Glad to see someone diving in! Darkest Dungeon is my first modding experience as well. The system is actually very moddable, but it is very strict in how you manage it, especially in regards to file hierarchy i.e., you have everything in the folder paths it should be in.

So here is what I would advise.

The folder referred to in the guide is the windowsnosteam folder. Inside you will find the Darkest.exe, which allows you to run DD seperate from Steam (saves and all). This is, clearly enough, an optimal way to test mods. I would reccomend however you copy the entire DD data folder to a seperate location, and handle it from there. Best to keep the safe copy where it belongs.

Next, in order for something to work in the mods folder, it must be in it's own folder, then mimic the DD directory. So, if I wanted to change the Plague Doctor skills, which are in the plague_doctor.info.darkest, then I would NOT put it into DarkestDungeon/mods/heroes/plague_doctor but rather into DarkestDungeon/mods/mymodfolder/heroes/plague_doctor instead.

I am fairly sure that should clear up your questions. Anything else feel free to ask! The Official Modding Guide is awesome, but if you want more advice I would recommend you check out MaesterSilvio's modding streams. They've been uploaded to YouTube and they are top-notch, as with all of his work. To be advised though, he does not delve into the graphical part of modding very deeply, so if you're looking for help with that, you'll have to look elsewhere.

Cheers!

Thank you so much! Now that I can test the dang thing, I've got it mostly figured out.

Thankfully, I was right about a hero skin mod being the easiest mod to start with. The information you gave me was basically all the help I needed for this one. Now, while my friend gets to work on that, I can start thinking about a more programming oriented mod.

Glad I could be of help!