As I passed 480 hours of playtime in , messing around with a solo druid run, I realised that maybe it was time to put the best fantasy of all time down. Simply put, I was getting serious déjà vu, and not in a good way.
While there are absolutely some things that I still haven’t seen in Larian’s masterwork, I suddenly found myself petering out on desire and willpower to re-run through parts of this magical fantasy adventure that I’d already run through countless times.
Because, despite running more than 50 mods on top of the base experience to add in extra content to keep new runs fresh, I think I reached a point where I had finally, after approaching three whole weeks of my life constantly playing Baldur’s Gate 3, burnt out on the game and its mechanics.
However, just as I was about to delete the game from my rig, I thought I’d go look one more time at the BG3 mod scene to see if there was anything that would relight that fire in my heart for another build and another run through The Sword Coast.
And then I found just what I was looking for—guns, LOTS of guns! And, as the video below shows, I’m now a repeating rifle-wielding angel of death, blasting my way through foes like the world’s foremost sharpshooter assassin.
The mod that has granted me my explosively lethal powers is the Vintage Firearms Pack from talented modder Skirbie. Skirbie’s fine work can be found both in the official Baldur’s Gate 3 in-game mod menu (just search for ‘Skirbie’ and it will pop up), as well over at , where it can be downloaded manually.
As can be seen by the nearby picture, the Vintage Firearms Pack delivers a variety of guns to use that vary in terms of design, ranging from ancient muskets through to blunderbusses, repeating rifles and even a variety of pistols, including black powder and Mauser models. The weapons, like many content add-ins, are available in the game’s early tutorial chest, as well as stocked [[link]] by one merchant in each of the game’s three acts (Arron in the Emerald Grove, Talli at the [[link]] Last Light Inn, and Dathelon at Wyrm’s Crossing).
On top of this, the guns all have unique actions and abilities, with more powerful ones unlocked as characters level up. For example, the repeating rifle that my beautiful and deadly ranger Ellowen is now using currently delivers both a ‘Repelling Shot’, which upon hit not only damages the foe but pushes them back 4.5 meters, but also a ‘Penetrating Shot’, which fires a piercing round that damages all enemies in a line, going through each.
The model work and animations on the weapons are really impressive, too, most looking like they were always part of the game. My ranger has her rifle slung over [[link]] her shoulder when not in use and, as can be seen in the above video, wields it like a proper sniper when in use, lining up kill shot after kill shot. There’s something incredibly satisfying in blowing enemies away with booming explosive rounds.
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What I would say, though, to those who like the sound of this mod, is that I feel it does make the game far easier than standard. With each weapon discharge doing serious damage, as well as adding on debuffing status effects like ‘Reeling’, one-shotting weaker enemies is not rare, and even tougher foes tend to fall pretty quickly.
As you can see in the above video, as a Gloom Stalker ranger at level 6, on the initialisation of combat I can squeeze off three shots with my rifle, two standard attacks and then one Dread Ambusher attack. And, with each shot potentially doing over 30 points of damage (and averaging high-teens to twenties), it’s not hard to see how it’s easy to blow your way through this game with this mod installed.
That said, for me, this mod has been just what I needed to keep playing. It has turbo-charged the speed of which I am progressing through the game on this run, enthusing me with just how powerful it makes me feel. Indeed, to keep things even remotely fair, for this run it’s just Shadowheart and my ranger on team, as if I added in any more characters to the party then it would be truly game over for the Absolute, and in record time, too.
And we can’t have the Absolute fall too soon now can we? After all, I’ve got that 500 hours playtime achievement/badge of shame to earn.