If I knew how to analyse what I don't like about the end I'd be a world acclaimed professional game designer
Since I'm not, I just complain.
Baldur's Gate 3
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If I knew how to analyse what I don't like about the end I'd be a world acclaimed professional game designer
Since I'm not, I just complain.
I would if they wouldn't cover me in darkness so I can't cast ranged spells farther than my fingertips. While they shoot the daylight casting characters with impunity until their concentration breaks. You find it a challenge I find it boring.
Oh by the way, why doesn't the permanent light from Lathander's mace cancel the darkness around it? Did they code a specific exception so it doesn't work in this fight?
Karlach respecced to some minmax multiclass build that has 8 attacks per turn right?
The fights you are complaining about were some of the most fun I had in the game.
The viconia fight was the only one I had to give up on, go do other quests and try again later with a different party. I was playing on tactician difficulty, even the sub only took 3 attempts to save everyone/loot everything.
Mobility was always the key to my party though. Being able to move around the battlefield is a big advantage.
For my first playthrough, I set a rule of no save-scumming outside of combat. Just let the dice and dialogue take me where they wanted me to go.
Terrible mistakes were made and I had the best time. No tiefling escaped unharmed.
Terrible mistakes were made and I had the best time. No tiefling escaped unharmed.
If god didn't intend me to savescum, he wouldn't have given my keyboard an F5 and F8 button.
So I cheesed the ambush before the temple of Baal:
I summoned an elemental and had it fly to the delayed finger of death dude, then beat him up until he ran away and stopped casting. All my characters were patiently waiting outside the finger of death range, except a few turns where I AOEed down the invisible archers. The finger of death dude was nice enough to walk to me and get bludgeoned to death outside the danger range.
Do I feel like I won? No, I feel like I cheated.
It was a really frustrating fight, but as you say, the game lets you back out and come back later.
Part of the fun of BG3 is how fights vary greatly. They’re never just a bunch of hitpoints you need to whittle down, the game throws a lot of different stuff at you; odd terrain, environmental effects, annoying spell combos, legendary actions etc.
The design of the party system with a camp where you can go pickup companions (instead of in earlier games where dismissed companions scattered, so good luck remembering where any one might be), also seems to clearly encourage mixing up and experimenting with your party composition. Together with cheap respecs for all characters, you have a LOT of tools to tackle difficult encounters, which makes it much less frustrating to me than games where you just might not be good enough at the game to stay alive in a boss fight and end up endlessly dying.
technophile
Ars Legatus Legionis
If you're beating your head against a fight that feels unwinnable, the game gives you lots of options to do things differently. Some of those might be foreclosed by options you've taken or missed but if you can't win a head on fight, not choosing to fight head on isn't "cheating".
IIRC I found that battle mildly frustrating just because the enemy has so much mobility, but every single person in my party also had some way to cast either Misty Step or Dimension Door, so it wasn't that hard to keep up with them.
Using summons isn't cheating; it gives you a massive jump in action economy, especially when you start using the upgraded elementals that all have innate teleport abilities. I started a lot of fights in the end game by having two melee specialists (usually my Paladin and Lae'zel, sometimes Shadowheart if I wanted to get the Radiant Lawnmower of Doom going early) Misty Step on top of the most dangerous caster and just Haste whale on them for a round. Extra tough enemies would get a couple of summoned elementals coming along for the ride, especially the water one (who has a Freeze attack).
I guess if you really prefer the straight up "stand next to your enemy and see who falls down first" type fights that feels cheesy, but I imagine the more straightforward unavoidable fights also feel irritating to people who prefer nonviolent or assassination type solutions. /shrug
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Act 3 End of Dark Urge and Astarion questlines:
In the coop game with my husband, he is playing Dark Urge and he hasn't beaten the game before. He just finished rejecting Bhaal, and now he's off to ascend Astarion next time we play. I cannot wait to see how that plays out; I've only Ascended Astarion on my murderhobo run.
I haven't followed this thread in a while, but I am confused by the difficulty complaints. If I had any difficulty criticisms, I would say the game is too easy. In my honour mode run we (I always played coop with a specific person) one-rounded the last boss for example. None of the complained about fights were what I would call difficult.
That said, our hardest playthrough was our first one on balanced. After we'd seen it all once (and more importantly seen the items available) our tactician and honour mode runs were trivial. I think the house of grief fight we did end up doing twice that run to win, but nothing like what is reported here. Are people putting any thought into their characters or items or are they just using random stuff without paying any attention to potential synergies, etc? Going back to my honor mode character, its standard just plain old weapon swing damage per round (only two attacks) expending no resources at all was over 100 damage per round. Using resources put it through the roof, and that was a control character more than a damage character. My tactician monk/thief was doing well over 100 damage a round as well without using resources, and with resources did far, far more.
If it's too hard for you, drop it down to min difficulty, but the game if anything is too easy, not too hard. Larian put in way too many overpowered magic items, ignored attunement rules, and ended up with a game where optimized characters just roflstomp the whole game.
That said, our hardest playthrough was our first one on balanced. After we'd seen it all once (and more importantly seen the items available) our tactician and honour mode runs were trivial. I think the house of grief fight we did end up doing twice that run to win, but nothing like what is reported here. Are people putting any thought into their characters or items or are they just using random stuff without paying any attention to potential synergies, etc? Going back to my honor mode character, its standard just plain old weapon swing damage per round (only two attacks) expending no resources at all was over 100 damage per round. Using resources put it through the roof, and that was a control character more than a damage character. My tactician monk/thief was doing well over 100 damage a round as well without using resources, and with resources did far, far more.
If it's too hard for you, drop it down to min difficulty, but the game if anything is too easy, not too hard. Larian put in way too many overpowered magic items, ignored attunement rules, and ended up with a game where optimized characters just roflstomp the whole game.
I think it's because you play pen and paper AD&D. Looks like BG3's most vocal supporters are in that category.
Personally I just play story heavy CRPGs and D&D is just another system to minimally figure out until things work. And... multiple playthroughs? When the Elden Ring expansion is coming in 18 days? And ... my backlog? No, not going to happen. I'll get to see the end and move on. (Incidentally, BG3 is good enough even for me that I've skipped the backlog and played it almost to completion when I was gifted it for my birthday.)
Speaking of minmaxing, I've started cheesing the game by using a camp hireling to ward everyone before venturing forth. Dropped the difficulty down like two notches. Was much faster than respeccing the barbarian to have 8 attacks per turn without consumables
Also, since I'm confessing to my sins, I've save scummed every single storyline dice roll to make the story go my way.And speaking of D&D, the best AD&D crpg is still Planescape: Torment for me. The most story heavy one and the least Tolkienesque. Also - i think - the one that deviated most from the pen and paper rules in that golden era.
Edit: that's it. Did the Cazador fight and uninstalled the game. So you free Astarion at the beginning... then the boss beats on him until he's unconscious and ... sends him back to his spot. No problem, you think. Dash and free him again. Except the platform is full of stinking clouds and you don't get any actions to free him.
Apparently my impression from all those glowing reviews was right. They all praised the D&D implementation but there was little explicit praise for the actual game, the story or stuff like that. Which is why I didn't buy it myself, but someone decided to gift it to me. The first 85% of the game was just fine(tm). But the last 15% isn't for me. And the reason I'm whining so much is ... i feel betrayed.
I'll replay a soulsborne - the difficulty there is much more fair
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Baldur's Gate 3 - Community Update #27 Official Modding Support - Steam News
Hey everyone, We come bringing news of Patch 7! Finally, we hear you say - but don’t get ready to throw yourself into our next patch just yet, we’ve got a lot of work to do to bring you our first iteration of modding tools, evil endings, plus a whole bunch of fixes, quality of life improvements...
technophile
Ars Legatus Legionis
I have yet to install a single mod (I didn't want to deal with upgrade incompatibilities) so I am really excited to see what they enable especially if it means most mods can either auto-update or be version-independent. It might be a total longshot but if people can create whole new campaigns that would be amazing given the capabilities in the game already.
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I've been debating another runthrough for a while now, but I can 100% wait for all this before returning to BG3.Baldur's Gate 3 - Community Update #27 Official Modding Support - Steam News
Hey everyone, We come bringing news of Patch 7! Finally, we hear you say - but don’t get ready to throw yourself into our next patch just yet, we’ve got a lot of work to do to bring you our first iteration of modding tools, evil endings, plus a whole bunch of fixes, quality of life improvements...store.steampowered.com
I started playing with some mods via NexusMods for my current evil-not-durge play through. I gave everyone Misty Step for the first half of the game before you can get the Illithid Fly ability, which sped things along a bit and also allowed for some interesting new strategies, and setup some fast leveling to make the earlier game fly by. Now I'm in Act 3, things are still difficult enough that I don't feel I've 'over cheated' the game.
For the first few hours I kept wondering if I should go back and re-roll as a dark urge, but my wife and I have a co-op game where I have the dark urge character, so I'm just playing a regular agent of chaos. It's been fun, and I've had some unexpected events compared to my first 'good' play through.
I was all-in on letting Shadowheart kill Dame Aylin, but left to her own devices she decides not to. So I re-loaded and this time told Balthazar he could just get on with taking Aylin to Moonrise, expecting one of my party to step in and prevent it ... but he just upped and left, and Shadowheart rage quit my party xD
For the first few hours I kept wondering if I should go back and re-roll as a dark urge, but my wife and I have a co-op game where I have the dark urge character, so I'm just playing a regular agent of chaos. It's been fun, and I've had some unexpected events compared to my first 'good' play through.
I was all-in on letting Shadowheart kill Dame Aylin, but left to her own devices she decides not to. So I re-loaded and this time told Balthazar he could just get on with taking Aylin to Moonrise, expecting one of my party to step in and prevent it ... but he just upped and left, and Shadowheart rage quit my party xD
technophile
Ars Legatus Legionis
Looks like they've already confirmed on Reddit that neither console nor PC official modding tools will allow adding new quests or new maps/levels. Not to say it won't ultimately be possible, but it would be strictly a PC thing and strictly using unofficial tools (not an expert, but I guess you'd need something akin to the Skyrim/Fallout Script Extenders, among other very complex tools).
the game is very complex. the scripting too involved.
the linked announcement talks about limitations on scripting. they are pretty careful in their language letting people know that while there will be official mod support, this will necessitate limitations on what they can support.
unofficial mods can still exist, and you can package them using their tools, but they will not receive official support.
and that makes sense.
the linked announcement talks about limitations on scripting. they are pretty careful in their language letting people know that while there will be official mod support, this will necessitate limitations on what they can support.
unofficial mods can still exist, and you can package them using their tools, but they will not receive official support.
and that makes sense.
technophile
Ars Legatus Legionis
Doing it to reproduce the voices of existing characters/companions would be super sketchy and I wouldn't support it, but for new characters LLMs are getting shockingly good at convincingly voicing text these days. And of course you could always use volunteer/amateur voice actors.
IIRC both Skyrim and various Fallouts have mods with new voiced characters (or new custom voices for existing characters); it's a lot of work but not impossible.
Or you just add unvoiced text; it obviously wouldn't be as immersive (or as accessible) as fully voiced options, but I've seen that done as well.
Yeah, sad as it is to have just a 'one and done' from Larian on this...given how well it was accomplished overall by their team...I'd rather it end that way vs. some janky add-on that diminishes things. Sadly.
I've been avoiding this thread due to spoliers, but I'm mostly done with my first play-through! My party is very bad for inter-party kills. I'm using KArlach as my main character...
I'm sort of feeling like a murder hobo, but this does makes me want to try another playthrough, maybe with Will as the protagonist. having a lead character with persuasion can be really helpful. Of course, I also want to play a bad-guy playthrough. The only issue is I've been playing since November and I need to play something else some time.
The party killed ShadowHeart in Act 2 because there was no way we were going to keep an immortal being imprisoned. We killed Astarian after he went through the ritual. Too much talk about taking over the world...
I'm sort of feeling like a murder hobo, but this does makes me want to try another playthrough, maybe with Will as the protagonist. having a lead character with persuasion can be really helpful. Of course, I also want to play a bad-guy playthrough. The only issue is I've been playing since November and I need to play something else some time.
If you only play one more run, definitely make it a Dark Urge run. It really feels sometimes like the game was written for that character to be the main character all along, but they chickened out and gave us the option for the generic Tav for people who want custom characters without any Urges.
Speaking of which, is there any reason to replay the game with one of the party members as the player character?
Generic then Dark Urge makes for the two obvious playthroughs - how about playing as Shadowheart or Gale or whomever? My initial gut reaction is that playing as a party member would be weird, but have others enjoyed it? Do they have any new content as the player?
Generic then Dark Urge makes for the two obvious playthroughs - how about playing as Shadowheart or Gale or whomever? My initial gut reaction is that playing as a party member would be weird, but have others enjoyed it? Do they have any new content as the player?
My honor mode run was as Karlach, and that was pretty fun. The Paladins of Tyr and the first meeting with Wyll feel fairly different when in first person. Also while most of their dialogue isn't voice acted in first person, Karlach's emotional scenes dealing with the unfairness of her situation became voiced internal monologues and that was good. Plus Karlach and Wyll romance. Overall, probably 97% of the game plays out exactly the same but the 3% is neat.
I also started a Gale run. I didn't make it all that far in, but I'll say if you're a fan of his posh catbird friend Tara (and how could you not be), then playing as Gale is probably gonna be a good time for you.
Supposedly Astarion as the main character has more emotional impact in act 3 when it's your choice what to do with the ascension and all that. I bet Shadowheart would go pretty differently too.
I also started a Gale run. I didn't make it all that far in, but I'll say if you're a fan of his posh catbird friend Tara (and how could you not be), then playing as Gale is probably gonna be a good time for you.
Supposedly Astarion as the main character has more emotional impact in act 3 when it's your choice what to do with the ascension and all that. I bet Shadowheart would go pretty differently too.
I imagine I would make very different choices when instead of "One of your party members want to become a super-vampire", it's "You get the change of becoming a super-vampire".
It's easy to see why it's a really bad idea when Astarion wants to do it (and you aren't playing an evil character), but you're conditioned in games to follow the path that lets you get to the "end-game". Ascension would definitely feel like something you do to get there.
I played a Dark Urge sorcerer and it was fun to take care of annoying companions like Astarion and Gale instead of coddling them. The high CHA stat let me explain why there were red puddles around the camp. I shouldn't spill my tomato juice. Warlock would probably work better because some of the nicest gear for sorcs disappears along with the people who would provide it.
Yes. This is known as playing an origin character. There are some special abilities sprinkled in you don't see otherwise.
Gale can get ADV to CON checks and also an extra L3 spell slot.
There are some others, but I can't find one good article summarizing all.
Halsin gets a free shape change and some free spells early.
There are others.
technophile
Ars Legatus Legionis
Every origin character also has a unique intro cinematic (the first time you take a long rest) that gives more detail on their backstory/history.
Shadowheart gets unique dialogs with Shar I think? Wyll gets a few additional conversations with some of the ruling class from Baldur's Gate (the Flaming Fist captain you rescue from the burning manor in Act 1, for example). Gale has some additional interactions with Tara and Mystra.
The difference is mostly pretty marginal, if you love the game and want to see it from a slightly different perspective/take different choices it's worth trying a different character (I played Wyll for my second playthrough and enjoyed it), but I would say Dark Urge and custom Tav are the two playthroughs I would recommend everyone play (Durge obviously gives you the most information about what's going on, but custom Tav lets you focus on all the companions' stories).
Shadowheart gets unique dialogs with Shar I think? Wyll gets a few additional conversations with some of the ruling class from Baldur's Gate (the Flaming Fist captain you rescue from the burning manor in Act 1, for example). Gale has some additional interactions with Tara and Mystra.
The difference is mostly pretty marginal, if you love the game and want to see it from a slightly different perspective/take different choices it's worth trying a different character (I played Wyll for my second playthrough and enjoyed it), but I would say Dark Urge and custom Tav are the two playthroughs I would recommend everyone play (Durge obviously gives you the most information about what's going on, but custom Tav lets you focus on all the companions' stories).
I'd really suggest only playing as an Origin (not Tav or Dark Urge) if you are playing coop with someone. If you've got two Tavs running around, that only leaves two slots in the party for people with personal quests. If you have four Tavs, you literally cannot do most personal quests.
I recommend Tav or Dark Urge for a first (or second) playthru and then possibly Origins to mix things up a little on subsequent playthrus. I am currently playing a game as Karlach coop with a Dark Urge.
Remember that you can respec freely but it doesn't change their story so you can make Origin/Wyll a Paladin but the cutscenes will still treat him as a Warlock.
Also Wyll x Karlach is pretty high up there in romance, second only to Dark Urge x Astarion. Playing as an Origin lets you sail that ship, should you care to do so.
I recommend Tav or Dark Urge for a first (or second) playthru and then possibly Origins to mix things up a little on subsequent playthrus. I am currently playing a game as Karlach coop with a Dark Urge.
Remember that you can respec freely but it doesn't change their story so you can make Origin/Wyll a Paladin but the cutscenes will still treat him as a Warlock.
Also Wyll x Karlach is pretty high up there in romance, second only to Dark Urge x Astarion. Playing as an Origin lets you sail that ship, should you care to do so.
I finished my first play through tonight! 16 hours of gameplay and I know I didn’t do everything in the game.
next play (after a break) will include a wizard. My party was pretty melee heavy (Karlach as my main character with Will, Astarian and Halsin. I did have shadowheart until the end of act 2. She and Karlach had a disagreement over the shae ritual.)
next play (after a break) will include a wizard. My party was pretty melee heavy (Karlach as my main character with Will, Astarian and Halsin. I did have shadowheart until the end of act 2. She and Karlach had a disagreement over the shae ritual.)
16 hours? Were you going for a speedrun!?
I play games fast(ish) and advanced dialogue quickly because I'm a fast reader and I still do that amount of time per act!
I play games fast(ish) and advanced dialogue quickly because I'm a fast reader and I still do that amount of time per act!
Oops, I lost a digit. Make it 168
i am near the end of act II and i realized i had forgotten an item in act i. there is a ring on a skeleton under a bush below and to the east of the broken bridge. it gives +2 sleight of hand... and stealth I think. it's the sleight of hand i really wanted. whenever i tried to go back to act i, halsin would disappear... a backpack with all his stuff would end up in my inventory.
i tried it again, but this time i travelled on foot instead of using fast travel. same thing happened, but when i hoofed it back and checked camp, (i also received a backpack of minthara's items) he (and minthara) was still there. whew!
it's annoying to me that disguise self and shapeshifter do not prevent vendors from recognizing your character or one of your companions. it's annoying from a been caught stealing standpoint.
i tried it again, but this time i travelled on foot instead of using fast travel. same thing happened, but when i hoofed it back and checked camp, (i also received a backpack of minthara's items) he (and minthara) was still there. whew!
it's annoying to me that disguise self and shapeshifter do not prevent vendors from recognizing your character or one of your companions. it's annoying from a been caught stealing standpoint.
