: mod support.
That wait should soon be over, as developers Red Hook Studios recently announced plans to start rolling out PC modding support over a series of updates. The decision to gradually build up the grim roguelite game’s mod framework is tied to the reason it’s taken so long to bring any kind of mod support to the sequel: the change to a different engine from Darkest Dungeon 1 has meant “modding and mod support has required quite a bit more complicated work to enable, as compared to the first game”.
As such, Red Hook say to expect “some modding capabilities sooner”, with “a fully finished modding experience” arriving sometime down the line - potentially a good while down the line, that is, as the studio say a complete mod offering will take “significantly longer to deliver”.
“This staged work will allow our team to receive feedback that will help determine direction of future mod support initiatives, while also allowing us to balance the effort to our other key releases coming later this year, specifically consoles and Kingdoms,” the team wrote in a recent Steam blog.
The first mod update for Darkest Dungeon 2 should arrive before the end of June, allowing modders to edit the game’s .csv files and share them as downloadable mods via new Steam Workshop integration. In short, that’ll let you create new custom items such as trinkets, combat gear, inn items and equipment for the stagecoach, as well as additional hero palettes, and upload them.
Red Hook says the hope is to get to the point of allowing players to create custom characters in the future, saying they’ll “work closely” with the game’s community to create the tools needed.
“It will simply take some time to get there,”
PC
Strategy
Darkest Dungeon 2
Indie
Action Adventure
Strategy: Turn-Based Strategy
Red Hook Studios