Baldur's Gate 3 Playthrough Discussion

[Zed Clampet]

@Zed Clampet - eh? You don't need a relic to defeat the general.

Spoiler: I guess maybe a spoiler about the relic

We just finished it, and I would definitely say that you do, in fact, really want the relic.

 

[Zloth]

We just finished it, and I would definitely say that you do, in fact, need the relic.

Are we talking about the same boss? Is this Act 1 or 2?

 

[Zed Clampet]

Are we talking about the same boss? Is this Act 1 or 2?

Spoiler: the relic

Act 2. I mean, I guess technically you don't need "it", but she helps you kill the general and joins your camp

 

[Frindis]

@Zloth I believe congratulations are in order. Well fought!

 

[Zed Clampet]

By the way, the fight I said we couldn't win we won the next try. We snuck past them and started the fight on the other side and took out the monster as quickly as possible, and it all went smoothly from there.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

So, I'm dibbling my way through Act 1 little bit at a time and it seems its going to stick for a while.

Is the game still weirdly janky for anyone else?

I've had Astarion unable to jump a gap for no reason which wasnt a problem after reloading the save, and also had him walking in the air and through walls for some time around the Toll house until he decided to hit a stack of boxes and remember where the ground was. Also items on the ground sometimes dont react and the contextual tool tips sometimes just dont work on items in the menu. Its only small things but I was expecting the game to be less buggy than when I played it at release, not the same or more.

Otherwise just hit level 4. Maybe regretting choosing Storm Sorcery as a subclass for my sorcerer Durge after checking out a class guide and seeing the bonuses for the Draconic and Shadow options. Flying away without provoking opportunity attacks might be useful but I'd much rather summon a hell beast or have the extra AC and HP.

Apart from that mainly been using Wyl The Fiend, Astarion as an Assassin and Karlach as a Berserker. Considerign changing up Astarion to a Swashbuckler as the abilities look more interesting. Dont think Im quite ready for Ethel or the Gobbo camp yet, so exploring all corners and gearing up, hopefully Gale doesnt eat too much of it before I manage to progress.

 

[Zloth]

Wow, I don't think I've seen anyone floating around off the ground!

Spoiler: the relic

Act 2. I mean, I guess technically you don't need "it", but she helps you kill the general and joins your camp

Spoiler

Oh! You mean HER! Jeesh, don't let her hear you call her a relic. I thought you meant the glowy mace from the end of Act1, or maybe Shadowheart's D12.

I'm still not quite to Act 3. Seems there's a little interlude between the two acts. I decided to get Lae'zel's levels updated and use her to clean up some things in the Shadow Lands. I also did a respec on Shadowheart, switching her to a war priest. It's how I've been playing her, might as well make it official. It will let her use heavy armor, too.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Wow, I don't think I've seen anyone floating around off the ground!

Spoiler

Oh! You mean HER! Jeesh, don't let her hear you call her a relic. I thought you meant the glowy mace from the end of Act1, or maybe Shadowheart's D12.

Spoiler: relic info

Hey, it wasn't my idea to call her "relic". That's what the baddies call her to leave the impression she's a magical item as they siphon off her essence to make the General immortal.

For us, the fight to end act 2 was a bit anticlimactic. The whole sequence of "events" was fun, but we were never in any real danger. We probably need to raise the difficulty for the last act. I think we're on Normal.

Of course, once you watch Guido and Gayle get it on at sex camp, everything else seems kind of...anticlimactic

 

[Zloth]

Spoiler: Interlude between Act 2 & 3

OK, so I meet my Dream Visitor and she's... taller than I expected. And bald. And kinda mind flayery. I join her in her fight, but then I see who's at stake and immediately decide I want to fight against her, plus I want to bring Lae'Zel, so I finish the fight and make silly choices just to see what happens. The narrator flat out tells me that, if I had freed the trapped guy, he would have killed me.

Pthtthth, stupid narrator. I re-load and go again. Die Dream Visitor! I don't even live long enough to be killed by the trapped guy. As soon as the mind flayer goes down, a cutscene plays and the whole party is changed into mind flayers. A Game Over pops up, and I go to the main menu.

But, just briefly, the game engine shows up again and quickly fades out. Thanks to the Steam recording thing, I managed to get a shot of it as it faded:

https://images.steamusercontent.com/ugc/17731591274998939783/2E6201CEE67997DA7319C0A37943F93E6F486500/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

(I don't want to put it into the forum screenshots because of spoilers.)

You can see on the right that everyone received condition "Mind Flayer Form." The portraits all changed and a bunch of new powers showed up. Zloth still has his "hunter's mark" concentration going, though! The whole party has been teleported to a new place, probably in the Elder Brain.

 

[Pifanjr]

Is the game still weirdly janky for anyone else?

Not at all. The only problem I've had is in trying to see what's happening above a character. Even when zoomed all the way out the game typically doesn't let you see the level above you, which can be a pain as the game does feature quite a lot of verticality. It means that I can jump into a building through a hole in the roof, but jumping out again is almost impossible.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Wow, I don't think I've seen anyone floating around off the ground!

Not at all. The only problem I've had is in trying to see what's happening above a character. Even when zoomed all the way out the game typically doesn't let you see the level above you, which can be a pain as the game does feature quite a lot of verticality. It means that I can jump into a building through a hole in the roof, but jumping out again is almost impossible.

It wasnt this bad the first time. I have some different parts in the system to then so could be related to that, but havent had any problems in anything else. At a guess seems like weird either engine or CPU/RAM stuff to me, some calculations under the hood going slightly wrong. Dunno.

Maybe Ive just had bad luck, its nothing game breaking anyway.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I didn't even know you coul respec your characters because I've never talked to Withers at camp. Now I'm pretty excited to respec Shadowheart and Karlach. I wont respec my monk because I only have a small amount of XP needed to get to level 9, and he gets some high damage attacks

Is the game still weirdly janky for anyone else?

After everything people have said about it, I was expecting the game to be near flawless. It definitely isn't that for me. At this point I would classify the game as "buggy". Just had a lot of things go wrong, including things that could have dramatically changed the game, like not getting the option to invite an NPC to join up. That happened to us the other day after the Act 2 finale. Guido just walked off, and I thought 'that didn't seem right' because the conversation seemed to be cut off early, so I talked to the person again and got the option. Same day I also flunked one of the trials because it said I missed a jump when I definitely didn't; later I attacked my own character after having selected a Greater Zombie; and I couldn't use the machine that lets you converse with brains.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

After everything people have said about it, I was expecting the game to be near flawless. It definitely isn't that for me. At this point I would classify the game as "buggy". Just had a lot of things go wrong, including things that could have dramatically changed the game, like not getting the option to invite an NPC to join up. That happened to us the other day after the Act 2 finale. Guido just walked off, and I thought 'that didn't seem right' because the conversation seemed to be cut off early, so I talked to the person again and got the option. Same day I also flunked one of the trials because it said I missed a jump when I definitely didn't; later I attacked my own character after having selected a Greater Zombie; and I couldn't use the machine that lets you converse with brains.

Good to know its not just me, hopefully theres nothing that cant be fixed by reloading the save. Not sure how that would work in Honor mode though.

 

[Zloth]

Not at all. The only problem I've had is in trying to see what's happening above a character. Even when zoomed all the way out the game typically doesn't let you see the level above you, which can be a pain as the game does feature quite a lot of verticality. It means that I can jump into a building through a hole in the roof, but jumping out again is almost impossible.

Pressing O gives you an overhead view, which often helps, but it can still be a big problem.

 

[Frindis]

Not played with the latest patch, but I have thankfully not experienced any bugs ending my honor mode. There was one notorious bug that I was afraid of (that one is fixed now) which was characters dying when taking the elevator near Gauntlet of Shar. To avoid this, I sent one person down the elevator, then the next one.

Other than that I have experienced a lot of smaller stuff like floating on boxes, walking in midair, stuttering and weird game mechanics happening when summoning too many creatures. To their defense, I did summon A LOT of creatures. Other than that, some spells being wonky, walking being bugged at times, weird cut scenes, strange textures and stuff like that.

The worst bug (or probably just bad level design) I encountered was actually one that could have potentially destroyed one of my characters build completely. I was building a spear thrower and I had obtained one insanely good weapon for just that build, but it got lost when I threw it into the water. It sucked because the difference between not throwing it in the water and hitting the enemy was basically just a small square. Thankfully I kept a couple spares, not as powerful, but good enough to get the job done.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Spoiler: Interlude between Act 2 & 3

OK, so I meet my Dream Visitor and she's... taller than I expected. And bald. And kinda mind flayery. I join her in her fight, but then I see who's at stake and immediately decide I want to fight against her, plus I want to bring Lae'Zel, so I finish the fight and make silly choices just to see what happens. The narrator flat out tells me that, if I had freed the trapped guy, he would have killed me.

Pthtthth, stupid narrator. I re-load and go again. Die Dream Visitor! I don't even live long enough to be killed by the trapped guy. As soon as the mind flayer goes down, a cutscene plays and the whole party is changed into mind flayers. A Game Over pops up, and I go to the main menu.

But, just briefly, the game engine shows up again and quickly fades out. Thanks to the Steam recording thing, I managed to get a shot of it as it faded:

https://images.steamusercontent.com/ugc/17731591274998939783/2E6201CEE67997DA7319C0A37943F93E6F486500/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

(I don't want to put it into the forum screenshots because of spoilers.)

You can see on the right that everyone received condition "Mind Flayer Form." The portraits all changed and a bunch of new powers showed up. Zloth still has his "hunter's mark" concentration going, though! The whole party has been teleported to a new place, probably in the Elder Brain.

This cracked me up. I didn't read it until now because we had quit right after the Act 2 boss fight. You did this sequence with all the advanced strategery that Guido and I used in Dying Light 2. Every time we made a decision, right afterward we thought, 'Why did we do that?'

*****

I swear I'm enjoying this game more and more every time we play it.

I reset Shadowheart (thanks @Zloth for letting me know that was possible), and I'm very happy with her now, although part of that is that we just hit level 9, and I finally have some massive damage spells. Buffing and healing are fine, but calling forth the flames of Hell to rain down on your enemies is just another level of joy.

Anyway, we've decided that once we finish this we're actually going to go back and play the Divinity games.

 

[Zloth]

Quite a bit more humor in those. And pyramids of teleporting, which are a Larian staple!

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I just stumbled into and area I didnt find before in Act 1

Spoiler

its full of spiders and there appears to be some kind of special key gem on the floor in there that might fit a book.

 

[Pifanjr]

I just stumbled into and area I didnt find before in Act 1

Spoiler

its full of spiders and there appears to be some kind of special key gem on the floor in there that might fit a book.

I have been carrying around a gem that supposedly fits into something, but I haven't found a clue indicating what it should be used on/with.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I have been carrying around a gem that supposedly fits into something, but I haven't found a clue indicating what it should be used on/with.

I'm carrying around a strange piece of amber that I've had since the beginning. I almost sold it the other day, but decided I was taking it to the end.

I also have what is probably a quest item, a stuffed animal, that I never had a use for.

 

[Zed Clampet]

@Zloth regarding your Act 2 final boss battle:

Spoiler: Act 2 Final Boss Battle

I take it based on what you were saying that there were a bunch of enemies there? Because we only had the boss and a couple of archers. We wiped everyone out, including Balthasar, before we got there. We also had the relic with us, and she probably took half his health.

 

[PakGamerNerd40s]

I had played and finished BG3 at the start of previous year (2024).

Despite some cotroversies surrounding the game, I decided to go at it a bit late to see if it deserved all the accolades.

And to my surprise, I found the game to be extremely enjoyable and satisfying as I could skip all the controversial stuff in the game.

What really impressed me was the voice-over that was top stuff and done really well, especially the voice of Karlach (Samantha Beart), Astarion (Neil Christie Newbon), Raphael (Andrew Wincott), and Shadow Heart (
Jennifer English).

Also, the element of startegizing in this game made it fun from the start right till the end. The boss fight with Raphael was particualarly classic whom I was able to beat by literally the skin of my teeth, as I wasn't strong enough when facing him. I was able to beat this boss through a defensive strategy of falling back and eliminating his minions one by one before taking him solo with ever-trusted Lae'zel elimiating nearly 400 points (out of 666) in one go.

After Elden Ring, and Sekiro, BG3 is my third best game of all time.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Larian? Why you doing this to me? I see that chest over there. The most beautiful one I've seen in this game. But to get to this beautiful chest, I have to go against my nature and commit an act of evil.

Hmm, maybe it's time to save scum. See what's in that chest and then reload. I mean, I know it's not going to be worth it. But it's so tempting...

 

[Pifanjr]

Despite some cotroversies surrounding the game, I decided to go at it a bit late to see if it deserved all the accolades.

It seems the thread you linked was just a troll, though I don't doubt there is a large group of people who would agree with most if not all of his points unironically, if they knew about the game.

Larian? Why you doing this to me? I see that chest over there. The most beautiful one I've seen in this game. But to get to this beautiful chest, I have to go against my nature and commit an act of evil.

Hmm, maybe it's time to save scum. See what's in that chest and then reload. I mean, I know it's not going to be worth it. But it's so tempting...

What better way to tempt a Gamer to evil than with the promise of shiny loot.