After 50+ hours playing with the 4CharacterCreation mod and then more lately with 4CharacterCreation coupled with Simply4Player, I just wanted to briefly share my experiences (and problems).
Note: all of our games were with only 3 players connected. We killed the 4th player on the beach at game start and just used it for a "bank".
Using the 4CharacterCreation mod we were able to customize players, 2 at a time, for all 4 members of our starting party. This worked for the most part without fail.
The only amusing thing about it was that once the first 2 players were done customizing and the second 2 were doing their characters, the first 2 players could sort of control their finished characters. After experiencing this a couple times and finally figuring out what was going on, it resulted in at least one occasion where I was laughing so hard the tears were flowing. One of our first two players actually succeeded in vaporizing one of the customizing players' character with some abilities, in effect killing the character before it ever got created. Pretty good ROFL moment. Once we got to the beach we just rezzed the pile of ash and went on our merry way. Heh. Fun stuff.
Once the game was going we never really had any major problems outside the ordinary crashes that we've experienced with ONE exception. Our homestead got bugged out. NO portals would ever open in it no matter what we did.
In an attempt to solve this glaring game-breaking problem we did the following:
1) Start a game with 4CharacterCreation
2) Once we had all 4 members of the party on the beach ready to go, we saved the game and quit to menu
3) We all then deactivated 4CharacterCreation
4) Next we all activated Simply4Player
5) The host loaded the just saved game and everybody joined
Once we did this we found that the homestead worked fine.
Additionally the 3rd player (and assumedly the 4th but since we were only using the 3rd I can't say for sure) was able to talk to NPCs and actually get traits to proc on his character.
However, the 3rd player was also able to seriously bug out the game such that we had to reload to a previous save on several occasions. One time I was talking to Evelynn in Theralyon's (spelling) house at the start of the game, when she was trying to decide who to heal with her Bloodstone. Right as I told her I had decided who she should heal, our 3rd player decided to break open a container right behind her causing her to stop conversation with me and engage with him. We lost the original conversation and couldn't get it back resulting in a missed Starstone.
Another time was when the same 3rd player was stealing some things and got accosted by the guards, causing our 2nd player to get so bugged out he couldn't get his character to interact with the game in any way. All he could do was scroll the screen around. Even with everyone logged off and I was the only person in the game, I couldn't control his character either.
With that said the experience has been a blast and for the most part without problems. Saving OFTEN goes without saying, because if you don't and something DOES go wrong you've potentially got a lot of ground to make up. We pretty much save after every combat, after every several important conversations, and after every major set of purchases/sellings.
The 4CharacterCreation mod is found
here.
The Simply4Player mod is found
here.
They are both .pak file mods and can thus be simply dropped in your \Documents\Larian Studios\Divinity Original Sin\Mods folder.
Just make sure you only have 4CharacterCreation active at startup, and Simply4Player active after your party spawns on the beach.
Thanks Larian for the awesome game, and thanks roguelike and Tiaexz for the awesome work you did on these mods!
Take care.
