Baldur's Gate 3: Quicksave is my favourite spell

[HokieStone]

3 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

 I’m not good at finding all these hidden locations and quests either lol. Off to the goblin camp to gather some fire barrels because the guide said there are a lot of them there, just wanna get this part over with, and the barrels seems like the easiest way to do it…

I'm towards the end of Act II (at least I think it's near the end), and I've never used a single fire barrel intentionally.  I'll repeat what a few people have said...it seems like you have 3 tanks in your preferred party - you, Lae'zel and Karlach.  That's a lot of redundancy.  My party is typically me (ranger), Shadowheart, Lae'zel/Karlach, Gale/Wyll.  Lae'zel and Karlach are kind of a tossup for me, but I think Gale is the much better wizard type.  But I throw in Wyll for story purposes.  I was never using Astarion because my character was good enough at picking locks...but I just started bringing him in more, and wow is he so much better at lockpicking.  I just recently got access to the druid (Harsin?), but I haven't found much of a use for him.  

Mostly, I think I do ok in the fights because I'm over-leveled.  I tend to go around and find every little side quest, and do those, so I *think* I'm levelling up faster than anticipated.  I'm level 9 at the end of Act II.  You can also do things ahead of time to make fights easier.  At the end of Act II, there's a big fight in a castle.  Instead of waiting for that big fight to be triggered and fight them all at once, I went around room-to-room and did a bunch of easier little fights (It's amazing that the guards didn't hear me fighting it out with their buddies in the next room over...)  

[Werthead]

Yeah, I think Astarion outlevels the game's need for lockpicking to a degree that is actually insane. I believe that not once in the entire latter half of the game I ever failed to pick a lock with Astarion (with the exception of that DR 99 one in the endgame which is deliberately designed to be a Hail Mary), whilst my main fighter was perfectly competent at picking locks with a small failure rate. With his combat skills being mediocre at best, he became my most easily-subbed character for someone else for story purposes. He only remained a mainstay because his dripping sarcasm and contrary views to the rest of the party were very entertaining.

To be honest, BG3 is not a very hard game even on the tougher difficulty levels. The game is pretty forgiving of you bringing a deliberately badly-optimised party to most situations (see the guys who completed the game with a co-op party of four unarmed halfling barbarians). The two Pathfinder games can grind to an unplayable halt if you do the same thing there.

[Kalbear]

It's especially not that hard depending on how much you want to min-max your characters. If you're comfortable with rerolling you can get some seriously broken things. To be fair a number of those are somewhat required for honor mode but you have a LOT of options. 

I respecced Astarion into the strength-potion monk/rogue build. I'm the dex user, but he could have been if I really wanted him to. He consistently does the funniest stuff day to day so I kept him around. Lae'zel I kept as a straight fighter though she could have done more multiclassing in retrospect. Karlach I went from the barbarian/fighter early on (very similar to Karlach, with Great Weapon Fighting combining nicely with Reckless Attack) to a Barb/Fighter/Rogue build that maximizes throwing one particular trident. Astarion came on after I ended up not needing Gale as much and my spells became more useful. 

My build is a bard/rogue/fighter that focuses on dual hand crossbows and abusing sharpshooter. I occasionally miss having massive crowd damage, but I find that the sheer volume of attacks I can do tends to work itself out, along with harnessing some of the non-class powers that you get. 

19 minutes ago, HokieStone said:

Mostly, I think I do ok in the fights because I'm over-leveled.  I tend to go around and find every little side quest, and do those, so I *think* I'm levelling up faster than anticipated.  I'm level 9 at the end of Act II.  You can also do things ahead of time to make fights easier.  At the end of Act II, there's a big fight in a castle.  Instead of waiting for that big fight to be triggered and fight them all at once, I went around room-to-room and did a bunch of easier little fights (It's amazing that the guards didn't hear me fighting it out with their buddies in the next room over...)  

You can hit level 10 by the end of Act 2, so you're not crazy overleveled. And yeah, going around and not waiting for people to attack your ass is a very good ability and in traditional D&D fashion works great as other people don't hear the absurd huge explosions, screams of rage and random loud spellcasts in the room next to them. Mostly. 

[HokieStone]

I have not respecced anyone or tried any kind of multi-class stuff.  I guess that's what the magic mirror in camp is for?

[FalagarV2]

Astarion's lockpicking is ridiculous, but even with my druid I had few problems with the locks in the late game. The dex gloves helped, of course.

Speaking of Shadowheart earlier, while I've never really understood the attraction of watching other people game, I have recently been sucked into watching the voice actors of BG3 play the game. Most of them are pretty new to the whole thing, which makes for some hilarity - I especially enjoyed the chaotic and meandering stream of Shadowheart's actress who plays together with her girlfriend. Also, the playthrough of Lae'zel's actress goes pretty dark.

Edit: Of course, one should definitely watch the high roller episodes where the whole crew plays table dnd. Excellent stuff.

Edited February 9 by FalagarV2

[IlyaP]

4 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Aand now I’ve been trying to defeat that fucking spider matriarch in the blighted village for the past hour and I keep dying against it…looked up a guide and it recommended the use of fire barrels of 6-8 against it lol. It was the same for the githyanki patrol. And the same for the demon commander in the ship in the prologue. 

Fireballs. Lots of fireballs. I took it out in a few turns without any barrels or anything by just using Gale and Wyll's (and my) fireball spells on it. 

[IlyaP]

52 minutes ago, HokieStone said:

I'm towards the end of Act II (at least I think it's near the end), and I've never used a single fire barrel intentionally.  I'll repeat what a few people have said...it seems like you have 3 tanks in your preferred party - you, Lae'zel and Karlach.  That's a lot of redundancy.  My party is typically me (ranger), Shadowheart, Lae'zel/Karlach, Gale/Wyll.  Lae'zel and Karlach are kind of a tossup for me, but I think Gale is the much better wizard type.  But I throw in Wyll for story purposes.  I was never using Astarion because my character was good enough at picking locks...but I just started bringing him in more, and wow is he so much better at lockpicking.  I just recently got access to the druid (Harsin?), but I haven't found much of a use for him.  

Gale's also got a fairly important character arc and has very useful AoE spells. 

I completely agree here: 3 tanks is too much. 

Get 1 tank to kite and/or take damage, one to two people doing ranged combat, and at least one person does Area of Effect spells. 

As my main was a wizard, this resulted in me and Gale being absolute bastards who destroyed everything at the horizon line from a distance with our fireball spells while Astarion had his smaller fire spells, ranged archery, mist walk to get in close and bite people (which did a surprising amount of damage, I found!), and Shadowheart or Laezel firing off a few rounds at a distance before adding support (Laezel at later levels can do up to 5 attacks in one turn, which makes her ultra impressive in close-quarter combat). 

I've never had to rely on or even bother with exploding barrels or any kind of murder hobory to get by. With the matriarch, a bit of grease to screw up its step, some spells to take out the net bridges, and a fireball shitstorm were enough to take her out quite quickly. Was a very easy fight with spell-casters and ranged fighters with good bows.

52 minutes ago, HokieStone said:

Mostly, I think I do ok in the fights because I'm over-leveled.  I tend to go around and find every little side quest, and do those, so I *think* I'm levelling up faster than anticipated.  I'm level 9 at the end of Act II.  You can also do things ahead of time to make fights easier.  At the end of Act II, there's a big fight in a castle.  Instead of waiting for that big fight to be triggered and fight them all at once, I went around room-to-room and did a bunch of easier little fights (It's amazing that the guards didn't hear me fighting it out with their buddies in the next room over...)  

Ditto on this front. Taking everyone out slowly and tactically means there's less back-up that can be called in later on, making combat slightly less tedious than it already is in turn-based games.

[Poobah]

5 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Balanced , level 4, paladin, Shart,lazael,karlach,have no idea about any cultists, spears and owlbears. I’m not good at finding all these hidden locations and quests either lol. Off to the goblin camp to gather some fire barrels because the guide said there are a lot of them there, just wanna get this part over with, and the barrels seems like the easiest way to do it…

im coming to this game from the Witcher 3 which is a million times easier, even on highest difficulty….

Ok so if you want to stick with this party in roughly this comp with their default classes this is what I'd do:

Ideally come back at level 5 and absolutely shit-stomp everything because all martial characters suddenly have 2 attacks and Shadowheart has level 3 spells. But assuming this isn't an option:

Take Shadowheart to Withers and respec her to a different Cleric domain and fix her stats which are quite suboptimal. She still wants high wisdom but you can put it down to 16 at no loss, and raise her constitution. Depending on which subclass you're going for you may want 14 dex for extra ac and extra initiative or just 10 dex. Depending on your tastes my recommendations for Cleric domains would be either War (can use heavy armour, can consume charges to use a bonus action to make an extra attack in melee, and can turn one of your misses in to a hit by adding +10 as a reaction), Light (can use a reaction to give an enemy disadvantage on attacks, making the miss more and has a decent damaging channel divinity option which synergises well with gear you find later, also gets some decently damaging spells), or Tempest (also gets heavy armour, this is the go to DPS cleric spec because you can make enemies Wet and then use lightning magic on them for double damage, and then use your Tempest Cleric ability to maximise the damage).

If you don't want to respec her all you do is go into her spell book and give her the spells Spiritual Weapon, Aid, Bless, Command, and Healing Word. At the start of every day have her cast Aid on the party to give you more max hp. Before or on the first turn of fights cast Bless on the other party members and Spiritual Weapon with her bonus action on top of an enemy. You could also give her any scrolls you're picking up to cast when she isn't doing other things. You can use Command to control the battle against bosses pretty well - Grovel makes them prone so all your melee attackers get advantage, or Approach and Flee can make the enemy move away from them which gives them Attacks of Opportunity. Healing Word is a bonus action and a great way to pick people up from dead or to top them up if you really feel she has nothing better to do.

Lae'zel depends on what subclass you gave her. If she's a Battle Master just get her in there and spam trip attack until the thing falls over, then use action surge and attack some more. If she's a Champion just attack, and remember your weapon abilities and action surge.

As a Paladin make sure you have checked all the boxes in your reactions tab so you can choose when to use your spell slots to do smites. Depending on what paladin subclass you are you may have abilities to help you in the fight from your oath. In general you just wanna be right up in there smiting, especially smite on a crit. Any ways you can get advantage can be helpful to get more crits, like for instance battle master Lae'zel Tripping the enemy prone or Shadowheart Commanding them.

Barbarian is pretty similar in terms of point at enemy and attack a bunch, tho remember to rage first. Diff subclasses have some different ways of raging and doing stuff, but it sorta amounts to the same thing for now and I don't want to overwhelm you with nuance.

All your melee people want the strongest weapons you can find them. Ideal weapons will have a +1 enchantment to make them hit more frequently and do slightly more damage.

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

17 minutes ago, Poobah said:

Ok so if you want to stick with this party in roughly this comp with their default classes this is what I'd do:

Ideally come back at level 5 and absolutely shit-stomp everything because all martial characters suddenly have 2 attacks and Shadowheart has level 3 spells. But assuming this isn't an option:

Take Shadowheart to Withers and respec her to a different Cleric domain and fix her stats which are quite suboptimal. She still wants high wisdom but you can put it down to 16 at no loss, and raise her constitution. Depending on which subclass you're going for you may want 14 dex for extra ac and extra initiative or just 10 dex. Depending on your tastes my recommendations for Cleric domains would be either War (can use heavy armour, can consume charges to use a bonus action to make an extra attack in melee, and can turn one of your misses in to a hit by adding +10 as a reaction), Light (can use a reaction to give an enemy disadvantage on attacks, making the miss more and has a decent damaging channel divinity option which synergises well with gear you find later, also gets some decently damaging spells), or Tempest (also gets heavy armour, this is the go to DPS cleric spec because you can make enemies Wet and then use lightning magic on them for double damage, and then use your Tempest Cleric ability to maximise the damage).

If you don't want to respec her all you do is go into her spell book and give her the spells Spiritual Weapon, Aid, Bless, Command, and Healing Word. At the start of every day have her cast Aid on the party to give you more max hp. Before or on the first turn of fights cast Bless on the other party members and Spiritual Weapon with her bonus action on top of an enemy. You could also give her any scrolls you're picking up to cast when she isn't doing other things. You can use Command to control the battle against bosses pretty well - Grovel makes them prone so all your melee attackers get advantage, or Approach and Flee can make the enemy move away from them which gives them Attacks of Opportunity. Healing Word is a bonus action and a great way to pick people up from dead or to top them up if you really feel she has nothing better to do.

Lae'zel depends on what subclass you gave her. If she's a Battle Master just get her in there and spam trip attack until the thing falls over, then use action surge and attack some more. If she's a Champion just attack, and remember your weapon abilities and action surge.

As a Paladin make sure you have checked all the boxes in your reactions tab so you can choose when to use your spell slots to do smites. Depending on what paladin subclass you are you may have abilities to help you in the fight from your oath. In general you just wanna be right up in there smiting, especially smite on a crit. Any ways you can get advantage can be helpful to get more crits, like for instance battle master Lae'zel Tripping the enemy prone or Shadowheart Commanding them.

Barbarian is pretty similar in terms of point at enemy and attack a bunch, tho remember to rage first. Diff subclasses have some different ways of raging and doing stuff, but it sorta amounts to the same thing for now and I don't want to overwhelm you with nuance.

All your melee people want the strongest weapons you can find them. Ideal weapons will have a +1 enchantment to make them hit more frequently and do slightly more damage.

Thanks a ton for the tips ! I’ll try respecing Shart to Tempest in that case so I can give her heavy armour and more DPS. Already have the rain making ability so Wet is covered. 
 

Any tips on Gale, Wyl and Astarion ? All three suck at fighting for me which is why I never use them other than story purpose. Gale I especially find irritating cause he keeps dying very easily and he keeps consuming my magic items. I’m tempted to just let him explode. I use his ice spells and lightening spells and magic missles and firebolt but they are all quite weak. The lightening one isnt  even a ranged spell. I don’t have fireball yet. 
 

Btw If I lose the disguise self spell with Shart being respecced, then how to manage alternatively as many parts of the game require it ? 

Edited February 9 by Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II

[Kalbear]

2 hours ago, HokieStone said:

I have not respecced anyone or tried any kind of multi-class stuff.  I guess that's what the magic mirror in camp is for?

It's what Withers is for. If you haven't gotten Withers you should go back to the start of Act1 and get him, but otherwise you'll automatically get him towards the end of Act 1. 

You can multiclass any time you level, though it is SUPER confusing on how to do it. What withers does is allows you to reset almost everything about your character - your stats, your levels - and you can redo anything you want. All for the low price of 100 gold. 

You can also hire hirelings from him - which are not able to be respecced but can be multiclassed, and allow you to do some nice things with camp casting. Having a transmutation wizard doing all my potions and having a cleric to cast aid and hearty feast is pretty awesome, especially since I don't have to have that cleric running around.

[Kalbear]

Also to the above stuff for the Paladin - I'd recommend going Polearm Master instead of Great Weapon Master so that you're not conflicting so much with Lae'zel and Karlach for weapons and you act more as a thing to be dealt with and let them be the strikers. Polearm Master is not quite as insane as it is in the regular game but it is pretty good, and it gives your paladin something to do with their bonus action and another source of smite attacks. 

[Werthead]

Alternative just have Shadowheart cast Spirit Guardians at maximum possible level and lawnmower absolutely everyone in sight to death.

Quote

 

"What is my purpose?"

"You cast Spirit Guardians."

"Oh my god."

"Welcome to the (adventuring) party, pal."

 

 

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

13 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Also to the above stuff for the Paladin - I'd recommend going Polearm Master instead of Great Weapon Master so that you're not conflicting so much with Lae'zel and Karlach for weapons and you act more as a thing to be dealt with and let them be the strikers. Polearm Master is not quite as insane as it is in the regular game but it is pretty good, and it gives your paladin something to do with their bonus action and another source of smite attacks. 

Thanks I’ll check this out. Another issue I’m facing is I can’t give Astarion or Wyll any decent weapons as they don’t have martial prowess, what are the best weapons I can give to them that they are compatible with ? 
 

I’ve also given all my characters a crossbow/longbow and a shield (if not two handed) for added versatility….hope that’s a good policy. Left Gale unarmoured so he can take advantage of mage armour and spells.

 

Also you guys are suggesting Grease+ firebolt with Gale right ? Let me practice that against the goblins 

 

Is there any way for me to endlessly grind to higher levels to overlevel myself before I go into that mountain pass to get to the githyanki crèche or is there limited experience one can get ? I’m just looking for a cheap way to win combat  

 

Ive noticed when I do a main sword attack or ranged attack I tend to miss much more than a specialised attack like lacerate, it’s quite irritating. 

Edited February 10 by Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II

[IlyaP]

5 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Thanks I’ll check this out. Another issue I’m facing is I can’t give Astarion or Wyll any decent weapons as they don’t have martial prowess, what are the next weapons I can give to them that they are compatible with ? 

I've got Wyll using a rapier (there're a few +1 and enchanted rapiers that can be picked up along the way) and Astarion using a Bow of Shrieking with fire and electricity arrows. 

If you also give Astarion two short swords or daggers, especially +1 short swords or daggers, the mist walk ability, and shadow armor, he becomes absolutely fucking lethal in close quarter combat - which comes in handy during Act 3. 

Plus, Wyll has Eldritch Blast, which is super useful for knocking people off perches, making things go asplodeyboom, and generally assisting in managing mobs, to keep non-ranged attackers at bay. 

5 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

I’ve also given all my characters a crossbow/longbow and a shield (if not two handed) for added versatility….hope that’s a good policy. Left Gale unarmoured so he can take advantage of mage armour and spells.

You can train Gale to wear light and medium armor, to increase his AC and thus make him a bit more of a damage sponge, whilst still retaining his spells. Mages in 5Ed are no longer locked to wearing bathrobes to cast spells, and as you level him up, give him the ability to wear medium armor, and give him studded leather armor and off you go to war. 

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

1 minute ago, IlyaP said:

I've got Wyll using a rapier (there're a few +1 and enchanted rapiers that can be picked up along the way) and Astarion using a Bow of Shrieking with fire and electricity arrows. 

If you also give Astarion two short swords or daggers, especially +1 short swords or daggers, the mist walk ability, and shadow armor, he becomes absolutely fucking lethal in close quarter combat - which comes in handy during Act 3. 

Plus, Wyll has Eldritch Blast, which is super useful for knocking people off perches, making things go asplodeyboom, and generally assisting in managing mobs, to keep non-ranged attackers at bay. 

You can train Gale to wear light and medium armor, to increase his AC and thus make him a bit more of a damage sponge, whilst still retaining his spells. Mages in 5Ed are no longer locked to wearing bathrobes to cast spells, and as you level him up, give him the ability to wear medium armor, and give him studded leather armor and off you go to war. 

For some reason my eldrich blast never knocks enemies off ledges , believe me I kept trying with that spider but it didn’t work… I’ll try that with Gale , but mage armour will be useless than, his spells won’t get weaker right ? I think I had tried giving Wyll a rapier but it said he’s not proficient in it…hmm lemme try it again and check to be sure. 

[IlyaP]

6 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Is there any way for me to endlessly grind to higher levels to overlevel myself before I go into that mountain pass to get to the githyanki crèche or is there limited experience one can get ? I’m just looking for a cheap way to win combat  

Yes. Go and deal with the bog witch in the south-west. Clear out the infested camp. Discover buckaroo orc lovin' and get some extra XP for interrupting some good ole-fashioned rumpy pumpy love-time, go and fight the harpies to the east of the druid grove, go around to the north-west and disable all the traps past the goblin camps, and go and murderise the fuck out of everything in the goblin camp. And then in the central north area, go and find the Zhentarim base, gain some XP from them, and also rescue folks in Waukeen's Rest, including a diplomat you'll want to meet. 

By the time you clear the Act 1 map you should be level 5. 

6 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Ive noticed when I do a main sword attack or ranged attack I tend to miss much more than a specialised attack like lacerate, it’s quite irritating. 

Check each members' proficiencies, to make sure they're lacerating with weapons that they've been trained to use, to get the max bonuses available. 

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

Thanks for all the tips guys! I’m just fucking tired of looking up YouTube guides to every major fights and ALWAYS end up wasting time to go find those effing fire barrels again cause that’s apparently the only way to kill these bosses.  I’m done with backtracking and looking for fire barrels now. Larians next game though should rely less on these gimmicky tools and just let us out level our enemies like a good old rpg lol.

 

One more thing - Are any of those tadpole powers any good ? I unlocked concentrated blast for my paladin but are yet to use more of them. And no story spoilers regarding them please, I’ll discover on my own the price for using em hehe…Should I put a few tadpole powers for all my party members ? Ive persuaded all of them to use tadpoles. 

Edited February 10 by Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II

[IlyaP]

1 minute ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

For some reason my eldrich blast never knocks enemies off ledges , believe me I kept trying with that spider but it didn’t work… I’ll try that with Gale , but mage armour will be useless than, his spells won’t get weaker right ? I think I had tried giving Wyll a rapier but it said he’s not proficient in it…hmm lemme try it again and check to be sure. 

I don't recall what Wyll's native proficiencies are, but in my build, he's proficient with rapiers for whatever reason, and there are a few that I've found in Act 2 that were useful. 

With the matron, honestly: fireball the fuck out of her. Spiders in this game hate fire. Just get Gael, Astarion, yourself, Wyll, and whoever else, dumping mountains of fire on the matron. 

The full battle took me (not even kidding) 5 minutes because I dropped a mountain of fire on her. Whereas Eldrich Blast is more useful for critters that aren't likely to cling to things strongly - so, for example, blasting trolls off ledges when entering the gnoll/troll (or whatever they were) camp - hella useful. 

Also comes in handy when you want to blast people into pits. Wheeee.

[IlyaP]

Just now, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Thanks for all the tips guys! I’m just fucking tired of looking up YouTube guides to every major fights and ALWAYS end up wasting time to go find those effing fire barrels again cause that’s apparently the only way to kill these bosses.  I’m done with backtracking and looking for fire barrels now. Larians next game though should rely less on these gimmicky tools and just let us overlevel like a good old rpg lol.

Larian likes allowing players to "play" with the environment and find creative uses/methods for doing things. You'll see a lot of this in DOS2, which really should have been subtitled Divinity: Original Pyro Sin 2: Fire Harder, as that game is *obsessed* with lighting everything on fire. If they could find a way to light water on fire, I'd bet good money they would.

And if you've not already seen 4 Halfling Barbarians, enjoy. Timestamped for your pleasure.

[IlyaP]

If BG3 does end up driving you bonkers, there're always the original 2 Baldur's Gate games (which I still prefer over BG3, especially in light of some decisions made in Act 3 to legacy characters), the 2 Pillars of Eternity games, the 2 Pathfinder games, and Solasta: Crown of the Magister, which, as far as modern turn-based 5eD games go, I've enjoyed more than I have BG3. And of course, there's always Betrayal at Krondor, which is terrific fun and costs next to nothing these days on GoG and Steam.