Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 RELEASE THREAD

[vitellus]

You need to complete the dungeon near the beach to get access to the NPC that grants them though

i actually had him in camp beforehand...i did a ton of the starting areas but avoided the chapel area since i did that during the foray in early access, i went to rest and it alerted me that another companion wanted to speak to me and had to go find him in camp. interestingly enough, after meeting him in camp i went to the chapel and murdered everyone and went found withers' sarcophagus and devs had dialogue built in to ask him back in camp if that was his tomb.

 

[cretin]

whats the consensus on difficulty now, balanced or tactician?

 

[Perkel]

uh oh

I feel like Larian design + 5e is perfect combination. Someone said something about web spell and this perfectly encapsulates it. Yeah web is uber powerful but simple fact that web is flammable makes dude with fire beat it. Those kind of situations is what makes game shine. It is not just Larian or 5e but combination of both.

It is basically trying to replicate 5e PnP not CRPG.

Another huge thing is how they tie level design with narration. On surface level enemies are mostly logically placed when they should be, but when you start to fight you quickly see that pretty much all fights have deliberate placement of enemies despite narrative.

Another thing i like is slow progression. Aside from first level each level takes a lot of time to play with and the higher you go up the longer they last. at some point you forget about next level and just focus on playing game rather than chasing quickly exp. Slower pace also means you learn better tools at your disposal because new toys are far off in distance.

whats the consensus on difficulty now, balanced or tactician?

Balanced for Roleplaying tactician for powergaming.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I feel like Larian design + 5e is perfect combination. Someone said something about web spell and this perfectly encapsulates it. Yeah web is uber powerful but simple fact that web is flammable makes dude with fire beat it. Those kind of situations is what makes game shine. It is not just Larian or 5e but combination of both.

Yeah. I had a feeling Larian's idea of RPG gameplay as a mix between simulationism and abstraction would be a great fit for adapting a PnP module. But with BG3 I think it's evident there had been a lot of input and design feedback from PnP designers as well. They have some excellent synergy as a result.

It is basically trying to replicate 5e PnP not CRPG.

This is what I've been trying to explain as well.

uh oh

Only 22 hours for me

 

[perfectslumbers]

whats the consensus on difficulty now, balanced or tactician?

Tactician. It's balanced around 0 min-maxing and is the best if you have any familiarity with D&D or turn based rpgs.

 

[Perkel]

I hope larian will release editor and proper modding tools. Game screams for community made modules/campaigns.

DOS2 had official tools but DOS2 gameplay system and world was just poor thing to play with trying to create proper modules.

 

[Johnny Biggums]

Betraying Zelnor, seeing him sputter in shock, telling him the grove belongs to the Absolute, and then butchering him

 

[La vie sexuelle]

I tried romance both Lae'zel and Shadowheart. Some night Frog comes to me and asked for fight, and then we fucked. Next day, Shadowheart said she don't want to be my "second", so I said "No, I love you!". "Ok ", she said. Then I returned to Frog. She was ok with being cucked: "Just like after our fight, I have bruises, but some of them to leave scars" and ended "Gale will be more suitable for you".


This approval-romance system is completely broken.

Sounds positively French-influenced to me, so it just might be working as designed.

I think it's need rebalancing.

Besides:

WHY I CAN'T FUCK BOTH FROG AND SHADOWCUTE?!

Those janky porn visual novels would probably be better for this.

I want something more thank janky visual novels. Just like de Sade novels were and are better than BDSM maculature written by bored American housewives.

Maybe try a real life romance instead?

For real life I prefer paid love.

Maybe pay a them to LARP for you too.

LARPing is too cringe even for my standards. CRPG and Codex are the lowest of my bars.

 

[Fedora Master]

Sometimes in order to save the world you have to push an old woman down the stairs.

 

[Grunker]

major dark urge spoilers and info on saving throws whydoibother Barbarian

Spoiler

The saves aren't in Act 1, they're before the final quest of Shadowlands. You basically try to kill your closest companion - maybe more, I don't know. It's possible you can avoid this entirely if you killed Isobel, game strongly hinted at this. There are three saves - I'm not sure you entirely need to make the last save (it's do some extra resisting, so unsure what the consequence would be for failing that). Even though the game lets you add Resistance or Bless, they aren't actually added to your dice roll tally - your own your own. DCs are 14 then 18, and then 18 again for the last save I'm unsure whether you need. So even with proficiency (+3), Forbidden Knowledge from the necromancy book (+1) and a Wisdom score of 16, I was at a total of only +7, meaning even with heavy investment of ASI, proficiency and a collectible, I was at 50/50. What tilted it strongly in my favor was the Harper's Amulet that grants advantage on all Wisdom saves. Even with that, I still ate 2/4 inspiration.

If there are even harder saving throws to come, it's gonna be preeeeetty dicey.

Also, the game had some very impressive reactivity for what was essentially an optional background, in the sense that you have a whole long convo and discussion that *even references prior choices with the companion in question* - so even within the reactivity of having to have long voiced lines for the specific companion, there was also reactivity within that conversation.

Felt like durge was pretty much like a race/class reactivity up until this point - sparse comments and new content throughout the game. Not that scene, though.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

This might come off as incredibly stupid, but how do you activate rage on Karlach? I can't seem to find an ability called that. Is it Frenzy? However, on that skill, it says Frenzy turns your rage into something else. I don't even know how to see how many "rages" she got left.

When Karlach (or whatever barbarian is in your party) is selected, there is a tiny button with a red axe-like symbol in a row of tiny buttons just above the large combat buttons. The number displayed on that tiny button should be the number of uses of rage/frenzy left, since Larian couldn't bother having that information appear on the large rage/frenzy button, which is the one that actually activates the ability and is far more prominently displayed.

Wait, how do you roll for stats? Or is that not allowed on 5E? Lol what kind of self-respecting RPG doesn't force you to spend 5 hours on your character creation screen? This is gay.

[EDIT] Races have no stat bonuses either.

Solasta allows the player to roll stats for four, fully-customizable party members, complete with racial bonuses.

 

[Fedora Master]

Laughing IRL at the whole hag storyline. Lots of ways to be a massive asshole, too.

 

[Turn_BASED]

Discovered an interesting dialogue today, I went 1 cleric of Selune / the rest paladin and hit a “Paladin of Selune” dialog. I wanna respec and see what other combos are possible.

 

[Tyranicon]

 

[Grunker]

Laughing IRL at the whole hag storyline. Lots of ways to be a massive asshole, too.

Yep, IMO one of the best written questlines as well, maybe because it references the massive mess of the main plot very little. I love the main plot in a kitsch kind of way, but man is it messy. So much fucking stuff going on all over the place and a million supar dupar mysterious NPCs trying to tempt you. It's hella fun in a "this GM is very creative but it's going to be impossible to connect all those threads"-kind of way. So in other words: feels like every real GM

 

[Grunker]

whats the consensus on difficulty now, balanced or tactician?

Definitely Tactician. The game is *very* easy. I basically only Long Rest when I suspect there's new rest content.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Oh no. Codex is not going to like the information about Jaheira's kids...

Yeah, I saw something about that in the game. Haven't met them or heard anything about them.

Not sure I will either, given that I've killed a bunch of harpers and druids. Probably for the best.

 

[Mortmal]

whats the consensus on difficulty now, balanced or tactician?

For most Codexers, the Tactician difficulty will be unplayable and sometimes too hard in balanced mode. If you don't use Karmic Dice and don't save scum, it can be extremely challenging. An athletic check failure can result in instant death by falling, an Illithid psionic blast can wipe out the entire party instantly, and there are some boss encounters that can't be approached like a D&D encounter and can't be won without reloading, making it mostly impossible without a mage. I don't think I could finish Act 2 without it. It's significantly harder than Solasta in some parts and sometimes doesn't allow rest, which is a very good thing.

 

[Shaki]

View attachment 39754

That's BG2 if it was written by Larian

 

[Shaki]

whats the consensus on difficulty now, balanced or tactician?

For most Codexers, the Tactician difficulty will be unplayable and sometimes too hard in balanced mode. If you don't use Karmic Dice and don't save scum, it can be extremely challenging. An athletic check failure can result in instant death by falling, an Illithid psionic blast can wipe out the entire party instantly, and there are some boss encounters that can't be approached like a D&D encounter and can't be won without reloading, making it mostly impossible without a mage. I don't think I could finish Act 2 without it. It's significantly harder than Solasta in some parts and sometimes doesn't allow rest, which is a very good thing.

Are later acts really that hard? So far I'm nearly done with Act 1, and it was easy af on tactician, with 0 powergaming/buildfaggotry and very limited 5E knowledge. I shat all over the goblin leaders on lvl 3 using mostly cantrips since I was afraid long resting may fuck with my quests. Overall every combat so far was extremely cheesable and had so much shit like barrels/uber high ground/chasms etc. that it would require some serious mental retardation to be unable to figure a way to win, even with all class resources burned. I also barely used potions/scrolls, have a serious collection of them now, which should trivialize multiple encounters if I'll choose to use them.

 

[Gerrard]

More buckbreaking

View attachment 39744

There is some truth to their questions. While I'm 100% willing to believe the Steam Achievement servers are overloaded, only .01% of people who own the game have actually gotten the first mandatory achievement in the game.

Were the achievements already in early access?

 

[HammyTheFat]

whats the consensus on difficulty now, balanced or tactician?

Definitely Tactician. The game is *very* easy. I basically only Long Rest when I suspect there's new rest content.

So after every two fights?

 

[MerchantKing]

I feel like Larian design + 5e is perfect combination. Someone said something about web spell and this perfectly encapsulates it. Yeah web is uber powerful but simple fact that web is flammable makes dude with fire beat it. Those kind of situations is what makes game shine. It is not just Larian or 5e but combination of both.

Pierre did it first with his OGL3.5 game back in 2007 and carried it over into Kotc2. Not only that, he did a superior job when it came to implementing the 3e ruleset and programming the AI to utilize it. And then there's the fact that you create six characters and go through either an enjoyable adventure throughout the countryside in Kotc1 and a tech demo dungeon in Kotc2 that make his games superior in every way to Bioware's approach (Larian is directly emulating Bioware in this game).

LARPing is too cringe even for my standards. CRPG and Codex are the lowest of my bars.

That's practically what going to a video game for a romance is however; LARPing.

BTW. The default Gnome doesn't look like a Gnome. It looks more like a French midget. None of the presets look like Gnomes.

Spoiler

I bet that fraud hasn't even touched a turnip once in his life! Well. This is the best that can be done... What a shitty developer

Spoiler

Also where do I change the character name?

 

[Space Satan]

So far it is the best CRPG experience in the last...decade? No problem with immersion and Larian held true to AD&D tropes and fluff. Turn-based, dice checks, versalite save-load system, no ugly Bioware-level female models.
I have only one complaint for the time being...and that is lack of diversity. You have a rather limited cimpanion selection in terms of alignment.
Baldur's Gate 2 had shitloead of companions that would be fitting all alignments and gameplay, BG3 - only tiefling, shadowheart and faggot vampire are evil, Tiefling FIEND is...good aligned, others are good as well, with no neutral options. Minthara is a separate case due to her recruitment quest and that recruiting here means two will leave instantly.
And the worst part is that it is understandable situaltion - BG2 had lots of compations and they had next to no interaction with the world, and longest dialogues, as memory serves, was with Viconia due to having longest romance options. In BG3 in diagolues companions have their comments or insights often. Adding another 4-5 characters will push release date months and months further, so even with current situation I am haiving a blast with great replayability potential.
I really hope they will focus their efforts on DLCs that will enrich story AND add new compations to fill the gaps.

 

[Mortmal]

whats the consensus on difficulty now, balanced or tactician?

For most Codexers, the Tactician difficulty will be unplayable and sometimes too hard in balanced mode. If you don't use Karmic Dice and don't save scum, it can be extremely challenging. An athletic check failure can result in instant death by falling, an Illithid psionic blast can wipe out the entire party instantly, and there are some boss encounters that can't be approached like a D&D encounter and can't be won without reloading, making it mostly impossible without a mage. I don't think I could finish Act 2 without it. It's significantly harder than Solasta in some parts and sometimes doesn't allow rest, which is a very good thing.

Are later acts really that hard? So far I'm nearly done with Act 1, and it was easy af on tactician, with 0 powergaming/buildfaggotry and very limited 5E knowledge. I shat all over the goblin leaders on lvl 3 using mostly cantrips since I was afraid long resting may fuck with my quests. Overall every combat so far was extremely cheesable and had so much shit like barrels/uber high ground/chasms etc. that it would require some serious mental retardation to be unable to figure a way to win, even with all class resources burned. I also barely used potions/scrolls, have a serious collection of them now, which should trivialize multiple encounters if I'll choose to use them.

Most of it is not hard but there's some very challenging stuff later. Some you cant possibly cheese. But yes most of time you can do that, when its too hard you sneak up get high ground and shoot, ranged is often the best option.