Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 RELEASE THREAD

[AwesomeButton]

I'll post screenshots later. They are quite a crowd.

I can save you the trouble:



It's very similar to the fight I faced, but mine had me facing the strongest ones at the front gate first.

This almost seems easier, since they're all grouped together and you have backup. Spam fireball, use silence or counterspell on the casters, use mistystep items to jump to kill problem units. Rinse, repeat.

Yeah, I've watched that already. What can I say, I like making things difficult in my own way.

 

[Saark]

People don't like seeing it at all, nigger. The game solicits it to you even if you're just a little bit nice toward the characters.

Okay and? Then you tell them no, and they move on. It's not like Gale slips up behind you at night to tie you up after you rebuffed him to, and then Astarion facefucks you without your consent. It's a fucking RPG. You get presented choices, and then you make them. And because it's at least a decent RPG, it will respect those choices.

Used to be that the codex liked choices, and the more, the better (as long as they carried weight with them). If you're not secretly a faggot too afraid to come out, you wouldn't mind a game giving more choices even if you don't agree with them, because it makes your choices more meaningful if there are branching paths in the narrative, whether it's the storyline itself, or companions. The alternative that you seem to want, is having multiple choices that all amount to the same thing (and have those things conform to the safe space bubble you wanna live in) -- something that Bioware is very good at. Maybe you'd enjoy some of their games more.

Anyway. Does it suck that every character seems to be bi and wanna jump your bones 5 hours into the game? Yeah. Is it a reason to not enjoy the game for the next 50 hours? Certainly not. Unless you're secretly gay and feel threatened by having to confront your own sexual insecurities, I suppose. Only whiny little twinks stop enjoying something the moment something doesn't conform to their standards, man the fuck up and enjoy the other 90% of the game that are actually pretty solid.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Hasting or otherwise negating difficult terrain helps a lot when the devotees cast the hunger of hadar in the center.

They never did in my game, iirc. They were too busy burning to death, or getting eviscerated by Minthara.

My party is the same - two casters, two melee.

Shadowheart was my other melee and she kind of sucks as a melee unit. I probably would have done better with that fight had I used Laezel, but SH helped with the Thorm fight by AOE blinding him and giving DOT with her aura spell. She basically tanked him for me while I fireballed or otherwise killed his backup.

However I intentionally didn't cast haste and don't have access to haste potions. I'm rationing spell slots because I want to do the whole tower without resting.

Welp, there's your problem.

Like I said, I'm aware of the win buttons. After all, it's not rocket science, there is a limited number of variables you can exploit, boost or diminish: movement speed, line of sight, ability to cast, to hit and damage modifiers, etc. I'm just looking for the minimum amount of win buttons to press.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I've mentioned this before, but hearing about Jaheira dying easily later in the game makes me even more want to go back and re-do Act 2 from a save I kept where the Isobel event that happens when you get to the Last Light Inn went horribly, horribly wrong. Because it turns out that if that all goes completely tits up (and I mean completely, it's possible to have a complete and utter disaster at that point), but Jaheira survives, then Jaheira joins your party then and there.

It would be quite impressive of the game if there are two completely different paths through Act 2, and it seems like a bigger bifurcation than supporting goblins/tieflings in Act 1.

Anyone gone down that road less travelled? Anybody? I'm just at Balthazar in my main game and I'm loathe to go back and re-do stuff right at the moment.

Yeah, this deserves a replay. I had the abduction go through successfully the first time, and then had to slaughter all of Last Light, like you did, but it felt off and I reloaded that one. Maybe should have played along with it, but I was too curious to see the other branch of the game.

 

[Pizzashoes]

Yes, and uhh, what the fuck are you guys talking about? This isn't a joke. The Codex still upholds to the standard of zero discrimination.

What the fuck?

People don't like seeing it at all, nigger. The game solicits it to you even if you're just a little bit nice toward the characters.

And it's ironic that I can't say nigger on 99% of the websites online because of the same kind of faggots that made this game not wanting to see it, yet I have to put up with faggotry in literally every product now.

 

[gurugeorge]

People don't like seeing it at all, nigger. The game solicits it to you even if you're just a little bit nice toward the characters.

Okay and? Then you tell them no, and they move on.

They don't though. Gale has sidled up to me twice after my show-me-the-Weave refusal. Could be a bug, but who knows?

I agree that it's a good RPG and you do have options, but it's also a symptomatic cultural phenomenon in Current Year that stinks like old roadkill. As one reviewer said, it's Schrödinger's Game, Great and Terrible at the same time.

One can pat one's head and chew gum at the same time, or whatever the saying is.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Idk, I killed one person in Moonrise before with a dialog option, and it was still a cakewalk. I just brought two casters, hasted both and then fireballed everything at least twice at the start. After that, it was just mopping up the stragglers.

Hasting or otherwise negating difficult terrain helps a lot when the devotees cast the hunger of hadar in the center. My party is the same - two casters, two melee.

However I intentionally didn't cast haste and don't have access to haste potions. I'm rationing spell slots because I want to do the whole tower without resting. I think I only cast two fireballs (one from a scroll), one Guardian of Faith, one Fire Elemental through the whole fight.

I'm not the one extolling my skill in a simple game of dice where the higher number wins, and players can play a limited amount of "cards"/"options" to modify the dice result.

You're the one boasting how easy the game is. I've never once claimed it's hard. On the contrary.

 

[Zeltak]

Idk, I killed one person in Moonrise before with a dialog option, and it was still a cakewalk. I just brought two casters, hasted both and then fireballed everything at least twice at the start. After that, it was just mopping up the stragglers.

Hasting or otherwise negating difficult terrain helps a lot when the devotees cast the hunger of hadar in the center. My party is the same - two casters, two melee.

However I intentionally didn't cast haste and don't have access to haste potions. I'm rationing spell slots because I want to do the whole tower without resting. I think I only cast two fireballs (one from a scroll), one Guardian of Faith, one Fire Elemental through the whole fight.

I'm not the one extolling my skill in a simple game of dice where the higher number wins, and players can play a limited amount of "cards"/"options" to modify the dice result.

You're the one boasting how easy the game is. I've never once claimed it's hard. On the contrary.

That's where you are wrong buddy. I'm not boasting how easy the game is, I'm genuinely despairing over it because the underlying combat, exploration and general feel of the fights are fantastic in this game but ruined by not feeling challenged. I'm sitting here waiting for the super autist that makes a good difficulty mod. Maybe by then even Patch 1 is out as well to fix some bugginess.

 

[Saark]

They don't though. Gale has sidled up to me twice after my show-me-the-Weave refusal. Could be a bug, but who knows?

When Gale invites you to his little magic show (when he has a simulacrum in the camp) and you tell him no, he gives up immediately. At least he did for me. Maybe that's because I was already "spoken for" with someone else though.

Honestly, if companions keep trying after you rebuff them politely once or twice, that's not even a bad thing in my book, because it makes more sense for someone who's romantically interested in you, to keep pursuing you a bit.. Because let's be real, if the hot elf chick would keep thirsting after you, no one would give a shit, but when it's the flamboyant mary sue wizard, it's outcry worthy. Double standards are for pussies.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Then you tell them no, and they move on.

Wrong. Most of them ask you at least twice. I think Laezel is the only one that truly stops after one refusal, and Shadowcunt is the only one who never makes an offer.

Used to be that the codex liked choices

It's not a choice, it's forced weirdness that doesn't respect your characters choices.

I pick a male character. 10 years ago, that choice meant not having to deal with male romance arcs.

If you're not secretly a faggot too afraid to come out

Unless you're secretly gay

Anyway. Does it suck that every character seems to be bi and wanna jump your bones 5 hours into the game? Yeah. Is it a reason to not enjoy the game for the next 50 hours? Certainly not.

It's a reason not to pay for it, if you want to vote with your dollar. If you want to pirate it, that's up to you, but I don't think you're missing out on anything that you couldn't get elsewhere here. The turn-based combat is nice, but it's hardly the best. Quit pretending that someone needs to bury their head under the sand and play the game just because you did.

And it's more than the characters hitting on you. It's how they're written. Everyone is a hypersexual freak of some sort and eager for you to know about it. And not just companions, but NPCs in the world.

 

[gurugeorge]

Idk, I killed one person in Moonrise before with a dialog option, and it was still a cakewalk. I just brought two casters, hasted both and then fireballed everything at least twice at the start. After that, it was just mopping up the stragglers.

Hasting or otherwise negating difficult terrain helps a lot when the devotees cast the hunger of hadar in the center. My party is the same - two casters, two melee.

However I intentionally didn't cast haste and don't have access to haste potions. I'm rationing spell slots because I want to do the whole tower without resting. I think I only cast two fireballs (one from a scroll), one Guardian of Faith, one Fire Elemental through the whole fight.

I'm not the one extolling my skill in a simple game of dice where the higher number wins, and players can play a limited amount of "cards"/"options" to modify the dice result.

You're the one boasting how easy the game is. I've never once claimed it's hard. On the contrary.

That's where you are wrong buddy. I'm not boasting how easy the game is, I'm genuinely despairing over it because the underlying combat, exploration and general feel of the fights are fantastic in this game but ruined by not feeling challenged. I'm sitting here waiting for the super autist that makes a good difficulty mod. Maybe by then even Patch 1 is out as well to fix some bugginess.

I wonder if a good diff mod is possible though (other than the stat-bloat type like the diff mod that already exists). If I think of Tactician on DOS2, which was actually quite hard, it was hard because so many elements of the game were changed that you couldn't change the diff after choosing Tactician.

With this game, with diff being changeable at-will, it seems like the devs can't change the game deeply enough to make that much of a difference (maybe because they have to stick to 5e in a way that precludes that?)

 

[Pizzashoes]

A few scenarios here or there that people bitch and moan about, while you can simply pick another option in dialogue.

People don't like seeing it at all, nigger. The game solicits it to you even if you're just a little bit nice toward the characters.

And it's ironic that I can't say nigger on 99% of the websites online because of the same kind of faggots that made this game not wanting to see it, yet I have to put up with faggotry in literally every product now.

Non-Edgy Gamer It's not ironic that the whole thing had to be blown up. I want to keep conversing with you but I will not have a conversation around literally incendiary, lose-your-job nonsense

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

@Non-Edgy Gamer It's not ironic that the whole thing had to be blown up. I want to keep conversing with you but I will not have a conversation around literally incendiary, lose-your-job nonsense

Nigger, this is the RPGCodex. And if you have a problem with a kike saying nigger, faggot or niggerfaggot, I suggest you fuck off back to reddit.

 

[Zeltak]

At the start of the combat I immediately used speed potion for my fighter, killed that orc lieutenant I forgot the name about and used Gale, Shadowheart and Karlach to kill everyone who were closest to Jaehira and almost all of the cultists. Np if one of them casts AoE just counterspelled that. Then I moved Gale a bit further ahead of Jaehira to make sure they would attack him instead.

So thanks to Haste you nuked the guy casting Black Hole, he is the major source of trouble. Try the same combat but without using Haste, i.e. without having an extra turn.

But you know you can just throw a lvl 1 spell like sanctuary on her if you really are keen on keeping her alive. Perhaps dimension door works as well to move her away from the crossfire idk.

I considered both but I thought they would be too drastic/cheesy/non-RP... Yeah... I know.

I'm fully aware of what tools I can use, I'm just looking to pass it with just the minimum amount of "easy" buttons.

"Bro if you aren't allowed to use X, Y and Z then it's actually hard and that means I'm totally right..."

If you refuse to use any of the tools to actually solve the problem that's on you. Btw this sort of discussion is meaningless because how the fuck would I know what restrictions you arbitrarily decided to put in your playthrough and then come here to complain about an encounter being unsolvable. You whole post about this is completely pointless.

 

[Pizzashoes]

Of course, I don't personally care. Nothing matters more than good discussion. The issue is whether it inhibits live discussion you monkey.

 

[Pizzashoes]

Citation needed, you mother fucker? When have I done you wrong? I have done nothing but support you! I don't even know you you stupid bitch!

 

[AwesomeButton]

That's where you are wrong buddy. I'm not boasting how easy the game is, I'm genuinely despairing over it because the underlying combat, exploration and general feel of the fights are fantastic in this game but ruined by not feeling challenged. I'm sitting here waiting for the super autist that makes a good difficulty mod. Maybe by then even Patch 1 is out as well to fix some bugginess.

My impression was you are decrying it as too easy, which is a no-brainer because it's... well "BG3". Doesn't get more normie than that, even action rpgs are harder.

Mods will definetly come that increase difficulty, the question is what kind of difficulty you are satisfied with?

I mean that once you can see through the combat mechanics, and know the rules that govern the final dice+modifiers result, what's there to make it more difficult for you - any mod that doesn't "Actually Make Them Smarter" will just consist of adjustments to abovementioned dice modifiers. Adding enemies to the map to buff up numbers can be ruled out, it is not possible through modding.

So, if not "make them smarter" and not "make them more numerous", what you are left with is either gimping yourself, or buffing the stats of the opposition. Neither of these looks particularly attractive to me, but of course my taste is not the end all be all. For me this just adds modifiers to the dice. I don't have to come up with a strategy to counter another strategy, I just need to come with better RNG in a more narrow-margin-of-error situation.

My root belief is that combat should reinforce roleplaying the characters, and when being successful in combat takes me too far from RPing my character - case in point Jaheira suiciding in this fight - I'd rather play on an lower difficulyt and RP more than boost the enemy's health and RP less.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Of course, I don't personally care. Nothing matters more than good discussion. The issue is whether it inhibits live discussion you monkey.

Well, I want to stay on-topic here and talk about BG3 (with whatever language I feel like).

So I suggest you start a thread in site feedback talking about what speech should be censored here if you want to talk about that. I'm sure the admins will treat the issue with the appropriate level of concern.

Citation needed, you mother fucker? When have I done you wrong? I have done nothing but support you! I don't even know you you stupid bitch!

Citation needed that it's inhibiting discussion, I mean.

But like I said, probably not itt.

 

[Saark]

Wrong. Most of them ask you at least twice. I think Laezel is the only one that truly stops after one refusal, and Shadowcunt is the only one who never makes an offer.

Oh no, you have to rebuff them not just once, but TWICE? Yeah, that's, like, 60 seconds instead of 30 in a 50+ hour game. Instant refund.

It's not a choice, it's forced weirdness that doesn't respect your characters choices.

Weirdness is in the eye of the beholder though. Larian decided to go with less on-the-nose romance in some cases (Gale, Shadowheart), and as a result decided to give people multiple attempts to initiate romance with them (or have these characters initiate it for you) so you wouldn't miss out on a romance by declining to see a magic show that one time. That's fair design in my book.

I pick a male character. 10 years ago, that choice meant not having to deal with male romance arcs.

Oh is that so? Weird how one of the most beloved titles of the codex, ToEE, had a gay romance. Even had an ending slide for it. And it was made 20 years ago. Guess we gotta adjust the codex GOTY lists because clearly it's woke trash.

It's a reason not to pay for it, if you want to vote with your dollar. If you want to pirate it, that's up to you, but I don't think you're missing out on anything that you couldn't get elsewhere here. The turn-based combat is nice, but it's hardly the best. Quit pretending that someone needs to bury their head under the sand and play the game just because you did.

If you think that's a reason to not pay money for something that is still enjoyable in many other ways, that's your perogative. It's also retarded. I gave my own experiences with the game, and some might relate to it, some might not.

I never gave a recommendation to buy the game, by the way, but maybe you were already seething so hard for me not unequivocally standing against the "wokeness" in the game, that you rolled a nat1 on your reading comprehension. I said that people who get conniptions over the sheer existence of a gay character, i.e. you, should probably avoid the game. Not everybody is like you though, and thank lord for that.

 

[Zeltak]

That's where you are wrong buddy. I'm not boasting how easy the game is, I'm genuinely despairing over it because the underlying combat, exploration and general feel of the fights are fantastic in this game but ruined by not feeling challenged. I'm sitting here waiting for the super autist that makes a good difficulty mod. Maybe by then even Patch 1 is out as well to fix some bugginess.

Mods will definetly come that increase difficulty, the question is what kind of difficulty you are satisfied with?

One where encounters require you to use different strategies to solve. There is no 'perfect' difficulty because at the end of the day the game has to give you a way to win but that doesn't mean I should be allowed to just use basic strategies to faceroll the content. My build choices don't really matter because almost everything works without struggle.

I'm convinced that just fine-tuning the stats a little bit more to make enemies survive initial alpha strikes and perhaps looking at the long rest supply curve can go a long way.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

My root belief is that combat should reinforce roleplaying the characters

I agree. And this is why I don't like so much of 3E and 5E's incentivized minmaxing with feats etc.

But this game, like BG2's rescuing of Imoen, does the thing of implying great urgency where none exists. And, ironically, this sabotages the timed quests because it gets the player used to the idea that they can just ignore that sort of messaging and spam rest.

Mixed signals.

 

[whydoibother]

Githyankeeee-haaw!

 

[Pizzashoes]

I'm not sure who I'm defending against. But, I'll say my general opinion of the game is, of course, the game stands on its own. My opinion doesn't matter. In fact, my opinion is the game exceeds simple judgement from anyone, and the game requires multiple perspectives from multiple players who have invested plenty of time of their lives into the game. I have invested plenty of my life into the game and I have provided youtube links solely to RPGcodex in order to enhance RPGcodex discussion. I don't really care about RPG discussion other than the discussion in RPGcodex.

 

[Saark]

But this game, like BG2's rescuing of Imoen, does the thing of implying great urgency where none exists. And, ironically, this sabotages the timed quests because it gets the player used to the idea that they can just ignore that sort of messaging and spam rest.

It's one of my biggest gripes with the game, since the mcguffin is used early on and there's a great deal of time-pressure expressed, but then it doesn't actually matter at all. In fact, the game kind of requires you to rest frequently and often, as it's the only time when the story gets moved forward. On my first playthrough, I didn't get tadpole powers until the beginning of act 2, because I was incredibly conservative with spells and resources, to the point where I got to the shadowlands without having had the dream-visitor sequence yet.

This shit then repeats in Act 3, when you suddenly leisurely stroll around town while a massive army marches on the city (how did you even get there before them, they moved out quite a bit earlier than you did). It's just pretty inconsistent writing, and anybody saying the game has good writing should shoot themselves.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Oh no, you have to rebuff them not just once, but TWICE?

And if it turns out to be 3 times, as is the case with Astarion? (4 if you count him trying to neck rape you in your sleep, which he apparently views as sexual.)

Weirdness is in the eye of the beholder though.

Granted, if you're a massive faggot you might find all of this ok. Not sure that needs to be said though.

Oh is that so? Weird how one of the most beloved titles of the codex, ToEE, had a gay romance.

And I have no idea which character it was with. Gosh, it's almost like it's not spammed at the player repeatedly or something.

PS: TOEE isn't 'beloved' for its romances. By most of us, anyway.

If you think that's a reason to not pay money for something that is still enjoyable in many other ways, that's your perogative. It's also retarded.

Not spending money on something I don't like is retarded, huh?

But then you say:

you, should probably avoid the game.

So, which is it?

Not everybody is like you though, and thank lord for that.

Which "lord" are you thanking here? Just curious.