Baldur's Gate 3

[Vaako]

Gale had some gay moment, but it's cool that you could friendzone him and he leaves you alone.

You could not at release, he just immediately tried to have sex with you repeatedly

You could tell him off after he invited you to his magic show and sit way too close to you with uncomfortable eye contact. Just the dialogue option that lead to that scene wasnt explcity stating that it was the romance option and companions allegedly liked you too much at launch. If it was intended or not we will probably never know.

[Acrux]

If it was intended or not we will probably never know.

[Prardenciflar]

Gale had some gay moment, but it's cool that you could friendzone him and he leaves you alone.

You could not at release, he just immediately tried to have sex with you repeatedly

From what I heard that was partially due to a bug. Gale's meant to be super easy to date but he wasn't taking no for an answer, fixed in patch 2 or 3 iirc. Happened to me on my first run through as well.

[Fitz]

Had about an hour free, so I immersed myself in Baldur’s Gate 3. Cleared out parts of the swamp after passing an investigation check—it was really cool that I couldn’t see all the traps, so I had to backtrack at times just to avoid them. I also fought some frog (?) that was surprisingly strong. Not sure what the reasoning was there—the thing actually managed to down a few of my party members. Makes me wonder how that would’ve gone on Honour Mode. Having multiple saves really takes the edge off. Even though I’m trying to play seriously—without going full try-hard—the game isn’t pushing me that much yet.

Anyway, I found an obelisk surrounded by tree creatures and swamp imps that explode when killed. I also found a letter addressing Kagha in one of the nearby trees, detailing her betrayal of Silvanus by siding with the shadow druids for more power. Ran into a vampire hunter, killed him for Astarion’s sake, explored a bit more, then headed back to the Emerald Grove. Did Karlach’s companion quest where she meets the blacksmith and gets parts of her engine repaired. Then I confronted Kagha—this fight is really easy if you manage to persuade her that what she’s doing is wrong. Just more proof that a bard would be great in Honour Mode.

Also stole the druid idol and gave it to the tiefling kids—they rewarded me with a pretty badass ring. +1 AC this early is huge—basically a 5% lower chance to get hit. From a ring. Insane.

Back at camp, Astarion was offering to bite me again… When does this stop? It’s getting a bit much—too easy and kind of off-putting at this point. First Gale, now this guy. Told him to **** off. And yeah, that’s pretty much it. Did some minor stuff too, but that’s a lot packed into ~90 minutes. My save is at around 15 hours now, and I honestly don’t know where the time went—which is usually a good sign.

The encounter design is great, and exploration actually comes with a cost—you need to be patient or you’ll get blown up by the dumbest things. The tougher encounters in Act 1 are coming up—the goblin camp, the githyanki patrol, the hag.

I’m in no rush to tackle them yet. I want to go through the githyanki section with Lae’zel in my party, so I’ll probably swap out the warlock or barbarian for that. Though honestly, I’m having too much fun with those classes to replace them willingly.

Any advice on the order? I was thinking: Githyanki → Hag → Goblin Camp.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The Githyanki Creche that Laezel wants you to go to is located on another map called the Mountain Pass that you are supposed to hike through once you have finished the goblin fort and Halsin tells you to go to the Shadowlands (the act 2 region). I think you can do the mountain pass before finishing the goblin fort, but you will be in for a miserable time like I was if you do things out of order (and the game doesn't clearly identify the level order until you are already very close to pulling aggro, or have been ambushed).

Despite the goblin fort sounding like the last thing you should do in act 1, most of the enemies there are only level 3 while most of the rest of the act 1 stuff gets to level 4 or 5+ mobs. So you actually want to do the goblin fort relatively early on into act 1 and get a lot of exp from the lots of mobs there while you can, rather than what I did which I did all of the side content (which was way higher level) and then coming back and doing fort (because I thought that doing the fort would lock me out of the side content).

I would recommend:
area around the crashed spaceship > grove quests = the town taken over by the goblins > auntie ethel = goblin fort > cross the bridge (enemies are higher level) or underground areas (enemies are higher level) or Mountain Pass to do Githyanki Fort (enemies are higher level). If you go underground too early, you might stumble into a boss that is very frustrating to fight underlevelled like what happened to me

[WhiteShark]

<slop>

It's pretty cool that LLMs are advanced enough now to play BG3 and blog about it.

[J1M]

That’s straight up sexual harassment. By a ******. In a video game.
That’s ****** up.

Wasn't intentional. All of their testers just never found it because they always said yes.

[Bhaalspawn Jr]

The Githyanki Creche that Laezel wants you to go to is located on another map called the Mountain Pass that you are supposed to hike through once you have finished the goblin fort and Halsin tells you to go to the Shadowlands (the act 2 region). I think you can do the mountain pass before finishing the goblin fort, but you will be in for a miserable time like I was if you do things out of order (and the game doesn't clearly identify the level order until you are already very close to pulling aggro, or have been ambushed).

Despite the goblin fort sounding like the last thing you should do in act 1, most of the enemies there are only level 3 while most of the rest of the act 1 stuff gets to level 4 or 5+ mobs. So you actually want to do the goblin fort relatively early on into act 1 and get a lot of exp from the lots of mobs there while you can, rather than what I did which I did all of the side content (which was way higher level) and then coming back and doing fort (because I thought that doing the fort would lock me out of the side content).

I would recommend:
area around the crashed spaceship > grove quests = the town taken over by the goblins > auntie ethel = goblin fort > cross the bridge (enemies are higher level) or underground areas (enemies are higher level) or Mountain Pass to do Githyanki Fort (enemies are higher level). If you go underground too early, you might stumble into a boss that is very frustrating to fight underlevelled like what happened to me

When are you coming back to finish it, Val? Are you still busy playing WoW?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The Githyanki Creche that Laezel wants you to go to is located on another map called the Mountain Pass that you are supposed to hike through once you have finished the goblin fort and Halsin tells you to go to the Shadowlands (the act 2 region). I think you can do the mountain pass before finishing the goblin fort, but you will be in for a miserable time like I was if you do things out of order (and the game doesn't clearly identify the level order until you are already very close to pulling aggro, or have been ambushed).

Despite the goblin fort sounding like the last thing you should do in act 1, most of the enemies there are only level 3 while most of the rest of the act 1 stuff gets to level 4 or 5+ mobs. So you actually want to do the goblin fort relatively early on into act 1 and get a lot of exp from the lots of mobs there while you can, rather than what I did which I did all of the side content (which was way higher level) and then coming back and doing fort (because I thought that doing the fort would lock me out of the side content).

I would recommend:
area around the crashed spaceship > grove quests = the town taken over by the goblins > auntie ethel = goblin fort > cross the bridge (enemies are higher level) or underground areas (enemies are higher level) or Mountain Pass to do Githyanki Fort (enemies are higher level). If you go underground too early, you might stumble into a boss that is very frustrating to fight underlevelled like what happened to me

When are you coming back to finish it, Val? Are you still busy playing WoW?

WoW is almost done. The final story chapter released today, but it is bugged so I am waiting for a fix. I am also a little busy IRL. I will get back to BG3. I also checked out Elin, but had a miserable experience with the survival crafting and the confusing menus, so I will probably play BG3 over slogging through Elin or starting a new playthrough and trying to do better there.

[Fitz]

<slop>

It's pretty cool that LLMs are advanced enough now to play BG3 and blog about it.

text only is more of an api

[Fitz]

Huh, I thought Aunt Ethel's fight would be a lot more difficult. Made me wonder if I should've skipped on the speed potion. Got some extra Dex and going through the camp.
Everything feels like a breeze so far.

[rusty_shackleford]

Huh, I thought Aunt Ethel's fight would be a lot more difficult. Made me wonder if I should've skipped on the speed potion. Got some extra Dex and going through the camp.
Everything feels like a breeze so far.

Are you playing on tactician difficulty?
BG3 is much easier than DOS2

[Fitz]

Yup yup, just zerging on combat. Haven't had a tough fight since the hayena guy with the mercenaries and the locked chest. Let's see how long this goes on for. Hoping for a challenging fight at the end of goblin camp arc.

[Oyster Sauce]

it's an easy game BUT I hope you didn't cheat and look up builds...

[Fitz]

Ofc not. I haven't looked up any valuable metadata. Just some random stuff I sorta mentioned in my previous posts here.
I'm waiting for the later acts, but this is prbly the easiest crpg I've played.

[Fitz]

Alllright, finished up Act 1. Got the heavy adamantine splint amor and the sussur tree dagger. The whole act felt like going through the dark portal in the burning crusade with the mushroom people and all the burning forts left and right, there's even a red orc running one of the forts too. Ended up playing a maximum autistic party of a monk, fighter, barbarian, rogue by the end of it.

The Adamantine Golem Grym is a decent fight. It's a gimmick fight which - you either get it right and everything goes smoothly or you gotta reload. Still tho, I can see things going sideways fast if you only have one try to end him. Nere was my hardest fight yet. If I recall correctly you can have some of the npcs fight with you but I must have messed up my dialogue options at some point because I was fighting the entire camp and then some. It was a pretty cool encounter especially with all of my party being able to push people around with either skills or arrows. Decent amount of challenge in this one, the mind control spam was a nice touch. I still haven't popped any of the brain worms or used any of the soul coins. I pulled through this one without having to use a speed potion too.

Left the githyanki for last since the game confirms it progresses forward after passing to the mountains, wanted to finish up all quests before that and be thorough etc.
Damage numbers are starting to stack and it's actually starting to feel like rolling dice. Overall, some things in bg3 are clicking for me. Tho even after 30hours in it feels like I've barely scratched the surface. Multi-classing is already starting to sound broken af.

At one point during the Nere fight my thoughts did an interesting swirl - I was thinking I've had more fun with pillars and rogue trader combat and that if you remove the visual spectacle from bg3 it's combat is not that outstanding. I wouldn't say this is the absolute truth for me, but it is something I'm considering as I'm going through the story.

[buttfucker 3000]

Yup yup, just zerging on combat. Haven't had a tough fight since the hayena guy with the mercenaries and the locked chest. Let's see how long this goes on for. Hoping for a challenging fight at the end of goblin camp arc.

Act 1 is the hardest imo. Most likely because you're low level and your class has not fully opened up yet, so you're fairly limited with what you can do in a fight. There will be some boss fights that will be road bumps down the road, for sure. But generally speaking, the game only gets easier.

[Fitz]

Was charting the path for an honour mode run in Act 1, the whole act looks like a setup to get gear for until mid game + the harder fights can be bypassed with high charisma rolls.
Other than watching out not to get pushed into lava or some pits everything feels very straightforward. Even without cheesing the AI.

I know in honour mode the Owlbear fight spawns two bears, but even that sounds easily doable with the lightning charges bow you get from the burning building down the road. The Nere fight is hard mainly because of the mindcontrol that keeps getting thrown at you, but I was going through the vendors last night and saw that the mindflayer from the society of brilliance sells some +wis resistance elixirs that should solve that comfortably. I also went through the whole act without the Titanstrong Bow (+Str modifier in addition to your +Dex when shooting with it) which is an extremely busted item to give to the player so early on. Add to that some other elixirs, some speed pots, some misty step scrolls and everything starts to look like a breeze. Ethel sounds easy on paper (idk what her legendary action is tho) and the titan is not so hard to handle too. Not sure if one of your party members can wait outside the pit, but if it can that's a good option if you end up wiping. He doesn't do anything extra on honour mode, right? I'm assuming it's something like more trash mobs, boss needs to get hit by the hammer +3 more times, those sort of things. Ethel, Spectator, Forge Titan sound like the messiest and most dangerous fights. Maybe goblin camp can get tricky. Used the ogre horn to clear that part of the map, but have to check how the summons scale for hm. I think a minimum of 17AC for the end act fights for the whole party is a minimum.

That sort of thing. Even the gnoll fight with the mercenaries and the locked chest can be bypassed with some dialogue check, tho not sure how. And the githyanki patrol fight can be avoided with dialogue checks too.
That's charisma solving two of the hardest fights in the act simply by existing. On paper paladin sounds omega busted. And I can't even imagine the heights your party could reach if you steroid them with tadpoles.

[logincrash]

I like the Durge portmanteau for Dark Urge because it sounds like "funeral dirge."

[TKVNC]

I like the Durge portmanteau for Dark Urge because it sounds like "funeral dirge."

It's actually just a reference to the Jeb Surge.

[anvi]

Is this game any good in terms of combat? I played it for maybe 5 hours or so. I think I completed episode 1 just about. But I had zero fun. Too much running around. I don't like any of the characters. And the combat bored me. Is it worth trying to carry on?

[Fitz]

The combat is decent. But it also lets you pick up skeletons and throw them at other skeletons so if you get bored you can do **** like that.

[J1M]

it's an easy game BUT I hope you didn't cheat and look up builds...

"Builds" in 5e just means picking the overpowered feat out of a flat list. What's to "spoil"?

[Bhaalspawn Jr]

Is this game any good in terms of combat? I played it for maybe 5 hours or so. I think I completed episode 1 just about. But I had zero fun. Too much running around. I don't like any of the characters. And the combat bored me. Is it worth trying to carry on?

I personally love the combat. There's such a large variety of ways with how you can approach it. Like right now, I'm doing a solo playthrough (no companions) as an assassin rogue and I'm just bobbing in and out of combat and taking down everyone one by one like Batman.

The combat does get better as you level up and learn new abilities (you can also get experimental with multiclassing). If you can persevere with the early stages, it only keeps getting better imo.

[anvi]

Is this game any good in terms of combat? I played it for maybe 5 hours or so. I think I completed episode 1 just about. But I had zero fun. Too much running around. I don't like any of the characters. And the combat bored me. Is it worth trying to carry on?

I personally love the combat. There's such a large variety of ways with how you can approach it. Like right now, I'm doing a solo playthrough (no companions) as an assassin rogue and I'm just bobbing in and out of combat and taking down everyone one by one like Batman.

The combat does get better as you level up and learn new abilities (you can also get experimental with multiclassing). If you can persevere with the early stages, it only keeps getting better imo.

Thanks! I still have it installed, I think I was around the start of Chapter 2. I will try to get back into it. The combat was promising. I think chapter 1 was a lot of busywork which wore me down.

[Bhaalspawn Jr]

Is this game any good in terms of combat? I played it for maybe 5 hours or so. I think I completed episode 1 just about. But I had zero fun. Too much running around. I don't like any of the characters. And the combat bored me. Is it worth trying to carry on?

I personally love the combat. There's such a large variety of ways with how you can approach it. Like right now, I'm doing a solo playthrough (no companions) as an assassin rogue and I'm just bobbing in and out of combat and taking down everyone one by one like Batman.

The combat does get better as you level up and learn new abilities (you can also get experimental with multiclassing). If you can persevere with the early stages, it only keeps getting better imo.

Thanks! I still have it installed, I think I was around the start of Chapter 2. I will try to get back into it. The combat was promising. I think chapter 1 was a lot of busywork which wore me down.

Yeah, I also recommend that you don't search every last nook and cranny or read every last book/letter you come across. It creates unnecessary tedium.

[rusty_shackleford]

I read everything and I finished the game within days of release

[Bhaalspawn Jr]

I read everything and I finished the game within days of release

When I fell in love with the game, I did start reading everything, but now that I'm on my 5th playthrough, I've read it all.

[Rand]

How does Larian so reliably (along with other companies) manage to make the party limit one smaller than the number of companions you would want to have?

I want a mage (not Gale), a thief (not Astarion) a cleric (not Shadowheart), and a fighter or ranger (Lae'zel is actually amusing), while I play the paladin leader, but the game is only designed for 3/4 and bugs out if you mod it for extra party slots.
Not that the engine can't handle it, but all the conversations expect 4 max and can bug everything out in multiple events if you have more than that.

I had the same problem with Divinity Original Sin and Divinity Original Sin 2, but at least you could mod in an extra slot and not have issues in those.

Like, how hard is it to allow every companion in the party, or none, and just increase or decrease the challenge appropriately?

"This is the final battle, and all of [placename] is on the line, but half of you just stay here in the camp because... well I don't know why, actually."

[Fitz]

My only explanation for this is that they expect you to play one of the original characters yourself.