A world of warning, so you won't get burned like me, and get severely discouraged *after* purchasing base game and all the DLCs:

As the title says, "Red Hook" - the studio behind "Darkest Dungeon" - is treating non-steam customers as a second class sort, and double so for users of Linux version. Namely, being not on steam AND on windows at same time, cuts you off from major part of the game - its extensible modding scene and mod support.

What is worse, hoever, is that it doesn't even have anything to do with Steam Workshop (!). "Darkest Dungeon" *does* have a *theoretically* working functionality of placing mods in correct folder under game's root directory, and just enabling it from in-game button. the problem is, that it is silently broken if you are not on windows (even using steam), or if you are not on steam (even using windows). To add insult to the injury, it is not mentioned anywhere (no warning), and is half-working - you see your mods without names (mod version number instead of name), and if you try to enable them, only first mod on the list is actually enabled, with rest entries being just a clones.

Of course, sensible thinks that he screwed something during installation, and starts debugging - this is exactly what I have been doing for last 3 hours, and I must say I am really pissed off with "Red Hook" after discovering that it is just them, leaving half-baked part in game. By the way, AFAIK the issue was known - and purposely ignored - since release (yes, before all the DLCs) - apparently, there were other "priorities" that ensuring ALL your paid and officially "supported" customers are getting full product.

Additional details:
https://www.reddit.com/r/darkestdungeon/comments/9k7srq/so_is_fixed_mod_support_for_offline_linux/
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To sum it up, I am really, really disappointed - especially, that I was really hyped up for the game, following it for a long time and thought much better about the people behind it. If I would know that they are from the "steam-only" group (apart from being "lets take linux folks money and tell them to F off"), I would surely not make the purchase, despite objective quality of the game (where it works as it should...).

Hope this warning helps others - I wasn't able to avoid the pitfall, despite doing my usual pre-purchase research.

/CatLady

Have you tried contacting the developers to ask about this?

Thanks . Removed the game and its DLCs from my wishlist .

Before you and others fall back into the clutches of Steam, here's a little bit of info I found.

Firstly, a quote from another forum: The gist is that mods made for the steam workshop may not work with the god version by default, but the localization program shipped with the game can convert the mods easily. So that doesn't sound to bad.

Secondly, there is this. It's a brief guide for making mods that are compatible with the gog version. It's just a proof of concept mods work fine with gog.

So, what Cat_Lady said about the mod folder being silently broken is apparently inaccurate.

That said, I've no doubt that the steam workshop makes finding and installing mods far smoother and easier than is currently possible with the gog version.

(Note: I haven't tried any mods myself. I'm still content just playing the base game - I just did this search because I was curious as to what the problem was.)

I've been trying versions of mods that were made *specifically* as non-steam workshop releases (some of them have steam workshop release + DRM free release). The fact that the usual way of installing them for non-windows and non-steam users isn't working (or non-windows users even if using steam) *is* accurate.

As for the tutorial for making gog-compatible mods, I will try it, when having free time - I don't have high hopes, though. Debugging clearly shown that the process of merging mods via in-game mechanism is broken and was never fixed, and if there is a way around it re-creating existing mods for specific gog-only version, it is not very feasible.

BTW, unpacking things *directly* to DLC folders is a nice way for mod conflicts, that the in-game mechanism was *specifically* made to avoid (but isn't working for non-windows for all, and non-steam for windows users).

/CatLady

//Edit
And, as of of your "discovery" of running the localization part as possible workarounds, it was quoted in the source material that I linked in the first post (hint: not working for non-windows release):

"From what I understand it is possible to simply copy most mods into the base folder and have them work, but that would prevent me from actually choosing which mods to use, not to mention that removing an unwanted mod after the fact must be a pain in the behind.

(...)

In the linux version all mods placed in the mods-folder are detected, too, but display the preview image of the first mod (alphabetically), don't display names at all (except the version number of the first mod, again on all entries) and once a mod is installed on a save it only displays one mod (the first one, which also is the only one to actually be applied to the save, even if it wasn't selected).

I wouldn't mind manually installing mods so much (it is, after all, just unpacking/copying a folder into the right directory most of the time). I just don't want to have a separate installation of the game for each combination of mods I want on a specific save. I also would like a way to generate .loc files (which, to my knowledge, are necessary for any mod that actually adds content to the game to work properly), because that also isn't possible on a linux install, because it has no _Windows folder and no localisation.exe in the first place. It also has no equivalent '_linux' folder, or however it would look, and the only executable I found that had the name 'localisation' was the .bat that was calling the (nonexsistent) .exe of the Windows version."

Thanks

Cat_Lady,

I'm surprised that you're still having trouble with this; and apparently you're successfully chasing people away from GOG.

Mods work fine on the GOG version. Heaps of people use mods without steam. Nexus mods has a large set of mods; and for the rare cases where the mod is only on steam, it is still possible to just pull the files from steam and use them with the GOG version. People on the Darkest Dungeon discord channel discuss mods all the time; and pulling files from steam is a topic that comes up from time to time. There's always someone willing to help.

So, in short, the game works. The GOG version is good. If you are still having trouble, seek help - not revenge.

Hi,

Searching in the official Subreddit shows about a month ago somebody had issues with the GOG-version and Nexus-hosted mods. Have you tried them?

I just got a notification that this game is on sale but am hesitant about it due to this issue.

Any ideas?

Sounds like the title should read 'Warning, people using mods on steam and linux= second class customers for devs

Please read with understanding. Both blind3rdeye's and SirHandsome's answers are irrelevant for the issue at hand.

The problem as described on OP and in my 1st answer is still present as of latest GOG version. Nothing changed, and if it does change, I'll surely update this topic.

I have the GOG version with all DLCs. I have download and installed more than 30 mods from Nexus, I have even manually made some and modify some more.

All is working... This Thread is misleading.

Attaching screenshot.

Suggestion:

1. ALL MODS should have an XML named project.xml as follows.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<project>
<PreviewIconFile>preview_icon.png</PreviewIconFile>
<ItemDescriptionShort/>
<ModDataPath>C:\FULLPATHTODARKESTGAME\Darkest Dungeon\mods\MODFOLDER</ModDataPath>
<Title>MOD TITLE</Title>
<Language>english</Language>
<UpdateDetails/>
<Visibility>public</Visibility>
<UploadMode>direct_upload</UploadMode>
<VersionMajor>1</VersionMajor>
<VersionMinor>0</VersionMinor>
<TargetBuild>0</TargetBuild>
<Tags>
</Tags>
<ItemDescription>None</ItemDescription>
</project>

2. A LOT of mods out there were built for a previous file structure of the game.

What you have to check is that the mod File Structure matches the current Game file Structure. In other words, If you were to copy all the files in the Main game folder, the files would overwrite existing ones or augment them.

If the file structure does not match, it wont be recognized by the game. Either use other mod or manually make the correct fixes.

3. Steam workshop Sucks.... Use Nexus there is more and even better stuff there.

There's a huge upcoming overhaul of the game under the title of "Moonlit Dungeon", so this'll be useful if I buy a DRM free copy.
EDIT: Also I highly recommend the game, great fun and brutal difficulty.

Do NOT let this post discourage you from getting this great game. Yes, it's true that activating mods in the Linux version is a bit fiddly, but it is more than possible with a small workaround. I recently had to do a fresh install (my fault), but through making a backup folder (I've made some changes to the Musketeer) in the GOG Games/Darkest Dungeon/game/dlc folder that the game reads every subfolder in there as DLC.

So to start, instead of your mods folder put mods in the dlc folder. I'm not sure it did anything, but I then ran the localization.bat file in the localization folder (open a terminal, type wineconsole cmd, and once the wine console opens type start localization.bat; it should only take a couple of seconds).

Getting Steam Workshop mods is a bit more of a faff, admittedly, but most of the mods I have running in my current playthrough are Steam Workshop only (I generally prefer the Nexus, but I love trying new things). I saw a post some time ago that listed three download sites for Steam Workshop mods. One of them didn't work, but steamworkshop.download has for me. I think the site runner has made a dummy Steam account that they leave online so people can get zipped Steam Workshop mods. Then just unzip into your dlc folder as per the previous paragraph.

Is this method somewhat clunky? Yes, a tadge. Would it be nice if Red Hook would learn how to properly make things for GOG and Linux? Definitely, here's hoping DD2 is better on these points. Can you make it work and get to play this great game with mods? Absolutely.

and you've achieved all of this on linux? Coz OP has clearly said that windows version has no such problem.

Actually, I came to this very forum to ask if this bug exists in gog version of game. Coz I already own it on steam - its drm-free there too, once downloaded you can launch it as you please without requirement to have steam launched on the background or even installed on your machine. But yeah - you cant use mods from outside of workshop properly on linux. Mods subfolder exist, but it doesnt work as intended there - you can only make non-steam mods to work by replacing game's own files. Which is nuts.

I've reported this bug multiple times (since I own this game on steam since it didnt have a single dlc) - and never got a single answer from developer (not bugfix, obviously)

Mods are definitely not well supported in the GOG version of Darkest Dungeon.

You can see the posts about localization.exe not working at all with the GOG version. 'localization.exe' is needed to compile localization files if people want to make a mod or modify text in game. People have contacted the devs and received no reply for that problem. I have investigated it, here are the findings:

You can go to the 'colours' directory and copy 'base.colours.darkest' to 'colours.darkest' in the same directory. After that you can run localization.exe . Copying to colours.darkest makes the included localization.exe work. Trying to run Darkest Dungeon after that will make it crash.

So why does it crash?

It crashes because the localization.exe included in the '_windowsnosteam' directory was updated on the Monday 23 November 2015. It is a truly ancient version of that executable and produces significantly different output to the latest version included with Steam. It does not work with current versions of Darkest Dungeon whether they are on Steam or not. The version included in Steam was updated on Tuesday 5 September 2017.

If you copy the '_windows' directory from the Steam installation into the GOG Darkest Dungeon base directory and then run localization.exe from that, it works perfectly.

So Red Hook have ignored the requests to get localization.exe working on non-steam versions. All they had to do was put the steam version in the '_windowsnosteam' directory and call it done, no need to actually change any logic in the executable. (Okay, they could remove the steam_api.dll dependency in it which seems to be there for no reason at all). Yes, the fix was that easy.

------

Also developers limiting steam workshop downloads while having their game sold on other platforms is terrible for people on other platforms. I would suggest that they allow downloads for people who don't own the game on Steam. IIRC they have the ability to allow that. I had that problem owning Party Hard on GOG and not being able to download user created levels for it. That sucked.