1y ago

Baldur's Gate 3 - Discussion Post #2

The previous post was starting to lose steam so here is another one.

Please note that these will be pinned at the top of the community, so do remember to check back to these threads. The more people contribute, the more other people will check it out and continue the discourse.

As always, please be careful of spoilers. Use warnings and tags when needed.

Feel free to share anything you want, or ask any questions :D

Lucky rolls to you all.

110 comments

Who is with me: Larian improves the BG3 engine, and starts putting out D&D campaigns, from the classics on. Buck the Baldurs Gate thing, and do some modules as games. Be my dungeon master, Larian.
- I'd love that but it's far too lucrative an idea for Wizards of the Coast to ever do it with the way their business is currently being run
  
  Exactly. I'm still amazed bg3 didn't have loot boxes or gas stuffed in somehow. Thx for slaying mind parasites, Larian.
- Honestly, the number one thing I wished for while playing BG3 was DOS3. BG3 is great and all and the combat is fun, but there are so many things about DND 5e (and especially its combat) that just don't work well (both in BG3 and tabletop imo).
  But DOS3, where every ability would be designed fresh, without any pre-defined requirements, combined with the amazing engine that they've built for BG3? That just sounds soo good imo.
  So yeah, I can't wait for them to go back to working on something else actually.
  
  This is what I've been thinking the whole time too. Absolutely love the game, but coming from Pathfinder I find 5e... lacking.
  
  What is DOS3?

Quests and gameplay bugs aside, am I the only one who has a gripe with how there are so little to no good looking helmets in the game? Most of the time it's set to Hide Helmet for all of my characters. I just want my Oathbreaker to look the part.
- Agreed. The circlets are the only consistently good ones because they're barely there. It's tragic when a helmet is both a huge upgrade and distressingly ugly.
  
  Yeah ikr? We've seen some better designs when it comes to the rest of the armor sets and helmets on NPCs. Let's just pray they'll include better helmets in the future updates.
- Agreed on the helmets. It would be great if the hide helmet option worked on the party members you leave back at camp.
  My biggest gripe would be the inability to preview dyes though.
  
  I had to quicksave and test out every dye manually for this very reason.
- There is a hood and a couple of hats, but otherwise definitely agreed.

I just opened the game for the first time, haven’t started playing yet. The EULA is already entertaining. They encourage fan art because “there is no fiend in the Realms that doesn’t have a soft spot for idolatry, and admittedly We’re no different. So send Us your best work and know that mortals who amuse Us often get better perks”. There is more lighthearted, not-so-legal speech in here. I appreciate them considering those of us insane enough to read the damn EULA.
- Really?! That's amazing. A little gem that probably almost everyone missed.
  Are there others like this in the EULA?
  
  There is, I believe they have an easter egg about Warlock pacts in there. A warning about being careful to sign your soul away or something like that.
- That's amazing! Is there a way to read it after accepting it? I searched for it but I could find it, and the EULA linked on the Steam store doesn't contain any of that.
  Tho I found funny parchments to request days off work: https://baldursgate3.game/, scroll down a bit and click on "baldur's day dispensation".
  
  Just rename your localappdata\Larian studios\baldur's gate 3 folder to OLD and relaunch.

Is anyone else at awe with how massive this game actually is?
Like I was in a big zone in Act 2, explored the crap out of it, went past the next part of the main story line but decide to explore a bit more. I find a door to some seemingly small dungeon.. "Uh let's see where this leads." It's starts to become bigger and bigger, and then inside that there's another door to an even bigger place. Holy shit I'm completely lost, I don't even know what I've already left behind.

The only downside is that I get rather tired when playing splitscreen on my living room TV. Otherwise I think I wouldn't even leave my home for 2 weeks.
I would kill for the dynamic split screen from DOS2.

Controversial take: party size unlock is absolutely the best experience, feels more narratively justified and more like a 5e D&D adventure.
- First thing I did once I had more than 3 party members! Game isn't quite balanced for it but the difficulty level changes helps. Ran into one bug already (getting on a boat in the underdark area) that made 3 party members forever invisible. Definitely makes the big battles super cool!
- Once I finish my normal run I'm already planning a second modded run with Tactician Plus, Better AI, more spells and Party Limits Begone mods. I'm gonna go all out here.

About to go into the final battle and finish the game off for my 1st run. I'll probably shelve the game for a couple months and play Starfield and Phantom Liberty and then give an evil run through a try.
Loved act 1, but not too impressed with act 3. Seemed a bit rushed and all over the place, maybe should've split the content up and made an act 4. Always felt with Larian games that the writing usually falls apart near the end and this game was no exception. Bit let down with the other 2 chosen fights as well. The highlight was definitely the house of hope, between the music, the characters you deal with and the fight itself it was absolutely my favourite part of act3.
I've also run into numerous bugs requiring reloads too. Jumping across a small gap and characters will get caught on some invisible wall and just die. Quests not completing or triggering properly. Companions repeating dialogue or just giving me dialogue as if I chose different outcomes from quests(looking at you Gale). Also managed to get two different outcomes for the same gather your allies quest so I guess I'll see if that works out or not. (EDIT: Just a dialogue/extra character glitch. Didn't have two skills in the allies bar to use for them)
All in all I enjoyed the game, but bg2 is one of my all time favourite rpgs and this fell short for me. I'm glad it did really well though, hopefully they can make an Icewind Dale or Neverwinter Nights game, that would be wicked.

Aw man... using a potion of Colossus or enlarge person before buying the statue of yourself doesn't make the statue gigantic 😩
Larian. Pls fix.
- Honestly upsetting that you return to normal size in dialogue as well. Running a Godzilla Tav and trying to be double big from elixer and enlarge person as much as possible. These ants should be talking to my knee caps!

Does it bother anyone else that if you're playing an elf, the narration for camp scenes never remembers that elves don't sleep? It's bad enough that the trance animation is very similar to sleeping anyway.
- Oh crap I never even thought of that. I haven't looked very deep into dnd lore but does it say anything about how elves handle not sleeping mentally?
  
  They spend 4 hours each day meditating in a trance, during which they remain semi-conscious. They don't dream in the same way that humans do; their trance-visions are the result of mental exercises that have become reflexive through repetition. Having strange dreams should be extremely concerning for them, and sneaking up on them should be more challenging than sneaking up on a sleeping human; neither of these things are really reflected in BG3.

Laezel's been growing on me lately. Used to not like her that much at the start but now she's a permanent member of my party. Interested to know how others feel about her
- I like her. Romanced her. She has always been in my party. Her and Shadowheart are both great. I had to tell the wizard to fuck off when I ran out of items I could part with so I don't know how I feel about him, but in general I'm not a fan of the class so he'd need a great personality to make up for that. I'm not a huge fan of Halsin, Wyll, or the barbarian even though I like all three classes. I've never met Astarion, so I'm not sure if I missed him or haven't gotten to him yet.
  I sort of feel like all the characters are assholes. Interesting and entertaining assholes certainly, but I don't think I like any of them. Laezel, though, is at least perfectly upfront about who she is. She knows exactly what she wants, gives no fucks about anything else, and tells you exactly that. I think I asked if she loved me and she basically said wtf are you an idiot? We are mates, that's it.
  Anyway my game just bugged and I can't move so I think I'm going to take a break and then start over again with a different character. I'm kinda sick of my female wood elf's stupid face. She always looks constipated.
- I hated her at first, but after a while I started to see her reasons and also made her a bit less rigid so I don't mind her so much anymore.
  Only thing I still hate is that I seem to never have appropriate responses in dialogs when she's being rude, like all my options feel too submissive and I don't like that.
- She left my party permanently fairly early on in my first run due to a bug, so I never really got to know her then. On my second run, I was impressed by how well her zealotry was acted and found her abrasiveness towards NPCs amusing. Ultimately though, she settled into merely being interesting by being a look into the githyanki, similarly to how I ended up with Dak'kon in Planescape: Torment. The lore and culture was more interesting to me than the character.

Stopping now after making it about 2/3rds of the way in on my second run. Had a blast, but with as many bugs as I'm running into now even before Act 3, I think it's best to shelve it until more fixes are made. Straw that broke the camel's back was missing romance scenes seemingly because I didn't long rest enough. That's funny because I felt like my party was getting wrecked a lot more than my first party was, so I had to be resting even more. Maybe by Act 2 I had figured things out more than I realized.
Next run (whenever that is) I'm thinking evil bard and fully Embracing My Potential, if you know what I mean. Also probably going to bump it up to Tactician when I hit level 5 on that run.

Disclaimer: if this is how you like to play that is okay.
I find it so confusing that people are asking for specific builds with what spells to take and what items to equip. Although it's a singleplayer game with a difficulty that doesn't require much optimization (if any) even on tactician. I really enjoy trying different builds that seem fun regardless if they are the strongest or not, so to me following a build would take out half the fun of the game.
- I come from MMOs, didn't know anything about DnD nor cRPGs, I needed to be told everything on how to build a char, what spells to take and what items to get. I don't personally ask but reading responses to other players questions helps me immensely.
  It took me a month to learn the rules and understand what's available in game (DnD is hard lol, when you start from nothing) and now I can start making my own choices even if I don't yet fully understand everything.
  I guess there are other people like me, BG3 is not only for DnD/cRPGs fans.

Act 3 bugs and unexpected quest lock offs make me sad. My Monk is now punching his way directly to the finish line and I'll roll a new hero and play again in a little while. Had a blast but a bit disappointed with the bugs.
- What bugs did you have? I guess I'm surprised to hear of complaints about it, I haven't really had any in 150 hours. Guess just got lucky.
  
  Not many to be fair, but they have been frustrating.
  A certain character repeating quest dialogue but not advancing the quest. This was after a significant amount of effort including a boss fight, had to abandon the quest.
  One bigger quest to help a group of people unexpectededly closed but my journal wasn't updated so it just stays there in an incomplete state. Quite frustrating as I was really wanting to do it and it also blocked two areas that I wanted to come back and explore.
- There is a particular end game situation that monk just flat out trivializes. You'll see it when you get there. Lets just say, spamming the free jump from Step of the Wind: Dash feels like cheating, but it certainly is an effective way to do things on a Tavern Brawler monk at a certain point in the game.

I created my own character, drow elf druid. I think I messed up in the beginning and didn't grab one NPC, so my entire party is weak. No tank just warlock, druid, cleric, and whatever the vampire is. Do I have a chance to get a tank later?
- So you have Shadowheart, Wyll, and Astarion, at least. You missed Lae'zel? Did you get Gale?
  There's a Barbarian character that you can pick up a bit later than the other companions. Make sure to get her before leaving Act 1, she makes a great front-liner.
  There will be more companions to get in Acts 2 and even 3.
  If you have Withers at your camp, you can also respec companions or get a hireling.
  
  I do have gale. I have him a magical artifact already to consume
- You can respec any character at whithers in your camp. Also as other have said circle of the moon druid can bear form to get an extra 60 hp (half from each cast) circle of the spore can spawn minions that can tank the hits that would other go towards your team mates.
  It sounds like your problem isn't just that you don't have a tank but that you're solely relying on Shadowheart for healing. In my run I'm doing an ancient paladin so I've got lay on hands plus the heal aura to subside her healing.
  When you level up you can also multiclass to get some desirable traits from another class to help your comp.
  
  True, I really on shadowheart, and healing potions. I'll look at respecting her as a life cleric. I think my druid is already circle of the spore, but I'm only level 3,so maybe I can't spawn minions yet?
- You can change classes once you meet an NPC early on. Explore around the starting area, and you'll meet someone that'll show up at your camp and let you respec anyone.
  Also, druids can get tanky if they go the wildshape route
  
  I have withers at the camp, so I can respec
- There's some additional late game companions in act 2 and 3 but not too much. A lot of casters (including druids) will also gain elemental summons as spells in later levels. The summon itself can be a tank for you. You can also respec characters at Withers in your camp. You want to be careful changing origin characters classes, but subclasses are fine. Clerics can be great tanks, especially in the life domain. For example my current character is a cleric/monk with an armor class of 24, almost ever attack misses them.
  EDIT: removed my first sentence, it mentioned the class of a later game companion which may be considered a spoiler to some.
  
  Their character is the druid.
- If you are playing a shape shifting druid your character can easily tank. Especially if you pick up a few levels in Barbarian. Rage stays active after shape shifting and a raging bear is one of the tankiest builds available.
  Without knowing how far you are it's difficulty to say if any companion are still available. Except for Shadowheart and Asterion I found all other companions fairly easy to miss in a blind playthrough. So you might want to read up on who they are and where to find them.
  
  I've beat momma spider, and the shagging giants in the blighted village, I think I've done everything there, so I'll move on from that point.
- To actually answer your question, since no one else did ... yes, there is one additional melee character you can get in Act 3, but he's not the easiest character to find. It'll be a slog to get that far without a tank.
  Since you have a druid, you could try using a combo of animal form and summons to tank for you. I've found elemental summons are pretty durable, but won't do as much damage as a real tank.
  Otherwise yes, you could respect a party member to tank.
  
  Do you mean Wild Shape, when you say animal form?

Man. The Phalar Aluve is my favorite sword. I'm probably a bit biased because I'm running a Paladin/Bard, but the 1d4 plus to attack rolls and Cha, Wis, and Int saving throws while it's singing, has saved my bacon more times than I can count.
- Also, it's great that drow clerics of Eilistraee can get it for their RP, since the longsword is very important to her worship.

How extreme are the consequences for not bringing companions with you on their specific quests?
I've been rolling with the same party all game and I'm really happy with it. I figured on my next playthrough, I'd just pick a different party composition and really get to know those characters on that playthrough, which would keep things fresh for me.
I don't mind missing out on random lore or conversation bits (that's the kind of stuff I'm trying to save for future playthroughs,) but it would bum me out a little if one of my camp buddies got mad and just left in a "bad ending" sort of way (I'd be more ok with a bittersweet "friends going separate ways" type scene, though, if it makes sense for the story.) I want to help everyone, but it just feels so video-gamey to add someone to the party, level them up, give them decent equipment, complete a quest, and then kick them out again just to get a better cutscene or something when that's not how I've been playing for the past 40 hours.
Specifically, I am about to enter the part of the Act 1 map relevant to Lae'zel and she hasn't been in my active party since I met Karlach.
So what do you think? Should I stick to my preferred play style and see what happens? Or change it up because I'm a chronic "good guy" gamer who wants to help everyone and get the "goodest" ending?
- Some companions will leave the party permanently if you do not bring them with you for their subplots. It's not metagaming to put them in the party for things that are relevant to them, it's the opposite, it's bringing them along for something incredibly important to their personal journey.
- Keeping it vague I left 2 different party members at camp for their subplots and I still have them both. There was some minor griping "wish I could have been there" type stuff but nothing beyond that.
- I got a big "Fuck You!" from Karlach for not bringing her along one time.

So I'm about to fight Kendrick and I haven't found the other ring of the True Love set nor given the book to the He Who Was dude. Will I be able to do those things, or will it immediately make me go to BG?
- Nevermind lol. I just kicked his ass up and down the block and finishing up those side quests now.

Okay, first time I thought I would be able to enter a burrow hole but nope. A rat familiar can't enter a burrow hole? Nevermind it'll probably be able to do next to nothing on the other side. Can't you let me poke around at least so I can see if it's worth casting 2 spells (disguise and reduce size) or calling up my druid to get in there?
- Astarions mage hand can get through for me

Uh I just got Karlach, so now I'm cooking with fire

I don't want to know where it is, just if it exists and if it's missable in a particular act:
Is there a cowboy hat in this game, and can I miss it by progressing too far?
No additional details please! Thanks!
- There are several hats that look cowboy hat-ish.
  
  Excellent news! Thanks for the response! May the dice gods bless your rolls!

Say I go down the Oathbreaker path for a while. When I switch back, will I still have access to the skills I learned as an Oathbreaker?
I challenged The Prison Warden to a dual, and then accidentally fired my crossbow, killing her lol. Insta-Oathbreaker. I wanna see what the skills are like
- It's like a respec. You can either have the Oathbreaker subclass or your original subclass, they have some mutually exclusive class abilities. It shouldn't affect things like your skill proficiencies or feats, though.
  
  Thanks! The Oathbreaker Knight looks like a badass. Almost looks like a Death Knight. My first fight with it was really fun. The Hellish Rebuke exploded around me towards the end of it, and I took out 4 enemies at once lol

Has anyone else had the bug where pressing the level up button causes the game to crash to desktop?
I've played through one whole playthrough and I'm starting my modded run but I can't seem to level Asterion from 4 to 5. I looked it up and I found a reddit thread that has a lot of folks sharing the same problem with no one conclusive solution. I just wanted to double check if it's a vanilla issue with somebody else. Otherwise I just wanted to start the discussion here.
- Never had this
  Remove the mod and try it?

I'm seeing some conflicting information about Act II out there regarding order of operations. From what I've read, it sounds like I'll get a pop-up warning when I'm about to trigger something that would affect other quests. However, I'm also seeing a lot of people saying that you should just beeline to Moonrise ASAP before doing any side quests. So which is it? Am I free to explore, work on Halsin's stuff, etc. as long as I don't trigger that pop-up? Or is there a timer going as soon as the stuff at Last Light kicks off?
- I was in the same boat as you. I believe that you can explore to your heart's content as long as you don't cross a boundary with a warning about progressing the world.
  I explored everything in act 2 up to the boundaries, and then did Moonrise and I don't think I messed up any questlines.
  It's hard to describe without spoiling anything, but once you get to Moonrise, it does give you some direction on where to go, so it does kinda make sense to go there ASAP.

So, I've come to the conclusion that the game is actually not that open ended when it comes to how you want to do things.
For example, I killed gortash and only gortash at his coronation, but Duke ravengard died anyways, you could argue hey maybe he was killed by someone else to get back at your character but it still sucks.
Killing gortash right away also completely removes certain areas and quest lines and also bugs certain other quests very disappointing.
Another thing in regards to romance, apparently if you don't trigger certain flags you can end up not romancing a character you want. I was not able to romance shadowheart on my second playthrough because I rushed act 1 a bit and didn't have enough approval for her and the game seem to insinuate that that was fine and I could do it later. But, apparently that wasn't the case and I cannot romance Shadowheart at all now in Act 3.

Ive been loving the random interactions between laezel and shadowheart and occasionally with astarion as well. Is great to see everyone start out a certain way and eventually change their opinion on certain events and other companions - feels like we're really on a journey and evolving together
Haven't really explored much with the rest of the cast. Any other companions have fun quips / interactions?
- Wyll and Karlach also have history together.

Not sure what they changed in the new update, but it doesn't just crash occasionally, it bricks my entire PC. Literally have to do the horrible 'hold power button down to turn off' manoevre, which always feels to me like Deebo choking out Craig.
"Go to sleep, go to sleep, yeah!". Got to the point I'm seriously thinking about uninstalling the game because I can't risk fucking up my PC like this just for a game (entertaining though it is). Just about to start Act 3, gutted because I want to see where my characters' stories go.
- That sucks. I've got a pretty shitty PC and I've crashed once in my 176 hours
- Im sure that your pc will be fine
  It’s not really something that software can do.
  Have you tried changing to Vulkan or making sure everything is nicely installed? Maybe verify the game files as well.
  
  It wouldn't even load in Vulkan last time I tried, I'll try again as iirc that was before even patch 1. From the beginning, this game sent my cpu & gpu to the edge, it's better now than at launch but still very taxing (i9 12900k / 2070s), sends multiple cores right up to 100c. The cores can hit 100c when I'm doing demanding work eg audio / visual design. But they shouldn't be held up there constantly.
  I tried undervolting my cpu slightly (which defo helped re temps, but perhaps has introduced instability), and also noticed in the bios pretty much every superboosterturbodude setting was turned on so switched a couple off. Or maybe it's the small number of mods I use, ah the joy of PC gaming, and the fun of figuring out what's wrong

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