A new Baldur’s Gate 3 mod has entered beta, inserting an entire new region into the journey between Act 2 and Act 3. The Act Two Expansion mod comes from creator SquallyDaBeanz, whose project first surfaced as a teaser over a year ago, as reported by PCGamesN. The beta adds new quests, dungeons, enemies, and a full region to explore before the party ever sets foot in Baldur’s Gate.
The mod slots in after players leave the Shadow-Cursed Lands but before they reach the city, replacing the usual transition into Act 3 with a detour called the Chionthar Wilds. SquallyDaBeanz built the region to approximate the scale of Act 1’s Wilderness, leaning heavily on exploration and combat rather than dialogue-driven reactivity, and balanced it around parties sitting between level eight and level ten.
Access is straightforward for anyone mid-campaign: after leaving Reithwin, cross the bridge near the Road to Baldur’s Gate waypoint and the mod redirects the party into the Wilds instead of the vanilla Act 3 opening, with no separate save required. Players can still backtrack into the Shadow-Cursed Lands for a while after entering, but the expansion eventually locks in a point of no return that pushes the story into Act 3 – the game warns before that happens, giving players a chance to wrap up loose ends first. It’s a structural approach not unlike the ambition behind full custom campaigns such as fan-made expansions built for other established PC games, where the goal is adding a genuinely new chapter rather than a small system tweak, in the same spirit as broader community efforts to meaningfully expand an existing game’s systems for players who’ve already exhausted the base campaign.
The practical scope so far includes:
- Region – the Chionthar Wilds, positioned between the Shadow-Cursed Lands and Act 3
- Recommended level – parties between level eight and level ten
- Content – new quests, dungeons, enemies, and exploration- and combat-focused encounters
- Access point – the bridge near the Road to Baldur’s Gate waypoint after leaving Reithwin
- Caution – save regularly, since bugs can cause softlocks, particularly around the shift into Act 3
- Before the finale – finish any outstanding camp events first
SquallyDaBeanz has been upfront that this is a beta with rough edges, and the mod doesn’t attempt to match Baldur’s Gate 3‘s famously reactive quest design – its encounters follow a more linear path instead. Looking ahead, a planned 1.0 release is meant to bring improved writing, finished cutscenes, new class and race-specific dialogue, combat rebalancing, boss reworks, and additional Legendary Actions, though no firm release date has been given. For now, it stands as a substantial fan-made detour worth trying with the beta’s limitations in mind.
Is a fan-made region like this enough to justify another full playthrough, or does the lack of reactive writing make it feel more like a side excursion than true Act 2 content?
