Unreal Engine 5 Game Modding Guide

Unreal Engine 5.4.4 Installation

Download and install UE5.4.4 (no other version will work for live DBD) from Epic Games Launcher.

UE5.4.4 requires roughly 32GB of free space. You can uncheck additional files in Options (Starter Content, etc.) to save space

Apply UnversionedFix

Download UE5.4.4 UnversionedFix DLLs from here.

Unzip it, then replace UnrealPak-CoreUObject.dll and UnrealEditor-CoreUObject.dll inside your UE5.4.4 installation folder - UE_5.4\Engine\Binaries\Win64.

[OPTIONAL] Visual Studio Setup

Install Visual Studio with C++ development tools. This is only essential for compiling C++ code in your mods.

If you don't plan on creating Blueprint mods, you do not require Visual Studio, so you can skip this step entirely if you only want to make cosmetic mods. Full VS Guide.

Downloading DBDUnrealPak

Download DBDUnrealPak for UE5.4.4.

Unzip it somewhere where you can find it later - you will use this a lot while making mods so put it in a memorable directory.

New Project Creation

While you can create your own UE5.4.4 project from scratch, I heavily recommend downloading the pre-prepared UE5.4.4 DBD Template Project. Without an overly long explanation, it has pre-prepared Plugins folder structure allowing you to make cosmetic mods for all characters and it contains all DBD classes so you can begin Blueprint modding in the future.

FModel

Download FModel and save it somewhere where you can find it later - e. g. your Desktop. Download the Newest mappings file in the Guides section - top right corner "Mappings" button.
Open your FModel, open "Settings" tab. In General tab, enable "Local Mapping File" and set "Mapping File Path" to your downloaded Mappings file. Now, in FModel, click on Directory in the top left and click on "AES", then paste in 0x22b1639b548124925cf7b9cbaa09f9ac295fcf0324586d6b37ee1d42670b39b3
Lastly, click on Directory one more time, under ADD UNDETECTED GAME press on arrows symbol, click on "..." next to Directory and locate your DBD Paks directory again, under Name type in for example "Dead by Daylight live", then press blue + button. Finally, set UE Versions to be GAME_DeadByDaylight, it should look like in the screenshot below. Make sure your GAME_DeadByDaylight is UE5_4 variant and not _OLD (GAME_UE5_2).
Short explanation of what FModel does: It allows you to explore DBD (or any other UE game)'s file structure - where models, materials, textures, blueprints and all other assets are located, while modding you're essentially packaging your mod to replace these assets, so knowing what asset is where is crucial.

Material Instance Patcher

Due to internal Engine changes made by BHVR, this is crucial software for creating any mod that contains materials. Download MaterianInstancePatcher made by olegshabunov and save it in your DBDUnrealPak folder, next to the UnrealPak_NoCompression and UnrealPak_WithCompression batch files.