Running Borderlands 3 Mods

Modding in Borderlands 3 is a bit different from how you might be used to dealing with mods in BL2/TPS. You will not be using OpenBLCMM to manage your mod list, and you won’t be using a console to run any exec commands.

Instead, BL3 modding requires that a program modifies the hotfixes that are being sent from Gearbox, and so another program has to get in the way and do that. There are now two methods to do this: OpenHotfixLoader, and B3HM (Borderlands 3 Hotfix Merger).

OHL (OpenHotfixLoader)

OpenHotfixLoader is a fully open-source tool written by apple1417 to do local hotfix injection without having to mess with network streams (like B3HM does). It’s fully compatible with both BL3 and Wonderlands, and features a bit more hotfix support than what B3Hm currently has (as of October 26, 2022).

Some handy links for OHL:

• Main Github Site
• Releases

B3HM (Borderlands 3 Hotfix Merger)

B3HM is a tool written by c0dycode to merge in custom hotfixes for BL3 to pick up. As of October 26, 2022, it does not yet support Wonderlands, but once v1.0.2 is released (likely in September), Wonderlands should be supported as well.

It’s available either as a standalone EXE, or as a DLL which you can inject in a variety of methods. You can find B3HM in these locations:

• B3HM at Nexusmods
• B3HM at Github Releases

The B3HM project has documentation right at its github page.

For the DLL version, it’s recommended that you use FromDarkHell’s BL3DX11Injection/PluginLoader to inject the B3HM into the Borderlands 3 process. For the EXE version, just download the EXE and give it a run.

See the B3HM documentation for further information about how to use the app! There’s also an easy-to-follow HOWTO about running PluginLoader + B3HM, written by FromDarkHell, and a tutorial video by FromDarkHell:

Finding Mods

For information on where to look for BL3 Hotfix mods, check out our Finding BL3 Mods page.

Info for Linux Users

B3HM and OHL should both run just great on modern Proton versions, whether via the GloriousEggroll versions or Steam’s own Proton. The PluginLoader (DLL) version will be the easiest to get running (and is the only option for running OHL). If you try the EXE version of B3HM, you’ll have to make sure to be running both the game and B3HM inside the same WINEPREFIX, and have various environment variables set properly. Remember that nowadays the correct way to launch other apps inside a Proton prefix is with a proton run <foo> command, rather than running a Wine binary directly.

A “legacy” modding method for Linux users is still available as well, though it takes more setup and technical knowhow. Check out apocalyptech’s bl3hotfixmodding repo for a general overview of the technique, and a mitmproxy-based script to handle loading mods and getting the hotfix injection working right. That page doesn’t go into all the details necessary to get mitmproxy up and running for this purpose, but feel free to ask apocalyptech about it.