Baldur's Gate III

Opening cinematic: https://youtu.be/_hqgv0pU0EM

Who's hyped? I'm hyped.

what do we know about it? 5e rules or 2nd ed? import bg2 chars or start from scratch? tentatively interested.

It's Divinity: Original Sin 3 with a tacked-on license, but they'll probably shoehorn in a lone reference to the hilarious hamster guy tbf

It's a tired meme by this point but I have no interest in Divinity: Original Sin III. Larian's gaudy, would-be humorous aesthetic is the exact opposite of what I want from an isometric CRPG.

Anyway, it's 5e and you'll be starting from scratch. Game will be turn-based, which is a huge turnoff for me because I'm one of those rabid, nostalgia-goggled assholes who'd rather the franchise was left alone.

xp

Here's an archived stream from a few days ago, featuring gameplay that looks and feels almost indistinguishable from D:OS2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSc17QXxfyU

i'm not an original sin fan but i do love the forgotten realms setting and i have yet to play a crpg with 5e mechanics so i am interested now!

If you disregard the title (this is no BG3, not even in spirit) and lower your expectations in terms of writing and art direction, I'm sure it'll deliver a worthwhile combat-oriented experience.

The campfire conversation is very Dragon Age

Yep, definitely. Except BioWare, for all their faults post-BG2, have always excelled at creating memorable characters. The same cannot be said for Larian, alas.

Shadowheart seems pretty cool

https://assets.rockpapershotgun.com/images/2020/05/baldurs-gate-3.jpg/RPSS/resize/640x-1/format/jpg/quality/90

Hoping this game will pleasantly surpass my expectations but everything's just going to be on fire all the time isn't it

They just really properly think it's good when everything's on fire all the time

Larian gonna Larian.

The original BG series is my favourite CRPG franchise of all time, but this one's a hard pass from me. No way I'm falling for Larian's snake oil after trudging through D:OS1&2.

I became more immersed in and devoted to BG1 and BG2 than any game before or since. That might've just been the right time and place and amount of free time in my life for me to have that moment, but nothing I've tried since then has really taken hold.

Pillars of Eternity did it for me, but it too arrived at the right time, just as I was dipping back into gaming.

This is out at the end of the month on PC. It's looking pretty good tbh, and they've maybe toned down the "everything's on fire all of the time" stuff in response to feedback. I enjoyed what I played of the Early access when it first launched but haven't touched it for years at this point

Oh and uh, [most exhausted voice in the world, just desperate for death to come and/or Reddit to stop existing] you can fuck a bear

so it’s set In Provincetown

I love the first two so much, do not understand why they are changing anything, seems to be some kind of a thing in the gaming industry that it always has to be more and "improved" somehow but I would pay a lot of money for just more BG2, maps and party members and quests and dungeons and dragons y'know

Siege of Dragonspear was alright but I think the team that worked on the originals is probably kind of important too

O shit Mac version coming

This will be my first PC RPG in like a decade

It is out!

Anyone interested in playing multiplayer?

I've just put a gaming rig together for my father because he wanted to play age of empires 4 and baldurs gate 3 and his laptop couldn't do it, opinions pending, baldurs gate is his favorite game so I hope it's good

How's does multiplayer work in BG3? I only tried it a couple times with the previous entries where one person was the sort of dm and decided who got the loot or whatever I dunno it was frustrating lol

Shame this isn't cross platform.

very pretty game! Polished, shiny, exciting! Glad I chose to wait on ffxvi, already confident this was a much better use of my money.

Started with a sorcerer but the first two characters added to my party are now a cleric and a wizard! Not fun when enemies get close, but very satisfying to strike down enemies from range.
Good use of bass as well! Get a nice "omph" every time someone is defeated/you level up, very satisfying

Only tried multiplayer for a moment but seems like you can jump in with a new character to someones campaign at any time and you get full autonomy. You can run around and start different battles/conversations than another person

Shame this isn't cross platform.

Most of my mates are PS5 but some are PC

looking forward to trying this out next week, have stayed away from spoilers and really any info at all but I did think to lookup whether or not you could still cast goodberry and am heartened to report that you absolutely can

When this comes for mac I guess I’m in, have to use these 16 gpu cores for something

Friendship ended with Lae'zel, Karlach is my new best friend <3

The scope of this game, not just in terms of the environment but in terms of player choice, is absolutely mind-boggling; it almost makes me worry about the people working at Larian

Yeah Lae'zel tried to slit our throats during our last camp, don't know what else I expected

Next day Karlach got shoved into a spider pit with no easy way out and just took them all on her own. A+ would recommend Karlach

So it looks like this is fully a video game version of AD&D? I don't have any history with it, but it looks pretty crazy. I don't think I have the patience for it (it seems like basic encounters can take quite awhile?) but that's great that it seemingly came out so well. Wonder what it'll be like to play on consoles.

I'm playing on a pc with an xbox controller and it's fine. It'd def be easier with keyboard and mouse, which I used as a kid when I played bg 1 and when I replayed it 3-4 years ago.

but yeah, some encounters feel like chess. This game is fuckin insane though, prob worthwhile playing just to see where game design is at these days

So excited for this, but waiting for the PS5 release.

I played Divinity: OS 2 on console and honestly Larian does a pretty good job of making these games controller friendly.

I'm playing on keyboard + trackpad and feels clunky so far. Only an hour in though. Also I have no idea how to cancel actions, one online guide said "just click on one of your companions' portraits!"and of course I attacked her

You’ll get the hang of it. This is my “hour a day” game at the moment and it really works well in those time intervals. Get a battle in, a significant dialogue encounter, and the ability to explore a bit, then log off and do it all again tomorrow.

Re: Larian’s work ethic, I recommend watching this video. It is about the production of their previous game divinity OS2 (high recommendation, not sure if BG3 has surpassed it for me, they’re sitting equal atm).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKwi_5nePZg

The Larian dude talking here seems like a very shrewd business man and manager. Credit to him for taking a big risk with Divinity OS2, it paid off and now it looks like it’s paying off again with BG3. Interesting to see where they go from here now as a studio

A word of advice: I had been approaching this game with a "I will feel free to ignore side quests and pursue them on a later playthrough," but it seems like that's left me pretty under-leveled for the end of Act I/start of Act II. I could barely deal with the Grymforge area, and when I went to move on to the next part of the main quest I got a warning message that was like "this is going to be too intense for you." So now I'm back in the aboveground area tying up loose ends and clobbering goblins. I didn't expect this game would be at all grindy, but here we are.

look, i have played this game way too much in the past 2 weeks, just absolute goblin mode, so i'll keep a lot to myself but i need to type this out loud (i'll spoiler tag it anyway, and like, the spoilers go up in spoilerness as they progress)
there's a point in act 3 where you (extremely vague spoiler to help you know if we're at the same place):
are sold/given a bag with 5 things in it and told to go upstairs to do the thing you want to do next

if you know what i'm talking about, you know i'm talking about:
going to hell to steal from raphael

the thing is, at the end of the thing i'm talking about, you
are about to fight him, and there's an extremely OTT conversation...... AND THEN THERE'S A SONG

and it's
the most unnecessarily expensive thing out of nowhere in an extremely expensive-to-make game. A LOT OF PEOPLE WON'T EVEN FOLLOW THIS QUEST LINE. and it's so fucking ARCH and CAMP and... AN ENTIRE DISNEY VILLAIN SONG.

so anyway, y'all have 4 months, because
i'm voting it #1 for song of the year on ILM. sorry mitski! it's RAPHAEL'S YEAR.

if you're skipping this specific content i understand but i recommend making a fork save somewhere so you can just... do this content

if you wanna just watch it, i don't know how youtube plays with ilx spoiler tags so i'll just leave the end of the url here: watch?v=ep43h63mYl4
(it's the entire pre-fight convo, plus the fight and the song, on low graphics settings sadly) (but also the first big attack they do, fucking LMAOOOOOOOOOO) ("NO MORE DEALS, IT'S OVER!")

game of the year, easy. sorry jagged alliance sorry zelda sorry starfield preemptively sorry street fighter sorry whatever else came out this year

The free camera movement that lets me scout ahead, spy on enemies etc is very helpful but ... feels kinda like cheating.

I love the design of the myconid grove and the shadow-cursed lands. That they managed to get the shadow-cursed lands to feel gloomy and unsettling but still look pretty, in their own way, seems like a feat - not dissimilar to but probably better done than the underworld in Tears of the Kingdom, which I also loved until it started getting really samey.

So far we've done one delightfully creepy fight and another outright disturbing one (among more routine ones) and it's all very much up my street*, in moderation. Genuinely worried some of this stuff will give me nightmares (that whole bit with Malus Thorn!) because I am a lightweight.

* Aside from Gale getting hot and bothered and flirty with me after a battle with a zombie kid's wraith family, I mean really mate now is not the time or the place

I'm guessing that if I want to get the most out of the main story in BG3, I should start off with single-player? When I played multiplayer DOS2, my group really didn't pay much attention to dialogue.

Probably depends hugely on your gaming partners..? I don't think I'd enjoy it as much solo, but my partner and I are usually on the same page with how we want to play the game and it's helpful to have a co-strategist.

haven't gotten past the character creation screen yet, just finally installed it but this screen made me laugh out loud

https://imgur.io/EXGm01V?r

which led to a google image search for "nude minsc" and of course deviantart never disappoints

whoops

https://imgur.io/EXGm01V?r

So this is great, got it on PS5 yesterday. A more streamlined version of Divinity: OS 2. Though I think I liked the combat system more in DOS2? Too early to say. I’m glad everything isn’t constantly on fire this time around at least.

Not a fan of only being able to re-slot spells when you level up, but I guess that’s a D&D thing. Showing a d20 roll for skill checks is wonderfully satisfying 👍. Conversation trees are about as fun as combat and I can’t say that about pretty much any RPG I’ve played outside of Disco Elysium.

You can change which spells you have memorised using the spellbook menu any time out of combat; to swap the spells you have memorised you sort of have to wait for it to give you the option at certain level-ups but you can also just pay a nominal fee to [NPC met early game] to respect your character whenever you want

This game owns imo

Second sentence should say to change the spells you *know*

Anyone want to play today or tomorrow?

I’d totally pop in for some multiplayer, but the way they do this is a little weird.

Anyone can drop in and play any of your main quest character and drop out. Fun, but said drop-er doesn’t gain anything from the experience outside of having fun.

You CAN bring a custom character into a friend’s game, but apparently once you do they are locked into that friend’s party even after they leave. You can’t even leave them at camp. I understand managing that stuff is really tricky, but that particular decision seems a little insane.

I think they fixed that in Patch 2, you talk to Withers to drop your friend's character from your party.

I'd be down for some multiplayer but full version doesn't drop on Mac until the 6th, and it'll probably take me a bit to catch up.

Don’t underestimate the pull of this game….

Yeah multiplayer is weird. Playing a fun warlock/paladin run atm, just hit level 5 and some good friends were playing together last night so I jumped in with a new character but just felt no motivation due to making a completely new character, and also playing a part of the game I hadn’t before thus spoiling it for myself. Dropped out after one battle. I don’t have a solution, besides acknowledging this is not the best drop in/drop-out game, definitely begs consistency.

Astarion is a BEAST rogue/ranger. Not the most interesting character in battles, but definitely the most effective. Making this tactician play through a breeze.

Which character would you recommend replacing? Astoria is a little irritating, but I feel like I need a rogue. I’m a Warlock, have Shadowheart as a Cleric, Lar’Zel as fighter, and Gale as Wizard.

I think they fixed that in Patch 2, you talk to Withers to drop your friend's character from your party.

I’ve already made my decision and it’s Lae’zel. She’s a dick.

Trying to figure out what I want to play when the full version drops for Mac. I think I'm going with Way of the Four Elements monk - pull enemies toward you, push them away, fire/ice strikes, decent melee damage. Way of the Open Hand is higher damage but seems less fun.

Only played a couple of hours. But already encountered about 5 or 6 frustrating glitches that have caused me to have to reload the game, especially.in multiplayer. Hope they fix these

I was having difficulty last night trying to assign characters to ourselves as players in the "Session Manager" screen.
I found I was able to move characters into the right-hand column (i.e. assign a character to Player 2) but couldn't switch them back to the right.
So I'm not sure if that was just me struggling with the UI or if this was a genuine glitch. If anoyne here has the same issue, let me know.

I'm still getting used to this really.

Also, we were in the middle of combat and we found during one battle that the turn-based system ostensibly went out the window and I was able to take turns (cast spells, move around, fight people) at the same time as my partner. Is that a thing? I know if two characters roll the same initiative they can do combos etc.

Yeah if you and your friends are in line to go and there’s no enemy in between you, you can go at the same time. Improves the flow.

Circa, I’m having a lot of fun playing a melee warlock/paladin (see the YouTube below) with with astarion, shadow heart, and Karlach (much better than lae’zel. Just depends if you prefer bashing things (which I do) or casting things. But the party is making tactician a relative breeze. High recommend!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oN4EQuf_ljw

was totally ready to be a curmudgeon and not be into this but no, it's great, just so much going on, chock full of little caves and secret passages and other weird detours around every corner

even the dyes, must have spent an hour experimenting with dyes once I found some

have a question, it seems like the game wants me to do something with all of these movable crates/rocks/wheelbarrows and I'm not sure what

I don’t think it does necessarily? Not yet anyway. I haven’t had any use for that in this game yet, but in the developer’s previous games you could stack crates and such to make stairs to get up to stuff.

You can stack crates for high ground or to reach places, but in general this game just has stuff like rope that looks useful but isn't really.

If the crate/rock/wheelbarrow glows blue and the character completes a check of some sort, then you want to move that sucker out the way to find some hidden treasure. But yeah 99% of rocks should stay where they are... unless you want to pick them up and throw them at goblins

i think i hate the writing and characters in this game! why can't RPGs move past this joss whedon shit. and everyone is always talking

Played this till 4am last night/today, nbd.

Mac release date pushed back?

"later this month" yeah

Gives me time to save up $ so good

Is it better to swap your party members on the regular or generally stick with the same ones? I quite like Gael's character and the voice acting is great, but I already play as a wizard so it's a bit pointless really.

also wonder about that, but I presume at least most of their individual story beats can be found if they are in "camp"

which is a whole other thing I had no idea about prior to starting, I do like it but now I am obsessed with trying to collect all of the people to hang out in my dope camping spot, love the Suikoden/Animal Crossing vibes though there are only a handful of empty bedrolls left (this colors how I interact with anyone because I want them all to be my animal crossing neighbors)

still in the first chapter/area though, was super exciting to recruit a friendly dog

The dog is great, so is the owlcub, my rarest steam achievement atm is patting both dog and owlcub at the same time; kicking goals! .
I'm sticking with the same party besides swapping Lae-zel and Karlach every now and then for them to interact with their specific story points. I just can't be bothered reconfiging my battle strat for an offensive spell caster, and I am already playing warlock sorry Wyll. Wish I had a bard in my party though! seems like a fun class to play

Haha, can't believe I havne't even met Karlach yet.

I picked up a bedroll and it's in my inventory. Is it useful?

Karlach is the best. maybe not the best story of the companions, but definitely the best vibes

Something odd has been happening in that I'm experiencing almost identical stick drift issues with both my PS5 controllers since playing this game.

It seems strange that both controllers would develop a problem where my character sometimes decides he's just gonna go a walking to the left of his own accord.

I've told PS about the issue, and I'm sure it's just a freak hardware issue, but I wonder if anyone else has had this happen and it might be another weird bug in the game.

Karlach rules. I’ve got her running as a Berserker and she can absolutely stomp through some enemies when the situation’s right.

Yeah berserker is so much fun. With great weapon master you can get 4 beefy hits in per turn, very fun.

Just took down a raiding party of level 9 Githyanki as a recent level 8'er (was close to giving up halfway through but we made it work!) and finally found the road to baldur's gate! Loving this game.

i think i hate the writing and characters in this game!

the writing seems...fine to me so far, in line with the previous two which were also just ok, basic sword & sorcery skeletons to hang a story on

I do think it is weird that every party member I've met so far (besides the dog) is super hot and wants to bang, am a lil bit afraid to encourage any of that, crossing my fingers for some weirdo ancient gnome friends or just asexual monster people to pal around with

maybe this is my fault for playing a warlock, max charisma and all how can they resist

This game is hornier than all the jrpg’s I’ve ever played, a true feat

This game is hornier than all the jrpg’s I’ve ever played, a true feat

has anyone else read the novelizations? because I have, twice and the second time just recently in anticipation of BG3, don't want to spoil them but I should because you really don't need to read them they are bad ask me anything

It really really wants you to get it on with all the characters. Gale and Astarion are especially keen. And it's not just my party who are lusting - I walked into a very compromising scene in a goblin village last night.

I'm playing a good, moral, pragmatic character this round so obviously I'm Team Shadowheart but she seems very unfussed. I'm looking forward to a second playthrough where I'm basically going to be a total bastard, sell out my friends to anyone who wants them, be mean to all the tielfings etc...

The horniness was a bug, apparently: https://www.polygon.com/23858507/baldurs-gate-3-horny-bug-gale

I was thinking about doing a run where I RPed as a charismatic bastard, but the writing is so effective that when I had a chance to demean an NPC, I just sort of defaulted to my usual moralistic prig.

I never go evil intentionally, but I accidentally fireballed some innocent gnomes I was supposed to save, and their friends refused to talk to me saying "you've done enough" which was pretty funny.

Is there a way to like, spare enemies or kind of just say "whoa now let's all just calm down here"?

I know you can toggle non-lethal attacks, but it might be useful to say, spare one member of the gang for questioning. Sometimes I don't feel it's fair to literally kill people for defending themselves

There are many ways to skill check out of a fight, but once a fight starts, it's either kill or non-lethal, and even non-lethal will leave them unconscious so there's no further questioning to be done.

I love when I talk my way out of a fight and then like 20 dudes I didn't realize were even nearby just pick up their shit and leave the area because there's no fight to be had.

I accidentally fireballed some innocent gnomes I was supposed to save, and their friends refused to talk to me saying "you've done enough" which was pretty funny.

― what you say is true but by no means (lukas)

When attempting to free the gnome strapped to the windmill, I saw a lever, flipped it, and watched in confusion and mounting horror as the windmill sped up and flung the poor gnome over some distant trees. Then I saw there was a second lever, presumably the 'stop' one. I still feel bad about it.

Also, don't kick the squirrel unless you are doing an evil playthrough or you viciously hate squirrels

XP haha I flung the gnome last night in exactly the same way. Sorry dude!

lol I did the same thing, then promptly reloaded a saved game and did it the right way

I also flung the gnome. That shit killed me

I did not reload... sorry mr. gnome

Grrrr.. well this game has plummeted in my estimation since tonight I've encountered one of the most irritating, broken areas of any game I've ever encountered.

The stupid cave of traps before you meet the Hag. First off, my characters almost always fail to perceive the traps, so I'm fucked from the start. Sometimes on loading I don't see anything, other times there's areas of noxious gas everywhere. If I jump over them, usually only three of my characters make it intact. More often than not, one of my characters will just not bother jumping and just hang back, or they'll walk straight into the mist before making the jump. If I do spot the traps (which is hardly ever) and try to disable them, they explode and kill half my party and I can't revive them because they're literally lying in magma so as soon as I revive them they die again. I did see a hint flash up (all too quickly, it disappeared before I could read it properly) about putting something heavy on the "vents". Trouble is, I can't see anything that would look like a vent. If I try to put a stone (as was suggested when I finally caved and Googled a solution), on the flower type things, nothing happens other than I walk into the mist. I read somewhere that you can use a potion of feather falling and just jump all the way down, which is fair enough but seems like a fudge and it's not intuitive to do this.I finally managed to fudge myself and my other characters down there, with a massive amount of healing. Then the Hag herself made mincemeat of me. It's the stupid traps that annoy me more though. Who decided that this would be a good idea to have in the game? Invisible traps that explode when you try to diffuse them or sneak past? I dunno.. I'm all het up now

I'm sure there's a simple trick with this idiotic area, but if there is, it doesn't seem intuitive or the kind of thing that's designed for a game like this

Do you have astarion with you? The rogues specialty is disarming traps. I know the section you’re talking about, mildly annoying but it wasn’t that bad for me to get through. My pet peeve with the game is when you jump over something, only to relies 5 minutes later that one of your party memebers decided not to jump and now you have to do it all manually again. If this was a one or two time thing, whatever, but it happens every second jump I do I swear! And it’s not that they can’t make the jump, they can! But the computer just seems to decide one random character doesn’t want to jump every time. Kills me

traps are a huge pain in the ass, even with astarion because unlike the previous games finding traps seems to be a passive thing that anyone might "perceive" except they often don't, at this point I just get super nervous whenever a dice roll fails while I'm bumbling around

also the first time I failed to disarm a trap and then my one set of tools broke led to me hoarding everything just in case, I have so many shovels, but so far nothing else has busted during use

only just realized that jumping is pretty important, seems like some characters can make jumps that others can't?

Yeah stronger characters can jump farther.

when you jump over something, only to relies 5 minutes later that one of your party memebers decided not to jump and now you have to do it all manually again

Yes, this was part of why I was getting frustrated. And when I switch to that character, my other characters' AI decides it's time to JUMP BACK to the ledge they just jumped from and rejoin the straggler, often jumping INTO the poison. Yes, yes, I know I can split my group up, but why it happens in the first place is a mystery.
It's not always with jumps either. I was fairly deep into that area when I realised Shadowheart was still just hanging out in the swamp on her own and the AI had just dosed off

Eldritch Knight with expeditious retreat (actually for charging people) enhance leap and misty step is a fun time, you can just whizz round all over the place using your two attacks and shove to squish casters and ranged enemies

I wish there was a good-aligned rogue companion. User salsa shark is providing v effective rogue services with a custom character in our main playthrough, but in my other solo save as an extremely morally inflexible dwarf who splats anything remotely evil without negotiation, its a bit annoying not having an easy way to disarm traps and pick locks unless you want to make nice with someone who is obviously hiding in plain sight as a privately educated English person . I know you can respec people but don't want to bust any origin characters' storylines

They should have also had a bigger variety of species and appearances in the companions imo, I know horny nerds want to have relations with elf supermodels on the computer, but there are far too many elves

H.P., I did have Astarion with me. He wasn't very good at perceiving or disabling traps.

Or maybe it's me? I can't seem to see the traps myself - I don't know what they look like in order to do something about them. Nor these vents that get mentioned for that matter - it's either a sea of gas or just a normal-looking walkway. So I'm about as clueless as the characters.

Sometimes when I walk in the room after loading, I can see noxious gas. Other times it's not there, but if I walk into the rooom everything explodes and everyone pretty much dies. If my characters do perceive the trap, I'm not sure what to do next. If I ask my character to disarm it, he'll either walk straight into the fumes or the trap explodes anyway.

I've watched guides on YouTube on how to do this, but there seems to be more happening in the environment (there are yellow outlines on the ground that weren't showing for me).

I'm sure it's trying to teach me stuff about splitting my group up, jumping, throwing and covering these elusive vents etc...

But it feels very convoluted and fiddly, largely based on trial-and-error, and the sort of thing that would only work in an action RPG than one where you have to manipulate four characters at once.

Lol, I'm very grumpy due to no sleep and too much BG3

Here are my exploits in this area. I just don't get it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEamEBXYrsA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5I1qPd5dj1Q

Huh. So I just died and reloaded my game and now I can see the poison clouds whereas I couldn't before. There is no logic here

Haha okay I've done some digging and this might well be a bug. Frustrating though

Full Mac version September 21st. I've put in 47 hours so far in Early Access, so all in Act 1 on characters I won't be able to bring over to the full version. I *think* I've been everywhere.

You know what's especially great about those game? It's a new gen game that doesn't make me feel lonely. So many games out there set you as a solitary loner in a desolate, unforgiving world. I switch this on and it's like "Yay, all my friends!"

I found the baby owlbear and invited it to my camp and convinced the goblin lady to let it go and it ran away AND NEVER SHOWED UP AT CAMP and I am absolutely crushed, do I just restart the whole game now or what

You might need to give it another long rest

I started this game! I find it so overwhelming, my god. I haven’t played party-based RPGs since Ultima, in my teens. Keeping everyone outfitted and dressed is such a job!!

I thought I was cruising through, and assembled a party of four, got them to level 2, but then my cleric fell through a pit into “the crypt” at a time when I was down to one healing potion and all my characters needed a rest… and now couldn’t, because the party was separated

And the first dungeon battle was so, so challenging for me. I had to text a friend for help. I only won by setting the difficulty on easy, enticing the ragey dude into the candle room and finishing him off with the door closed

Sometime later I realized that I have an inventory full of items I can use. This game is a lot of information

True, I find the whole inventorising UI fairly hard to manage. Wish there were a faster way for me to quick-find certain items in the PS5 version, like marking them as faves or something.

Plus I swear some objects I know I have don't show up among the myriad odds and ends I seem to have collected. The filters are either bugged or just not very reliable. I want to filter all my junk items so I can add them to Wares, but there's no satisfactory way to do this. And just trying to find my healing potions in a hurry can be a tricky one. Witcher 3 had a similar system, but it felt a lot easier to manage than this.

FGTI, I think exactly the same thing happened to me last night - I was fighting enemies on one floor of a dungeon and one of my characters got pushed down to the crypty basement. Admittedly I was level 4 by then, but it's still a really tough battle so you must have struggled!

Think I'm doing this all in the wrong intended order though as I already did a bunch of other stuff (that was also pretty challenging). I didn't meet Karlach till quite late on and it took me AGES to work out how to get to the Goblin camp and the North East part of the map - must have just missed the turning.

Regarding romances:
I haven't really used Lae'zel much so far. But she very suddenly decided last night that she was in lust with me and didn't mince her words in propositioning me. After a bit of consideration I conceded (it's just a game, right?) but quickly found the whole experience low-key triggering in its reminiscence of past relationships that I called it off. It is JUST a game

FGTI, I think I still managed to do a long rest though, even though my party was split up. Was your cleric conscious? And was your party "grouped" (L2 menu on PS5)?

I'm in act 3 and I think that first dungeon fight that you're talking about was prob the hardest in the game for me: cramped space with a bunch of enemies with different powers, I still hadn't figured out how to control the group or use everyone in conjunction, everyone in my party was a super low level

I am playing The Dark Urge and it is WILD.

I started this game! I find it so overwhelming, my god. I haven’t played party-based RPGs since Ultima, in my teens. Keeping everyone outfitted and dressed is such a job!!

I thought I was cruising through, and assembled a party of four, got them to level 2, but then my cleric fell through a pit into “the crypt” at a time when I was down to one healing potion and all my characters needed a rest… and now couldn’t, because the party was separated

And the first dungeon battle was so, so challenging for me. I had to text a friend for help. I only won by setting the difficulty on easy, enticing the ragey dude into the candle room and finishing him off with the door closed

Sometime later I realized that I have an inventory full of items I can use. This game is a lot of information

― my best wishes to all (flamboyant goon tie included), Thursday, September 14, 2023 11:08 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

The combat truly is D&D so my best tip is: CHEESE, CHEESE, CHEESE. E.g., in the crypt, use the environment, run out to rest, etc.

https://acoup.blog/2023/09/15/collections-the-gap-in-the-armor-of-baldurs-gate-and-5e/

If you realllly want to nerd out about armor (also a good history blog in general.)

Fascinating article!

When I saw the link I thought "the gap" they were referring to was the clothing chain, as in "fall into the"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obAPAq4BnjE

The prison level in Act 2 is irritating as hell. Honestly Act 2 in general kinda sucks so far. Like they just stacked annoying things on top of each other.

update on my precious baby owlbear it finally found my camp after several long rests, then I tried to feed it and astarion scared it off ugh now I am definitely not going to have sex with that guy

also regarding romances in general
after suffering through a really awkward make out sesh with shadowheart and an excruciating "love scene" with laezel I think videogame romance is not for me, is this stuff pretty common in gaming these days?

this is the first new game I've played in 20 odd years, back in my day yadda yadda anyways I get that there are lots of horndogs in the world but yikes, yikes everybody, was hoping at least for like a special "power of love" cantrip where we can heal/revive each other or something

also yeah that first real dungeon fight kicked my ass so hard, and indeed most battles even at lvl 5 now I seem to be clearing just by the skin of my worgs teeth, what has helped enormously is summoning the invisible flying imp to scope out the scene in advance, invisible imp MVP

Well I have definitely brown a few quests and killed potential party members I know that. It's all a part of it I guess

*broken

One of the reasons that multiple runthroughs is the norm

Yup. I need to get used to the idea that you don't (and can't) do everything in the first run. I'm so Souls-pilled though that I insist on thoroughly exploring all areas before leaving them. No stone unturned

Found Karlach and she is already great, except for the part where she goes HAM after the fight with the fake paladins; I barely made it out alive after my third try against them, and of course she proceeds to wreck the place and set everything on fire, which kills Astarion outright and nearly my character and Shadowheart. Eventually she calms down by accidentally killing herself.

Who decided the Gauntlet of Shar dungeon in Act 2 was a good idea? Like cool, let’s have a labyrinthine, 4 layer dungeon with a map that will show you exactly one layer.

I honestly can’t tell if my game is broken or what. I’m watching walkthroughs and none of them are matching up with what I’m seeing. Good job, Larian. Glad I put like 50 hours into this.

Also it’s cool how your PS5 directional pad randomly stops working in conversations. I’ve accidentally started fights like a dozen fights because of it.

Why is nobody mentioning how borked this game is on PS5 in reviews?

Yeah all that stuff happens to me too. The dialogue thing is super annoying - I think it happens when you enter dialogue in turn-based mode, so try fiddling with that and seeing if it works.

I'm still having the thing where poison mist isn't visible.

And I'm worried that some sussur bark I spent ages looking for might have magically disappeared from my inventory. I sincerely hope not

I'm assuming this will all get patched but in the meantime it's very frustrating

I’m at a point where the game is just straight broken. The only save I have is rolling a 30. But I can only roll 29 with everything maxed out. I’ve never been so furious at a video game in my life.

have not encountered any bugs yet on PC, one time I "perceived" a giant clump of dirt but it wouldn't let me dig the chest up, but whatever those all seem to be little fun treats that don't matter like an extra mushroom in mario bros

mostly just agree with the polygon video Leee posted above, the options and branches and completely unnecessary detours in only the first map is tremendous

Yeah no bugs to report playing on PC. Careful with your inventory re: dog Latin. It might be a bug for you, but I’m kicking myself at accidentally selling a quest item amulet (I knew it was a quest item, just bulk sold some necklaces for cash). Have a stupid quest marker that is going to be there forever unless I can track the exact merchant I sold too but that’s long gone

Yeah no bugs to report playing on PC. Careful with your inventory re: dog Latin. It might be a bug for you, but I’m kicking myself at accidentally selling a quest item amulet (I knew it was a quest item, just bulk sold some necklaces for cash). Have a stupid quest marker that is going to be there forever unless I can track the exact merchant I sold too but that’s long gone

Woke up in the middle of the night stressing about party composition. Can't imagine not having a tank, a healer, a rogue and a wizard, but I don't want to be any of those, I want to be a secret fifth guy doing random fun bullshit.

Turns out it wasn't a bug. Sussur Tree bark wilts in daylight

So I'm at the stage where the game is asking me to get on with the next part of the quest, but there are still things like visiting the Githyanki creche I need to do. I'm not sure whether to do all that stuff first or if I'm really meant to just plough on and leave certain quests for another playthrough

You can definitely leave some quests behind. I never did the Githyanki creche stuff or the mountain pass. Shit, I never even recruited Gale (I tried, but I failed the strength check to pull him out of the portal). I could have save scummed until I succeeded, but I decided just to roll with it (no pun intended). This is absolutely a game that expects you to be comfortable with not seeing everything and not succeeding at everything. I think that is really cool and I think more game devs could stand to learn from the example.

agreed, super cool game design it's almost not even tempting to roll back to a previous save, I only do it when I stumble into a battle I was in no way prepared for and get absolutely murdered or like when I found Jaheira(!) and then minutes later huge surprise fight and she along with all the harpers are dead, could have just moved along but that sucks, do over please

I really need to get the obsessive "have to see everything, no stone unturned" thing out my head. I did it with Elden Ring on first playthrough which meant there wasn't much else left to explore on subsequent runs

I also need to get out the habit of save scumming quite so much. I don't do it that often, mind you, but sometimes I just want the thing to happen, you know.

Nobody is interested in me romantically right now.

There is something about dice-rolling that "really kinda works" in the context of irl D&D but is frustrating in the context of a video game RPG; it runs counterintuitive to the pleasure centres that are triggered by completism. I save-scummed (once) last night when Gale didn't read a scary book right the first time and the internet said that was that, the book was shut. Fuck that! I re-loaded and re-rolled and read the book and now Gale is a lich or something

There is something about dice-rolling that "really kinda works" in the context of irl D&D but is frustrating in the context of a video game RPG

This is a really interesting point and I'm not exactly sure why, I guess we want to see the real dice? but also there are rolls behind the dm screen irl, do we trust humans over computers? kind of the same question I've had playing poker online

can we trust computers to play a game of chance or is that a strictly human thing

xp haha FGTI I got to that bit last night, and I used Gale! I can't read the rest of it? It's still an open quest and hints I might be able to. Maybe another character could give it a go?

You've got that "Karmic Dice" feature that I don't completely understand

Karmic Dice is just a setting to prevent a run of consecutive low rolls, like a DM who fudges the outcome if you keep rolling poorly.

Turns out it wasn't a bug. Sussur Tree bark wilts in daylight

It's stuff like this and the gnome catapult that keep me reading this thread vicariously.

@ dl apparently if you don’t pass three consecutive dice rolls then nope the benefit is closed to you

Gale’s annoying, tho. He asks to eat and I can’t see the details of what artifact he wants, so I wave him away to contemplate what to feed him, but if you wave him thrice then he leaves, so…

I’ve spent too much of feeding him learny scrolls to dismiss him tho, I have archmage plans for him

Last night I played a couple hours and was visited by a dream visitor who I since subsequently read up on, and yes this game is insane

I think karmic dice tries to offset runs of high and low rolls, which can mean that you pass a bunch of easy checks with 17s and 18s that were way higher than the roll you actually needed, and then arbitrarily fail another easy check because the game thinks you must be due a 2

Most people seem to turn it off

These characters all seem to have:

- An addiction which makes them rather needy and dependent on some hard-to-find substance or artefact which they invariably shove into their chests
- A back story involving a cruel oppressor whom they're running away from

I'm halfway through chapter 3 and have reached the hard-capped level, all the fight encounters have been pretty easy now that everyone in the party has a million powers but the game is still fun and interesting

To satisfy your meatworld thirst: https://www.polygon.com/23879237/baldurs-gate-voice-cast-high-roller-dnd-stream

Curious to know what Shadowheart's actress's accent is -- Northernish?

Shadowheart? I'd say RP really

Ah, I thought I recognised the actor Jennifer English's name - she also is the voice of Latenna in Elden Ring. I have no idea why I looked this up previously. Maybe because it's quite distinct

Mm had a save game data crash or something… reinstalling? I hope I win it back. Dunno if I’ll start again otherwise

The servers were down last night and it wouldn't let anyone connect. I got around it by switching off 'connect to internet' on my PS5

Yeah it started working again for me. I met Karlach and decided that I’d had enough of this ineffective party and I’m gonna respec Shadowheart with that Wilson dude to make her actually useful

I'm playing as a wizard, so I respecced Gale to a Bard and swapped Astarion for him.
Now I've got me, Karlach, Gale and Shadowheart, but I'm worried I have too many rangey heal casters and only one tanky melee person.

Shadowheart is a pretty good healer but she takes so much damage, I find myself spending enough potions and spells keeping her health up as seems worth it.

Killed Minthara by Thuderwaving her into a Cloud of Daggers, now I want a four-caster team.

Is Shadowheart viable? I have her as a support healer in my party with Karlach and Astarion (I'm playing as a sorcerer), but in tougher fights she ends up not contributing much (maybe I'm just being tactically stupid). I think I saw somewhere that she has some decent offensive spells too and that I should grind a little to level her up first?

I found that Shadowheart didn't really get good until I hit Act 2 (which felt thematically appropriate), where her Turn Undead ability and the various kinds of radiant damage spells become extremely useful (Spirit Guardians is particularly great)

Also, Guiding Bolt wherever possible

I re-statted Shadowheart to have more focus on just WIS, STR and CON so she could hold her own in physical fights a bit better but yeah by Act 2 she has a lot of spell slots and a lot of enemies that are prone to getting mulched by just standing near her.

So much of her stuff requires concentration you just have to be careful you're picking the right one for the current encounter

I respec’d Shadowheart away from trickery and more toward “healing” both to zup up her heals and to give her heavy armour proficiency. Slapped a scale mail on her and I think she’ll be having an easier time now

Gonna keep my party basic basic for now (paladin rogue cleric wizard)… Astarion even as a thief is just too powerful a ranger/sneak attacker to let go, even if I’m not as tanky as I’d like

Also respec’d my pally main to get him 2H proficiency (I had picked duelist). A greatsword is smitier than etc etc

Something I didn’t realize is that making Gale an evocation specialist, apparently, eliminates friendly fire problems? Maybe I might cast that thunder wave thing without just hitting my own folks, now?

God the thunderwave thing is so dangerous. But when it works, it works

Shadow heart is so good in act two (especially if you found a certain weapon right at the end of act 1). Spiritual weapon, raise undead, spirit guardian, even the melee necro spell at higher spell slots. Bless is a great spell. Feel like it would be very hard to play without her utility.

But yeah, that particular weapon…. It can trivilialise many act 2 encounters.

I've not got to Act 2 yet but I can imgaine her daylight spell will come in useful for it

Full version for Mac tomorrow, hopefully companions won't run right into my Cloud of Daggers after combat ends now.

Oh god that is so annoying. There needs to be a dismiss spell button

Had a real problem with my characters running straight into bibberbang at every given opportunity

There needs to be a dismiss spell button

There is, active concentration spells appear in circles near the hotbar, with little Xs on them to end them.

But when you kill the last bad guy your companions will immediately trot toward you like puppies, so you're in a bit of a race there.

Thank you!

Shadow heart is so good in act two (especially if you found a certain weapon right at the end of act 1)

finding this is the first time I had to look up a guide, on account of I completely missed the ceremonial mace and there is no way I would have ever thought to check all of those shitty drunk kobolds for it, and I also missed the statue puzzle somehow despite looting that room pretty thoroughly

gotta stop checking pots and burlap sacks and start checking statues I guess

but I must check the burlap sacks! honestly the loot I am most excited about lately is new clothes, there should be way more outfits imo, though it is funny to switch around people's underwear and unique pants

This game is intense, I feel like “I’m finally reading Ulysses” except “I’m finally deeply immersing myself in D&D mechanics”

I read ahead, and I’m sticking with story mode, I don’t wanna subject my crew to the challenges at the expense of multiclassing

I think I'd be a lot further through this game if I didn't feel compelled to check every burlap sack and crate, looting every glass bottle and bundle of rags I see until I'm encumbered, then try to work out what to do with it all.

Incidentally, I don't know why sometimes I go to examine and loot a crate only for me to pick up the whole crate and put it in my inventory. Sometimes I don't realise this because, well, I'm in a place with a whole bunch of crates, and then I wonder why I'm walking around all encumbered.

I had to take a break from this after getting so annoyed at being stuck in what seemed like a game breaking situation.

Ended up loading the earliest save I had that was at the beginning of the dungeon and high tailing it out of there. Still had some weird shit happen teleporting out. Instead of getting “you cannot teleport from this location”, my main character was getting “this character cannot teleport in their current condition”. They didn’t have any strange status effects on them. Looked it up online, and apparently having one of your characters shove the problem one fixes it. OK, lol. It worked.

Anyway, started cleaning up other quests in Act I and II and crossing my fingers I don’t suffer the same problems when I return. Pretty sure that area’s mandatory for plot progression.

Great game, but this kinda stuff can really ruin the fun.

The dank crypt area is discussed here and elsewhere as being the hardest part of the game, not only is it “a tough fight to begin with” but also the player’s unfamiliarity with the mechanics of it

When I had Shadowheart separated from my party after falling through a pit, I couldn’t rest, couldn’t figure out how to save her, but at the time, I didn’t even know inventory management :/

I definitely prefer the combat in DOS2, which in BG3 feels a lot more restrictive. OTOH, I now understand spell slots.

Act 3, just hit level 11. Cannot stress how much fun the spellcasters become as you level up. Shadow heart is a beast, while a station who was my mid game beast has suddenly become the least powerful in the party.

Also want to clarify, I only romanced the emperor for the achievement……

*astarion

I actually love the combat in this game. In some otherwise great games, turn based combat can get really repetitive and a hindrance to the story. Feels like each encounter is a bit different, has meaning to the plot, and is pretty exciting too

Tonight I went in search of the Githyanki creche. Great area. Loads of books and crannies to explore, which is really hitting my FromSoft legacy dungeon nerve

*nooks, but yes books also. I got a trophy for reading a hundred books

Act 2 is when the fromsoft really turns on. Bloodborne/dark-souls/elden-ring vibes the whole time

And Act 3 = Game of Thrones. I’m not a fantasy guy so there’s probably a million better comparisons from those more versed in that world. I really like the diversity of tone between the acts! They’re all very distinct in gameplay, visuals, and story. I did need to take a pause from my act 2 binge tho. Now that I’ve give. It a week, I’m really loving act 3

Out for Mac

Why is this game so fun and yet so non-addictive? I love it. Very comfy playing for 90 min a day and don’t feel any desire to stay up all night as I did/do with a From game or even Slay The Spire

My party is at Level 5 and it’s like “oh, finally I can do [x]”

Oh I dunno. I've only had it 3 weeks and I'm 70+ hours in

But maybe it's because you literally "end the day" in this game, which puts a nice full stop to the end of each mini-chapter. The various missions are clearly demarcated too

the end of the day camping trip is such a good idea, check in with all the people hanging out, pet the dog, play fetch, sort through chest full of nonsense, perfect way to wrap everything up til next time

wish the camping supplies meant more, would have been cool to get like dinner scenes with people reacting to the food and drink but that's a tall order on top of many others and they had to draw the line somewhere

also think it helps that there is just so much to do, especially if you backtrack in an effort to see it all, which increasingly feels not possible in one playthrough and that is great

Man, a well placed Cloud of Daggers can really grind em up. Absolutely smoked a boss and his boys with it.

Just wish your companions were smart enough to NOT walk directly through it after a fight.

yeah I love Cloud of Daggers. you wanna walk through here? you sure?

kinda deflating to get an "investigate X" quest, think "ok, time to gather clues!" and then there's just a marker on the map showing exactly where to get the evidence to convict.

Man, a well placed Cloud of Daggers can really grind em up. Absolutely smoked a boss and his boys with it.

Just wish your companions were smart enough to NOT walk directly through it after a fight.

― circa1916, Sunday, September 24, 2023 7:12 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

So funny to read posts like this so concurrent with my gameplay. Cloud Of Daggers > Boss moves out of it > *BAM* smack him back in with a well placed thunder spell > Dies

I did have a little bit of frustration in the Underdark earlier when NPCs were making lots of references to characters and things I hadn't come across yet.

There are so many ways to approach and access that area, and I found myself exploring it piecemeal while exploring other parts of the overland. This meant it was all too easy to just stumble into an area, clearing it out, and only later finding out what the signficance was.

For example The Arcane Tower was one of the first places I went to in the Underland. Had loads of trouble with those laser beam things. Picked up what I assumed was Sussur Bark for the weapon quest, then it wilted in the sun. Later realised it was Sussur Bloom I'd picked up, not bark. Much later I encountered the Myconids who told me to get some special ingredients from the Arcane Tower I'd cleared out days before. Unfortunately I'd already used those ingredients while doing some Alchemy, not realising they were important to a quest. I was kicking myself. Luckily I read up on a way to be able to buy them from a couple of nearby merchants if you long rest a few times... Later, I did that whole thing where I sailed across the lake to help the gnomes, but when I got there the Duergar kept saying I owed them money (still don't know why). I wanted to get the aforementioned ingredients so I could tie up the loose ends of the above quest I just mentioned, so I fast travelled back to the Myconid camp. Suddenly my whole party are banging on about a guy suffocating to death under some rubble. I had no idea who this guy was or what they were talking about. It was only much later that I would encounter Nere, but it wasn't clear at all what was going on, and I'm still more than a bit confused by this part of the story

Yeah, that aspect of the game doesn’t get better in the other acts lol. Feature or bug? A necessary evil of the open ended design

It's just part and parcel of the non-linear open world experience. On the whole I am impressed with how often stuff like this DOESN'T happen in this game. Think about how easy it is to break whole quests in Elden Ring by not speaking to that one NPC three times etc...

After finishing goblin/Druid stuff I kinda fell quickly into Underdark endeavours and probably-prematurely found myself at the foot of the Adamantine forge

It felt like the forge was broken, everything was stuck, couldn’t find a lever to get the thing to descend and so I hit it with an arrow and then couldn’t get back up

But then I realized that the real problem was that I needed to “hold a button to confirm the combination of objects” when putting a mould in. Like I just hadn’t put it in yet. Anyway I was ill-equipped to murder a big robot but I murdered him regardless with tactics and zeal

I’m half-cheating I guess, I don’t read walkthroughs but I kinda give myself a whiff of “here’s the best Act 1 armour for Astarion, i.e.” articles. Apparently double Adamantine splint is good for my paladin-Shadowheart tag teaming so that’s what I did. They look weird standing side by side wearing the same outfit, like an embarrassing red carpet moment

Are you guys using your tadpole powers? I can't bring myself to.

100% yes. Just do it for fly, best power in the game.

I haven't been able how to get the fly mechanic to work at all

Spent ages last night losing to a tricky gimmick boss the forge golem who was driving me nuts. Finally managed to beat it by the very last bit of my last character's health bar. Then I saw that my friend had won the trophy for beating him without the main mechanic. HOoooowww?!

Keep the lava flowing, I think.

I fought the golem before “saving” Nere and I was wrong so he drowned

I’m a little ticked off because I plucked two blossoms and knew to “not go upside” but a mushroom circle I found put me at a surprise sunlit area and they withered. Hope I can get a couple more?

I just couldn't get the golem to stay in the right place. He's meant to go after the last person who attacked him, but instead he kept marching up to my pacifist lever puller and smashing her.
Meanwhile, my baiter, Karlach is standing knee-deep in lava next to the forge hammer firing arrows at him to get his attention and it's not working at all.
Finally managed to get a few good hits on him, leaving Shadowheart (against all odds) standing alone.

Very tough boss if I'm not mistaken.

Didn't realise it was possible to access the forge without doing the Nere part first.

fgti, don't worry about the blooms. they're useful if you're going to fight the automatons at the top of the tower as they have an anti-magic field. but otherwise it's the Sussur Bark you need, which is elsewhere. If you do want some blooms, you should be able to grab them somewhere else. I sent them to camp, so now there's an anti magic field around my stash chest. I don't know if they'll wilt if I open the chest now though.

Do you have Compelled Duel?

Ah good shout, but no. That would have been handy

Does anyone know how to report bugs to Larian? Moving the camera while holding down the "show lootable items" button started crashing on Mac (well, my Mac) when the full release came out.

I'm sprinting through Act I right now, already done it a few times so eager to get to Act II. Will I regret it if I skip the forge and the tower?

I somehow doubt it. Those areas are really hard work for what you get out of them it seems.

I mean

What good comes from the tower, but it seems so piddly to skip?

The forge tho idk, I got main paladin and Shadowheart walking around in the Splint mail from that thing and it’s alarming how my other characters seem so squishy but idk I’m still act one, first playthrough

My party has pretty good survivability so far, except when my sorcerer's Gloves of Missile Snaring don't trigger for some unknown reason. I guess I can fast travel back if I need a gear upgrade.

I went overland initially and have been backtracking thru the underdark just because I like meandering around and it is still so wild to me how much stuff there is to do that is totally optional, and yet is also time sensitive in some cases

like I visited the forge area and started all these subplots and then did something else and by the time I came back it was a ghost town and everything had been resolved in my absence

still don't know if the tower is just an insane bit of world building or if it figures in later, I had to take a days long break because it actually felt overwhelming checking in on all of these disparate branches of map

also seems like if you don't want to bang it picks up on that because everyone really likes me but there has been no sexy advances lately (except for gale but even then after luring me away from camp it was just like "yeah thanks for hanging out, I know we aren't close I'm just a hot lonesome wizard tryna commune with the weave" lol

Overwhelming feelings otm. This is a great game, but I am constantly having to take breaks because it’s just overwhelming how much game they managed to fit into this game lol

I know! It feels un addictive in the best way, I always want to play but never for more than a 30 min burst

Today I did some inventory management, very satisfying! oh and I killed a lava thing and met a laugh ghoul

Just noticed that my wizard’s name is Gale and my undead friend is named Withers so I changed my thief’s name to Cotton and my cleric’s name to Weary

re: inventory I just figured out what "send to wares" does, which is cool, but then I am still not clear on how the barter system works

again, wish every shopkeep had a weird pair of pants for sale but there are rare dyes at least

still, every party member has two unique outfits ("camping" and "boudoir") but everytime I murder someone and root thru their wardrobe/rotten burlap sack it's the same destitute rags or whatever if there are clothes at all, c'mon

love this game

Just started Act II... (minor spoilers ahead, do not read if you haven't got there yet)

Tried the Shadowlands last night or whatever they're called. All my characters started going "It's so dark and spooky" and talking about some sort of affliction or curse that Shadowheart claimed she didn't have. I was confused because they seemed to be walking around normally, and it wasn't much darker than the Underdark. Then I realised I was equipped with a special weapon that creates daylight wherever you go. I unequipped it and was like "ah okay, yeah, I have no idea what to do about this!"

So there are people you can talk shit to and people you can't, and it turns out (Act II spoiler) the gith queen is the second kind.

I went the other way to start Act II, overland, loving it.

still, every party member has two unique outfits ("camping" and "boudoir") but everytime I murder someone and root thru their wardrobe/rotten burlap sack it's the same destitute rags or whatever if there are clothes at all, c'mon

the sartorial options really open up in act 3. kinda too bad it takes that long but wow the number of dyes and clothes and underwears like quintuples or something

My drow sorcerer is wearing evening dress she, uh, borrowed from Minthara.

How is it that I have run out of Camp Supplies for long rests? This can't be possible. And as I'm such a meticulous scavenger, I can't find much more. This is strange

Are you carrying all your camp supplies with you or sending them to the camp chest? If it's the latter you have actually take them out and put them in your inventory. It's weird.

I sent like 1000 camp supplies to my camp chest and they all disappeared or ended up lost in transit by act 3? Anyways, gave some use to the general store!

Is the Creche a side quest? I’m here and Lazelle is with me and idk why I’m here. I think I tapped out Act One. Haven’t found a knock anything so that beauty chest in Grymforge is still unavailable, but I think I got the rest of it. I miss Astarion. (Swapped him for Lazelle so she’d stop her complaining)

Is the Creche a side quest?

I think it's required if you want to keep Lae'zel around, right? I dunno, I remember her saying she'd leave if I didn't go there. Otherwise, definitely not required but few quests in this game are.

I'm there too, I just slaughtered everyone, wondering what the consequences will be in Act III.

Dungeon Master: Please roll a survival check

Player: ok...

DM: You succeed, you notice a giant pile of fresh dirt, do you want to dig around in there

P: yep

DM: You find a straight up treasure chest

Wait, where and when does this game tell you you're in Act II? I know I'm in Act II but I never really got a thing to say so

Re: the camp chest. I'm a bit loathe to send anything there. Once.its in there, it's in there and I rarely think to go hoiking anything out of there.

It would be nice if they'd incorporated a feature where you can somehow retrieve stuff from it (or at least check what's inside it) without having to physically go back to camp.

Similarly, it would be neat if I could check the inventories of characters who aren't in my party without the rigmarole of swapping someone out, swapping them in, offloading their inventory items onto another character, then swapping everyone back, then rearranging my inventory so my characters aren't encumbered.

I realised this is why a lot of my camp supplies were missing: I'd used Laezel during much of the Crèche area, so she had most of the supplies even though I'd swapped her out for other characters to play Act II.

I'm not really sure who to have in my party for Act II. I currently have Shadowheart because she has the special powers. I have Karlach because she's just awesome. And I have Gale, mostly because I've built him up to be a pretty good Bard/Rogue character with high charisma, but I'm wondering if the story would be better with Wyll or Astarion on my team

agreed about the rigamarole, I don't need a bear guy right now I just want his clothes (forgot to give him new clothes and this resulted in a fully nude Halsin hanging dong outside his tent for awhile, whoops)

encountered my first bug yesterday, in the middle of a conversation with Raphael he said a line and then proceeded to cycle thru a variety of facial expressions while ominous music played for a solid minute or two, very Lynchian a+ bug

Wait, where and when does this game tell you you're in Act II? I know I'm in Act II but I never really got a thing to say so

Beat it! claimed my "1.4% of players have this achievement" completing the game in tactician mode, getting framed and going right above my bed!

It was alright, wish I took a more interesting path (i.e. not being the good guy in every dialogue path). I'll save that for the next crpg, either tyranny (very easy to be a bad guy) or pathfinder (apparently very fun to be a bad guy).

Congratulations!

That is actually amazing. I am still in story mode. It's actually unchallenging at this point? I probably will go back to medium mode. I can't imagine doing this as a tactician!

This is one of the few adventure games, especially turn-based games, where i actually look forward to the battles and don't see them as a frustrating inconvenience interrupting the story or a drudgerous grind to help me get leveled up

Yeah I was excited to play BG because I loved Champions of Krynn as a kid (also turn-based D&D) and hadn't found anything else that scratched the same itch.

https://www.myabandonware.com/media/screenshots/c/champions-of-krynn-un/champions-of-krynn_19.gif

Should I feel ashamed for cheesing the Spider Matriarch? I split off Astarion to sneak attack as many minions as he could before got engaged in combat, then had Shadowheart sneak behind her and Thunderwave her off the ledge, and had the others come into combat as necessary.

that's just smart fighting

Yeah, that's the right way to do it.

Another thing I like about the battles is that the difficulty seems pitched so that while I rarely lose a big fight, I never feel like I got away too easily either. It always feels like a challenge and there are always a few moments of doubt where I think it's all going to go wrong.

It would be great if I could get rid of this poison cloud glitch though. That would be nice.

lol thanks yall, I feel edified. Weird thing that happened last night though is that I was going to fight Filind (the boss Gnoll from the Find The Missing Shipment Quest) in that the boss was already dead, but not other Gnolls/hyenas. I had tried that fight a bunch of times but I'd have remembered killing a boss that I had been losing to (I apparently did manage to sneak attack some of the minions earlier).

Act II has some rough edges - dialogue that assumes I've had a conversation that I haven't, that kind of thing.

I've had a bit of that all the way through, especially in the Underdark.

It can be kind of gaslighty when this happens because I'll be talking to someone and they'll say something like "how are we going to save that drow trapped under the rubble?" And I'm like "Wait, what? Did I miss something? Was I not paying attention?"

Another thing I'm learning is to not always think I'm clever for anticipating enemy attacks and just shooting first. I realised last night that I'd managed to break a significant quest by firing at some non-hostile undead thinking they were going to surprise me

I suspect I’ve been doing tons of that too, I have an insane body count piled up behind me but almost no story stuff going on, staring to realise it’s because I keep killing side quest givers before they’ve had a chance to even speak to me.

Some very odd dialogue stuff going on in Last Light Inn. I fought a guy called Marcus ages back - in fact the whole village joined in. Now my character is saying he's upstairs and the person who helped me fight him says she doesn't believe me...?!

Yeah Last Light Inn is where I was getting weird dialogue stuff as well.

Act II was feeling like a slog ... but just got to a really awesome section. It's not D&D without skeletons wearing helmets and swinging swords.

There is something weird about the fact that you're never looking up in this game. Little mini-cutscenes when entering some of the grander spaces with a different camera angle and POV would be nice.

Otm about the camera. Many times wanting to change the verticality and remembering I couldn’t.

Act 3 > act 2 > act 1

So far I think the whole Rosymorn / Githyanki Creche area has been my favourite part, I dunno why, it just feels unique like an interlocking puzzle to me

I Think I like it for the same reason I love Stormveil Castle in Elden Ring - I just love a maze

Act 3 > act 2 > act 1

Act II Moonrise Towers:

Why is Walbrun or whatever his name with so cold towards me in the Last Light Inn after I saved him and all his mates?

It felt like a cutscene had been missed - we got to the little boat and then suddenly I was at the Inn - it was quite disorienting at first, especially as I had wanted to stay behind at the prison and do a few things first

I was ready to be let down by act 3 due to that narrative but it really is the best part of the game! I liked act 1, but the setting of act 2 was just great. I also felt like my crew was solidified and getting down to business, rather than in the middle of awkward introductions

Yeah I love the setting of Act II and there are some incredible moments. I wish they'd actually done a bit more with the surgeon and the bartender characters.

There have been just one or two too many "what the fuck just happened?" moments, which do break the immersion though.

I'm not entirely sure why my party has been so warmly and quickly welcomed into the fold at Moonrise, for example. I realise it's likely because I'm a True Soul, but people speak to me like I haven't just wandered in off the street.

One minute I'm even being asked by the chief overseer to decide on the fates of some prisoners - I only just got here. Then I'm being told I have permission just to walk around the Towers' private rooms, that is, until for some reason they change their minds and start attacking me when I walk back out a different door.

I lost about an hour's play last night due to this.

I think I’m at the same spot as you dl

I just told a jailed gnome to “hold on a tic” while I finished some other things before a jailbreak. What about that punishment weirdo? Wasn’t there something else I was supposed to do first? I’m going to consult my journal thoroughly tonight

The only thing I spoiled for myself in this act is that I read that the gauntlet is the last place you should go so I turned around when I found it

The Absolute camp looks so awesome from a distance, I am absolutely going to kit Astarion out for stealth mode and scout it out before my incursion

Yeah, I'd done a significant part of the Gauntlet before coming across this. It feels that logically I should be doing everything on the map before Moonrise Towers, but no.

Because I'm one of those gamers, I also have a habit of never just marching up the front steps along the critical path to where I'm going, often negotiaitng some sort of crumbling side route that may-or-may-not be advised before going back and doing what I'm meant to be doing. This might be why I'm getting a few strange story glitches.

There have been just one or two too many "what the fuck just happened?" moments, which do break the immersion though.

Constantly for the main questline. Never for my companions' quests. Odd.

Also, I investigated Kagha, saved the Emerald Grove, etc etc. All good. Find out at Last Light Inn I need to rescue the tieflings again. But when I get to Moonrise Tower there was exactly 1 tiefling in the place.

Apparently I was supposed to talk to someone named Rolan back in the Emerald Grove? Like I have time to talk to every goddamn person?

Technically, I did complete the "Rescue the Tieflings" quest.

Maybe Rolan & co were the people having a loud argument a little ways into the Grove? I was politely minding my own business!

I spent most of the night replaying what I did last night because I was certain something funny had happened. Lo and behold, I rescue Walbrun and co in pretty much the same way as I did before, and the game plays a whole connecting sequence it hadn't done last night. Very strange

Lukas, I'm surprised all that stuff would have been skipped if you hadn't spoken to Rolan - he doesn't seem integral to the plot so far (maybe he comes into his own later, I dunno)

I managed to get past the 4 Whispering Masks who had previously been ruthlessly manhandling me, still have to make my way to the witch though.

Something that's annoying is that sometimes when I start the game it asks me to adjust the brightness and my video settings go back to potato mode (which I briefly experimented with and do not recommend). I think this is happening after downloading and installing new patches, so I can't be the only one this is happening to?

Also I feel bad for just murdering the Masks, but not as bad as dying repeatedly to them.

My witchfight was gd horrible.

Considering the maskpeople we’re using WIS saving throws before acting against me, I logically concluded that if I let them live, and murdered the witch quickly, then they’d de-hostile and be grateful to me

I had Shadowheart spam command-cower at witchface while my other characters took her down and did our best to avoid the maskattacks

Witch dead, no sweat, but did the masks become friendly? No! They only lost the WIS checks so they were now hostile-without-abandon.

I had to dash away, all four characters at less than 10 HP, saving-reloading every turn, escape and rest and come back to deal with them

Definitely the nadir of this, my first playthrough

I had no idea there was even a way to get past the masks without killing them. I'll have to try that.

I really hated the witch part. But I think I did that quest way too early on. Didn't help that my game glitches sometimes and doesn't let me see poison clouds.

Anyone else find the secret route to the witch's lair from the Underdark. That was a "holy shit!" moment for me, until I realised where I'd ended up and then I was like "nope"

I found it, but don’t remember where it puts me?

Oh, there’s a woodface door that I haven’t figured out how to pass through. Gave up on it

Currently attempting to peacefully bust out the gnomes without making the tower hostile. Last night my oath pal got a demerit for killing the warden so I’m trying another approach

Ah, you need to wear the masks. It doesn't take you anywhere interesting, just back into her lair, but I thought it was interesting

Oh, there’s a woodface door that I haven’t figured out how to pass through. Gave up on it

You can also pass some kind of check (which I was able to do) and just walk through it (which I didn't actually try till I read a walkthrough).

Well, I'm well-past all that anyway :)

I want to get these gnomes saved tonight so I can solo-stealth Astarion into the crazy-looking Absolute Army area

Saving the elves without fucking it up is pretty tricky. As I say, I gave it more than one shot. The first and third time, it triggered a fight and a subsequent cut scene. The second time, no fight occurred, we just hopped on the little boat and it cut immediately to Last Light Inn.

I was going to post something about how ridiculous the pathfinding in this game is, the fact that you can select a destination that's only accessible via a series of rooms and closed doors you've never visited before, and your character will just instantly and flawlessly head there

then the pathfinding had my character jump off a roof for -15HP (Prone)

Skill issue I'm sure, but Astarion just isn't pulling his weight in combat. He only does decent damage with advantage, and in well-lit environments where he can't stealth that can be hard to come by. He can turn invisible now, but that costs an action and is over after the next attack.

I like Astarion, but rogues definitely aren't about going toe-to-toe with enemies. The strategy that I'm trying to use with him is to sneak attack before combat actually starts, and when combat does start, having other characters casting spells that confer advantage, or else just have him find high ground and shoot arrows at baddies.

https://www.thegamer.com/baldurs-gate-3-astarion-best-build-equipment-subclass/#best-ranged-astarion-build

This range build, with the right weapons will take you far.

Having him be able to cast silence was the only thing that got me through a particularly ridiculous fight in act 3 (harder than the last battle imo).

I've been trying to avoid min-maxing since combat has been easy enough already (which is not to say I haven't had to reload some saves ...)

Eventually though there will be a fight I can't win by casting Haste on Lae'zel, and when that happens I'll come back here, thanks.

Hah I didn’t even know about haste! I did have to use those potions of speed eventually for another act 3 boss. Act 3 is stacked with tough bosses!

As soon as I got Astarion dual wielding he became extremely good in combat

Karlach is easily my not-so-secret weapon. I have her carry the Sussur Blade and she just chews through enemies. The rest of my crew are basically there to make sure she doesn't die

I will tell you this: It's highly unlikely you've explored the entire map of the Shadowlands. I thought I had, then I came across all sorts of stuff I didn't know about. I even found a strange little plateau you can't reach with a regular jump which only contains a sign telling you to go away and a book called "Out Of The Sausage Tube, Into The Shadow"

I didn't even try to see all of Act II, was eager to get to the city. And honestly no regrets, the city is awesome.

Just started Act III. Bit sad I've not been able to recruit Jaheira (she's stuck in a perpetual cycle of being upset about Marcus due to a glitch). Then there's Minthara (Minthara? I hardly knew her) who I never spoke to, only fought.

Flew up to a rooftop, threw a fireball through an open window, started a huge fight. Most fun I've had with this game.

I'm planning to know Minthara on my next playthrough if you know what I mean (sex)

I stormed Moonrise last night. Apparently the first battle is a challenge? I switched to “regular mode” because my characters have multi-class capability and I’m glad I did; that said, my paladin got hasted and took down K’zell in a single turn

Act 2 is weak only because Shadowheart’s devotion to Lady Shar was tedious from the get-go.

dl should I finish exploring every nook of the now-clearskies Shadowland before engaging in what I assume is the final battle of the act?

Good lord I barely survived getting to Auntie and once I actually faced her she kept holding my most of my party and nearly one-shotting them with poison. Am I way under leveled at 4? I've seen a one-turn cheese method but I'm very unsure if I can pull it off because the characters I'll need to pull it off might be getting held.

The game turned around for me once I got my characters kitted out correctly (Shadowheart respec’d to life cleric and wearing heavy stuff and a shield)

Are there multiple Aunties? If not, I think you need to do a certain amount of damage to get to the next phase of the fight and she'll switch tactics. Lvl 4 should be fine. Potion of Speed? Silence if you have it?

Can we talk about the music in this game? Like, I can't think of a single game from the last few years with such an instantly iconic soundtrack. The fact the quality of everything else in this game is at such a high standard that the music is less discussed is really saying something

Fgti - I'm not sure what the final battle is! I tried brute forcing my way to Ketheric Thorm but I was told I couldn't best him without the Nightsong, which I assume won't be found until Act 3 at this rate?

As for the Shadowlands, it's a fun area to explore. It doesn't take long, there's just more than I at first assumed, so worth backtracking and taking a good poke around

which I assume won't be found until Act 3 at this rate?

it's in Act 2. I don't think it's possible to finish Act 2 without finding it.

I would assume it is? Idk. I fought Kethric and now I’m in need of rest in the Colony and cannot rest

The music in this game is extremely good. It’s not just about “good music” but about having an ambient quality that becomes familiar enough to be non repetitious. This is the first game I’ve played in years where I haven’t muted the music after a couple hours

Have I missed another cutscene? There was a strange jump straight after finding the Nightsong and jumping through the portal where it very quickly cut to Shadowheart giving a detailed and painful explanation of Shar admonishing her. It all seemed a bit jarring, as though something had been skipped over

When I found the Nightsong I had Shadowheart in my party, immediately got in a fight, afterwards Shadowheart had to make an agonizing decision. If you didn't have the scene where Shadowheart had to make that decision, yeah it would be confusing.

Lukas, I'm not far enough to know if there are other Aunties, but I was talking about Ethel. I did manage to beat her on my second-ish try, the Silence suggestion was a huge help, but I still squeaked by with two downed party members after it wore off -- and I still had to do the part after she offers you a deal three times because she viciously mocked one of my remaining active players and he kept missing his melee attacks, all when she had just 11 HP left!

You guys must have a different soundtrack because the music in this game is nearly unnoticeable and completely forgettable to me

Other than the doom choir on the start screen

I can think of a few just off the top of my head, especially:

- That excellent fight music with the twangy folk-metal guitar and the deep yo-ho style chanting
- The overall "By The River" motif that seems to wind through most of the music. Something I noticed during the character creation menu is that I'd been going through options for at least 30 minutes and it didn't feel like I heard the music loop once

I'm kind of amazed at how often I've missed a path to a new section of the map and instead felt stuck. The first time was pretty egregious because I didn't see the big gate in the Blighted Village leading to these Sunlit Wetlands, though the second time (a path into the goblin camp) was a lot narrower.

The music is extremely good— keeping things medium-ambient instead of Soule-heroic is an effective soundtrack to an hour of play. I am reminded most of the first time I played Diablo 1

I’m in Rivington and there’s a lot of things to do and see. What happened last night? Oh, I went to visit the gnomes, accidentally picked up not-mine object and infuriated them all. I wish there was an easy way to quell NPCs who have become “temporarily hostile” rather than the arduous act of having to escape.

Idk if this is strictly a PS5 issue, also, but the engine is always prompting for you to interact with a ladder/vines/scaleable-wall when you are steps away; when you’re actually at/on the object there is no such prompt. It is frustrating

I haven't really had that problem fgti, not really. Sometimes though when I dig up a chest, the prompt doesn't show up, but I just scan the area for it and there's no problem. Have you got the option switched on that lets you select items with the right stick?

Yep. When I’m standing on the top of the vines, or directly in front the vines, it’s not an option to interact with them. It’s a small quibble in the navigation of this beautiful game!

tThere are a lot of quibbles tbh but they don't stop me coming back. Just kind of funny coming from the insane polish of Zelda.

I like the music, though have always wondered why videogames almost never get in touch with...y'know, like any number of pop musicians that might be interested, should probably make a thread for the few times that has happened

But it all feels appropriate and I love the little touches like a bartender humming the "main theme" to themselves or when the tunes get a little creepy in battles against the undead and so forth

Haven't tried a bard yet but one of my favorite things lately is to pick up a proficiency in performance and pick around on a lute in between turns, wish there were more song options available but maybe there are?

Few times? It happens a lot I think

Bobby Krlic (The Haxan Cloak) did Returnal most recently, won a bunch of awards, too

65DaysOfStatic did No Man's Sky.

Didn't realise Bobby Krlic did Returnal. That's got some great music in it

The music in Tetris Effect Connected is brilliant and I'm surprised the person who did that isn't some sort of major pop producer

Few times? It happens a lot I think

Yeah, Death Stranding, Bugsnax, and Metal: Hellsinger are ones I can think of off the top of my head.

So it turns out going though Act 3 all smashy smashy carries some consequences. An evil playthrough in which other people are irrelevant would be positively relaxing at this point.

I just checked my Act 3 journal (haven’t in a while) and apparently the Thay book is lost, Kevlor is Kevdead, and some grieving duder in the fiery house is unsolved. How did this happen? Wish I’d been a better journaler

The music in Tetris Effect Connected is brilliant and I'm surprised the person who did that isn't some sort of major pop producer

Well, he kind of is, or at least was. It's a Mizuguchi game and Mizuguchi is basically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genki_Rockets

I made it to the Underdark and the game feels like it's opening up more, with merchants selling useful gear for once. Level 5 also seems to be a pretty decent milestone to reach as I finally got a second attack for Karlach.

I am so, so tickled by a particular NPC in the circus area, I feel like everything good about D&D is given its turn in the sun, in this game

I randomly didn't save Zevlor (and it seems as if most people do save Zevlor) and it was shocking-- shocking!-- to find him last night dead in my camp with a taunting note stuffed in his mouth

am old and stopped playing videogames for awhile so when I tried thinking of "pop musicians in videogames" it was "uh didn't Stewart Copeland do the Spyro soundtrack" haha anyways thanks y'all for keeping me abreast

pretty sure I am close to the end of this game and my only gripe I guess is that I reached the level cap before I even got to Baldur's Gate, which isn't actually terrible because since then I have adopted a devil may care attitude and turned Astarion into the evil monster he wants to be

echoing wills sentiments way above about the surprise and super optional disney villain fight/song, so many weird yet super fleshed out detours, super impressed

Disney villain fight song? Ok I’m interested

Also: you got to Level 12 before Act 3? How on earth

I've saved Halsin and the Tiefling refugees, but when I went to camp, I didn't see anyone besides my party members. Do I need to go to camp from the Emerald Grove?

I think you have to talk to them at the grove and tell them to go to your camp

Halsin's not at the grove the last time I went by -- I've already talked with Zevlor and he said we'd meet at the camp, but I didn't see him there. I went to camp from the Goblin Camp, maybe that's why?

Lol I figured out what happened. After I killed the last goblin boss, I was supposed to talk with him but didn't. I had to use the map to find where I left him in the Goblin Camp to pick up the conversation.

I'm in Act 2 but keep thinking about starting over because of how some of my early decisions have panned out. I really wish Dammon was still alive, for example.

Jaheira finally snapped out of her Marcus obsession glitch and joined me at Moonrise Towers, dying almost as soon as the first fight broke out

Blundered around for an hour or two last night, might pretend none of that ever happened and reload.

Jaheira's AI is INCREDIBLY stupid in the Moonrise Tower fight. I had to get Shadowheart to babysit her and keep Dimension Door-ing her to the back of the room just so she wouldn't repeatedly dash through a wall of fire to get herself surrounded by enemies and hacked to pieces

Given that she's about to become an optional party member it's dumb that you can't just resurrect her if she dies in that fight, you can res Wyll if he manages to get killed by the goblins outside the druid camp

Also shout out the bard Alfira, who got heroic in the tavern invasion fight and used her whole action to sprint and stand uselessly next to the lone surviving demon, who was one hit away from death and already surrounded by Harpers and Jaheira in panther form, and promptly used its last act to crit her to death

Didn't have a quicksave, thanks for coming, off to Valhalla to join the squirrel and the gnome salsa shark murdered for fun

"How about all the weakling characters you're trying to save just dash head first into danger?" is very annoying, yes

easily the hardest thing in this game is keeping certain npcs alive, just go away please I turned you invisible run far away please

so disappointed to find Halsin and he turns into a bear and quickly turns into a brutally murdered bear, please stop trying to make turning into an animal a thing Halsin nobody needs a bear right now

Getting close to 60 hours and I'm still in Act 1 lol.

How?!

Dying a bunch, dash of save scumming, interrupting my dungeon crawls to go back to a merchant to sell stuff.

Just past 100 hours, diddled a devil

Had a little break and came back to this tonight.

Just had the second encounter with Ketheric in the Illithid slimezone, and honestly I'm losing patience with this game.

There are waaaay too many plots going on for me to keep up with, and I care very little about half of them. Characters and events keep getting mentioned about which I have very little recall. "Don't you remember Zoovlore, the random NPC someone mentioned offhand right at the start of Act 1?"

A character called Gortash has just shown up and Karlach is talking about him as though we're meant to really know and care about who he is.

Ketheric jumped into a pit for very little reason, but my NPCs kept talking about him as though he was alive, saying he transformed into a monster? Was the monster the bone demon I had to fight? Why then did it say I'd slaughtered its "chosen"?

Why did the Nightsong start attacking me after I freed her?

Who is Mystra? Who is the duke guy? I'm sure they've been mentioned before but it was hours and hours ago. Am I supposed to care who they are?

Ketheric jumped into a pit for very little reason, but my NPCs kept talking about him as though he was alive, saying he transformed into a monster? Was the monster the bone demon I had to fight? Why then did it say I'd slaughtered its "chosen"?

He transformed into the monster iirc. When "it" said you slaughtered its chosen, "it" was the evil god whose avatar he was.

I could be wrong about this though because the Zoovlore effect is real, plot elements are simplistic and confusing at the same time. And they're always super important. Just once I'd like to have someone say "yeah it would be nice if you could kill this bad guy, but if not no problem."

Why did the Nightsong start attacking me after I freed her?

beats me

Who is Mystra?

she's magic itself

Who is the duke guy?

Wyll's dad

Am I supposed to care who they are?

not as much as Gale and Wyll do

I've been busy and not playing this game much recently. I also find getting to the end of the game stressful. Like, should I do my hair and makeup first? What if I forgot to do something important? Maybe I'll just rush through and then enjoy a second, slower playthrough.

That’s interesting, I haven’t even run into Zoovlore!

Few have.

n00b here, man am I having a hell of a time trying to defeat the hobgoblin boss. have recruited Halsin, always run up to the rafters asap, always get my arse handed to me nonetheless

I woke up last night to go to the bathroom and while waking up my brain was doing turn based combat

I remember playing Elden Ring and getting to the final boss and thinking “I have no idea what the plot of this game is, at all”. Second playthrough was just a big “oh… oh oh oh this makes sense now”

Baldur’s Gate’s plot is even more GRRM in a way, so many factions, so many plots, too many to keep up with. I would argue that my “caring less” than I would about your average fantasy plot is likely a by-product of a narrative structure that allows one to completely invert one’s allegiances. Like, even playing LG Paladin has me in frequent ethical quandaries, to wit:

- should I give a Githyanki egg to a fundy evangelical type for adoption? Sure I will, “Lawful Good” cosplay means having a streak of Rudyard Kipling in my ethics

- whoops, looks like that Githyanki grew up and murdered his adopted parents, vive la liberté, too bad I’ll never see Blurg and Omeluum again as a result

- should I allow Astarion to murder 8000 vampires for profit? or let those innocent undead peoplekillers free? Obv I picked the latter but talk about a Lawful Good conundrum

It really does feel as if Larian plotted this game carefully so that most plot lines have at their heart a “genuine ethical dilemma” that doesn’t really offer any 100% satisfying outcomes, no matter what you choose. You can’t be honest with a god about your intended path of resistance without a game over. I couldn’t even get sodomized by a hot leather devil without a “you’re in hell now” game over

The hobgoblin fight took me two tries; first time I (naively) wasn't expecting a fight and so I didn't have my group set up well, but IIRC the second time I sent Astarion immediately to the rafters (to get that sweet high ground bonus), kept my party members farther apart to avoid getting AOE'ed, asked Halsin to join me in the fight (if for no other reason than to draw some of the enemy's fire), and made sure to concentrate my attacks on a single enemy at a time to winnow down the numbers.

I had pretty good results starting the fight from outside the hobgoblin's throne room (or whatever it is), and just drawing people outside. had to go inside to finish off a few people behind the throne.

Finished the Adamantine Forge quest but I ended up creating a one handed mace, which isn't really useful to my party. I'm wondering if reloading a save (and fighting Grym again) is worthwhile?

I might re-do it to get a scimitar, but realistically it's just a blue weapon with a useful trait. My level-six squad has solid rare longswords and I don't really ever use maces.

I made 2x splint mail with that forge and never regretted it for a second; worn by Shadowheart and my Pally Tav

I tried the Grym fight again and gave up, just couldn't get the timing or positioning right. So I'm stuck with the mace which I've given to Shadowheart, but I made a scale armor for Big K (I don't use anyone with heavy armor proficiency).

Funny thing about the first time I beat Grym is that I had Karlach on the anvil to lure in Grym, who killed her; I kind of blanched about bringing the hammer down in top K's corpse but I was fed up with the fight and reasoned myself in into doing it.

Am missing a clown arm

Finally in Act 2! Only took me 63 hours.

Thanks for the advice everyone, I did actually beat him later the day I posted that. Focusing on the smaller enemies is good advice yeah, splitting the party is what really did it for me - got my tank and Halsin to burst in drawing all fire while everyone else hid and fired from the rafters.

Splitting the party also v useful with the undead at the start of act 2, tho I cannot stress enough that focusing on the weaker enemies is NOT.

It really does feel as if Larian plotted this game carefully so that most plot lines have at their heart a “genuine ethical dilemma” that doesn’t really offer any 100% satisfying outcomes, no matter what you choose.

I'm playing as a social justice paladin and sometimes the only option to keep my kayfabe is to leave storylines dangling - no I'm not gonna ressurect this dude or break the wand that can do that in front of his grieving widow, no I won't do a settler colonialism and kidnap an egg for this woman but I also am not gonna kill her for suggesting it.

lol @ all the Lae'zel hate upthread, she does start to unlearn her racism eventually. you might say it's my job to educate her.

it's been working a bit too well tho, because I'm romancing Shadowheart and yet apparently my relationship with Lae'zel is so good that whenever she or I die we do a big "noo" scream and yet it's crickets for and from Shadowheart.

hard dating a religious person tbh, but I'm trying to make it work.

Lae'zel's character arc is great, I must say. I'm sure they subtly change her facial features/expressions as she softens up a bit

I've really not had the chance to romance anyone really. Not sure what's going on. Lae'zel came on to me heavy right at the start of the game; Wyll and I did a little dance but that was about it. Shadowheart is as hard to get as anything. Karlach was all "I will literally smash anything that moves... ooo I didn't mean you though" X-D

I had sex w Lazael (almost by accident), Gale and then mind flayer. My paladin is a catch tho, no wonder everyone wants a piece

Knocked boots with Laezel because sure why not.

My infernal heart belongs with Karlach though, completely heartbroken with her story when I reached the Act 2 inn. One lol thing that happened was that I triggered then failed the Isobel fight before finding Dammon, and so after he turned into a zombie (which I didn't realize at the time), Karlach spotted him and cheerily said, "It's Dammon! We should go say hi!" Then I killed this random zombie and then her quest ended and then I was aghast.

After I freed the vampire children, I ran into a human-dad speaking to his hungry vampire-kids in the sewer. I advised him to find them some animals. Then, when I came back later, the vampire-kids abruptly disappeared, and a fight was initiated against the father. Paladin non-lethally dispatched the hostile father, and I immediately chalked up -45 attitude from all my party members. I wish there was a "Calm A Hostile" spell!

One lol thing that happened was that I triggered then failed the Isobel fight before finding Dammon, and so after he turned into a zombie (which I didn't realize at the time), Karlach spotted him and cheerily said, "It's Dammon! We should go say hi!" Then I killed this random zombie and then her quest ended and then I was aghast.

Along the same lines, this Karlach you've all been swooning over...I only met Wyll quite late into act 1, so when he explained there was an enemy to slay I was just like "sure let's go, shoot first ask questions later, I'm sick of getting my ass kicked if I wander into a situation" and so instantly killed her, had a dialogue with Wyll where he was like "oh no maybe I didn't do the right thing" and then found an outpost where they told me she had slaughtered dozens, so while I know that's prob not the real story as far as my party is concerned it is.

It's so strange. I'm really wondering how different my next playthrough will be. What happens if you deliberately don't recruit Shadowheart, I wonder?

I think I pretty-much cleaned out this game of possibilities. I guess I could still find Mol and let her know that I stole her soul from Hell, and apparently there’s another murder investigation that’s worth doing for some weird Sea Witch worshippers, and there’s a hostile necro who keeps coming back to life, but I think I’m ready to say goodbye to games, again

Decided that my end game was to let Emperor down and free Orpheus and have Karlach convert. Swapped in Karlach and swapped out Shadowheart. Went through the whole rigmarole. Emperor furiously screaming ”I… saved your life, over and over. I… gave you my body!” and I turned to my bf and said “that’s me”

Anyway turned out after all that that Shart had the hammer, and I’d swapped her out, we were marooned. Bf sighed and went upstairs to resume his rewatch of The Office (US)

I had hoped I'd make it through a play through without the game jumping the shark, and it almost made it there. The moment: when my Pally Tav was asked for words to "inspire the allies", and he broke into a corny grin and pumped his fist. From then on the game felt like Twin Peaks Season Two.

I really enjoyed this game but it is kinda weird/ironic that a game that is essentially "inventory management" is so incredibly difficult and counter-intuitive to use. Generally it made me more appreciative of how Elden Ring handled vast inventories and made it as painless as possible, sorting through your hundreds/thousands of items. Granted, Elden Ring was single-PC instead of four-person-party, but still. Considering you can scream through the game sending every heavy object you encounter immediately "to camp" with no penalties, it would've made for a more streamlined approach if there was a "party-wide encumbrance limit" and a shared inventory, or something.

Every time I click on my character and she says "is that blood?" I hear "'sup blood?"

Making decent progress in the Shadow-cursed Lands, but I haven't gotten a chance to smash K yet -- in contrast, I had to shoot down both Laezel (even though we already had a fling) and Wyll, and they both looked so crestfallen, but that's because it seemed like K really seemed wounded when I mentioned my Laezel fling.

I just reached level 7 and now I have to worry about the FOMO of picking the wrong spells!

The only spell I really could’ve used that I never got was Greater Invisibility

Remove Curse is pretty useful, and Counterspell is essential

Ice Storm ended up being my favourite AoE. Those Level VI spells are kinda weird and I didn’t end up using them that often

The only spell I really could’ve used that I never got was Greater Invisibility

Remove Curse is pretty useful, and Counterspell is essential

Ice Storm ended up being my favourite AoE. Those Level VI spells are kinda weird and I didn’t end up using them that often

I'm starting to think that you're going to feel FOMO no matter what, because so many spells are great and unless you're a wizard or cleric you have only so many you can prepare?

have finally finished a playthrough of this and yes there are so many spells I never even tried, so many feats, so many branches unexplored, and I really tried to do it all

will probably have to do it again because I have read you can recruit Minthara somehow and I had no idea, just straight up murdered her and stole her cool outfit

also while I would rate the experience 10/10 I feel a kind of way about the general story and resolution

like ok the followers of three evil gods have contrived to use an illithid elder brain to rule the universe, we're meant to stop that, fine, but am still confused what role your guardian/the emperor/balduran(?!) plays in this, and then wait it was all a ploy by the elder brain to bring together the magic crown? it couldn't have done that earlier? and then it commandeers one (1) dragon to defend itself from being stabbed to death but it dies and then everyone just wanders off afterwards whatever good job

anyways great game 10/10

Been googling bg3 advice regularly enough that YT is serving me up the game's IGN marketing blitz with the voice actors and honestly, I ain't mad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeJKnofNBNs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0FECmifHyk

Really hate the House Of Healing, that place freaks me out so bad.

Is that the one with the nurses? I loved that part. Actually the entire tour of the various Thorm siblings has probably been one of the biggest highlights of the game for me

Yes, the nurses. Grand guignol is not my aesthetic, and it also gives me Bloodborne vibes (which I don't like).

Hijinks!

- I was doing the mission to save Thaniel by protecting Halsin's portal. My warlock cast Hunger of Hadar on the ground leading up to the portal, then I had Shadowheart's Spirit Guardians up on the first level as the enemies came out of the HOH area -- great combo! But I also had Astarion right next to SH and they were starting to get overrun, and he had a ring that gave him Thunderwave, which I cast to push back the enemies... and SH got caught in the blast and lost her concentration. And that's how I found out that TW is capable of friendly fire.
- I respecced Astarion away from the Trickery specialty to Thievery, and while it doesn't make him a sneak attack machine, it did prompt me to looking more closely at his bonus actions again -- and figured out that sometimes you can just maneuver him outside of enemies' cone of vision, then he's set up for a sneak attack (cue "no duh"). That said, now that I have 2 bonus actions, I'm going to try to remember that he can do a dash and then a hide, to zip around the battlefield to do more sneak attacks.
- I nearly beat the fight right before you meet Balthasazar with basically nothing above level 2 spell slots left on my first try. I didn't prioritize destroying the portals and so I got really overrun.
- It seems that Karlach is actually monogamous! I reloaded a save just because my fling with Laezel broke her heart, so I guess there's additional reason for future playthroughs.

I haven't played in a bit largely because I'm stuck on the Yurgir fight -- his small army is just too numerous and any little mistake I make ends up getting magnified. I may have to swap out Astarion because sneak attacking doesn't seem like a viable option for such a long fight against so many enemies; I wonder if Shadowheart needs to get benched because of I don't thin out the herd quickly enough then healing will just be holding back a tidal wave. Instead, I might go with Laezel for her extra attacks, or Gale for the first time since I've heard that wizards are good for crowd control.

When I found Yurgir I didn't even know you could fight him because the first thing I did in that area was murder the last justiciar, on accident, I thought the rats were leading me to a treasure, and then I waltz in later and Raphael shows up and it's a whole confusing dialogue and everyone just leaves, lol ok great

still astounded by what an unbelievable pain in the ass it must have been to account for all the ways somebody might approach this videogame

has anyone messed around with these mystery people that withers can summon for you?

Those Level VI spells are kinda weird and I didn’t end up using them that often

esp using sorcerer twincast

When you meet Yurgir try engaging him in dialogue instead of going straight for the kill - you can fool him into thinking you'll help him escape his contract and then you can chill there like you would at the goblin camp. Worth it for positioning your characters and getting the element of surprise at least. You can also look at the big cat's leftovers, discover Yurgir has been poisoning it and convince it to join your team for that fight. All of this demands pretty high rolls mind so make sure to use the right characters and have some inspiration stored up.

What I ended up doing was with Halsin I engaged Yurgir in dialogue, figured out his contract and tricked him into thinking he had to kill his army and then his cat to escape - grim stuff (poor kitty) but it made the fight against him solo pretty doable.

Spent a lot of time grinding to get to level 8 so I could beat the big battle at Moonrise Towers only to discover there's a boss fight at the end of it and then ANOTHER AREA and ANOTHER BOSS FIGHT. Like Leee I dislike the aesthetic of act 2, all dark and gross, it's fun to turn the undead with Shadowheart sure but it's just not an area I want to hang out in, I just wanna get to Baldur's Gate and get my Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser/Dragon Age II on.

My friend (who has played the whole of Elden Ring a bunch of times) said that Act II was too bleak and dark for her. Not sure how that works when compared to the Souls games or the Witcher. The Shadowlands aren't that dark, just a bit glum like a wet Wednesday in the UK; and most of the horror is cartoonish to me

Yeah I don't like the aesthetics of Witcher, Dark Souls, etc. either.

Finished Act II and now I am at the CIRCUS this is more like it.

I'm at Act III and I'm having to give it a short break.
I'm finding the whole thing of having to talk to every NPC or risk missing something a bit wearying. I was really into all that in Act 1, but now it feels like a job, and it's been a while since the game threw anything new or interesting at me - I'm hoping there'll be a few curveballs to come though.

Can't imagine doing a second runthrough anytime soon after finishing the first one, considering what a time sink it's been, but when I do get to it I think I'd like to play as a militant atheist. Just be openly scornful and dismissive of any religious feeling, talk back to Gods, maintain that their power only comes from ppl believing. See how many of my companions I alienate.

try pulling that with Vlaakith and see how it goes lol

Got past Yurgir this morning (this week I only managed to play an hour since my last post, and that was all just leveling up Laezel and Gale, lol). Hunger of Hadar + Cloud of Daggers were the co-MVPs, but I had a lot of trouble getting Laezel to actually land a melee hour on anyone (turns out I had All In toggled on, which I only noticed in a subsequent fight).

So since I had Laezel in my party, I decided to backtrack and do the Creche stuff, and I went there from the Underdark. Once I got to the mountain pass I remembered that I needed to reallocate my healing potions (that's what I get for running without a healer) and before I could actually do that I get jumped by a couple of Undead Shepherds, and boy, I was really missing my cleric.

It’s funny, I never once interacted with Hunger of Hadar, except one fight. Never learned it never used it. And I have a friend named Hadar! she’s nice

Hunger of Hadar is a major pain to have cast on you.

did a tight five in the lower city yesterday. gotta say i killed it, the host was even angry at my getting more laughs than him.

Did we ever talk in this thread about that one song yet (act 3)

hah, it's bad but as a dragon age fan I'm used to it

Went ham yesterday!

- Finished the Mountain Pass stuff, I think, and I feel a little bit bad for L now! I followed a guide more closely here and even loaded an older save (which I'm trying not to do because then things feel rote and sterile) because there are choices that, on the one hand, have some pretty notable but unspecified consequences, and on the other, seem momentous but turn out to be instantly irrelevant, and I couldn't tell which were which.
- Started into the Moonrise Tower area after getting the "Warning! Big Decisions ahead!" message when I tried proceeding to the next section of the Gauntlet of Shar. I really want to save those Tieflings!
- While I was clearing out the Shadow Cursed map I got ambushed by Githyanki and yeesh that was one of the hardest fights I've had, especially because I was fighting 3 on 6 because my warlock got immediately knocked down and then knocked out and I'm pretty sure she never got a single turn in the fight. It got to a point where I had two downed characters and my remaining team had something like 30 combined HP left (and one of them had less than 5). I also hadn't saved in some time which raised the stakes even more.
- I'm learning to not be so stingy with long rests. The game gives you plenty of food that you probably don't need to worry about exhausting your short rests first, especially if, after a fight like the previous bullet, you've basically used up all of your spell slots.
- I just figured out how to hide helmets in cutscenes, relevant because so many helmets also obscure characters' faces. Annoying thing is that I think you have to toggle the setting for each character.

hah, it's bad but as a dragon age fan I'm used to it

― Daniel_Rf, Saturday, November 25, 2023 5:21 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Bad?!? I hope this was an xp and u weren't responding to me

when the song hit I GASPED and when the fight was almost over I just stopped so I could hear it one more time. I love it

maybe we're talking different songs? I meant the vocal thing you get when camping at the tavern.

Ohhh no. I don't even remember that song! The one I'm talking about is during a fight in act 3. (act 3 spoiler obv) it's when you fight raphael

lol

"In Patch 4 we introduced a fix that would prevent the Scrying Eyes in Moonrise Towers from immediately calling the guards on you when stealing, even if you were sneaking, or invisible for example.
This fix had the unintended consequence of causing unnoticed thefts & acts of vandalism to remain stuck forever within the ‘did anyone see me’ pipeline, rather than timing out and moving on, as is intended. Essentially, your ‘DM’ - in a real-world sense - constantly thinks about the acts of theft & violence the player keeps doing, without ever moving on or verbalising them. Mulling on it ad infinitum.
These unnoticed and eternally-active acts of theft & violence eventually bogged down the game. The more a player commits those acts, the more the game is trying to keep that all up to date and in memory, and so the more slowdowns start happening. Essentially, the ‘DM’ eventually becomes unable to operate. By Act 3 this caused slow-down issues, which after some sleuthing we’re extremely happy to say we’ve solved in Patch 5, which is in testing and scheduled to release this week."

I did a prison break last night, sooooo satisfying (except for the fact that I forgot the last character I needed to talk to formally complete the quest).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8VwBNIJ6F4

Parted from my ps5 for 48 hours now and still doing bg3 battles in my sleep. Helluva drug.

Balthazar more like Bastardzar amirite.

getting shoved off a ledge <<<<<

Something fitting about Balthazar's farts killing me.

are you fighting him in the lab or later on? if the former I'd suggest opting for the latter.

I am definitely planning on getting this game in 2024 - I ask all of you: Should I get it for PS5 or Mac?

I'm already past the lab and in the other place.

octobeard, I'm playing on ps5 and it works amazingly well, though act 3 gets a bit buggy but I dunno if that's a ps5 thing. gotta imagine keyboard shortcuts are a plus tho.

Depends, what Mac? Working fine for me on an M1 Pro with 16GB of RAM. And yeah, can't imagine not having a keyboard.

Yeah it would be a Mac with an M1 Pro and 32gb. I've read that's quite sufficient, performance wise, so more curious on gaming experience and need for keyboard. Sounds like it truly is a _C_RPG

I play on the Deck and it's fine 95% of the time.

I made it to Act 3! 125 hours, from what I've heard this act it's enormous so I'm fully expecting to go past 200 hours.

As for the Act 2 boss fight, I beat him both times on the first try. I did have an extended moment of panic when I jumped in the hole immediately after the first round and slowly realized that I couldn't take a long rest. I used up a bunch of health potions and had to really scrounge to restore some spell slots, which thankfully became moot when you reach the end of the stage.

Oh and that brain puzzle: it took a long time to try to get it to work on the Deck, all I had to do was go into turn-based mode.

Oh oh and I'm running into (lol) dumb AI allies when I cast an AOE spell; so much friendly fire.

Made it to Baldur's Gate proper, finally!

I kind of miss Shadowheart's bangs.

Annoyed at the Circus of the Last Days because I got rid of their Killer Klown problem and they're not letting me loot all the dead bodies.

Shadowheart had a helmet that completely covered her hair, so when people were talking about her "new look" I thought they just meant the creepy skin change the Illithid worm had given her

I love treatos.

I don't trust that guy after I found a corpse who told me he was murdered and looted by him

I lost my paladin's vow because I traded with him!

Anyone else having trouble loading up their saved games?

Since patch 5, my PS5 crashes whenever I try and load anything in Act 3. Very sad and annoying! It's happening to a few people, apparently, but it's been going on for a week now

Not been happening to me no, sounds bad!

Only read if you've at least made it to the city proper: I've sort of decided to side with Gortash for the time being because Orin seems like the bigger threat. Fully planning to kill Gortash after I'm done with Orin, but...at this stage most of the missions the game suggests to me are to sabotage Gortash's forces and I'm worried if I do that the game will decide I've sided with Orin. Any thoughts?

I only made it to Act 3 after I installed patch 5, no load issues for me (I play on Steam Deck though).

Daniel: I'm mostly with you, although the main reason I'm allying with Gortash for the moment is that his fort is lousy with Steel Watch and I don't think I'd come out of that fight alive. But given that Karlach is my girl and she's eager to feast on his entrails, I'm going to turn on him when the opportunity is better.

There's an Act 3 interaction with Astarion that had me cackling.

I kinda dislike how the game rewards you for ambushing enemies - I mean it's fine but I wish it didn't do this in cases where there are important dialogue options and plot stuff.

Orin boss fight spoiler: if I confront her I get a super difficult intimidation test and if I fail my kidnapped companion dies. If I sneak up on her and start firing everyone focuses on my party and Astarion can sneak off and free the companion semi-easily. I guess the game assumes you'll do the dialogue stuff first time around and that it'll take you at least two goes to defeat her but.

This game has become basically unplayable for me since I got to act 3. I am so so so tired of Rivington. I'm tired of having it glitch out in some way EVERY single time I play.
Feels like I'm spending more time reading Reddit for troubleshooting solutions to bugs in the game than actually playing the game.
What started as an amazing game has become a succession of frustrations and setbacks.
Larian keep issuing cute hotfixes and patches, but they seem to make things worse every time. It's not right at all

After my usual Larian rant, I did have a really fun, extended impromptu battle with a bunch of Flaming Fists.

I was feeling anarchic after the last glitch.

So at that bit where you encounter the first steel watcher, I snuck up on a turret and started firing magic missiles at him. The guards couldn't see me, at first, until they did. But every time one climbed up the turret, I would cast thunderwave and send them hurtling into space 🤣🤣

It ended in a huge multi-level fight across several rooftops and outposts around Fraygo's Flophouse. Lots of fun. I've probably killed a few key characters, but sod it, it was worth it

Sorry to hear that DL! I think with a game this complex, players will inevitably get into a bad state, unfortunately, though I'll say that every major patch also fixes bugs (or tries to). (For example, I wasn't able to talk to Wyll at all in camp, the game would basically freeze, but after patch 5 that seems to have gone away.)

Anyway, I have -- after 140 hours -- realized that I can switch characters in and out of my party mostly at will by going to camp and leaving WITHOUT taking a long rest. It's let me cycle in a modest b-team to wring out some more story out of the game, although I still haven't brought in any of Act 2 characters I've recruited, which leads me to ask: what are some good Druid builds? Are they damage-dealers or more support/crowd control?

Anybody play AD&D back in the day? (Or just read the rulebooks like me.) Saw someone on FB say "if you remember THAC0, do your stretches or your back and knees will hurt tomorrow" and my feelings were hurt.

Ny vicarious "read the rules because you have no friends to play with" franchise was Warhammer.

After 150 hours I think I finally am hitting a bit of a wall; that said, I want to finish up a couple (mini-boss?) fights.

I also wanted to brag a little about how my Warlock Tav soloed two Steel Watch -- throw up a Hunger of Hadar and then keep Eldritch blasting them back through it. I barely survived so it's not idiot-proof, but HOH is still proving to be a great spell.

(That said, I still have to remember to be more judicious about casting that and other AOE like Insect Plague when non-party NPCs are around -- I'm pretty sure I killed Figaro that way.)

Yeah those mechanics are fun. Wiped a couple times in the House of Grief fight until I got my positioning right, then laid down some water / difficult terrain / AoE and my sorcerer just started mowing people down with lightning. I don't think my characters took any damage at all.

Nothing is ever going to beat Thunderwaving Minthara back across her desk into a Cloud of Daggers I had behind it. I was super impressed the engine handled that correctly.

I've been catching up on Laezel's actor's streams of BG3, and she is hysterical:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoCd3ropmR0

A bit of forewarning: this was the first time she'd ever picked up a PS controller so for the first couple of streams there's a lot of "Where's the Option button? Which one is R2?"

Shadowheart actress and her girlfriend are also good value, and I've seen the narrator also plays but haven't watched those yet.

Nice to see Astarion voice actor all moved accepting the award in his kimono at the goty awards.

First time I've had this kind of parasocial relationship with the actors of a video game I have to say.

Beat Gortash, just kinda dicking about the city now because I assume once I face the braiiiin that's the end?

I'm not that far but the last patch includes a new epilogue, sort of a 6 months later deal.

I think all the Act 1 companions have now streamed the game, as well as the narrator. I’ve watched at least parts of 4 of them but Laezel has been my go to so far (not least because she only spent 30 minutes in character creation).

She's great!

KIDS THESE DAYS

https://x.com/BeijingPalmer/status/1737514582170566812

(beginning of a long thread)

Lads, I finished it.

I just beat it as well. Hoping the cinematics finish before I have to go to bed.

Congrats! it's a great feeling

I really need to dive into bg1 again. My friend pulled out a quarter of the way through and haven't had it in me to restart or keep going yet

I lived with a guy in second year who basically disappeared for months into his room, “I’m playing Baldur’s Gate,” he said. This was 25 years ago and after a positive experience with BG3 I’m inclined to try that thing out, I think?

Man, I don't know how people are finishing this game already - a friend of mine has already racked up multiple playthroughs. PSN says I've played 200 hours of this, which is bananas, and I've only just got to the Lower City

i'm about to start this and terrified of it for that reason, i always take at least 3x longer, sometimes more, than the internet's tyical playthrough estimates and everything i've read about this game says 100 hours at least...

I did speed through some of the later stuff because the pile of unwatched blu rays was starting to get to me.

I also found that as the game progressed I got less invested in the story and more invested in the combat - would love for there to be a post game option of just doing random skirmishes. I didn't spend all my fancy arrows!

As with all games, I spent none of my special arrows, none of my cool scrolls, no big grenades, no one-time-use spell this whole game (maybe I did use that one actually, but it kinda didn’t do anything). Really need to fix that hoarding habbit.

Hmu if you want to try a session of it fgti

yeah that's how I play. There's easily 10x too much inventory for me to experiment with, so I tend to just fall back on Magic Missile / bonky weapon type stuff each time

You should try tactician. All of those items quickly become mandatory. If you’re unfamiliar, the increased difficulty isn’t just “buff enemies,” the AI plays completely different.

i'm about to start this and terrified of it for that reason, i always take at least 3x longer, sometimes more, than the internet's tyical playthrough estimates and everything i've read about this game says 100 hours at least...

Explorer difficulty has everything and is much shorter.

I played the first two acts with a friend on Explorer as a Bard face character and it was genuinely just as fun as playing on normal or tactician.

I completed it in tactician and kept my backpack mostly shut (besides health potions). I did research my builds going into them though so I think I was playing fairly optimised

Watched a tips video that was like "don't sell anything, it all might come in handy and you'll have tons of gold in the late game". They were half right - it is good to have stuff laying about for when see invisibility or resist stun becomes essential - but the windfall from Uncle Tav Sr I had expected never came :(

Yeah what? Where is all this gold supposed to come from? We're in act 3 and still have to make trade offs between buying gear/weapons for various characters bc we can't afford them all and that's with a decent charisma discount

Or maybe Biscuits' need to buy multiple copies of every dye available has really set us back

I think the advice is to sell only the gear that isn't unique and doesn't have special attributes or abilities. Like, if it's a Great Axe +1 or generic Scale Armor, you can sell it.

I couldn't imagine playing Honour Mode in the Tate the game is currently in. I encounter a game breaking bug on average every second session I play. Imagine getting to the third act and then that happens and you cants save scum

I imagine that a good chunk of bugs are specific to saves, so starting a new game should (hopefully) be a smoother experience.

Man, I don't know how people are finishing this game already - a friend of mine has already racked up multiple playthroughs. PSN says I've played 200 hours of this, which is bananas, and I've only just got to the Lower City

it's because I use guides when I get frustrated. i'm sure it would have been satisfying to figure all that out on my own, but I might have never finished the game that way. (also, sometimes I would read the solution and think "that's bs, glad I didn't waste time on that".)

That uncanny moment when you encounter an NPC with your Tav's face.

Just started a new Tactician playthrough. Looking forward to trying out some different stuff - a monk, bard/warlock, barbarian and divination wizard.

After 150 hours I think I finally am hitting a bit of a wall; that said, I want to finish up a couple (mini-boss?) fights.

That was a week ago and I've put in another 10(?) hours lol. I had some free time rosary to play other games and the thought just didn't appeal to me even slightly because I just wanted to play more BG3, I might have tadpole brain.

Lol it was 20 hours spread over 6 days, even I couldn't believe these.

Anyway, I spent the entire afternoon getting stomped in the House of Grief before I relented and looked online for help (short answer: tactics; longer answer: choke point).

Finished Shadowheart's questline and it never connected with me, maybe I'm dead inside.

I was thinking about this and La'zael is prob the most compelling story, in the end, though I'd never have thought of her as my fav character. Both Shadowheart and Astarion's finales felt eh.

I feel kinda bad about the Orin kidnap victim, I'm spending all my time clearing the quest markers on my map before I get to that mission.

One quest that's a slog is the Ansur mission, which required a bit more fiddly save scumming than I'd have liked. I did manage the do the big fight in one try, though only just barely. (Astarion was the MVP because of all the sneak attacks I managed, but he got nuked near the end and because my Wyll build isn't great I need my Warlock Tav's buffed Eldritch Blasts and all the Moonbeams and Guiding Bolts that Shadowheart could muster.)

I did Orin last. I've been so impatient about fights lately that I cast invisibility on my Druid Tav and sent him in to Thunderwave her into the chasm. I still had to fight all the other cultists, of course, but I at least didn't have to deal with Orin's beast form.

Now I'm on the final boss and my impatience is really causing me problems.

I'm thinking of what my hardest battles were: Goblin King def the first time I really had to work for it; Moonrise Towers probably the one I got stuck on longest (and I still didn't have Jaheira survive!). House Of Grief was a pain until I understood the trick and then became a piece of cake. Gislev was hilarious - I killed his servants, somehow managed to cast control person, it instantly threw me out of combat, dude just following me like he's one of the crew now. Went home for a long rest, came back and just hit him with all I had.

Think the timed battles were the most fun I had, protecting Halsin's portal and the underwater rescue mission.

My go at the timed Halsin was a comedy of errors, because I managed to lose track of how many turns I had left (not casting Turn Undead when the enemies had broken through my defenses and were attacking the portal, because I was saving it for who knows what), and yet I succeeded in spite of myself.

And I just finished the underwater rescue mission; I saved the VIP (though I reloaded after my first try because he got killed) and most of the hostages but I had no chance getting to the last prisoners. I did nearly leave SH behind because I forgot about her.) If nothing else it made me finally use potions of speed.

And now finally, I've shown that big brain what for. I used every summon available to me to distract the enemies while my party made it around the sides for the Crown of Karsus/portal thingie. Once I had everybody in there, it wasn't so bad.

Having plonked 170 hours into this thing, I still don't know if I even like the battle system. I generally love tactical stuff, environment use, positioning, turn denial, etc. But the battles themselves were so drawn out, and more often than not frustrating that I never looked forward to them. I was never like "hell yes! time for a fight!" More like a sigh of resignation. And a second sigh of relief once they were over. It could be that I never really wrapped my head around how to fight effectively, IDK

I had a dream last night where, at one point, Stephen Malkmus (why was he there!?) recommended Baldurs Gate.

Weird. Malkmus doesn't strike me as the gamer type at all, and if he was, he'd only be into sports management sims

Just started playing this after buying it late friday night on a whim.

Astarion's voice actor is trying to do Tim Curry, isn't he

Just a liiittle too much Stewie Griffin tho

FP'd

Gortash down! (Did I cry during Karlach's ensuing monologue? Duh.) Helped a lot on the fact that I had a rapier that allows another attack as a bonus action, which I had in my inventory for who knows how long and I only realized that I had when I clicked the Proficiency checkbox while viewing Astarion's melee weapon.

Those grenades were a real PITA even after I figured out you can used ranged attacks to set them off.

I killed Orin first in order to save the hostage, and at that point visiting Gortash led directly to him saying "ok, see you at the netherbrain!" and peace-ing out. So I never got to fight him because I met him at the morphic pool and he got zapped by the big bad. There's gotta be a way to get both big fights right?

I assume you just need to kill G first? Because if you work with O the agreement is "Kill G then we'll have a fun deathmatch."

I killed Orin first, then broke into Gortasch's jail, which turns him against you, so when I went to the castle he was in fighting mode.

I could use some hints for this Helsik questline:

I've pickpocketed this book from her because I don't want to pay her extortionate 20K gp fee, but I can't make heads/tails out of it. Is the ritual supposed to be impenetrable (both in terms of its location and its ingredients) without her help? The only hint I've gotten from the quest log is that the circle is somewhere in the sewers (and the map didn't show any markers for this quest).

So one hint is that the circle is not in the sewers, sort of the opposite actually. And the items needed can be found near the circle.

lukas, does that mean it's not underground?

I also started a MP campaign, and we've basically decided to be an all-female punk rock band (with 3 bards and 1 monk performer). (I named my character Poly Styrene.)

I'm also trying my best to keep my Performance score low but I expect that's going to be a struggle.

yeah that's what I was trying to hint

well that's part of what I was trying to hint

Lol I started my Dark Urge run today do I need help.

will never do a dark urge. already a bad person irl, do not need to bring that into my gaming.

Dark Urge doesn't require an evil alignment, from what I've heard. Also, for me at least, really embracing the role play is liberating, especially in the form of a backstory, as that becomes the motivation for doing things that might guilt my conscience.

Anyway, I've been putting off going after Orin because I stumbled into the Farslayer fight, but with a little preparation I got through in one more try (though I ended up with 3 dead party members). I had Gale, SH, and K in my party; I had SH cast Sanctuary on K, who then dashed to the Farslayer, which took two turns (she has permanent Longstrider). Then I proceeded to whale away; he did teleport once but not far enough for me to lose an action to dash back to him. (I kept everyone else under Gale's Globe of Invulnerability, and cast HOH on the jerks at the start of the stage who fire elemental arrows at you.) Not foolproof as a minion was able to get into the globe and break Gale's concentration, and everyone except K did die from the instadeath countdown; other tactics I've seen are to cast invisibility on members who have some combo of high DPS, teleportation/mobility, Silence, etc., and sneak close to F before unloading.

Unshackled Hope, which was a real mess on my part.

Anyone know why some map markers have a yellow circle around them?

I think those involve interactions in the indicated area (e.g. finding multiple items, talking with characters, etc.), though sometimes they don't clear immediately when you meet the objectives.

And now I'm out. The fight out was intimidating but I managed it on the first try. Great music, too.

I'm enjoying my second playthrough more than my first. Easier to enjoy without all the impatience I had to get to the next act.

Finished Astarion's quest line and I was really moved by its conclusion. But to indulge a pun, the boss fight bites.

Quick little dumb question, but when people say battles in this game are challenging ... it's a turn based RPG, and like Dungeons and Dragons everything is essentially RNG based, right? So is the challenge having the right character randomly roll the right number? As I understand it, there's no "getting good," right? I've read a couple of accounts (as I fend off fomo) saying they love the game/story/characters/writing, but dread every momentum killing battle, since it's just a a matter of waiting out the right roll. Others have said that save scrubbing is the best/easiest way to play, but that it poses a contradiction, because if you're just saving all the time and constantly rewinding the clock, then what's the point?

Sorry for the babble, I'm just curious about all this stuff. I guess I could watch someone playing it.

The challenge comes through strategy (knowing when to split off, how to grab higher ground, which targets to pick off, etc.) and good use of inventory (knowing what to bring to each battle, not bringing your super strong fire sword to attack a fire demon for instance). Much of this only becomes clear once you've lost a battle a few times. Chance does play a part, and you can get yourself into mathematically unwinnable situations, but it's not just about randomly rolling good results by any means.

Savescrubbing for battles and savescrubbing through the story are totally different imo, and the former makes perfect sense. Anyway if you get defeated and everyone dies you'll be at your last save.

Also knowing what spell or ability to use in certain situations, and what gear to equip. For instance, you can only wear a very limited number of items, so there's an opportunity closer to putting on armor that's good at reducing or negating damage vs a less protective robe that buffs your spell damage.

I'm playing Balanced mode and I haven't found the battles especially hard. I also quite enjoy them, even though I'm really bad at inventory management, or maybe it's just that the game is bad with inventory management.

Not sure if it's better on PC than PS5 but I really think the whole inventory UI could be improved - I have dozens and dozens of random bottles of potions and oils that all do different things. I can only really tell what they do by scrolling over them and waiting for that pop-up box to appear, so if I'm trying to find a specific one, like Potion of Flying or something, that's the big momentum killer as I'm literally clicking on each and every potion hoping to find the right one.

Also the sorting function is useless - I often sort by 'Latest' and it NEVER puts the latest item at the top.

It's also incredibly fussy and time-taxing in places. I appreciate you can now view inventories of characters who aren't in your party while you're at camp, but you still need to use the stupid camp chest to exchange the items. And I find that once I've got something in the camp chest, I forget it's there. Basically it's a bin for me. Would be great if you could at least view what's in it remotely.

I skimmed through a bit of someone's play through this morning, and it felt like 30% of the footage was just scrolling through menus. I saw a bunch of reviews that said it was surprisingly strong on PS5, but I don't see how that can possibly be, compared to mouse and keyboard.

It plays great on ps5 tbh but then I also enjoy Civ on switch.

Getting better at inventory management one of my objectives for my next playthrough but pragmatically if your chest ends up being a bin - and I've been there - better to empty it out and sell everything.

A large part of the game play is definitely spent in menus, but that's the case with a lot of RPGs.

That said, the inventory isn't great, for the reasons that DL mentions. But two points that may alleviate the annoyances:
- Sort by latest on an item won't work the way you'd expect if you already have that item; that's because they get grouped together into a stack.
- In camp, you can directly move items between all members now, whether or not they're in your active party. It works the same way as picking up items as one character but sending it to a different character. You can't, however equip items for non-active characters though.

I've played on PC and Deck and inventory management is better on PC. You can type to search, and moving things between characters is easier (and so the auto-slurping of certain categorized items like keys, alchemy ingredients, camp supplies, etc. is easier).

But even though you spend loads of time in your inventory, playing on a console is still a great experience! I've just learned to live with the clutter (sad lol as this is me IRL too). And one feature that I've seen that consoles have but PC doesn't is the area search; PCs do have the alt search (which consoles have too) but that apparently doesn't highlight all items, especially ones that are meant to be hidden.

I'm bummed, because this seems like a lot of fun, but I'm just not that into inventory management (beyond the modest demands of From games). That's also why I know better than to buy an otherwise appealing game like Armored Core. Too much swapping stuff in and out out.

I wouldn't let inventory management put you off! You can put the game on easy and not worry about optimizing your builds too much; I've watched a TON of streams where the player is totally new to just holding a game controller and they still have fun.

Yeah I wouldn't put you off. It's just a slight frustration for me. I know I'm a bit of a downer about this game, but I do really like it - it's just there are a lot of small things I encounter that make me wish the developers would just tweak it to make my life easier.

I've heard of some people organising their camp chests into different types of sacks, but I'd imagine that would be a full time job on console.

I couldn't imagine playing this game without area search!

There were maybe two or three situations where not having the right equipment truly fucked me over and even then I could find a vendor toget me what I needed.

I'm sure lots of fights would've gone easier if I had been better at inventory tbc.

There's just SO MUCH going on. And that's a good thing in terms of choice and replayability.

As a wizard, I have a literal plethora of spells in my arsenal, and I can even buy more if I have the scrolls. But still I tend to fall back on the old favourites like Magic Missile most of the time.

Same with weapons and armour - it can be quite hard to understand all the various boons, buffs and damage factors, especially if you're not familiar with DnD etc.
How would I know to swap to a specific weapon or armour just as I happen to be getting to a particular enemy? That's a level of prescience I just don't have.
\And as I say, it would be great if I could search more easily for specific items. I'm sure there are items I used to have that I cannot for the life of me find anywhere in my inventory.

If you examine an enemy and see that your loadout is fatally wrong, you can spend an action in combat to equip something else.

I have also completely lost track of certain key items too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmZFxAqZKuU

I'm pretty much in the endgame of my first playthrough, but I've also gotten underway on my Dark Urge campaign, and I got to the point where I disemboweled Alfira, JFC.

yeah same here it was my first time getting her to my camp, was looking forward to having a performer around, and then

Started my second go. Am a drow wizard, characterised by the following: militant atheism, greed, thirst for knowledge. Main objective is to hang out with the companions I missed last time - have picked up Gale and Scratch, trying to make my way to demon lady. Basically keeping Shadowheart, Lazeal and Astarion on the backbench, as I feel I explored their storylines sufficiently last time. Weird to play without a healer tho!

With all of the camp supplies you find, you just need to hit hard and fast and rest to top yourself up; that's sort of what I'm trying to do with my Durge game with Lae, Wyll, and Gale (my first game's bench), although I changed Wyll to a Paladin because I haven't played that yet (and I have played a warlock).

My question today is: How long did it take you all to finish your first playthrough? (Assuming you have)

I've got 224 hours on the clock and I'm still in Lower City. But I have friends who also bought it day of release who are on their fourth playthrough.

So I wonder, am I maybe approaching Baldur's Gate 3 wrong?

There just seems to be so much to do - I spent about 10 sessions just exploring around Rivington/Wyrm's Crossing. I have no idea how people are getting through this game so quickly.

Is it because I'm Souls-pilled that I feel the need to explore every nook and cranny I come to? Am I doing this wrong?

I played online with a friend the other day and she's just running from one place on the map to the next like a kid in a museum who can't wait to get to the gift shop.

I asked about this and she said "I just go to the places my character would want to go". But I can't let myself do this - it feels like skimming through a book to get to the chapter I want to read. For one, how do I know which is the good chapter, and also, isn't the rest of the book important?

I don't feel comfortable just running through locations I haven't explored yet. Plus there are so many distractions. I keep telling myself to prioritise disabling the Steel Watch, but every time I set out, I see a cool building I want to explore or someone stops me to talk and before I know it, I'm embroiled in yet another sidequest or a fight.

You're not "doing it wrong".

Everything depends on how anxious you are to get to the next development in the main storyline imo. I think I ended it in less than 100 hours, but it was under the understanding that I'd give it at least another playthrough so stuff I'd miss could be caught up with next time.

If you don't feel that urgency, of course you should explore as much as you can! That's what all that stuff is there for, they didn't make a game with a bunch of stuff so you'd ignore it.

Haha, no I'm not anxious about finishing (other than feeling like I'm being left behind compared to other players I know). I'm more anxious about leaving stones unturned.

That said, one of my regrets about Elden Ring was trying to do EVERYTHING in my first playthrough (I found all the grace points and basically carried out as many quests as is possible in one playthrough), so subsequent plays were a little less exciting. If I'd told myself I'd revisit afterwards, that would have made it more enjoyable

From the start I've appreciated From's enigmatic, esoteric pseudo-open worlds, which can be tackled any number of ways, to varying degrees of completion, not least because the list of things to do is obscure by design and therefore, by default, kind of passively manageable; you don't really know what you have to do because the game makes no effort to explain it. But I've yet to dive into any of these overwhelming open world RPGs or action RPGS, like "The Witcher" or "Skyrim" because they seem like ... a lot. They're seemingly fully immersive worlds that you can spend, yeah, 100s of hours in, just farting around. I suppose "Breath of the Wild" was a bit like that, too, where iirc I eventually hit a point where I was "done," whether or not I had actually finished everything.

rip my 70 hour save file, guess i won't be worrying about wasting 600 hours on this anymore

I don't think this game (or any other for that matter) can be played wrong; play it in a way that's fun for you. (Like I tried to avoid save scumming but I realized that's not for me, at least on some of my active candles.)

In my case, I'm very close to the end, with almost 250 total hours spread across 3 campaigns, with close to 180 on my first playthrough (I have a coworker who has more than 400 hours over 4 campaigns, none of which have been beaten), and the reason why I've got that many hours is because I'm genuinely interested in literally every side quest I've uncovered. In other quest-heavy games I get overwhelmed with the map of icons and I give up on them or the game because playing starts to feel like laboring through a list of chores, but BG3's writing COMPELS me to look for quest markers.

And the reason that I've got so many concurrent campaigns is because even at 180 hours, I know for a fact that I missed tons of things and I'm impatient to experience them for myself. (I of course could watch stuff on YouTube but I want to see my Tav with the origin characters wearing the equipment I gave them, which I guess shows how attached I am to them.)

I've gotten in the habit of never actually finishing open world games myself (For both of the last two Zeldas, I stopped at the end boss fight). I find so much of the side quest stuff in BG3 quite rich. I've also been playing it through slowly and thoroughly.

As far as inventory management, you know I basically feel that the individual character non-equipped inventory adds nothing but tedium to the game. So many times I've switched characters at camp, forgotten to hand off the healing potions, and arrived at my next combat before I decide to go back to save.

When I played 2e D&D as a kid, individual inventory made sense because there were individual people playing each character. Heck, we even counted arrows which no one does anymore. But for this game, I am not trying to role play the secondary characters and all it takes is time.

rip my 70 hour save file, guess i won't be worrying about wasting 600 hours on this anymore

― chihuahuau, Thursday, January 18, 2024 3:30 PM bookmarkflaglink

did a bit of reading and PSA: don't buy BG3 on Xbox for now

there's a save file bug i didn't know about that was supposedly fixed for good in yesterday's console update (which i applied, and played bg3 afterwards without any apparent problems) but when i booted up the game today it updated itself (the game this time, not the xbox again) and my save data was wiped

if like me you were already playing on xbox and never had the issues that other people had, maybe go offline and don't update your game yet?
if you try to play while the xbox has internet access it will force the update, so unplug the ethernet cord or turn off wifi.

it could just be a coincidence since the save bug has been present since launch but it only triggered for me after the supposedly definitive fix had been deployed

I think I was around 150 hours in when I finished my first playthrough. And 60 of that was an Early Access playthrough I had to abandon. Am not a completionist, and while there are a lot of fun little details in this game, I don't love the writing and tend to skip a lot of dialogue.

spent well over 200 hours on my first try attempting to see everything, just tucked into the honor mode for a second playthrough and it is kind of perfect

could easily sit and spend many hours experimenting/wandering around on tactician but now the stakes are too high, if I manage to survive a big fight that's plenty for the day, it autosaves whenever/wherever you stop so there is little temptation to push it, 20-30 mins at a go, kiss of the chef

will almost certainly die because per a couple youtubes I've watched I am not very good at this videogame but it is a great time, honestly would never have guessed that the new baldurs gate would kill it so hard but good job to everyone involved, clearly a labor of love

have also been watching some of the interviews/playthroughs from the voice cast which are delightful, especially Amelia Tyler (the narrator, somehow she's posting outtakes from her recording sessions, very funny) as well as Jen and Aliona (shadowheart + performance director/a squirrel) who met during production and are the cutest gayest couple ever and watching them play a videogame almost makes me want to fall in love again

highly entertaining current bug - when I revisit areas featuring the corpses of enemies I've slain, they initially appear revived and then instantly fall, ragdoll-like, back into their dead slumber

especially Amelia Tyler (the narrator, somehow she's posting outtakes from her recording sessions, very funny)

Her Durge campaign, in a nutshell:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCQscYq1Ytw

Sad that there's only 3 videos so far, hopefully that's only because the BG3 media cycle is taking her time.

Daniel, the first time I remember seeing that bug was after I'd beaten a boss.

I love that bug, one of the more amusing ones. Also happens if you warp into an area you previously trashed and for a moment things are crashing and tumbling down like washing up

DL are your act 3 bugs behind you now?

I have to say that the final level has been pretty unfun.

Beat it, I'm not sure that they stuck the landing but oh well.

I thought they did! Not the final dialogue scenes by the dock so much, but the final battles felt appropriately epic.

I'm trying to tackle the gith on the Risen Road in tactician and getting nowhere. Maybe I need to wait until my characters are level 6? or do I need to get good?

Beat it, I'm not sure that they stuck the landing but oh well.

I pickpocketed Astarion's underwear from under his clothes in the epilogue, so I stand corrected.

I'm trying to tackle the gith on the Risen Road in tactician and getting nowhere.

I skill-checked to avoid this fight hehe

the ones with the dragons? I think they're kinda there to teach you "sometimes enemies are too powerful and you should avoid a battle".

Had a lot of fun fighting Ethel Hag for the second time tonight. A real challenge. Died on the first attempt, so I made special preparations on second go

Okay got the gith after three or four reloads and a couple satisfying kills from Wyll eldritch blasting people off the top of the ramparts. Come to think of it laying siege from up there would have been viable.

Top secret information obviously

the gith are just such devastating assholes I avoid fighting them whenever possible which makes recruiting Orpheus kind of funny because he kind of sucks, like, why am I worried about escorting the savior of the githyanki thru the final battle he should be the baddest dude in the universe

So I thought I was going to have time to play other games now that I've beaten it but last night I put 90 minutes into my second campaign.

second playthrough is more fun imo

Yeah I can imagine. Well into Act 3 and somehow it's finally all starting to come together; as in, I'm thinking much more tactically about how I'm going to approach certain encounters, making more use of my inventory and spells, getting to know what I'm working with.

I heard you can't start new romances after a certain point, which is a shame as none of my characters were interested in the first part of the game and I spent a long time getting my approval ratings high so I could see what happens in at least one romance scene. But apparently I am doomed to die alone, despite everyone loving me to bits.

It's also a bit of a shame that leveling up finishes at 12. Kind if defeats the point of getting involved in anything but necessary battles

Preferable to being like level 20 and finishing off the entire end fight like it's a single goblin, surely? Also you still get to loot afterwards.

I'm romancing Karlach in this second playthrough, she's just become able to touch ppl and is like "hell yeah let's fuck" but so far...no follow through.

yep, every character has been like this, and just not followed up on the promise. I gave Shadowheart an orchid and she's all "Hmm, I'll find a way to repay you", then she forgot or something. Karlach, similar story. Lae'zel and Gale tried to jump my bones really really early on and I was a bit "Hold on, let's have a drink first", then they lost interest.

Question: I respecced Wyll into a Paladin (I think Oath of Devotion), and because I've never played the class, I'm not sure how maintaining your oath works. If he's in my active party but *not* the one initiating dialogue or making the oath-breaking action, does his oath still get broken? Similarly, if I leave him at camp, do the actions of my active party have any bearing on his oath status?

Went to Cazador's Palace yesterday. Gosh this game is gigantic isn't it? You think you've got to where you're going and then it's like "nope, there's a whole underground prison network to explore"

The act 3 overworld map alone is big, but it also contains an enormous sewer network, many multi-level buildings, a basement with hidden rooms in even the smallest townhouses, and several interdimensional areas like Cazadore's prison, Lorroakan's tower etc etc. Mindboggling

Oops, don't know why it posted my name just there, pasted it from a WhatsApp chat fff

I will say Act 2 is less fun to replay than Act 1...maybe because I'd gotten a bit better by then and so have less stuff that I neglected to do.

Act 2 feels more linear, more top-to-bottom and is easily the smallest area I think? Also the fact you do the whole Underdark and then get thrown into another weird, bleak underworld in Act 2 is a strange'un. I'm almost certain I saw everything there was to see in Act 2

Curious if other people got this in the epilogue: when I caught up with Shadowheart and gave her a hug, I got a "Halsin disproves" notification.

No - tbf, I arrived with Shadowheart as my girl. He'd already been creepily asking us for threesomes ("swimming") in previous dialogues tho.

Damn, the Underdark goes on for a while

Boredom with Act 2 has been relieved by just going on a murder spree around Moonrise Towers, got the ogre, the mage and the orc woman. Made my way into Thorn's inner sanctum even, at which point of course it turns out he's invulnerable so I still have to do all the shit underneath the masuleum. Will be fun to have the big act 2 battle with all of Thorn's heavy hitters missing at least.

Me approaching the end of BG3: Finally I'll be able to play stuff on my backlog.
Me after beating BH3: But why would I want to?

welp, my atheist run got to the inevitable - Shadowheart turned on me and I had to kill her. I even tried setting everyone to non lethal attacks but the system wasn't having it.

no great loss in objective terms - I'd done pretty much all her storyline in the first run - but it did not feel good

kinda feel like giving the game a rest now but then I've thought that like four times so far in this run and I'm still at it lol

Maybe Tactician isn't such a reach for me now that I understand combat better, because in my second playthrough, I finished Ethel in less than a full round with two characters. (Granted, my team was level 5.)

Super annoyed that I can'5 save wubren because I completed the nightsong thing first. How was that supposed to be obvious to me?

Yes very annoying. I only did it first because someone told me to.

Almost as good as playing BG3: looking at the class spell list and thinking about what you'll pick when you level up.

So Minthara was flirting with me and since I'm doing this second run to experience as much of the game that I haven't as possible, I wanted to go for it, but I knew Karlach would not be amused - so I had her jump off a cliff, got with Minthara and am now going to resurect her and see if I've gotten away with it. I'm going to hell (more than I already did).

hahaah yeah let us know.

i'm STILL in my first playthrough. I swear I'm playing several hours a night too. Maybe I'll regret this as I'm pretty much doing all the quests on my list. Hoping it doens't make subsequent playthroughs boring

Having reached the Underdark in my second playthrough, I can confirm that it's not boring, especially because I didn't come close to doing everything my first time even though the quests in my journal all showed completion.

It worked! Now I just have to live with myself.

Haha that's amazing, daniel

I got to the Raphael fight last night and LOOOOOOOOOL what in the Evanescence Christ Superstar is happening with the music?

I liked it unironically!

yeah it's pretty inspired I think, and suits the character, maybe not as appropriate but would have loved a doomy metal song sung by jk simmons about how he is going to murder me

attempted an honor mode run a few times and yeah, no way lol, am so much not good enough at videogames to pull that off, fun to try but I can't keep playing the first few hours before getting absolutely destroyed by gnolls or the fake paladins or whatever

Florin, have you tried Tactician before? If so, how did that compare with your Honor Mode attempts?

I did try tactician yes, mostly just to do all the evil stuff and it was cool, but there were a dozen times at least I made a grave error, got very murdered and had to reload

Meanwhile on youtube it's like "SOLO HONOR MODE SPEEDRUN JUST SALAMI"

the. Raphael music is fun, it's true. It's just completley unexpected because none of the other boss fights have big campy Tim Rice musical numbers ostensibly sung by the boss themsleves

PSA: you can lose your Honour Mode run in the epilogue!

I definitely think I'm ready for Tactician now because I basically did the Grym fight without taking any damage from it (SH was the only casualty because she walked through lava) and did the Death Shepherd fight in the Mountain Pass in just over a round of combat.

Finally beat the Netherbrain tonight but I stopped playing during the afterparty. 300+ hours that's taken me!

After 320 hours, I finally completed it, and they saved the funniest glitch till last

https://www.reddit.com/u/doglatin80/s/NJuEdov1id

I found out that I often leave my xbox on the character sheet screen, which counts as gameplay time so sadly I do not know how many hours I am really in!

tbf I do go away and come back a lot, it's not constant gameplay

Upgraded my video card so’s to play this even smoother

I'm mostly making roughly the same decisions as I did in my first playthrough, but I did get two new interactions:

Rescued and recruited Minthara.
Got my second visit from the urgent butler.

~40 hours into an honor mode run and terrified

had to watch some youtubes about how to actually play this game because it never occurred to me to throw things or be a monk, pretty clutch

really like Minthara, went through all the trouble to save Halsin only for a shade or whatever to destroy his portal and trap him in shadow hell forever, whoops sorry Halsin

Tavern Brawler breaks the game on normal, especially on a monk. Once I try Tactician or HM, I might consider it again if I find I need to cheese to survive, but just punching everything loses its novelty after 10 hours.

yeah well shortly after my previous post I decided to mess around with the githyanki for absolutely no reason and was handily taken to task lol, ah well, honor mode is hard, nobody cares about my monks or tavern brawlers

was doing pretty good though, should have minded my business

Lol damn well better to learn that sooner than later!

Oh god: in my Dark Urge run, I'm doing Moonrise stuff now, and I just saw a reddit post saying not to long rest, but I have loads of stuff left (I haven't scratched the surface of the Sharran Temple), and I'm out of short rests. The butler already told me to kill Isobel or else, and so now I terrified about what's coming. And despite the dread, please don't spoil me, as I think I have to let this play out.

I started my Tactican run and it was going very easy (I even got the cambion to drop his flaming sword) and didn't take any damage while on the Nautiloid. Then picked up the first four recruits, cleaned up the Intellect Devourers and the dying Mind Flayer, scared off the surface-level tomb raiders, this is all smooth sailing so far I'm really nailing this, then fail the deception check at the door, "Oh well I'll just lockpick it open," but the creep left a trap for my party to step on just inside the door, and then their entire party was already waiting for me and proceeded to wipe me off the map.

mmmhm yeah that got me too the one time I tried that area, have completely skipped all of that every subsequent go, did not realize you can actually find Withers until I watched some youtube playthroughs

the early levels are just so sketchy and dangerous I don't wanna fight anything if I can help it

There's the draw of getting the XP and getting Withers so that I can respec Shart ASAP, but it may have to wait till I pick up Wyll for that sweet sweet Eldritch Blast.

Back in my other game, I'm trying out Halsin a bit more to figure out a better druid build, especially with beefing him up while wild shaped. Apparently certain feats apply to animal forms.

Got through that fight and the skelly one after it (which I accidentally triggered early by seeing if I could move them before they aggroed), and now my Shart is a Tempest cleric. I also managed to save the Tiethling kid in the Harpy fight for the first time ever, which was a pretty good fight.

I keep forgetting to pre-cast stuff though! Main thing I want to try is to exploit wetness (use Mage Hand to throw water at enemies, then hit them with ice or lightning).

Combat has been a lot more fun, too the point where I'm wondering if I should preemptively change it on my Act 2 game...

https://www.ign.com/articles/larian-studios-wont-make-baldurs-gate-3-dlc-expansions-or-baldurs-gate-4

Wonder what the dust up was that caused this?

I'd imagine it's at least partly related to the layoffs at Hasbro:

https://www.pcgamer.com/theres-almost-nobody-left-ceo-of-baldurs-gate-3-dev-swen-vincke-says-the-dandd-team-he-initially-worked-with-is-gone-due-to-hasbro-layoffs/

This fucking sucks

Yeah, this type of shit spells the end days. It’s happening everywhere. Enjoy the carcass of a company you have left after you “more lean, more modern” every quarter.

Optimistically I can say I'm excited for what Larian does next. But sad 2 say goodbye to all my new friends.

idk, from the ign article it's not clear if larian actually wanted to continue working on baldur's gate at all.
i reckon the layoff issue is unrelated to that decision but even then it's still a satisfying "fuck you" from them to hasbro

from where i'm sitting, this reads like good news, that they'll choose do whatever they want instead of being slaves in the d&d mines for the next decade or longer

chihuahua's take sounds like what I've been following (i.e. that it was never really in the cards to continue on with BG4 or more DND), and while understandable, I'm also sad.

The stuff about "No DLC" isn't news, Swen has said that before, but Larian has been continuing to release patches, some of which includes new content. Usually it's bug fixes, but sometimes it's new content, whether that's new voice lines around the camp or the whole epilogue. (I wouldn't expect new quests, though.)

Apparently they're still cooking up new things including epilogue cinematics.

Everything aside, I'm not really sure I need a DLC or a sequel, not for a long long time at least. My first playthrough was 350 hours. It'll be a while till I do another play through

https://www.ign.com/articles/larian-started-work-on-baldurs-gate-3-dlc-then-canceled-it-the-studio-was-elated?utm_source=twitter

LOL pay no attention to what I said.

Yeah, Larian itself will be just fine. Them potentially launching a fresh ip is more exciting than more D&D stuff. And I’d imagine after the Divinity games and BG3 they’d be itching to step outside of the trad-fantasy realm. Which would be dope.

Can’t find the post, but I’ve seen the point made that where Larian signed the original contracts, D&D was much less prominent back in 2017 or so before all the popular attention due to podcasters and Critical Role types and pandemic play making it a hit. 5e had only been out for a couple-few years by then.

Trying to renegotiate a game license now (and expansions and merch tie-ins, no doubt), with the far more massive cultural footprint and Hasbro enshittifying every it touches seems like such a headache that no wonder they said fuck it and went back to doing their own thing .

I hope they make a sci-fi property eventually

Absolute be praised: https://baldursgate3.game/news/community-update-30-photo-mode-cross-play-and-new-subclasses-arriving-next-year_128

Seriously though but Larian are spoiling us. (I'm closing in on 500 hours with at least another run planned.)

I've started an Honor Mode run and it's been incredibly exciting. There's nothing quite like feeling the stakes of accidentally starting a fight with goblins and knowing not to treat them lightly.

However: this is my fifth time playing through the beginning and I still managed to get Barcus killed.

i'll need to give this a proper second run soon now i've put it away for a while.
i was so thorough in my first playthrough, though, that i'm not sure how much more this would reveal to me. i know it's meant to have millions of possiblilities but i really felt like i left no stone unturned. never found the fish people though

There's always the Dark Urge playthrough, which has unique content (though tbh I wasn't particularly impressed by it) or playing as one of the companions.

So I shook Astarion's hand yesterday IRL on the street (there's a game conference this week where I live). Didn't get a selfie because I don't do those and he was very clearly going somewhere but he was incredibly gracious while I blabbed nonsense at him.

aw that rules

I follow Shadowheart on insta and the whole fandom around this game seems very sweet and untoxic

Finished Honor Mode! Just in time for the new subclasses, which are released this upcoming week.

Wow! Well done Lee

They waited for me to finally uninstall to start cross platform play

My Honour Mode has turned into something more closely resembling Slapstick Mode:

I infiltrated the Goblin camp first time 'round and just butchered everyone from the get go on the second, so I was looking around the internet for further possibilities and discovered you can poison the goblin's ale. I did that, but was caught and a battle ensued, which I lost, ending up in the dungeon. So I lockpicked my way out but was found, and since the rolls are individual even with good intimidation rolls and lots of bribery only half of my party got off. So I sauntered back to the cage and...broke the last lockpick I had. "Sweet, I'll just grab everyone else and free them by force" I thought, but no, you can't swap party members while they're in jail. So there I was, no coin and no picks - I travelled back to the Esmerald Grove merchant and had to sell pretty much everything except my main weapons to get another lockpick. Strut back into the Goblin Camp in my underwear, armed with a single lockpick, but I got lost and ended up at the Halsin cutscene instead. "All very well" I thought "but I don't have time for this now, gotta save my friends first", so I picked the options to ignore the whole situation. This, of course, lead to the bear being freed and seeing me as an enemy. I tried to start killing goblins to show I was on his side but he wasn't having any of it. So now I am in my pants getting chased by a bear through the camp.

Hahaha! Oh god I couldn't imagine playing Honour mode, honeslty.. sounds ridiculous

God the scrying spheres were always a pain but now there's basically no way to get rid of them outside of lightning damage or throwing them in a pit? Had me ragequitting during the duegar underdark stuff.

Thunder damage works too, and Shatter will usually one shot them (unless you roll really badly).

Yeah, thunder was what I meant. This is bullshit imo, they were tough enough as is.

I've got a lot on my mind and, well...innit.

Shouldn't have wished to live in more interesting times, innit.