Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 RELEASE THREAD

[Cat Headed Eagle]

When trying to free the gnomes and tieflings from the jail at Moonrise, if I fight the guards, will the entire place go hostile or just them?

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Grymforge is a good example of the "puzzle combat" in this game. (For those with reading comprehension, my complaint is that the combats take too long, not that they are too hard.)
When you enter the area you are told Nere and the gnomes are trapped in a cave-in with poison, you need to save the gnomes but also kill Nere, assuming you are good.

-If you rest, they all die, which makes sense at least. But if you happened to arrive at less than full health/spells, too bad. (Reload)
-You need a barrel bomb to open the cave in. I was lucky and had one already, but if you don't you have to go track one down. You'll probably run into several side fights that will sap your resources, potentially making the final fight unwinnable. (Reload)
-When you blow the bomb, you can easily hit one of the gnomes accidentally, turning them hostile and failing the quest. (Reload)
-When Nere is freed he immediately starts killing the gnomes unless you fight him. This inexplicably turns every dwarf in the area hostile, which is a fight you probably aren't prepared for. (Reload)
-One of the dwarves, who is not a caster, has a magic item that casts Thunder wave, and will attempt to use it to knock your guys into instakill pits or lava. The terrain of the room makes it very difficult to stay safe from this attack. So unless you intuited that this one dwarf was especially dangerous, win initiative, and burn her down, you're likely going to lose one or more guys. (Reload)
-You can try picking off some of the isolated dwarves ahead of time with stealth kills/pushes, but this is going to require some trial and error. (Reload)
-You can convince the elder to turn half the dwarves against Nere, but this requires a specific line of dialogue and a skill check, so if you missed it, too bad. (Reload and restart entire area).
-I tried to find an alternate way to free Nere without clearing the cave-in, but the game doesn't allow you to teleport or fly to the other side, even though it looks like it should. Waste of resources. (Reload)

So, for a single fight, that was about two hours of "gameplay" with at least 6+ reloads just to learn script triggers, gotcha enemies, and unpredictable NPCs, and I barely feel like I've made any progress or had any fun for my gaming time. You're really better off going into this area hard and just killing everyone, but then you won't get to experience the developers' awesome "puzzle".

What do you mean by "barrel bomb"? You can find rune powder at two locations in the Grymforge which provide an explosion that doesn't harm the gnomes. They knew through conversation what was going on and went into safety before I ignited the rune powder with a fire bolt.
Also Nere did not attack immediately in my run, we had a conversation and only one gnome was harmed in a cutscene.
I also struck said bargain with some of the Duergars who where pissed at Nere for being stingy with his money. They aided me in combat, because we agreed to split his loot.
The lava thing was a problem the first time around, but the second time it was not an issue to better positioning.

-If you rest, they all die, which makes sense at least. But if you happened to arrive at less than full health/spells, too bad.

No consumables at hand? You know you can craft potions, right?

What are you doing?

What is Grampy doing? Having a hard time dealing with the consequences of his actions, looks like.

 

[Eisenheinrich]

Grymforge is a good example of the "puzzle combat" in this game. (For those with reading comprehension, my complaint is that the combats take too long, not that they are too hard.)
When you enter the area you are told Nere and the gnomes are trapped in a cave-in with poison, you need to save the gnomes but also kill Nere, assuming you are good.

-If you rest, they all die, which makes sense at least. But if you happened to arrive at less than full health/spells, too bad. (Reload)
-You need a barrel bomb to open the cave in. I was lucky and had one already, but if you don't you have to go track one down. You'll probably run into several side fights that will sap your resources, potentially making the final fight unwinnable. (Reload)
-When you blow the bomb, you can easily hit one of the gnomes accidentally, turning them hostile and failing the quest. (Reload)
-When Nere is freed he immediately starts killing the gnomes unless you fight him. This inexplicably turns every dwarf in the area hostile, which is a fight you probably aren't prepared for. (Reload)
-One of the dwarves, who is not a caster, has a magic item that casts Thunder wave, and will attempt to use it to knock your guys into instakill pits or lava. The terrain of the room makes it very difficult to stay safe from this attack. So unless you intuited that this one dwarf was especially dangerous, win initiative, and burn her down, you're likely going to lose one or more guys. (Reload)
-You can try picking off some of the isolated dwarves ahead of time with stealth kills/pushes, but this is going to require some trial and error. (Reload)
-You can convince the elder to turn half the dwarves against Nere, but this requires a specific line of dialogue and a skill check, so if you missed it, too bad. (Reload and restart entire area).
-I tried to find an alternate way to free Nere without clearing the cave-in, but the game doesn't allow you to teleport or fly to the other side, even though it looks like it should. Waste of resources. (Reload)

So, for a single fight, that was about two hours of "gameplay" with at least 6+ reloads just to learn script triggers, gotcha enemies, and unpredictable NPCs, and I barely feel like I've made any progress or had any fun for my gaming time. You're really better off going into this area hard and just killing everyone, but then you won't get to experience the developers' awesome "puzzle".

What do you mean by "barrel bomb"? You can find rune powder at two locations in the Grymforge which provide an explosion that doesn't harm the gnomes. They knew through conversation what was going on and went into safety before I ignited the rune powder with a fire bolt.
Also Nere did not attack immediately in my run, we had a conversation and only one gnome was harmed in a cutscene.
I also struck said bargain with some of the Duergars who where pissed at Nere for being stingy with his money. They aided me in combat, because we agreed to split his loot.
The lava thing was a problem the first time around, but the second time it was not an issue to better positioning.

-If you rest, they all die, which makes sense at least. But if you happened to arrive at less than full health/spells, too bad.

No consumables at hand? You know you can craft potions, right?

What are you doing?

What is Grampy doing? Having a hard time dealing with the consequences of his actions, looks like.

it sure sounds wild, but we need to know what's going on here.

 

[Elthosian]

For PC Gamer US, Baldur's Gate 3 joins some illustrious names. Before today, only five games had scored over 96:

• Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, 1999 [98]
• Half-Life 2, 2004 [98]
• Crysis, 2007 [98]
• Sid Meier's Civilization II, 1996 [97]
• Half-Life, 1998 [97]

• Crysis, 2007 [98]

Was it really that good? I was too poor to afford a good PC when it came out.

Muh graphics + open world with nice freedom to approach situations but I guess they didn’t get to the last part where it goes downhill.

 

[lycanwarrior]

For PC Gamer US, Baldur's Gate 3 joins some illustrious names. Before today, only five games had scored over 96:

• Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, 1999 [98]
• Half-Life 2, 2004 [98]
• Crysis, 2007 [98]
• Sid Meier's Civilization II, 1996 [97]
• Half-Life, 1998 [97]

• Crysis, 2007 [98]

Was it really that good? I was too poor to afford a good PC when it came out.

Crysis is a good game but I would not consider it a masterpiece.

 

[Takamori]

I've started the game again cause I'm retarded
*I'm trying to stay away from CS:Go

In Act 1 I'm struggling to make progress. Not because the game is difficult (I just beat Ethel at lvl 4 on tactician) but eveything is mediocre at best. To be fair: some quests are decent but they are like specks of dust in a sea of mediocre shit.

Honestly I don't see a coherent design behind this game: there is no specific atmosphere to enjoy, the wold design is a mess (it's an amusement park like in Fallout 3), the romances are hiding the fact that the main story pacing is just awful (fake urgency hits again), the combat is braindead even on tactician (and not fun), classes are unbalanced (clerics in combat are a bad joke), the itemization is retarded (many pointless items which are not tagged properly) and it has almost nothing in common with the old IE games (except the setting).

I think Sven hit the sweet spot but not because the game is great but because BG3 is making stupid people feel smart. Most gamers today have no idea about the old games or DND 5E but somehow BG3 has become viral. It's like a fashion statement for ((real)) gamers.

I'm not trying to be edgy. I don't hate the game but I wish it was fun.

If your Cleric in combat is a bad joke you're doing it wrong.

You got old. It happens. Game's great. We're not stupid*. Next.

* - See the quote in my handle. Found it myself when I was nine. Called it the speck. Finding cool shit is fun - a lot here to find. You've barely scratched the surface and on here acting like you've been playing the game for months. Those who want to be fooled by this act are and no one else.

Yeah clerics become monsters after they reach 3rd circle spells. The most fun thing is at end game where you have spirits up, summon weapon and avenger guardian locking down an opponent. Depending on the arena or enemy you are fighting you can replace spirits and go blade barrier instead its a fuckton of damage.

 

[Nerevar]

My favourite place in the game is the Githyanki creche loads of gear for everyone and a cool mace to trivialize undead really good place to go before going to the underdark.

One thing I've noticed my bard with stealth and dual handbows cleans out maps by himself like an AIM merc on JA2, but with my martial character he needs backup even if his damage is much higher getting into melee means they can use a dumb spell (hold/fear) if you wiff a hit or fail a save, maybe its because my 2nd playthrough is on tactician and the CPU is smarter?

Now all my characters have 20 STR they don't need to rely on hill giant elixirs anymore and can use bloodlust instead or the initiative ones. The game gets easier the more access you have to gear.

 

[FalloutBR]

Got to admit, the whole Last Light sequence got me a bit in the feels, from meeting whatshername to the surprising turn of events (it all went horribly wrong for me lol).

The thing is, I'd had little conversations with just about everyone there and was really feeling at home and cosy in the magic moon globe of safety (and Karlach finally got her engine sorted out so she could hug - awwww - and the smith is such a bro - and I still haven't figured out what that strange ox's deal is yet)

To me that sequence felt very BG-ey - I seem to recall that sometimes events in those games were at that level of horrible and unexpected reversal (unexpected yes, I was anticipating doing the plan as agreed and everything).

[Act 2 spoilers below!!!]

The Last Light Inn area was also a turning point in my playthrough... I was playing as a somewhat neutral, no-fucks-given cleric of Talos, but failing to prevent the shadows taking over the inn felt a bit too much... they even killed the poor inn cat in its sleep cushion. I actually reloaded a previous save from a 3-4 of hours before and made sure they would survive. As a side effect, I had to endure Dame Aylin's lesbian power fantasy for the rest of the game... she's pretty strong when helping in combat though. Funny that the game has mechanics for fallen paladins, but if a cleric of Talos decides to prevent chaos and descruction, his deity doesn't even bat an eyelid...

 

[Alienman]

Funny that the game has mechanics for fallen paladins, but if a cleric of Talos decides to prevent chaos and descruction, his deity doesn't even bat an eyelid...

What do you mean by this? Not played Paladin nor priest except for Shadowheart.

 

[Takamori]

Oh yeah Kelemvor doesn't give a single fuck if you start raising an army of undead with your cleric or even use the necronomicon of Thay. The person responsible for cleric either didnt have resources to implement a roleplay mechanic where you lose your powers for fucking up hard or Larian didn't want cleric players crying like bitches because they did something against their god tenants.

 

[FalloutBR]

Funny that the game has mechanics for fallen paladins, but if a cleric of Talos decides to prevent chaos and descruction, his deity doesn't even bat an eyelid...

What do you mean by this? Not played Paladin nor priest except for Shadowheart.

I didn't play paladin yet, but apparently you turn into an Oathbreaker Paladin if you make decisions contrary to your oath. It's a subclass with different abilities it seems...

 

[Reinhardt]

you are told gnomes are trapped in a cave-in with poison

you need to save the gnomes, assuming you are good

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Funny that the game has mechanics for fallen paladins, but if a cleric of Talos decides to prevent chaos and descruction, his deity doesn't even bat an eyelid...

What do you mean by this? Not played Paladin nor priest except for Shadowheart.

There's several key moments where, as a Paladin, you can do things that go against your Oath. For instance, there was this dude, knocked down, unconscious, 1 hp left. For shits and giggles, I killed him. Thus, I broke my oath. An Oathbreaker knight appears and tells you he'll meet you at camp, where he'll explain the Oathbreaker business to you. He does and tells you you can unlock powers or pay and retake your Oath.

Clerics in comparison don't seem to care about allegiances. It's like they get extra abilities and that's that.

 

[Tyranicon]

How are you supposed to break the vengeance oath?

-me, drenched in the blood of anybody who looks at me wrong-

Vengeance oath:

 

[FalloutBR]

Oh yeah Kelemvor doesn't give a single fuck if you start raising an army of undead with your cleric or even use the necronomicon of Thay. The person responsible for cleric either didnt have resources to implement a roleplay mechanic where you lose your powers for fucking up hard or Larian didn't want cleric players crying like bitches because they did something against their god tenants.

There's no helping I suppose... There are 21 (I think) deities to choose from when rolling a cleric, it was bound to be mess... only got like a dozen of [CLERIC OF TALOS] dialog options during my whole playthrough, while they seemd appropriate, they were also pretty inconsequential.

Edit: I just went into the char creation screen to check how many deities you can choose from, and weirdly enough... there's no option to choose Shar, only Selune. Maybe Larian didn't want to bother writing all the extra dialog due to the number of Shar related quests in the game...

 

[Takamori]

Anything Goblin related if you use your Dark Urge options as paladin the game consider all right, you ain't breaking any oath even if you bite off someone foot off or kill some goblin kids. Like said previously in this thread they are treated as the mexicans of Faerun

 

[Gargaune]

He does and tells you you can unlock powers or pay and retake your Oath.

Really, it's just a fine? I thought they'd have a quest or something. One-off redemption, or can you just keep doing it over and over?

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

He does and tells you you can unlock powers or pay and retake your Oath.

Really, it's just a fine? I thought they'd have a quest or something. One-off redemption, or can you just keep doing it over and over?

You are told that a big material sacrifice will do, which is just gold. Just like IRL churches I guess

 

[Takamori]

Oh yeah Kelemvor doesn't give a single fuck if you start raising an army of undead with your cleric or even use the necronomicon of Thay. The person responsible for cleric either didnt have resources to implement a roleplay mechanic where you lose your powers for fucking up hard or Larian didn't want cleric players crying like bitches because they did something against their god tenants.

There's no helping I suppose... There are 21 (I think) deities to choose from when rolling a cleric, it was bound to be mess... only got like a dozen of [CLERIC OF TALOS] dialog options during my whole playthrough, while they seemd appropriate, they were also pretty inconsequential.

It was a bummer for me that the fucking avatar of Myrkul and Balthazar didnt even bat an eye to the fact, they treated as a generic cleric instead of the sworn enemy church to their practices and beliefs.

 

[Gargaune]

You are told that a big material sacrifice will do, which is just gold. Just like IRL churches I guess

Bummer. It's the common approach for most games, thought I'd hoped Larian would do something special with it, like how BG2 had the stronghold quests.

Oh yeah Kelemvor doesn't give a single fuck if you start raising an army of undead with your cleric or even use the necronomicon of Thay. The person responsible for cleric either didnt have resources to implement a roleplay mechanic where you lose your powers for fucking up hard or Larian didn't want cleric players crying like bitches because they did something against their god tenants.

That's what happens when you deprecate Alignment, much as I predicted, you can't fall back on a mechanic to deliver those narrative reactions and you're limited to costly setpiece designs. But that was WotC's call, if I recall correctly from the first showcase, Swen had originally planned to have Alignment but was eventually turned down. Still, videogames and tabletop are different beasts.

 

[MerchantKing]

How are you supposed to break the vengeance oath?

-me, drenched in the blood of anybody who looks at me wrong-

Vengeance oath:

View attachment 40163

By trying to redeem evil people who you see may have a chance at redemption like a Paladin might instead of just killing them outright.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

I don't think clerics have been good as anything other than spellcasters in D&D games. In IWD2 you could exorcise a ghost as a cleric, though.

 

[MerchantKing]

I don't think clerics have been good as anything other than spellcasters in D&D games. In IWD2 you could exorcise a ghost as a cleric, though.

In NWN because of how Bioware decided to change things, cleric was useful for building an armored spellsword especially since you could prepare spells with some of the domains in that game and get a cleric that's better at being a fighter than a fighter could ever be. You could do that within ToEE and NWN2 as well and they did pretty good as a divine spellsword type of character if you used it as a platform to jump into some of the prestige classes. In Solasta, there's a battle domain which makes cleric into a extremely strong melee character as well as an already powerful caster. In KotC2 some of the cleric domains allow you to build a cleric into a maneuver bot that can buff itself. However building around being a Holy Smite bot and caster was the best way to play clerics there.

 

[Tyranicon]

How are you supposed to break the vengeance oath?

-me, drenched in the blood of anybody who looks at me wrong-

Vengeance oath:

View attachment 40163

By trying to redeem evil people who you see may have a chance at redemption like a Paladin might instead of just killing them outright.

That's all? I give 'em plenty of chances to redeem themselves.

In hell.

 

[Takamori]

You are told that a big material sacrifice will do, which is just gold. Just like IRL churches I guess

Bummer. It's the common approach for most games, thought I'd hoped Larian would do something special with it, like how BG2 had the stronghold quests.

Oh yeah Kelemvor doesn't give a single fuck if you start raising an army of undead with your cleric or even use the necronomicon of Thay. The person responsible for cleric either didnt have resources to implement a roleplay mechanic where you lose your powers for fucking up hard or Larian didn't want cleric players crying like bitches because they did something against their god tenants.

That's what happens when you deprecate Alignment, much as I predicted, you can't fall back on a mechanic to deliver those narrative reactions and you're limited to costly setpiece designs. But that was WotC's call, if I recall correctly from the first showcase, Swen had originally planned to have Alignment but was eventually turned down. Still, videogames and tabletop are different beasts.

Even with the retarded alignment WotC retarded shenanigans like there is decision that you can simply flag that the player is being an Omega faggot to their deity eyes and cause penalty of some sort.