Path to Menzoberranzan Mod Hits First Playable Build for Baldur’s Gate 3

A major milestone has been reached in the Path to Menzoberranzan project, the most ambitious custom campaign in the Baldur’s Gate 3 modding scene. After months of work, the team behind the fan-made expansion confirmed they now have their “first working build,” meaning the campaign is officially playable, at least internally.

Project lead Lotrich broke the news during the latest development update on Discord, confirming that the early version includes functional combat, dialogue systems, companions, and a piece of the story. The build focuses on the campaign’s starting location and serves as a vertical slice of what’s coming in the full release.

“We’ve made big strides on the starting location,” Lotrich told fans. “The build includes combat, dialogues, companions, and a slice of the story to dive into.”

This internal version isn’t available to the public yet, but it lays the foundation for the first public demo, which is still targeted for a mid-2025 release. The team emphasized that this playable slice will be expanded in future versions as they continue adding systems, areas, and content. It’s a big step forward for a project that has been quietly growing in size and ambition over the past year.

Path to Menzoberranzan is set over a century after the events of Baldur’s Gate 2. It reintroduces players to Athkatla, the City of Coin, with a reimagined layout and a deeper, modernized approach to its environments. According to the team, this isn’t just a nostalgic return—it’s a complete rebuild with custom areas, quests, factions, and six to eight fully voiced companions.

One of the most exciting parts of the mod is the return of Irenicus’ Dungeon. For veterans of Baldur’s Gate 2, it was the iconic opening area—dark, mysterious, and full of traps and secrets. Now, in this new campaign, players will revisit the dungeon more than a hundred years later to uncover strange happenings beneath Athkatla. The team promises that while some things may feel familiar, plenty will have changed.

“We are revisiting Irenicus’ Dungeon over a hundred years later,” creative director Thomas Loughlin said. “And we will see that things are quite eerily the same, but also very, very different.”

Adapting the isometric environments of BG2 into the full 3D movement and cinematic storytelling of BG3 is no small task. But the team behind Path to Menzoberranzan seems to be treating it as an opportunity, not a challenge. Old locations like Waukeen’s Promenade and the Adventurer’s Mart are being rebuilt to feel alive, expansive, and modern, matching the depth and verticality of Larian’s world design.

“With Baldur’s Gate 3, you can look around anywhere. So like, we’ve reimagined this whole place to be more vibrant, more exciting.”

That includes building new assets from scratch, redesigning entire city blocks, and updating the story to reflect the passage of time within the Forgotten Realms lore. According to Loughlin, the city of Athkatla is booming. It's richer, more complex, and more dangerous than ever before. It has the same heart, but a different rhythm.

Beyond the art and level design, the writers are working to stitch together a full narrative with side quests, moral choices, and player impact. At the same time, the technical team is still trying to solve a tricky problem: how to implement fully custom music into Baldur’s Gate 3. It’s one of the few remaining toolset challenges the team faces, but they're not giving up.

Even in this early stage, the mod’s organization is being praised by those who’ve seen it behind the scenes. Despite being a volunteer project with hundreds of contributors, the workflow mirrors that of a mid-size development studio. Concept artists, modelers, coders, and writers are all working together with a singular focus: making a campaign worthy of the Baldur’s Gate name.

Path to Menzoberranzan is still a work in progress, but with a playable version already running internally, it’s clear that this is more than just a passion project. It’s a full-scale RPG experience built on the bones of one of the best modern CRPGs. If all goes well, fans will get their hands on the demo later this year—and from there, a whole new chapter in Faerûn may begin.

As modding continues to extend the life of Baldur’s Gate 3, projects like this show just how far the community can go. And with Baldur’s Gate New Patch support improving compatibility and tools, it’s looking more possible than ever to tell entirely new stories in this world.

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