Baldur's Gate 3: Quicksave is my favourite spell

[IlyaP]

13 minutes ago, Poobah said:

Genuinely what prison scene? My party was never jailed.

Wyrm's Rock Prison. You get arrested when arriving in Baldur's Gate if you can't meet certain criteria. What they might be, frell if I know. 

13 minutes ago, Poobah said:

Also I say this with understanding that it is not at all the best or most intuitive system but I still feel like you must have made it excessively hard to equip your gear if it took that long and are thus getting an even worse impression of it than is maybe justified.

When you're in the prison, you get stripped of your gear, and when you pick it up, it's all placed on one person, and if they're over-encumbered, that means they can't move, so the player must go through the process of moving things around to then free up enough weight to be able to travel to outside the jail and thus go to the camp and then dump everything into the main party chest - which means moving between each member of your camp one at a time. 

It's just goddamn tedious administrative work and at this point, as much as I love Larian's games, they are emphatically not for me, and that's a *me* issue, and what my preferences are, and has nothing to do with them.

 

13 minutes ago, Poobah said:

Are you on console?

PC.

13 minutes ago, Poobah said:

I imagine it may be harder there. On PC I would just click on the gear slot and then it shows me all the items I could equip from anyone's inventory in my party, or hit tab and then drag the items from my character to their equipment slots, and for quickly moving large numbers of items. You can shift click to select a range or ctrl click to individually select multiple items, as in Windows. 

Yes, I am aware of all this. But when you've got to re-equip your entire party, including everyone in your camp, and when the game decides to crash on you mid-way through, and when Act 3 is already visually frustrating because the camera is *awful* at dealing with indoor spaces...

No. Life's too short.

[Heartofice]

1 hour ago, IlyaP said:

I...what? You can't! The game, as far as I know, doesn't let you!

You end up in Wyrm's Whatever, and somehow (SOMEHOW) in your *armor* but sans weapons. 

AND WITH ALL YOUR SPELLS.

Because who cares about logic or reason, right?! 

Pretty sure you can, I can't remember how I did it, the conversation once you get to Wyrm's gate with the robot sent me to prison a few times, and I hated it so I googled. Went back and there was a way to do the discussion that means you don't need to do it.

[Kalbear]

So one thing to do is that you don't have to go to camp to put stuff in the chest - you can send to camp as an option on any item, ever. Don't get me wrong, their inventory is horrible - but that might help out some.

As to prison, there are a lot of ways to avoid it, including some conversations right there that you can do. Might not be obvious. 

[Underfoot]

I didn't go to prison. There's some quest you can do (the murder mystery one? The explosive toys one?) where you can get a letter saying you're good to cross. There are probably other ways, eg sneaking or arcane gate or something. 

I did sneak into the prison and ended up freeing someone, that's the only way I interacted with it. 

[Kalbear]

Yeah, there are a bunch of ways to avoid prison:

Spoiler

There are at least two ways to get a pass that lets you into the city - via the murder investigation or by the toy investigation of the dude kicking refugees out. 

You can also fight the things. They're hard, but you can do it.

If you saved the iron gnomes in act 1 they'll distract the steel watch and you can get through.

Or (my favorite) you fucking ignore the big-ass bridge and just misty step/fly across, because fuck the police

 

[Corvinus85]

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

Yeah, there are a bunch of ways to avoid prison:

  Hide contents

There are at least two ways to get a pass that lets you into the city - via the murder investigation or by the toy investigation of the dude kicking refugees out. 

You can also fight the things. They're hard, but you can do it.

If you saved the iron gnomes in act 1 they'll distract the steel watch and you can get through.

Or (my favorite) you fucking ignore the big-ass bridge and just misty step/fly across, because fuck the police

 

The iron gnome way was how I got passed them.

[IlyaP]

6 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Yeah, there are a bunch of ways to avoid prison:

When I emerged into the city after leaving Act 2, seemingly none of the dialogue options I tried could get me out of having to surrender everything and go to prison, according to the views of the guards at the castle door in Rivington. 

So having to go to jail and then reequip everyone, which is slow and tedious, because my player character gets overburdened is just So. Tedious. And to then have the game crash after I've spent nearly an hour on this (because Act 3 still has bugs) was the point at which my patience finally ran out. 

[Werthead]

Overburdening is a pain in the arse, but easily solved by just being more ruthless with the "send to camp" button.

Getting across the bridge without getting arrested, IIRC, was pretty straightforward.

Spoiler

There's a whole bunch of ledges under the bridge, send your best jumper down there and you can jump onto the bridge's superstructure and then make your way up on the street. Send that person along the bridge to activate the waypoint then fast-travel everyone there. You can also use the various teleportation/misty step options.

 

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

Has anyone successfully managed to kill the githyanki patrol in Act 1 in the wilderness area where we first meet them ? Or does everyone just save spam on persuade until it works ? Cause those fuckers whipped my ass in a single turn each time I tried to fight them. The difficulty spike suddenly shot up against them. I’m playing on balanced and thought the game was rather easy until I met them lol

 

20 hours in and I’ve yet to reach the goblin camp but so far loving this game. My only complaint is that it’s a bit too combat focused. Yes there are some enemies you can persuade, but by and large it’s hack and slash your way to victory, which does create tonal dissonance with some characters like shadow heart who clearly prefer being pacifists (why is she still with a mass murderer like me?) I’m playing as a DU paladin so hearing alvira sing made what happened later even more bittersweet ( although for some reason I didn’t become an oathbreaker) I’m mainly playing for the story and character relationships and I’m a noob at combat so I hope I can be more of a pacifist going ahead..

 

Also there are some companion characters I just don’t like using for combat like Astarion ,Gale and Wyll but I still want to see their story outcome. So will my relationship with these characters still progress even if they aren’t in my active party roster and are just sitting in the camp ? I mostly use Karlach, Shart,Lazael. Game really should’ve allowed us 6 characters…

Edited February 8 by Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II

[IlyaP]

1 hour ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Has anyone successfully managed to kill the githyanki patrol in Act 1 in the wilderness area where we first meet them ? Or does everyone just save spam on persuade until it works ? Cause those fuckers whipped my ass in a single turn each time I tried to fight them. The difficulty spike suddenly shot up against them. I’m playing on balanced and thought the game was rather easy until I met them lol

They're an annoying fight. Keep Lae'zel with you, as they're not a one-off group, and if kept alive will have a part to play in the game's storyline.

Of Lae'zel's with you and you defer to her judgement and let her speak on your behalf, you can avoid a wasteful and overly-long fight.

1 hour ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

20 hours in and I’ve yet to reach the goblin camp but so far loving this game. My only complaint is that it’s a bit too combat focused. Yes there are some enemies you can persuade, but by and large it’s hack and slash your way to victory, which does create tonal dissonance with some characters like shadow heart who clearly prefer being pacifists (why is she still with a mass murderer like me?) I’m playing as a DU paladin so hearing alvira sing made what happened later even more bittersweet ( although for some reason I didn’t become an oathbreaker) I’m mainly playing for the story and character relationships and I’m a noob at combat so I hope I can be more of a pacifist going ahead..

Players can *theoretically* do a pacifist run, but the game really isn't designed for it. The "tactical" combat is part of the game's design, unfortunately.

1 hour ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Also there are some companion characters I just don’t like using for combat like Astarion ,Gale and Wyll but I still want to see their story outcome. So will my relationship with these characters still progress even if they aren’t in my active party roster and are just sitting in the camp ? I mostly use Karlach, Shart,Lazael. Game really should’ve allowed us 6 characters…

Yes, stories do progress even if you leave party members in your camp and don't include them as active members in your journeys.

My recommendation would be to install the Party Limit Begone mod, which also means you don't have to do multiple replays to get everyone's story, and can instead get it all done in one play-through. Theoretically. I haven't tried recruiting Minthara, because life's too short. It also makes the game's combat a little less tedious and gets things over and done with more quickly, so you can get back to the actual story at hand. 

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

Thanks for all the answers @IlyaP I’ve heard of that mod but I’ve also heard it creates bugs in certain character quests where a temporary npc joins your party for a specific task so that’s why I want to avoid all mods, especially on my first playthrough. I’m already having problems with companion pathfinding (Shart being the worst offender who simply can’t keep up and keeps getting lost) in the vanilla game alone. I’ve also heard that mods can disable steam achievements which again for my first playthrough I wanna keep active. The game is mostly a polished experience so far but I have encountered a few bugs and glitches in quests which required me to reload like certain dialogue not triggering. Other than a single crash at the start, the experience has been smooth on DX11 with great frame rates on an rtx 3080 all maxed out with dlss, although I’ve heard from everyone that Act 3 is a much worse experience….

Edited February 8 by Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II

[IlyaP]

5 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Thanks for all the answers @IlyaP I’ve heard of that mod but I’ve also heard it creates bugs in certain character quests where a temporary npc joins your party for a specific task so that’s why I want to avoid all mods, especially on my first playthrough.

If there are bugs, I've not encountered a single one. 

It also means that you get some more diverse and increased amount of banter. And I've been playing the game since it was released, albeit in fits and starts, while I waited for the game to get patched.

5 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

I’m already having problems with companion pathfinding (Shart being the worst offender who simply can’t keep up and keeps getting lost) in the vanilla game alone.

That, I confess, is one I've not encountered. Haven't had any pathfinding issues so far. 

5 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

I’ve also heard that mods can disable steam achievements which again for my first playthrough I wanna keep active.

The mod does disable Steam achievements, correct, but I don't care about achievements, and view them as artificial nonsense and so much noise and pointless social status symbols. 

(Ask me how I *really* feel! )

5 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

The game is mostly a polished experience so far but I have encountered a few bugs and glitches in quests which required me to reload like certain dialogue not triggering.

Where have you encountered bugs? 

If you say Act 2, I won't be surprised. Act 1 is mostly *fairly* clean, but Act 2 has the occasional odd bit of weirdness, and Act 3, well, I'm not yet convinced it's as optimised as it could be...

5 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Other than a single crash at the start, the experience has been smooth on DX11 with great frame rates on an rtx 3080 all maxed out with dlss, although I’ve heard from everyone that Act 3 is a much worse experience….

Act 3's bugs/problems seem to be dependent on one's machine configuration, from what I've observed. I've had some graphical oddities that are...comical in a "Roach goes flying as Geralt stares in confusion" level of peculiar, but nothing Earth-shattering or game-breaking. 

Whereas other people have reported issues of falling through the world map, lock-ups, etc. I've had the game lock up once while I was in the inventory, which made me...twitch unhappily.

I'm still not a fan of Act 3. And I'm also aware that content is being touched up/restored/optimised even now, and given that DOS2 didn't really feel fully polished until a year after it's release, I'm giving BG3 a few more months. And hoping some terribly clever modder finds a way to improve Larian's atrocious fucking gear storage system and UI.  

[Poobah]

8 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Has anyone successfully managed to kill the githyanki patrol in Act 1 in the wilderness area where we first meet them ? Or does everyone just save spam on persuade until it works ? Cause those fuckers whipped my ass in a single turn each time I tried to fight them. The difficulty spike suddenly shot up against them. I’m playing on balanced and thought the game was rather easy until I met them lol

Their certainly killable but it does depend a lot on when you fight then and how tactically you approach it. If your party is also level 5 it's a lot easier, though using the high ground tactically and/or strong build they certainly can be breath earlier. Their main issue is their sheer damage per round output from all their attacks so stuff that can keep them from engaging your party, especial at range, is also very useful (darkness, fog cloud) or potentially to kite them while you blast from range (the same but also spike growth, hunger of hadar and similar). If you want to kite you'll have to bait out some of their misty steps though and longstrider which is generally an incredible spell is especial handy. I also favour baiting then up on to them high ground so I can knock them down. 

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

@IlyaP the game breaking bugs I faced was when a cutscene would trigger and couple of dialogue options would pop up and anytime I tried to choose any one of them it would say ‘option not valid’ in red text and force me to reload the game to trigger the cutscene and dialogue again (at which point it’ll work fine). Visually, at the camp I have this weird white box that keeps flickering on the screen near where Karlach stays. And yeah the pathfinding with companions sometimes screws up where they refuse to follow me or get stuck (usually have this issue in dungeons) there was this annoying house on fire quest where all my companions kept stepping into the fire and dying  when we had to rescue someone stuck there, so they aren’t too bright either.  

As I said though,nothing too bad, it’s mostly a polished experience so far. 

I don’t generally care about achievements either but because this game has ones based on certain choices /tactics I feel they are more unique.

I read about the problems with that mod on Reddit forums (no first hand experience ) and although I’m not a CRPG combat pro, I still don’t want cheat with 6 characters(still playing on balanced mode) the most I’m okay with is looking up online guides on how to deal with tougher situations.

@Poobah Makes sense, I didn’t have time to prepare for the fight so couldn’t make use of the verticality. I used the exploding tanks trick to kill the demonic commander during the first ship part of the game to get the Everburn blade, so I’m always happy to try out various tactics. Hopefully the next time I meet them I can use this…Already persuaded them to fuck off for now.

Edited February 8 by Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II

[IlyaP]

45 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

I read about the problems with that mod on Reddit forums (no first hand experience ) and although I’m not a CRPG combat pro, I still don’t want cheat with 6 characters(still playing on balanced mode) the most I’m okay with is looking up online guides on how to deal with tougher situations.

it's not really cheating, as Sven, if not others at Larian, have publicly said "play the game your way - there's no wrong way to play the game". 

And given how the game occasionally has a large number of opponents that it throws at you, I consider having an extra party member or two to just be evening out the odds. And it also means that as a player, you get to be a bit more involved in combat than you otherwise might have been, which can be a nice dopamine boost during battles with lots of critters.

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

3 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

it's not really cheating, as Sven, if not others at Larian, have publicly said "play the game your way - there's no wrong way to play the game". 

And given how the game occasionally has a large number of opponents that it throws at you, I consider having an extra party member or two to just be evening out the odds. And it also means that as a player, you get to be a bit more involved in combat than you otherwise might have been, which can be a nice dopamine boost during battles with lots of critters.

Fair enough, if the combat gets too frustrating ill certainly try it out, or lower the difficulty. Kudos to the peeps who are playing this game on Honor difficulty ! Also bare in mind im coming to this game after playing CP2077, RDR2 and Witcher 3 next gen recently, all 3 games are fucking notoriously easy. So the problem could be with me and i might just need to practice it out. There's a reason i avoid games like Dark Souls, Elden Ring etc 

Edited February 8 by Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II

[IlyaP]

52 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

The game breaking bugs I faced was when a cutscene would trigger and couple of dialogue options would pop up and anytime I tried to choose any one of them it would say ‘option not valid’ in red text and force me to reload the game to trigger the cutscene and dialogue again (at which point it’ll work fine). Visually, at the camp I have this weird white box that keeps flickering on the screen near where Karlach stays. And yeah the pathfinding with companions sometimes screws up where they refuse to follow me or get stuck (usually have this issue in dungeons) there was this annoying house on fire quest where all my companions kept stepping into the fire and dying  when we had to rescue someone stuck there, so they aren’t too bright either.  

As I said though, nothing too bad, it’s mostly a polished experience so far. 

What the hell. 

After 80+ hours, I've not experienced any bugs like that at all. @Werthead you ever encounter anything like this? Seriously perplexed, especially as I'm running this on a GTX 1060 6GB and  i7-8700. Like, if anyone should be having problems, it's me, with my slightly older system specs...

[IlyaP]

1 minute ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Fair enough, if the combat gets too frustrating ill certainly try it out, or lower the difficulty. Kudos to the peeps who are playing this game on Honor difficulty !

Or playing them as cats, because...what the actual fuck.

https://www.pcgamer.com/baldurs-gate-3-player-completes-the-game-while-playing-as-a-party-of-cats/

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

4 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

What the hell. 

After 80+ hours, I've not experienced any bugs like that at all. @Werthead you ever encounter anything like this? Seriously perplexed, especially as I'm running this on a GTX 1060 6GB and  i7-8700. Like, if anyone should be having problems, it's me, with my slightly older system specs...

I'm also apparently the only guy who got that shit bug in CP2077 where the Adam Smasher Boss Fight would crash after exactly 3-5 mins into it, no matter what, because of which i was forced to finish that fight on easy mode to avoid the crash And the rest of my CP2077 experience was great! ive just been cursed with some game breaking bugs lately. I rarely get framerate drops though so atleast the card and CPU work fine. 

[IlyaP]

1 minute ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

I'm also apparently the only guy who got that shit bug in CP2077 where the Adam Smasher Boss Fight would crash after exactly 3-5 mins into it, no matter what, because of which i was forced to finish that fight on easy mode to avoid the crash And the rest of my CP2077 experience was great! ive just been cursed with some game breaking bugs lately. I rarely get framerate drops though so atleast the card and CPU work fine. 

Having played CP77 for over 400 hours and multiple playthroughs, that too is a bug I've not experienced. And I've been playing it since *day one*. And except when I was experimenting with some mods, the game was always stable, and has, unmodded, crashed on me about 6 times in total, at last count. 

Perplexing.