VideoGame_Discussion

Yeah I played this for about 12 hours during the EA period, and started my "real" save last night. I initially encountered a number of pretty frustrating bugs, but I should have all of that behind me now. I'm looking forward to really diving in and getting my RPG on.

I'm doing a Human Druid and am going to lean into nature magic. I've already got about 6 characters/playstyles in my head to try on my next playthroughs.

It came out? Damn... I'm interested but bad timing. Curios to hear what you all think a bit further in and if it's worth it.

Man, I'm debating dropping others and getting this...

https://youtu.be/KqJVj-pVbhg

Downloading currently.

Ok this is the most amazing game I've played this year.

I know right? This is shaping up to be one of the best years for gaming ever, and it still seems like this will end up at the top.

sinnie wrote:

Wow, really bummed I missed out on the CE ... looks badass, and now it sells for a grand or more :(

Damn

Oh well, downloading now

I've been at the character creation screen for over 2 hours ... this is too much!

MrBean wrote:
lol
there's so many options... I just had to go with a character I've played before and I'm having so much fun. Plus your party grows and you get to play more characters anyway.

After hour 3, I bailed. I'll be back. Just analysis paralysis after getting lost in reading.

Largely set on going Warlock, I thjnk.

I've been putting off Burning Shores and Hogwarts. BG3 may sit just a bit longer as I'm assuming it will become amazing and hijack my time aggressively.

I spent probably 10hrs on it yesterday and I struggled to be pulled off of it. I want to play it today but alas I got to work. I might still find some time while at my store... lol

So far the only thing I really dislike is some of the camera angles and the way you move around on the map. I mean, it works best probably (point and click) but I find it clunky, sometimes I click in places and my characters run around randomly. Sometimes I move and my party doesn't follow even though they just did and it's weird. Some bugs I guess. But even with those annoyances I am loving the hell out of this, the story and the combat is really fun for turn based gaming.

Played for an hour or so as a Paladin ... super boring. It's not me, I have to be a caster.

Back to roughly ~4 hours of dbeating how to build a Warlock.

I have problems.

I'm having fun with my Rogue. I'm wanting to go back and have an evil play through after this though. I just started Act 2 and am about 50 hours in. I missed stuff from the first area too...

Casting is fun, but you have party members to fill that need. So in the end it really doesn't matter what character you build since you have a party of 4. I'm even enjoying playing the cleric and that's boring AF in a real game.

Had my first super frustrating moment. Chapter 1. No spoilers but basically there is a burning building and figuring out how to get the person out was based on pure luck if I was able to pick a 18 difficulty lock. I think the area was bugged out or something

haha, I think I FINALLY am set on my character ... I think ... maybe now I can finally start playing

image

So far i've put in 43.6 hours on the game and i'm loving every bit of it, i'm still in the first chapter exploring everything i can. The game still have some bugs i'm hoping in time they will work out but nothing game breaking. But if you get the bug where your UI disappears just do a quick save and then a quick load and that will fix it (depending on what keys you have set for each). I've taken care of everything i can find on the main land upto the pass, so now i'm exploring the underdark. Lots of lore to find, read all the books if you can, even if the title seems worthless it may contain knowledge you can use later.

There's just so many possibilities.

For real. I just got bitten in the foot by a squirrel for being on its territory and negotiated a compromise to pass through as long as I didn’t bother anything. There are so many random little details.

sinnie wrote:

It really does seem like EVERY choice and action matters. I've read some spoilers and some playthroughs are so unimaginably different. This game is going to keep me busy for 100 years I feel like.

I just pre ordered the PS5 deluxe edition. I noticed it has local 2 player mode? That'll slap if I can co-op with my husband and 2 NPCs... or even my 9yr old. He's loving watching me play (but I have had to avoid all the sex scenes) lol

I thought I was about to have the final battle but there's more. I was saving it and hoping to finish yesterday so I could start a dark urge game but no, there's more. lol. This game is just vast. I plan on having all new companions next play through if possible. I know some have morals unfortunately. I guess we'll see what happens.

Can't wait to play this. I think I am done with Diablo, Just can't get into it like I did 3. Maybe I will get D2 or something. But Baulders Gate 3 is a must!

The evil play throughs are pretty brutal. Like... some crap people are having issues doing and turn good, lol. My current character is somewhere in the middle.

When does this release on PS5?

Finn wrote:

Sept 6th but I think pre orders might get early access on the 2nd, iirc.

sinnie wrote:

Awesome thanks.

Dark Urge playthrough is wild. I actually made two saves so I can play the character on a redemption arc verses completely evil. (Since you lose companions while going all out evil.) I haven't hit that yet but I haven't had time to play this week due to work.

Just got to Act II and am 39 hours in. There is so much to do in this game, and I’m already curious about the paths I didn’t take. (I alienated one potential party member and killed another. There’s also one member who I realized I just lost and couldn’t find again. I can easily imagine how things would be very different with a different set of party members.). I’m playing a high elf wizard who started out mostly good but now is going fairly evil (with occasional good acts to keep one party member from leaving).

It's easy for one character to just stop following you which is annoying. I spent around 80hrs in act 1 in my first play through and even with that, one my second play through just about everything I encountered was quite different (but the overall story was the same, except I still chose different options so got other options.)

We haven't started a co op play through on PS5 yet (no time) but I'm still playing on PC and barely through Act 2 on my 2nd play. Things are about to get super evil and point of no return. I gotta stick it out no matter how bad it is I guess. lol

I'm on the final bits of act 2 and absolutely adore this game. I'd guess my primary character has about 60 hours on it.

I did not expect anything to rival Tears of the Kingdom this year, but Baldur's Gate is definitely getting close.

I'm super excited to start my second playthrough so I can do everything differently. I've considered doing an evil playthrough but playing as the bad guy always hurts my soul too much to keep it up.

Why oh why do cutscenes trigger on the nearest ally and not always on your player character? Has anyone else encountered this? I’ve had it happen twice and it’s annoying as hell having to restart a combat encounter and work on making sure my character is close enough to the NPC when combat ends. I don’t want to make choices using one of my companions!

Heavyd814life wrote:

Yup def annoying

50 hours in and just finished act 1. I’m speechless. I haven’t been this obsessed with a game in a very, very long time. I have definitely spent more time playing this game than I have spent on actual work this past week lol.

I have some major surgery coming up so hopefully that recovery time lets me finish up a bunch of stuff I've started so I can get to BG3

Does anyone know if you can fully side with the bad guys? I tried to do an evil run, couldn't do some of it (just not that evil I guess) and am getting into act 3 now. I guess I'll have to try again next time. So much still left undone that I know I can do on another play through, lol.

I’m through act 1. My only complaint is the difficulty “curves” are strange. Pretty tough early, then too easy, then you feel pretty useless, then too easy again. I’m looking pretty closely at resistances etc but certain fights the rolls are way off it feels- don’t match up with ranges at all. Some of the “forced” M rated content is super corny / cringey and even a bit uncomfortable. More to the imagination would have been preferable for me.

@Feeb The difficulty definitely goes through some weird parts. I think being able to enter encounters at various stages of power makes the difficulty inconsistent. I'm a bit over leveled currently so the game seems easy, but I know I'm going to hit the level cap way before act 3 ends so I imagine enemies will have caught up to me by the time at the end of the game.

I don't think this is your problem, but if you feel that the rolls are weird, be sure to disable "Karmic Dice" from the options menu.

I've not seen much "Forced" m rated content, but that might be because I was going after shadowheart and she is a bit of a prude. Astarion and Gale were ready to jump my bones really early but i friendzoned them to focus on everyone's favorite priestess of Shar.

I had an encounter with a drow lady- it was a lil S&M a lil fellatio and a lil grudge F. It was a bit strange. Then the devil lady needs to drop f bombs a little much. That one feels like an attempt to connect with the cool kids.

What I meant is my rolls are not feeling like they add up despite no res etc. just feels like often it throws the rules out the window to make it “difficult.” Tactician mode. Otherwise it feels mostly fair and definitely cheeseable.

Nah if you ignore any sexual advances early on, you might never see M rated content. My first play through I ignored everyone's invitation at the party because my 9yr old was watching. Then never again did any opportunity ever present itself, lol.

Other than the two monsters banging in the barn house it’s all been pretty avoidable

Feeb wrote:

lol that was pretty funny. My companion told me to not open it but to hell with that. I was actually surprised, didn't think it was that...

I thought it was another couple of ogres to fight. Yikes.

Feeb wrote:

For me it was a fight. I tried to join though. lmao

Well horny vamp boi was all like “oooh I love the ogre sex!”

105 hours in. Act 2 complete. To Baldur’s Gate!

Patch #3 is live. You can finally change your character’s appearance!

I can change my genitals too! That's the best part!

Just picked this up today. Not sure I have ever spent this much time in a character creator. I haven't even gotten to the game yet. I keep over thinking and changing my mind. And then spending 30 minutes making something. Then changing it and spending another 30 doing something else. The indecision is killing me.

Archer wrote:

Ha! Same thing happened to me. Legit took me 3 hours to create my character. It was ridiculous lol. But thankfully they’ve now released an update that puts a magic mirror in your camp so you can change your character’s appearance in game.

Heavyd814life wrote:

And now I have to make a guardian. Here we go again. Another 3 hours of this crap, lol.

Uh oh. Archer getting in deep! This one will consume you. Watch out.

Archer wrote:

Dude, I've spent 8 hours with the game, and only have about 40 minutes of actual play time, haha.

Feeb wrote:

For real! This game is a beast! Easily the most time I’ve ever spent on a single playthrough of a game.

I started my 3rd playthrough. Still so much I have not done.

This game is amazing so far. Its like Baldurs gate meets dragon age origins meets divinity original sin 2.

Also a question, no spoilers please. What was with me making a guarding? I'm only just over 4 hours in, so not that far. But it just dawned on me that I made them. And have yet to encounter them. I figured it would be right after the intro.

Archer wrote:


The guardian just becomes a character you interact with in the game. A sort of guide but also major character.

Huge update just came out for this. Over 1000 fixes/changes to the game. That is an insanely large patch/update.

Glad I waited!

I still haven't decided which class to roll. I was originally going with a Lock, then a Sorc, then a Bard ... gotta just make a decision and commit. Yet, this is still behind on the backlog, gotta get through a couple more before I get set on this.

I played through the first chapter / act but was able to get out then. I’m afraid if I go back there goes my life. Love the freedom it gives you.

MrBean wrote:

You can multiclass and you can also respec in game so you don’t have to commit to your initial class.

Feeb wrote:

I lost a month and a half of my life to this game. Zero regrets!

Archer wrote:

Damn, I need to check the patch notes to see what they fixed/changed.

About to lose my entire weekend to this game. I have nothing to do/going on this weekend. So I'll most likely sit around and play this for 10 hours both days, lol. And still probably not get out of act 1.

Archer wrote:

This is the way.

Been a long time since a game has me taking hours to make a decision. And reloading saves to test the waters of all the choices to see which one I feel is more correct for my character. And even after hours, I still don't feel like any of them are the choice they would make. So I guess its just pick one and move on time.

Just don’t get trashed and bang a drow.

The acting in this game is unreal. I don't want to just say its voice acting. Because its far more than that. Its on another level in this game. These all must be real actors, and not just your typical run of the mill voice actors. Because they are all bringing something to their delivery you just don't get from a standard voice actor in a video game. Its very impressive.

And sure enough, looking some of them up, they don't just do voice acting. They act in movies/tv shows and plays as well.

Archer wrote:

Yeah man, the voice work is exceptional. I think the quality of the facial animations/expressions helps make the performances so believable and takes it to a whole new level.

All NPCs were mocapped. So that's why

That must have taken forever. To mocap that many people.

I just remembered that when this game first came out on PC, everyone was talking about how it was nothing but sex and nudity everywhere. It became a meme. And all the jokes about sex starved gaming nerds. Yet, I'm at the end of act 2 and I've yet to see a single second of any of that stuff. Granted I'm not going out of my way to see it either. Which makes me think all those people went out of there way to find it. No one has hit on me or tried to fudge me. Its been very pg-13.

Probably the most annoying thing about Western RPGs, the sex garbage and the over abundance of marketing about it. Mass Effect, Witcher, Cyberpunk

Was that really a thing? Weird. Because yeah you definitely have a choice in how your relationships with other characters evolve. And if you are seeing a bunch of sex/nudity then you are 100% looking for it. At least that was my experience. But @Archer you should have had a couple of people hit on you for sure or at least had interactions where your choices could lead down the “more than companions” path.

For me there was only 1 character I had any interest in romancing and it was a slow burn and it was handled really tastefully, imo. That’s so wild that people were saying it was just sex and nudity everywhere lol. I’ll have to look that up because that wasn’t my experience at all.

Heavyd814life wrote:

For a while it was. It was the most content you would find about the game. Articles, youtube videos, memes on twitter and reddit. You don't see it anymore unless you look for it. But upon the PC versions release in August it was everywhere. It was hard to miss. I was not looking up stuff for the game, but I was made aware of it everywhere I went online.

As for being hit on and the romance stuff, I tend to not do that stuff unless I have to for a trophy to get the plat. Otherwise I pretty much ignore that stuff. And all the stuff for that in this game, save one character, is platonic stuff you can get out of the way early and doesn't lead to any romance dialogue from what I can tell. And I messed up being able to go on a date with karlach because somehow the game thinks I like shadowheart, who I actually can't stand. That may be from giving her the flower for the trophy. But there has been no romantic conversations between us. Nor have we spent time together. So I'll do that in my second playthrough for that trophy. I also never talk to or use the vampire guy, because I assumed he was evil and was going to save using him for my evil playthrough. But I also thought that about karlach and that wasn't the case there.

I’ve only encountered one moment that wasn’t expected or worked for- the barn scene. I thought they were fighting. I got a BJ from a drow too. Had to slaughter all my friends for that one.

Feeb wrote:

That must be from the Drow chick that is a leader in the goblin camp? I just straight up murdered all of them when I got there. Didn't talk to any of them. It just felt like the right thing to do.

Yeah

Wow, this game has major issues in act 3 on ps5. This is almost unplayable. The lag, stuttering, hiccups, crashes, delays and soft locks are insane. How has this not been patched out yet. There is just too much going on in this city and the system just can't handle it. I had read about the poor performance in act 3, but did not expect it to be this bad.

Archer wrote:

Easy on the spoilers mate ;)

I tried to romance Astarion and he laughed at me and told me he had standards. I am crushed.

But Minthara has the hottest sex scene in Act 1 imo. Surprised me and made me blush. I'm glad I was alone for that one, lol.

sinnie wrote:

Yeah that’s the drow booty. She’s scandalous.

Shane12m wrote:

My bad. I removed the post.

Archer wrote:

This seems to be better after today's hotpatch. I also turned off performance mode. Not sure which helped. Probably turning off performance mode, as the notes for the hotpatch don't mention anything about performance fixes. It still has some big lag issues and what not, but way better than before. It also doesn't crash now.

The tracking/ targeting / 3D is rough in some cases on ps5 too.

All these issues in act 3 are really making it hard to play the game. It was okay until I got past the opening area of the act. Now its back to being a complete cluster fudge of issues. I just sat waiting for the world to catch up to me because everything froze for over 2 minutes. And then when my companions got to me, it started rifling off all kinds of actions that had been queued, and this caused it to crashed to dash. This happens so many times. So frustrating.

Archer wrote:

Looks like the latest patch might have broken the game. I had issues with framerate and texture pop-in at the very beginning of act III, but I don’t remember having many if any performance issues after that. That really sucks. Hopefully Larian gets on it asap.

https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showf...

Heavyd814life wrote:

Yeah I saw that just a bit ago. There are also a handful of other similar topics on there. So at least they are aware. Hopefully its patched within a reasonable time. I might just start my Dark Urge character now while waiting. Because currently its not fun trying to play that area.

It’s almost like no one even played this through on ps5. Lots of issues here too.

Ahhh procrastination paying off...

Archer wrote:

Damn it dude I just stopped playing Banner Saga and booted BG3 up again. I totally forgot about the Dark Urge character! I also didn’t even realize you could customize them. I thought the character was a pre-made Dragonborn for some strange reason. Time to spend 3-4 hours on the character creator again…

Heavyd814life wrote:

I really liked the Banner Saga trilogy. And I totally get replaying this again over anything else. Even with the current issues for act 3 on console. I did the same with DoS2. Back to back playthroughs. And I'll be doing/am doing the same with this game too.

I also read about the dark urge...

And yeah. I spent over 90 minutes making mine today, lol. Ended up making two actually, and will play each for a bit to see which I like better. I made a Drow ranger. And a Tiefling paladin (who will become an oath-breaker if I stick with that one long enough). I also thought about making a Gith warlock. But I don't think I'd like a warlock build in this game. My first character is a halfing bard/monk.

Rangers and any range class are much more powerful in 5e. You can do some silly stuff with crossbows and pets. Add that stealth. Yikes.

Yeah, invis/hide, blind and dark in this game are insanely strong. I don't think they are actually that strong in table top 5e. But I love it in this game, lol.

Archer wrote:

I've barely made any progress. Got to the grove and then spent 2 freaking hours tweaking the skin tone on my Drow because she looks different depending on the lighting and it was pissing me off. I have serious issues lol.

And yeah man, love the Banner Saga games. I played the first one years ago and loved it. No clue why it took me so long to jump into 2 and I'm actually surprised I remember so much about the story from the first game. It's pretty great so far. I was in the mood for something tactical and it's definitely scratching that itch. I think I'll finish up before jumping back into BG3.

Still waiting for them to release a physical copy in the US on PS5. Japan is getting one in late December.

Yeah. I ordered the Japanese one, as it's multi-language. I'm not 100% convinced that they're going to release it physically in the U.S.

Sun wrote:

Bleed_DukeBlue wrote:

I saw it on Play-Asia as I was shopping today.

I ended ordering River City Girls 1+2 and Double Dragon Collection (includes DD1-3 on NES, Super Double Dragon/Return of Double Dragon, Double Dragon Advance).

Nice. I ordered mine from Play-Asia as well. I ended up getting that and Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remaster on Switch.

Sun wrote:

Bleed_DukeBlue wrote:

Ordered BG3 from Play-Asia as well and I was going to pick up Baten Kaitos but apparently the remaster doesn’t include the English VO. I remember the English VO for the first game being a bit rough, but that’s half the nostalgia for me. And the VO for II is legitimately great (at least I remember it being great) so it’s such a bummer they removed it.

This evil playthrough is, something else. I just did some crap that most games don't let you do. And honestly if feels bad. And then a nice lady wanted to hook up. And after that I did a thing. Now I only have two companions. And am locked out of getting another one later because of the thing. Even the dog ran away.

Ah that's too bad. I never played the originals.

Heavyd814life wrote:

Bleed_DukeBlue wrote:

I had forgotten about that one. I guess there will not be a NA physical release, might have to get a copy there.

The Play Asia version of BG 3 is going to be edited/censored. FYI.

Archer wrote:

Playing dark urge first run. It’s asking me to do quest breaking murders and I’m not sure I’m ready for it. Going to try to find a work around for a specific request tonight.

Archer wrote:

lol the dog ran away

I finished my dark urge run but quit at the final boss fight. I'm trading time between 2 redemption durge runs now. Mostly because one I killed Gale on purpose (oops) and the other I killed Shadowheart on purpose. Also Astarion doesn't like me very much in one. So I'm going back and forth with those two.

Astarion is the only one who ever likes what I do. I’m not trying to please him though. 🤔

https://x.com/larianstudios/status/172412597096824...

Xbox fans, and fans of physical media, watch this space for a formal announcement. It's going to be a busy week

Feeb wrote:

He legit laughed at me when I tried to bed him and said "I have standards." lmao

Feeb wrote:


Who is it asking you to murder?

Archer wrote:

There is a workaround it seems.

That is who I thought you were going to say. I'm actually looking forward to see how that part of the game plays out differently in an evil durge run vs a standard good run. There are a lot of interesting dynamics in that act.

Yes. I did the deed and saw the absolute havoc so I reloaded and decided I need to sleep on it. Also looks like I need to get a new partner before I skip that…

Yeah. From what I can tell, it seems like it's just that you can't toggle on explicit content, and they removed the option to torture someone in this one part of Act I. I have the uncensored version on Steam, and I don't feel like I'd be missing much with the censored version, but I'll see for myself when I get the Japanese one in December.

Kommie wrote:

Turn-based Baldur's Gate 3 has sold 21 mil copies while Final Fantasy 16 has sold 4.

https://dotesports.com/baldurs-gate/news/baldurs-g...

I know that includes steam for BG3 and not FF but still. To me this just shows fans still love turn based games and Square Enix is still determined to get them off of them when it comes to FF for some reason. There hasn't been a new turn based FF since 2001.

Mostly because it’s not on pc.

Feeb wrote:

FF16 won't make up that difference on PC. 15 sold over 10 million but that was total PS4 + Xbox One + PC.

Of course not. FF is washed up niche franchise- truth be told- And XV was possibly the worst received of all of them. It’s still not apples to apples making this comparison. People don’t understand that FF and jrpgs in general - are niche.

1 Pokémon 1996 440,000,000 [1]
2 Final Fantasy 1987 180,000,000 [2]
3 Monster Hunter 2004 92,000,000 [3]
4 Soulsborne 2009 91,628,551 [4]
5 Dragon Quest 1986 88,000,000 [2]
6 Borderlands 2009 72,000,000 [5]
7 The Witcher 2007 65,000,000 [6]
8 The Elder Scrolls 1994 58,623,000 [7]
9 Lineage 1998 43,000,000
10 Fallout 1997 38,000,000

180 million sales for Final Fantasy all time, that's for any rpg series in any region. Second most behind Pokemon. That is anything but niche. But I do agree they're washed up because they're trying to pander to non-rpg gamers to sell more copies. They've been doing so since 13.

That’s the whole series. The games as a single entry do not generally perform that well compared to the industry best. And take FF VII out of there it would look pretty different I bet. Jrpgs as a whole are definitely niche. It’s still not likely to make sales like this these days if you’re not on pc.

Pokémon is a different beast. As is any Nintendo nut cult product. Compare these to games like AC, GTA, Etc.

Yes my point was originally about the series as a whole and how it's gone stale because they aren't making the games like they were back in the day when they were selling gangbusters. You might can say jrpgs as a whole are niche but Final Fantasy is NOT niche. Nothing niche can be sold 180 MILLION times. I don't care how long the time period is again 2nd most sales all time for an rpg series of any region.

niche denoting products, services, or interests that appeal to a small, specialized section of the population.

Final Fantasy is one of the few rpgs that has mass appeal, but they're losing it due to making bad games that don't appeal to rpg gamers, that was my point.

I'll let you reply and I won't bother reading it because obviously you just want to disagree even if I say the sky is blue, and this is getting off topic from BG3.

Yes- that is exactly what niche means. Even the best of all jrpgs in the west is niche. FF, DQ, Persona- it’s a simple fact. I think you’re correct about the direction of FF-especially XVI- even the creators say it is not an RPG- because- they want it to sell better than RPGs they know the west wouldn’t buy it like other genres. It’s not a turn based thing / strategy thing. They’ve thrown everything they have at the west - TO, FFT, remakes, FM etc. low sales.

BG 3 sold like hot cakes because it is a WRPG / CRPG and major pc release. Comparing it to a single plat release JRPG it should crush it. MOSTLY because it’s install base is pc- Back on topic.

Pre-order deluxe edition

https://box.baldursgate3.game/

MrBean wrote:

Has Euro pricing, bound to be more expensive. I'm sure a US version is coming

Oof, $20 shipping with the US version

Three discs...

The physical stuff seems to be just a map and box, discs, soundtrack, poster. Was hoping for some more books or art.

$20 for shipping? TF...

https://twitter.com/Wario64/status/172520273755683...

I only ever bought special editions for the statues/figures. This one seems like a hard pass. Also noticed it wont be shipping until Q1 2024. So anyone who has held out for a physical version to play the game has to wait another 2-4 months.

Silver lining is larian stuff is usually rare and an easy flip if you don’t want it. This may be the one they decide to mass produce.

$100 after shipping is wild. I’ll just stick with the JP version I ordered from Play-Asia.

I want to get the JP version from Playasia but don’t like when games are censored in other regions. Debating grabbing the EU copy or holding off for a NTSC physical release (if that’s even within the realm of possibility)

thenadz wrote:

They will be shipping NTSC copies to American regain orders via the US shop. But as they are a European based company, all the art work on their site shows PAL versions. There are images floating around with ESRB ratings on them as well. However, the version of the disc doesn't matter anymore. Your console will play any region.

Thanks for the heads up. I went ahead and cancelled my Play Asia order and got this instead.

MrBean wrote:

I'll just wait until a regular US physical release.

I thought I was going to go into this second evil durge run and speed through just to see the different/evil stuff. But uh, that didn't happen. I'm taking my sweet time, playing like its the first. Over 30+ hours and still in act 1 still. Doing everything again. The game is just that good. It also helps that there is so much, and so many different ways things can go. And an astounding amount of dialogue variations all based on how you are approaching things.

Larian can just not win with these patches and hotfixes lately. They put out hotfix #11 today. And its apparently broken the PC Steam deck version just as bad as Patch #4 broke the PS5 version. And some people are saying the PS5 version is now just as broken in Act 2 like it is in Act 3. But some people are saying Act 3 is fixed for them on PS5. I haven't tested yet on my end. Hoping its fixed. And that Act 2 isn't borked, because I'll be there soon on my new playthrough.

I just ended act 2 on my durge tactician run. It was fine last night.

Feeb wrote:

The hotfix that 'supposedly' broke it released a few hours ago...

image

Looks like the update didn’t affect act 1. I’ve been playing for a couple of hours now and all good here thankfully. This durge run is something else. The dialogue options are wild! Got to the first real thing that happens on this route and it was a hard nope for me. Thankfully there’s a workaround. Also the Warlock build is kinda meh in this game. It seems to be Eldritch Blast and not much else. I think I’ll have to multiclass with Sorcerer to get more options.

Uh oh. Just in time to crush my game and make me step away for another month.

Heavyd814life wrote:

Lock takes a few levels to be worthwhile.maybe 3? And definitely I need another class for most of the core offense- but the EBARB / blast with repelling and hunger of hadar is very nasty CC.

Yeah I found warlock to be underwhelming as well. Like Feeb said it takes a few levels for it to get somewhat decent. But even then it still underwhelming. It really needs to be paired with fighter for a few levels to get better melee. And you need to also dip into sorc or wizard to get better spells. So it ends up needing too many class splits and its just not worth it. Its why I found Wyll so underwhelming. And in my first playthrough stopped using him until the party was higher level so I could spec him properly.

I went arcane archer this time, which is not a real class in this game, so its cobbled together. 3 levels of sorc and about to be 4 levels of ranger (gloomstalker). And its amazing. I have 3 attacks on the opening round without haste or bloodlust. I have powerful bow shots. And even more powerful shots with the special arrows. And decent spells for attack, buffs and cc. Its so strong I could probably solo with this setup on this tactician run. It just takes most of the first act to fully come together. But starting as the ranger was surprisingly really good too. Normally in DnD video games rangers are not this strong.

You gotta get that 3 rogue / thief dip for the actions too.

That extra bonus action is super nice. Especially on a monk who has a bonus action for a double attack. Having two of those is just.. *chefs kiss*

I’ve also been enjoying the one level light cleric reaction warding flare. Pretty nasty for a one dipper.

UV printer came in at work. The first thing we printed was Astarion, lol

Sorry for the glare, but people checking out with their groceries should see it.

image

Act 2 seems fine to me so far. A few instances of potato graphics, but that has been the case for me the whole time. Where the late texture pop-in never occurs so the persons face looks really fudgeed up like their skin melted off. Seems to happen to random npcs. I tried to load my Act 3 character, but every time I do the game crashes. So that sucks. I assume the saves are corrupted somehow.

Act 2 boss on tactician was quite a bit more challenging. First really hard encounter yet.

Debating on picking up the $50 Japanese physical version. The only thing holding me back is Japan's censorship in games. I would much prefer to play the unedited version.

The other option is the physical deluxe edition, but that's $30 more.

Yeah. She hits for 10 max and usually 2. I sent a single toon over there just to get the flayer off my party. His conal hits for 40-60 each toon. Nasty. The debuff zone is most of the center plat where phase 2 spawns. Almost have to stay off of that platform altogether

Act 3 is a buggy mess. Just got a spell rot curse bugged on my team. Nice.

I'm not looking forward to getting back to act 3. Hoping they send out a patch to fix it soon.

Playstation added a Baldur's Gate 3 trial. Good thing I find character creators a waste of time. Only 2 hours though

The character creator isn't even that vast though. Fallout 4/Skyrim had more detailed ones. Doesn't take much time at all to make a nice character. I might be a weirdo who blasts through it though, lol. It is a bit annoying that I can choose my genitals but not my boob size.

I just find character creators as a giant waste of time

This one is a little more apropos to the actual game. Being that you receive bonuses and a large proportion of the fanbase roleplays in game. It is not overly complex after you understand it though. Unless you min / max and if you do you’re probably toast in game.

I don't think you two understand how to make a dnd character then. It isn't about the looks of the character at all. If you are just playing on story mode then yeah, you can just skip right through all that and just do what ever and it wont matter. But otherwise there is a lot to consider and a lot of choices you can make, which can lead to taking a lot of time to decide on things for how you are going to be playing the game.

Although in this game later on you are able to re-spec in game, which I was unware of at first. Which is not something you are normally able to do in a dnd game. Which is why I spent so much time in the creator the first time around. All other dnd games once the character is created, that its, no changing it. Which means in those other games if you make a warlock and don't like it, tough crap, start over.

I just don't care at all about the look. Obviously class matters, etc.

My half orc is named Bill with a pink Afro and a green goatee. He is sexy AF with no shirt on. No relation to @bill.

I’ll post pics tonight if I can. Get your knickers ready.

Feeb wrote:

Please don’t , but also please do…

Archer wrote:

Warlock still sucks, but I've tweaked things a bit and I don't hate it as much as I did before. It's actually a lot of fun. It's super limited, but it's pretty OP with the Fiend patron once you get to level 5 - at least on normal difficulty. Eldritch Blast + Fireball/Scorching Ray + Hunger of Hadar are all you really need. If anyone makes it out of darkness, I just repel blast their asses back in lol. Add haste to the mix and it's just unfair. I want to go with a pure spellcaster so I'll multiclass with either Wizard or Sorcerer moving forward to see what that's like. Probably Sorcerer for Quickened Spell. I honestly don't remember the last time I had this much fun just experimenting in a game!

Heavyd814life wrote:

Also might be worth considering dipping one level into wizard for the ability to lean a spell permanently from a scroll. You can't use a level 4 spell if you don't have a level 4 slot though. But you can pick and choose what you want more. And get access to spells you might not otherwise get without having to find or buy more of the scrolls.

Get that eldritch blast to repelling and agonizing and level 5 hunger of hadar then blast them into it. It’s insane how you can control the field with that. EB is probably the single best spell in the game all around when it’s repel / agonizing.

Orin is my hardest fight so far. Stayed up way too late getting it done. Nasty mechanics on that one.

Archer wrote:

Umm…that’s a really good idea! I feel like I’ll get a lot of variety from Sorcerer but I’ll definitely keep this in mind. I was also wondering if it was maybe worth dipping two levels into Fighter for Action Surge and Second Wind? Or maybe two levels into Bard for the extra short rest? So many options!

Definitely feels better to pair lock with another ranged class. Surprisingly strong I’ve found is red draconic sorceror paired with pact swords lock. You can use any weapon, have max stats because it uses your cast attribute- and sorcerer has quickened spells, distant spell, twinned spell. Both use charisma. This is the best combo I’ve found so far as I’ve been struggling to get Gale to feel right.

Casting a large aoe such as HoH and then blasting everything back into the HoH with eldritch blast, using the best large weapons in game and being able to manipulate spells to use with action points or bonus points (quickened).

For me this combo edges out the warlock with 3 thief dip / sharpshooter- that one never feels like the ranged crossbow is worth wasting a move on. Using that legendary mace from under the cathedral with a lock has a ton of utility as well. Group rez often saves you.

Heavyd814life wrote:

You only want to dip into fighter if you are also doing a lot of melee with the warlock setup. Action surge would be a waste for pure or mostly caster. As you can just use Haste from the sorc levels. And twined haste to haste yourself and another ally all for the cost of one spell slot. Which is better because its not just you getting the extra actions then. But, if you are also going to be putting yourself into melee and taking damage, then a couple levels in fighter would not be bad. And you would then also have a backup extra action. But for a pure caster its not worth it. You should put those levels into something else to strengthen your spells and support ability. Mainly sorc to get twinned spells and haste.

Feeb wrote:

As far as I am aware, none of the melee is converted from your spell stats expect for monk using its wisdom with a certain piece of gear. It all uses str or dex. Does the draconic sorc have something for melee using casting stat?

Wait, I miss read that. You didn't mean max melee stat for any weapon. You just meant max casting stat since they use the same.

Archer wrote:

It causes your magic weapon to be charisma based. As in 20 charisma instead of strength or Dex. also you can be proficient in any weapon. I usually just max attributes instead of using the perks with casters. Outside of movement none of them are great imo. War caster is ok but very situational

I’m probably going to swords bard on easy mode my next playthrough just to melt stuff and see more story and grab the last 2-3 achieves.

Feeb wrote:

Ah, I completely missed pact blade in all of that. Holy crap. Its been a long morning, lol.

It’s a nice pact. Instant greatsword. Although I always feel like something is going wrong if I’m considering melee with my casters. Can’t get my brain to accept using a turn for it.

Yeah, I have the same problem. Because you don't want your caster taking damage. Especially if they are concentrating on something, like haste.

Having three rangers in your party is ridiculous. But insanely fun.

Archer wrote:

I just finished tactician and I had 2 ranger thieves dual wielding one hand crossbows and SS. They do ridiculous damage and are easy to protect. Load one up with all the tadpoles and the last hit is really nasty.

I honestly hated the end sequence. From the point of no return onward the game really stopped being fun. It felt very fair until this point - then welcome to hell. I’m ready to take this down a notch and playthrough it with a monk I think.

Holy crap the HPs! I did not realize tactician and medium cut it by half at max level compared to easy. The Orin fight is still insane.

Yeah the end stretch is a bit much even on normal. I'm sure on tactician its a real dog. I'm not there yet.

And normal and tact don't cut it in half, that is actually the normal dnd hp numbers for those levels. Story mode just adds a multiplier to make them bigger and make the game way easier.

Archer wrote:

I’ve never played anything but tactician. It’s good I did that because this is making me lazy and impulsive. You can’t multiclass on easy I didn’t know that- but it’s silly cause I just increased the difficulty prior leveling and then switched it back.

Feeb wrote:


Yeah, you can also get away with never ever healing yourself on easy or normal as well because of that same trick. Just change the difficulty and it auto heals everyone, lol. Not sure why you would want or need to do that though. But its there. You can even do it mid fight for some reason, but I guess that also heals the enemy units too. I saw video about this the other day on reddit.

They will also be adding Honor mode to this soon too. I think next month when they release the Xbox version. Which will have perma death and some other options as well like no manual saves. Basically ironman mode. I'm looking forward to giving that a shot.

Oh wow. I didn’t notice that toggling it set your HP back up. I tried honor mode or something similar with divinity. Not much fun at my skill level.

oh my god. I sat down to play for about an hour and 8 hours later I need to get off the chair and make dinner.

sinnie wrote:

So it was a good day is what you are saying.

yeah pretty much. 3rd play through, still finding new stuff. haha

Also Karlach is glitched and naked the entire time. Kind of annoying.

sinnie wrote:

Tell me about it! I got home at around midnight said to myself I'd play for an hour or two and just kept going and going. It's 8 now and I think I'm finally going to drag myself away from my TV so I can take a quick nap before driving to my parents for Thanksgiving.

Someone told me about an exploit and I just had to try it and I can't believe I got it to work...

Re: Minthara and Dark Urge, spoilers for anyone who hasnt completed this sort of run

My current playthrough is a durge but on a redemption arc. No Minthara this time around, I'm gonna try to get Jaheira and Minsc though. I want to see Karlach and Wyll's story line this time around. I still need to finish Gale's too but he died early on (oops.)
I'm probably gonna give tactacian a go after this, or maybe hard mode or something.

I just keep trying to romance Astarion and he really just needs to gtfo of my party because I know everything about him I think. But he's just too fun.

I have another save for a Bard who has Gale but I stopped playing because I FAILED to romance my stabby thirsty boy. He laughed at me. lmao.

sinnie wrote:

Not the experience I'm having.

Well damn that's disappointing. I guess it can go so many ways, lol.

Also it happened again. I played all day. Oh well.

There’s boat just near the grey Barbour docks waypoint in BG guarded by two robots- there are 6 parasite specimens in a crate. I’ve grabbed it on every run through. Nice find.

I may need to bump this up to Tactician because Minthara is wrecking everything with her Divine Smite. I just cast Haste and Sanctuary on her and she’s a one-woman wrecking crew. And she’s got great survivability as well because of heavy armor + shield. Such a fun class! Any of you guys try a Paladin/Sorcerer build? I think that one could be a lot of fun as well. Maybe I’ll mess with that on my next play through.

Sorcerer is definitely my go to hybrid caster class. Sorcadin for sure a good mix. Sauron or something else OP feeling.


PSA. I just got the Leave No one Behind trophy to pop finally. I was afraid I’d missed it because I did not talk to Arabella again after finding her parents. Rolled the credits and no pop. Then I realized I may have gotten the Tieflings killed with the summon in last area. I redid it without summoning Zevlor crew and it popped at credits. This trophy is a bit different for some I guess.

As much as I loved Minthara (I even played her before they fixed a lot of her dialogue) I got real bored with her. I guess I just don't know how to Paladin, lol.

I don’t enjoy the melee classes with buffs etc. way too many spells and actions to manage for me. Shadowheart usually gets benched very quickly after I use command to make Zhalk drop his Uber sword and beat him into submission. I actually lost her during my tactician run because I didn’t bring her to Shar’s place. She was like “I talk about going there nonstop and you left me? Later.”

Total dude move. I didn’t see any issues there.

My favorite is definitely a ranged double hand crossbow class with sneak. It cannot be beat for ease and high damage. Fun too. You can get the gloves of archery from goblin vendor and ring that adds poison damage from myconid colony and very quickly become a solo destroyer. Hide, kill, hide, kill. Lots of fun. I think I solod most of act 1 and 2 with that setup as rogue thief.

image

This is Bill. I can’t take credit for the design because he was randomly generated. He is now a mindflayer.

Paladins are strong as crap. Especially when multi-classed with something like fighter or cleric. But I'm not a fan of the limited resource classes that constantly need long rests to keep them powerful. Like Paladin, Cleric and Wizard. On tactician you can blow through their entire days worth of resources in a single fight. Which means you need to long rest constantly. And I just don't like that. I know there isn't anything wrong with it. I just don't like doing it. It clears elixirs and you end up having to spend a fortune replenishing them or going without. It clears buffs. It can kill a lot of quests if you long rest too many times before finishing them. So, I just don't like doing it.

I used mostly short / half rests unless a big fight. That’s probably why I don’t jive with those classes as well. I’d rather have a fighter or monk any day. Once their resources are exhausted they’re still better solid melee. You don’t miss it much and it’s like a bonus if you have it.

Feeb wrote:

I messed this up and have to re do it as well.

The keys are zevlor and Rolan it seems. Of course don’t destroy the camp- but I’ve seen reports of missing the harpy, the assassin, killing the bard at camp and I personally didn’t do Arabella fully- still popping. There must be an internal score or something that determines if you did enough- the flavor text says: Save every tiefling refugee you CAN throughout the game in a single playthrough.

It doesn’t say ALL.

Feeb wrote:

There are bunch. And then you have to talk to them all in act 3 for it to flag them as saved.

Yeah there are a ton of lists I found out there. The best thing is do it all- reality is some of it is optional. I missed it initially because I used the summon and rebooted it popped. I was sure I’d still miss because of Arabella but that was not needed for my playthrough for some reason.

Also there is a bunch of info out there on what to do in act 3. I only talked to refugees in camp, two ladies in the bar, Rolan at the mage shop, Mol in the camp and Zevlor shows up at end. I think as long as the resolution does not result in actual death, no matter where they end up (Arabella not there for me but alive) you’re ok.

Just finished the platinum. Only needed the Sazza trophy- a bit more complicated than it seems. Just started a new run, raided the camp and went straight to moonrise. Only took like an hour or so.

Nice. I have to finish this one, and then another to get the plat. I have do a full play through just to get the stupid karlach one.

Archer wrote:

I made Karlach a monk so I could tolerate keeping her around. The sounds are great. Her relationship stuff is so cringey.

I've been messing around with late game respecing to test classes and just goofing around in act 3. And I have to say having a summoned army in this game is the most bonkers and amazingly fun thing.

I switched to a druid, spore druid sub class. And I can have 12 summons. 4 fungal zombies, 3 skeleton zombies, a dryad, 2 minor elemental and an elemental. That is only 11, but because the dryad summon can summon their own wood woad summon, which is stronger than her, I have 12. I can also then turn myself into something else for a second HP bar to survive longer. Which is super useful. Druid is insanely strong. I don't see a lot of people talking about them.

Then I got a hireling and turned them into a wizard with necromancy specialization and he can have 15 summons. He can have 6 skeleton zombies, 4 flying imp things, 2 minor elemental, an elemental, a familiar and a mummy. Looking it up he could have 18 with gear. And if you had read necro of thay book from act 1 and brought it with you to act 3 and finished the quest you get 4 more ghoul summons. So 22 for one necro in the party with full gear for max summons.

Then I got a cleric who can have 6. A weapon, a flaming ball, 3 zombies and a mummy.

You could have a second spore druid and necro and a massive army with 57 summons. You could even go insane and have 4 necros and have 67 summons. Which is insane this game lets you do that. You can have so many things in your party combat takes forever. And the spore zombies replenish themselves. If one of them dies, and then another one kills something it auto turns the new corps into a fresh fungal zombie. Its really too bad all this is locked behind level 6 for all classes. So you can't start to experience any of it until then. So not until the end end of act 1. In act 3 most of them have such low xp you basically use them for fodder to prevent being attacked yourself. But a few of the higher level ones are very useful and do decent damage. But its also fun walking around scaring the crap out of everyone due to the giant zombie army coming towards them.

What I'm saying is everyone needs to embrace the summoner in this game and have fun with an entourage.

It really is about extra turns in tactician. If you get more moves you’re likely to win- a summon can help you do that. I like to use ravens and spam blind as well. I didn’t know you could create a whole battalion like that! I’m having a hard time keeping it from crashing already.

Yeah, it causes major lagging in the city. But under ground its fine.

@Archer That setup is nasty! Nothing so crazy here, but I've been having fun casting Minor Illusion outside combat to group enemies together and then hitting them all with HoH + Cloudkill + Insect Plague. It's complete overkill, but it's such a sick combo! Even if someone makes it out I just Eldritch Blast their asses back in or I Thorn Whip them to Minthara and have her do her Paladin thing. I legit don't think I've ever played a game where the options feel so limitless. It's just such a blast!

I really need to try out a Druid build, I guess. I didn't even consider it because I didn't enjoy playing as either Jaheira or Halsin my first time round. They just felt so weak and the novelty of shapeshifting wore off after a while. But your Spore Druid build sounds like a ton of fun.

Feeb wrote:

Hot stuff!

sinnie wrote:

Was her dialogue completely different before? She hasn't had a ton of dialogue for me so far, but when she speaks...man, she's so badass! It's wild having both her and Halsin in my party. I thought I'd broken the game, but Minthara got an inspiration event thing with I recruited Halsin which I found interesting.

Heavyd814life wrote:

She didn't speak too much but spoke more than people were complaining about (at least for me.) I think she is supposed to have a lot more interactions now and possibly at some point a "good" way to recruit her that doesn't break the game.


I think after I wrap up my 3rd and 4th games I am going to take a long break from this game. I've put hundreds of hours in and it'll be fun to see the changes a year from now. Even the changes over the last few weeks and months have been neat to see when they happen.

Heavyd814life wrote:

I always forget to use minor illusion or mage hand to distract and group enemies. I know its a very strong way to start a fight. I just never remember to do it until the fights already started. And yeah this is why this game is so great. There is just so many ways everything can go. Combat has such a vast array of ways to approach and do it and there are so many combos you can setup. DoS2 was similar. But not to this extent, not even close.

And yeah I think regular druids are boring and not that fun either. You just shift and attack as an animal the whole fight. But with the spore druid I don't ever really shapeshift unless I'm on low health at the start of my turn and don't want to spend the action on healing. If that happens though something has already gone very wrong in the fight and its a last resort to stay alive another round. The spore druid has another use for the wild shape resource that the other two do not, so you don't really want to spend them on shapeshifting anyways. A buff that doubles all spore damage while active. You have multiple spore spells. And one that is a reaction that you can just cast during your turn for a third action or use as actual reaction upon taking damage. And it adds 1d6 necrotic damage to your weapons. It also gives you temporary hit points. It lasts all day or until the temporary hp are depleted. You get this spell at level 2. But you don't get spore spells until level 6. So from the start of the game you always have extra damage via the 1d6 necrotic on your weapon. and a third action in combat, before anyone else gets that ability. And you have temporary hp right out the gate. So having the shield army (at level 6) to prevent you taking damage keeps its active through many fights. So staying a ranged bow user and slinging your spells is optimal for the setup while your summons tank. I might start as this on my next playthough and try a solo run with it. I can't believe I'm not warn out or tired of this game yet. I've put in so many hours in the month or so I've been playing.

sinnie wrote:

Come back just in time for that DLC drop only to get addicted again and do another 3 or 4 full plays, lol.

Archer wrote:

Honestly I keep seeing so much new crap it makes it hard to walk away... but you can only do the temple of Shar so many times. It feels like a drag. I wish some parts weren't required. Just let me explore and have random encounters.

sinnie wrote:

You can skip most of it and do it really quickly. I don't think its that bad.

I was able to counter spell the raise dead thing Balthazar did once. I’ve tried it scumming about 10 times and it worked just once. Trivial fight if you get it to work. Also bring guns and shoot from the rock, never jumping down works.

Yeah I am able to get through the Temple of Shar quickly, but still hate running around inside of it because it's boring.

Archer wrote:

Never considered this. Although I almost lit his ass up first time I saw him because he’s ugly.

Feeb wrote:

I don't know...

I summoned the ogres a few times. It’s pretty funny quest line.

I’m going to try summoning the golem at Balthazar and watch from the ledge.

Ogre summon

lol I always forget to use those summons. But I did summer the Flesh Golem recently and he helped a lot.

Larian announced today patch 5 is coming this week. And its bigger than patch 4 (according to ign, but who knows if thats true). And its going to fix act 3 lag/issues. But with it being so big, I wonder if its going to break something else, 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.

Getting to act 3 now so this is good to hear. Loved seeing Minthara finally get a bunch of dialogue at the end of act 2. Honestly can’t say enough good things about her voice actress. She’s phenomenal!

Also they need to do something about post fight cutscenes/dialogue triggering on the closest ally instead of my main character. So annoying! Or better yet find a way to include everyone in conversations so you can have other class/race specific dialogue options. But that would likely take a complete rework of the conversation system to get that to work.

Archer wrote:

This makes sense. My durge playthrough was plagued by slow downs, freezes, crashes etc. I was a douche, robbed and killed everyone. my last run through was very normal- not issues in act 3.

The patch is 30GB (from a larian tweet this morning). Hoping it drops today (they keep saying soon) so I can get back to playing in act 3. Because its completely busted in two of my saves waiting to be finished. I haven't really been able to experience any of act 3 in either of them.

Patch is live on PC and PS5 as of now.

https://www.ign.com/articles/baldurs-gate-3-patch-...

Main Highlights

● Epilogue: An entirely new section at the end of the game that aims to provide a well-deserved sense of closure with your allies.

● Two new play modes: Honour Mode and Custom Mode.

● Many performance improvements, particularly in Act III.

● Added dynamic resolution for PS5.

● Players playing on machines with low VRAM/RAM should see improved performance.

● While at camp, you can now access and manage the inventories of companions who aren't in your active party.

Wondering the improved performance for Act 3, been holding off buying it cause it sounds awful

● You can no longer loot the entire inventory of unconscious traders - instead you have access to a limited selection, as with dead traders. Nice try, pacifists.

Damn. That was such a nice trick to just get good gear early. Sneak up, knock out vendor. Steal entire inventory.

● DippIng weapons in toxin puddles makes attacks toxic for 10 turns rather than until Long Rest.

Another good exploit gone.

I try to keep Volo in camp and just rob him when I need cash or camping supplies. He just runs off and comes right back.

Feeb wrote:

Didn't even know this was a thing lol. Poor Volo

Archer wrote:

Damn it, Larian. The toxin puddles one is such a good exploit. I remember using the Spellmight Gloves + Magic Missile exploit on my first playthrough and wrecking everything! But now the gloves only apply to spells that make an attack roll so I didn't even bother trying to get them this time around.

Yeah volo usually has 700-900 gold and lots of food / scrolls per long rest. Just don’t use supplies and rest- he’s restocked.

Feeb wrote:

I'd rather have the eye personally.

Act 3 is actually fixed. Just walked around for about 15 minutes and not a single issue. Hooray!

Honestly its performing better than it ever did. This is better than act 1 performance. I'm actually getting 60FPS. They not only cleared the bugged log file. But fixed memory issues. And fixed it so not every single thing is active even if you are on the other side of the map. It is now in an aura around the player. So things only load in as you approach them. Meaning not only is the memory footprint smaller, its not trying to load every single damn nps into memory the second you load the map. This feels so much better.

Also a very nice QoL change I didn't see mentioned in the massive patch notes, when you pull up the map and then the fast travel points. They are now separated by region and not just one giant long list where you have to remember, was this in that region or another.

You can now also send items to companions in camp from anywhere. When you select an item to send its not just camp and your three current. Its everyone.

Archer wrote:

I didn’t feel like it helped much at all.

Damn I was gonna take a break and play something else after this campaign and they just keep bringing me back in, lol.

So starting a solo honor mode run last night was not a good idea. I died so early, so fast. Before 90 minutes I think. They really ramped up the difficulty in honor mode. Its going to be fine with a fully party. Probably not much more difficult than tactician. But solo is not a good time early on.

Double hand bow rogue gets going pretty quickly. You can get the archery gloves and poison ring asap as well as hand bows +1. That build was pretty viable to solo tactician act 1 and lots of 2 - if those stealth changes and PWT aren’t heavily impacted by the patch. It mostly exploits bad stealth AI and surprise attacks.

Feeb wrote:

I mean, I died at the gate of the grove. I didn't get far. It only took one crossbow bolt on the opening round and it was all over. It hit for full damage. Dead. Party wiped.

That sounds quite a bit harder than tactician. That fight seemed pretty easy with all of the distracting NPCs. I don’t think I’ll try that anytime soon but I’d probably try to cheese exp to level 3 to get the thief actions. Doesn’t sound like SS would be much help since chance to hit would be abysmal.

Yeah, it was just unlucky really. The odds of the crossbow goblin deciding to target me, and getting a perfect roll (critical) on the opening shot are probably not going to happen very often. And having a full party would have negated that, as one death wouldn't have wiped the full party. Unless it was still Tav who took the shot. I think that still wipes in honor mode. Maybe not.

Those bastards on the hill in the middle are where I prioritize in that fight. The rest usually don’t focus me. I think I’m going to play through DoS 1 and 2 and may attempt an honor mode at some point.

Yeah, this game makes me want to replay DoS2. But it actually makes me want to play Dragon Age: Origins even more. I feel like I need to stop playing this and play something else. Yet I keep playing it. So many other games I haven't played yet, that I want to play. But every time I turn on the PS5 I just end up launching this.

I really wish that Solasta: Crown of the Magister released on playstation. Not sure why its only on xbox. Its such a good dnd game. Its more like tabletop. No pre-made characters. You make your entire party if not co-oping. It has full 5E rules, so you go up to level 20 and get access to insane level 8 and 9 spells. It also has something like 9 full campaigns now. And you can use your character/party through each one.

I also really want to like the Pathfinder games. But those get ruined in act 2 of both games for me because of their heavy sim management that gets dumped on top of them. The first game you have to manage an entire kingdom. And in the second you have to manage an entire army. Its just not my thing. And its like playing two different games at the same time. A dnd rpg adventure (which is really good) with these weird sim management things tack on top (which is not so good).

Also Pillars of Eternity 1 & 2 are amazing games. The second one is more like this with turn based. The first is classic real time with pause. The second lets you choose which one you want. I so want them to make the third game for that series. I really love the story and lore in that one.

I’ve heard that pathfinder is like chess and too complex. I’ve also heard Tyranny is great but haven’t tried it. I’ve dabbled in the others. Didn’t love DaO and after the first it’s not the same game. Maybe I’ll just revisit the classic stuff BG old school, NW, Icewind, Torment. I really need to do something mindless this month. Oh well.

Archer wrote:
OMG this. So much this. I'm 300 hours in and it's still all I can think about. At work today all I could think about was needing to respec Shadowheart and jumping back in to see how things feel after patch 5 because Wyrm's Crossing was super rough pre patch and also what the new epilogue is like. I didn't even think I'd replay it so soon after my first playthrough but here I am in act 3 of my second playthrough and I am already looking forward to doing a solo run on tactician when I am done. But I have all these games just sitting here that I need to get around to.

And I've also been thinking about DA: Origins a lot while playing this. It's my favorite western RPG of all time, but BG3 is giving it a run for its money. I replayed it last year, but I want to replay it again. I even found myself looking up info on DA4 earlier this week, but the more I read the more I wonder if it'll ever even come out.

I'm currently playing Pillars of Eternity. Haven't gotten far. Just beat Tyranny. Wasn't a huge fan of that one. Hoping to maybe get Baldurs Gate 3 at some point. Hoping it goes on sale at some point...

Kommie wrote:

Tyranny sounds like it’s polarizing. I’m seeing it’s great or it’s bad.

I bought Tyranny a long time ago on a steam sale. I've just never installed it. Don't really know why.

Penis's now jiggle

sinnie wrote:

I'm curious how you discovered this. Are you just running around with fully naked party members?

Archer wrote:

Sometimes yes. But actually it's all over reddit. They snuck it in there without even putting it in the patch 5 notes, lol

300 hours in and I'm still coming across new stuff all the time. This game, man!

Also Warlock/Sorcerer ends up being a really fun pure caster build. Ended up going Warlock 2/Sorcerer 9/Wizard 1. Dipping into Wizard feels like an absolute must for any spellcaster because of those two unique level 5 scrolls you can get and learn early in act 3. They really are the icing on the cake for me. They are so powerful! There are ways in-game to boost Intelligence which makes it easy to max out both Charisma and Intelligence if you really want to. Thanks for suggesting one level of Wizard @Archer because I hadn't even considered it. You end up being able to prepare 3 Wizard spells so I have those two spells and Glyph of Warding prepared and it's just so much variety. I do wonder if there's a better option than Glyph though, but I'm still early in act 3 so I'll mess around with that. It's definitely one of my fav spells in the game.

I initially tried going Warlock 5/Sorcerer 6/Wizard 1 because Hunger of Hadar is such an amazing area control spell, but it wasn't worth going 5 levels of Warlock just for one spell when there are others that do a similar job. Two levels of Warlock feels like a good spot for Eldritch Blast (w/ Hex, Agonizing and Repelling blasts) which is just such an insanely powerful cantrip. Love Sorcerer for Twin and Quicken obviously and a really good variety of powerful spells. I'm sure if I did a bit of research I'd find a way to really optimize this build because I do wonder what I could do to take it to another level. But it's pretty damn good for a blind build. Oh and stick those Dexterity gloves on to boost AC and initiative and you feel unstoppable!

The wizard level is nice even from a novelty standpoint. There are a few scenarios that require a couple of spells to advance and one of them is a pretty rare scroll. I just respeccd quickly to do it.

@Heavyd814life There are actually three unique level 5 scrolls in that location.

@Heavyd814life Also thinking about how to make it better. Going level 2 of wizard and getting evocation specialization, so your AoE spells don't harm allies might be worth something. So 2 lock, 8 sorc and 2 wiz. That way if you have a fighter in the mix of 4 enemies, you can still drop a fireball or ice storm on them and it does nothing to your party memeber.

Archer wrote:

Dude I think this is it! I thought I needed nine levels of Sorcerer to get an extra Level 5 spell slot, but taking a second level of Wizard gives me that slot anyway. I lose out on 1 hit point and 1 sorcerer point and that's literally it. Unless I'm missing something. Also taking the second level of Wizard lets me prepare 4 spells which is fantastic and I'm going Evocation for sure so I can just Fireball, Ice Storm and Lightning Bolt wherever the hell I want!

And thanks for the heads-up on that third hidden scroll. No way I would have found it on my own. Plus I just tested it and looks like once you learn that scroll and add it to your prepared spells list...

I'm not sure how to make this better, but I'm sure there's a way lol. The only real downside to multiclassing with 2 Warlock and 2 Wizard is losing out on Level 6 spells and a 3rd feat. I think that's all. And I can totally live with that.

Caster feats aren’t so great. Often the points are better. And you got that covered it seems.

Losing out on level 6 spell slot isn't that bad really. Level 6 spells are very powerful, yes. But you only get the one slot, ever. And it can not be restored in any way but a long rest. So you only get the one spell per day with level 6. Might as well just cast more level 3 and 5 with either SP or arcane restoration.

And as Feeb said losing out on the third feat for a pure spell caster is fine too. You should have taken your main spell stat to 20 already via one of the two feats (starting with 17, using hag deal to get a +1 and one feat to push to 20). And use the other for something like better armor (for higher AC), alert (to act faster with higher initiative) or war caster so you don't lose concentration on spells (if you use concentration cc spells like dark, hold person, etc). Even taking both feats to get to 20 and then using the left over to add to dex or constitution is fine as well.

I don't there is a way to make it better. You could do something like dump warlock, which would cause you to lose out on the best cantrip in the game, and going 4 levels of wizard. Which gives you a third feat. Two natural arcane recovery points to restore spell slots. But since you only have two you can only restore one level 2 slot, or two level 1 slots. And you get a level 6 slot. I don't think any of that is worth losing EB. EB out damages any other cantrip from the moment you get it to the end of the game. And there is gear to make it rival level 3 spells in act 3. And you can cast it infinity. Plus warlock spell slots return on short rest. Which is nice because they can be used to cast any level of spell up to level 5.

There is also the potential to add in some Bard levels. As that uses Charisma as well. But most bard stuff is buffing and crowd control for magic. So it won't increase your damage. But it would increase your other party members damage. So not really what you are looking for.

Messing around last night with different builds. I realized one of the wizard sub classes has bonuses for alchemy. And lets you make extra potions when making them. I had 12 ashes of hyena ears. Which would normally make 12 potions of speed. I respeced into that sub class and was able to make 20. You have to pass a passive medicine check of 15 when you make a potion, so you can fail some and only make the one. But still 8 more valuable potions. However, this sub class is worthless beyond that is not worth using. But when it comes times to make potions of speed or bloodlust elixirs you can respec into it, then respec out. Because even though it wasn't mentioned in the patch notes, it wasn't just cloud giant that got their rarity increased.

Woah. Divinity OS 1 feels so dated now. I don’t remember this being so crude / vague most of the time. And it’s hard as hell.

Yeah the first one was way harder than the second game.

Have any of you done an origin character playthrough besides a durge? As in picking and playing as Asstorian, Shart, Gale, lae'zel, Karlach or Wyll. I just realized I've never even considered this. And I just saw some stats Larian released, and apparently a huge chunck of players (447k) have completed the game as Gale. Which seems like an odd pick to me. Also paladin being the most picked class is mind boggling to me. It such a bad class. It only gets super strong around level 8. Before that is garbage. And least surprising is 51% of people romance shart.

The stats:
https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2023/12/baldurs-ga...

Always custom. Even on the durge playthrough I changed him up. I stalked the drow lady. Only one I got that far with- except for karlach which was an achievement. I generally dislike melee classes aside from monk. Not surprised it’s pally though because if you search on best classes they all say fighter, cleric, pally- all the boring crap. lol.

I almost just died to the owlbear in honor mode. Was not expecting the change for that fight. And it almost got me.

Supposedly redemption durge is the best and official way to play from what Larian has said. I can't bring myself to play an origin character since I've gone through all of their storylines. I wonder if it differs any? Sometimes I'll switch my main character to someone to see what dialogue is different and sometimes you'll get surprises such as with Astarion (act 1)

Archer wrote:

I'm curious what changed.

I still need to go back and investigate the cave at some point. There's a lot of places you need to be able to squeeze into, and I never have a way to do that that early on.

sinnie wrote:

In honor mode only, if you don't want to be surprised when playing in that mode yourself...

As for small spaces and the pipes, those are just alternative ways in an area. None of them lead to unique places. So you've probably already seen them all.

sinnie wrote:

The thing is, you don't even have to play as them to get their unique dialogues. You can talk to anyone as anyone. Even after you've talked to them with Tav. And you then talk to them with everyone else and still get their unique interactions. Its super weird.

Archer wrote:

damn lol
Oh alright on the spaces... sucks but was bugging me!

Shocker to no one, won GotY.

Now I just need to play it...

They also apparently forgot to announce it for xbox being released tonight. But its on the store I guess and people are downloading it.

They also released a hotfix during the awards. They are gonna work themselves dead and hurt in the long run. Hope not though. Can't wait to see what else they do.

sinnie wrote:

That hotfix fixed the only gold exploit that worked on console. Bastards. It was keeping me in gold while playing in honor mode. Now I have to go back to being a hoarder to sell everything for pennies to buy things.

EDIT: for those that didn't know, you could sell an empty bag to a vendor. Then open the barter menu. Put the bag in the barter section. Open it. multi select (probably drag and drop on pc with a mouse) and put anything in the vendors inventory into the bag. Then buy the bag for 1 gold. And get everything or just what you wanted from them for a single gold because it was in the 1 gold value bag after the value was calculated. It was such a nice exploit. I'll miss it so much in this (no) honor mode run.

Robbing volo of his camping mats was all I needed. I don’t think I bought anything but a few late game gears and camping mats. I do tend to loot all the 1 billion alcoholic beverages in the game though.

Yeah I never had issues with gold in normal play, including tactician. But in honor mode they doubled the economy values over tactician. So I may have to abuse poor volo by using the respec option to make his inventory refresh with gold every couple minutes. Everything cost 4x the value instead of 2x like in tactician. And they only buy your stuff for 25% of value, were it was 50% in tactician. And that is with the highest charisma/persuasion and +100% attitude. Without it, they only buy your stuff at like 5% value with all that being 0 (attitude and persuasion). Its a bit much really. A regular healing potion is 100g to buy. They only give you 6 gold to sell them one. Gear is insane. Most armor and weapons, regular stuff in act 1 is like 250 gold. And when you pickup and sell everything you find, you can buy maybe buy two pieces of gear before you have to go hoarder mode again. And getting that AC up early is very important in honor mode. So you don't get one shot in the face by a crossbow, lol.

You can’t rest without mats and refresh him in honor mode? Makes sense because this DoS honor mode is masochism.

Feeb wrote:

I haven't tried, because I don't rest until timed quests are resolved, lol. But I assume not. Because if you don't have the mats it only short rests. And vendors do not reset on short rest. And long rests push timed quests forward. And I'm not high enough level to complete those yet.

So going to withers, pay 100g, random fast click anything to level one and exit. Vendor steal. Go back and pickpocket your gold back and do it again. Withers gives no craps. You can fail all you want. He does nothing. Even in honor mode.

Volo did reset every night. Rather if long or no mat rest. That’s what I’m wondering - did they change this. It’s pretty much infinite mats if not. I’d try it out but I’d have to get Volo on honor mode. Also- he’s only there after you rescue him so you gotta get by for quite a bit. And then he gets nabbed again…

Feeb wrote:

I just tried/tested it and it does actually still work in honor mode. Weird, I though it was fixed. It only resets him though. The vendor in the grove was not reset. But that doesn't matter. This is great. Way faster than the respec thing. No mats, half spell slots and volo resets. And it doesn't seem like it counts as a long rest. I'm not sure on that part. If it doesn't I'll abuse the crap out of this to buy late game items, lol. Because I hate being a hoarder just to get gold. Its so time consuming walking around and picking everything up.

Yeah once I figured that out I was like tactician. lol.

So after playing Tyranny, Pillars of Eternity 1 and now currently playing Pillars of Eternity 2, I can say I don't like RTWP. Pillars 2 is so much better with the turn based. RTWP is just too chaotic.

Kommie wrote:

I agree. I used to really like RTWP, but not so much anymore. Its too much micro management. And I don't want to feel like I'm working while playing a video game.

Archer wrote:

We'll see how I feel once I beat PoE 2. My other issue with these games is the amount of junky/duplicate equipment you get but I do realize you need to just sell it. It's just annoying work to sell. After PoE 2 I might give in and get BG3

Kommie wrote:

Have you played the Divinity Original Sin games?

As for the loot in PoE2, you don't really need to worry about picking everything up to sell it. Just pick up the unique stuff that you can use on your party. If I'm remembering correctly in that game almost every piece of the best gear is found or a quest reward. Or you craft it. You don't really need buy too much gear in that game.

Archer wrote:

I played some of DoS2, then stopped for some reason

Rogue Trader 40,000k looks promising. I may grab that after I finish DoS and FFXVI.

Yup, that one's on my radar as well

Yeah, on my list as well. I've never played anything warhammer, but I saw it the other day in recently released games. It looked good. And was shocked it was on console. These types of games generally are PC only. Which I need to finally get around to building another PC. I'm tired of this laptop and being locked out of playing PC only games.

And Honor mode has become too easy outside the big bosses. Once you hit level 5+ in this game and builds come online, everything becomes a joke in basic combat. However there are two fights that I'm dreading. The two hardest fights in the whole game on tactician. And now they have legendary moves and resistances in honor. Those two fights (or will be once I get there), and surviving long enough early game to hit level 5 without making a mistake are the hardest parts about this difficulty.

Act 2 boss was rough. The robot factory boss was almost impossible- I snuck passed and skipped. The rest was not too bad at all.

I haven’t messed with honor mode at all.

Take that back- the gimmick with Orin was pretty gnarly. Definitely some “optional” stuff was more difficult.

Yeah a few optional are way harder. But I'm not going to do them on honor mode, lol. Act 2 end boss is going to be a the real dog. The single hardest boss in the entire game who isn't optional. He has 160 more hp in honor mode. And his legendary reaction he gets once per round is strong enough to one shot you if are in range of it. And after thinking about it, the one in act 3 I was thinking of will actually be pretty easy. I'll just use the same tactic I did in tactician. Trivialized the fight into two rounds. I completely forgot about that.

There’s just so much going on with the act 2 boss. It’s nuts.

The toughest (and best) boss for me on tactician was easily dude in the spoiler tag below. I don't even want to imagine what that fight must be like in honor mode.

@Heavyd814life Yeah he is hands down the toughest overall boss. But he is an optional boss. I would never considered fighting him on honor mode. I've seen a few videos already of him steam rolling people with meta "op" builds. Dumb way to lose your honor mode run when the end of the game is right there.

I rolled a 20 critical success on the DC99 check.

Feeb wrote:

Doing that...

lol. I just reloaded my previous save oops.

Feeb wrote:

You're still playing it too? lol. We all have addiction problems.

Yep. All this talk has me trying out optional bosses. I didn’t attempt the vamp or Raphael on tactician yet. I was curious what happens if you win that 99 roll too.

Archer wrote:

Yeah, it's super risky. But it's my favorite section of the game (the music alone is godtier!) so I don't even blame people for trying just for the challenge. I have no idea how things work in honor mode, but I feel like you'll have to pass that skill check to get that one dude to switch sides. That one feels like a must to level the playing field a bit. Then you'll need haste + potions + summons + characters with high initiative so you get to act first and give yourself a chance. Maybe hit everyone with the Sleep variant of Glyph of Warding or with Hypnotic Pattern at the start? I also wonder if one of those Enchantment spells like Hold Person or that dance one would work on him because I didn't try that. You'll have one cleric already in the fight obviously, but you'll probably need another one to mass heal. And then on top of that you'll need a ton of luck.

Man, this makes me want to try honor mode out myself, but I beat it on Tactician last night and deleted the game. 400 total hours, man. I need a break lol.

So honor is a beginning to end no save scum situation? Would be nice to be able to throw it up there and try without having to play the whole game super carefully. Did they add a new trophy?

Heavyd814life wrote:

Alert feat is required in honor mode for all party members. If your party is not acting first, you're going to have a bad time. In any fight. Also honor mode nerfs haste and all ways of applying it (spores, potions, spells, etc). It does not give you extra turns on extra actions in honor mode like it does in regular modes. It gives you one extra action, period. And that sucks so much.

And yeah, 400 hours, its time to play something else lol

Feeb wrote:

Yeah, new DLC trophy for it. Xbox however it is baked into the normal chievos. And there is no save scumming. You get one save file. You can save when ever you want. But you can not load the save except from the main screen. Once inside the save it wont let you make a save, fail something and then load that save file. And when you die its an honor wipe. It doesn't delete the save like typical iron man. But it drops it to custom difficulty. So you have to restart to get the trophy.

Archer wrote:

Oh hard pass then lol. That sounds even more brutal than I expected.

A customer made my day today, he bought our joke canvas print of Astarion at work for his daughter. Now we’ll put out another!

Honor mode done. Now to detox from this game for the next three weeks as I hop a plane tomorrow to fly back home for the holidays. I'm probably going to have withdraws.

So I'm guessing your mode ended without beating it? I'd like to try it but I imagine I'd die pretty quickly. I am not great at min/maxing. Though I've heard Halfling Wizard is the way to go since they can't roll 1s.

No, I finished it. Used a few cheese tactics along the way but got it done. Barrlemancied the act 2 boss. And invis and globe of invuln for the final boss.

And for it I used a halfling for that exact reason. But I went bard/rogue/ranger for all the extra sneak/advantage attacks.

Nice

Hotfix today that fixes companions being stuck that can't follow you after jumping.
I have so much stuff to do before Christmas but...

image

Always one butt-hole that refuses to jump.

Always!

Bought this for one of my nieces the other night. Haven't really seen her since. She's just been in her room playing every second she can. Her parents are pissed at me. She has never played an RPG before. I think this is a pretty good first one to play.

Gdamnit, I've been slowly working on my backlog and forgot about wanting to get back to BG3 ... gah, need to dive in! 8 hours played and still not out of the opening area after multiple rebuilds and analysis paralysis.

@Archer gdamnit that video was awesome ... also have to get back to Sunny! Restarted it with my wife, she's never seen, I think we're on S4.

I’ve not been able to play for weeks due to work and kids. But there’s so much left I want to do.

There is still a lot in Act 3 I haven't seen. But I had to call it quits for now. I'll come back later. So what did I end up playing instead. DoS2. This is my fourth playthrough of it. I'm also hoping the thing Larian "teased" earlier in the week about finishing a story outline for a first act in an upcoming project turns out to be DoS3.

MrBean wrote:

Because of the implication.

Archer wrote:

Haha, the amount of times we've quoted that, will always be a classic.

Whats really cool replaying DoS2. Is even though this is like my fifth playthrough of DoS2, and this game came out first. I keep coming across random NPCs and saying, hey that is Shadowheart (Jennifer English), or that is Minthara (Emma Gregory). Its crazy how many random NPCs those two alone voiced in DoS2. And the narrator (Amelia Tyler) is Malady (important NPC). Lae'Zel (Devora Wilde) has a few as well. And Mizora (Tamaryn Payne) is Lohse (origin companion). Hell, even Jaheira (Tracey Wiles) has a few random NPCs. So far the only male voice actor that I've recognized is Raphael (Andrew Wincott). He does random NPCs as well.

The only ones that I recognized immediately when playing BG3 for the first time was Amelia Tyler. Her voice is unique. Hard to mistake her for anyone else. As soon as she spoke I was like, nice Malady is our DM for this game.

Mods are coming to console for BG3 later this year.

image

Nice!

Archer wrote:

This is the craziest build/idea I've seen someone do. This game is amazing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqKJtLdUe04

I am on my sixth playthrough and I can't stop. Still finding new crap. New dialogue has been added and new spells. I don't know how I'll ever play anything else.

@sinnie how many hours do you have in the game now?

Archer wrote:

According to Steam, 510. Which surprises me because it sits idle a lot of the time. I have to get up and run after children/run my business so like yesterday my party was just chilling in camp for like 4 hours straight. So I find it hard to believe it's only that and wonder if it knows I'm idle or not.

I do know my first playthrough was around 80 hours so maybe it does have a way of knowing.
My other playthroughs aren't complete like my first. I have 3-4 durge campaigns (redemption and not) and I'm curious about all the endings but haven't quite finished except for the good guy (selfish) one. IYKYK