This guide will explain what you need to do to create your first standalone mod for Original Sin. The basics you need to make your mod work.

This is the best starting point for anyone who wants to create mods. Even if you want to modify the main story. Modifying the main story requires a little bit more knowledge so it's advised you play around with a standalone mod first to get to know the engine and editor.

The first thing you will see when you startup the editor and your initial settings are setup is this:



You can open the main mod or choose to create a new mod.

WARNING:
If you open the main mod, spoilers are ahead! Don't open Main if you don't want your game experience spoiled!
Do not save when the main mod is opened. This can break the game and data/levels!

If you selected to create a new mod you will see this:



Enter a name for you new mod and choose the dependencies.
The main data pack is at the moment always included (this will be changed later). The main data pack contains the assets used in the main story.
You can also choose the Main mod as a dependency if you want to mod the main story, then you can open the levels and data from the Main mod.

After creating a mod, this window will appear:



When you click "New level" enter a name for the level.

Now you will see an empty screen/level. Best thing to do first is add a terrain. Click the terrain button:



When the new panel opens, click the new terrain button:



Choose your terrain size and click the right button to open the content browser to choose a terrain material:



Click on Main to view the main assets and right click the material icon to only filter materials. Type "tr_ base" in the text filter to show the base materials used for creating terrains.



When you have selected a terrain material, click on the left button to assign the material.



Click on OK to finish creating the terrain.
Now you should see an empty terrain in your level. You can close the panel now.

To be able to walk around the world with your character we need an AI grid. Click the Root Templates icon.



This will open up a new panel. Click on "All", right click on the trigger filter and select the "AISeeder".



Drag the AISeeder into the level, on your terrain.



Now open the AI grid panel.



Click on the "Full Generate" button.



Once the grid is generated, your level should look like this. Green is where you can walk, red is blocked.



Now you can close the AI grid panel.

Now we have a terrain and an AI grid, it's time to add a player character. Open the Root Templates once again.



Select "All", right click on the character filter and type "player" into the text filter.



Drag a player template into the level.



Now we need a spawn trigger for the player character. In the Root Template panel, select "All", filter triggers and drag a "StartPoint" into the level.



There should be two triggers (ai seeder and startpoint) and a player character in your level.



We need to set some properties on the character to be able to play with it in our level. Enter the selectionmode and click on the character.



Now open up the SideBar, View->SideBar (Ctrl+B). And set the property "Global" and "IsPlayer" to true.



After that you can close the sidebar and save your level.

The last thing for you to do is reload the level (because we added globals and characters). Click File->Reload level (Ctrl+R).

When the level is reloaded we can switch to Game Mode by clicking the smiley in the top left corner.



Then you can start running around your level with your character. To switch to game mode just click the smiley again.

There are 2 things we need to do to make this level playable in the game. The first one is to build a story (this can be empty, but is needed). Open up the story editor by clicking the icon.



Now select "File" and click on "Generate definitions + Build".



After that you can close the story editor. The second and final thing we need to do is open the mod settings.



We need to set which level needs to be loaded at the start of a new game. Select your newly created level as the startup level. (menu level is not needed for now).



After that, we can save the module settings and click the main save button top left to save the level. After everything is saved you can close the editor.

You can startup the game now and if everything was setup correctly you can choose your newly created mod in the mod menu and click activate.

That's all you need to create a basic playable level. Checkout the next guides to see how we can add more content to the level.