Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Technical & Gameplay Problems Multiplayer Act 3 T-Posing and Crashing/PC

I’ve seen this issue posted on the forums before but never with a solid answer as to what causes it or how to fix it. This thread is intended to be a record of an ongoing issue that multiple players are experiencing, hopefully to bring attention to it and finally get it fixed.

My partner and I have started multiple playthroughs on PC that always end in the Lower City area of Act 3. We are able to play together pretty much flawlessly up until this point, but when we enter the Lower City, it’s only a matter of time before the Guest player starts experiencing partially rendered environments, missing UI elements, T-posing characters and NPCs, or crashes in the loading screen. The Host player is able to load this area with no issues. The crashes seem to happen whenever there is a loading screen, like going from Camp to the city or leaving the sewers or a building basement and entering the large, main Lower City area.

Here is what we have tried, based on others’ suggestions and some of our own ideas, none of which has worked for us in the long-term:

-Uninstalling and reinstalling the game.

-Updating graphics drivers.

-Playing on LAN, Online, and Direct Connect.

-Launching the game with both Vulkan and DX11

-Bypassing the Larian launcher/Launching through the Larian Launcher

-Turning on Slow HDD mode, both individually and at the same time for both of us

-Lowering graphics settings for both the Host and the Guest

-Launching the game through both the BG3 Mod Manager and Steam

-Having the Host launch the game with all party members in camp, and then having the Guest join and 1.) leave camp through the "Leave Camp" button, and 2.) Fast travel to a Lower City waypoint. Neither of these methods seem to work.

-Having the Guest join the Host's game, and also having the Host invite the Guest to play via Steam

-Sending the Host’s save file to the Guest, and having the Guest load in first as the new Host. (This just ends up swapping who is having the issue. The Guest who was initially experiencing the issue can load and play with no problem, but the problem starts occurring on the original Host's computer if they load in as a Guest.)

-Having the Guest load the Host’s save file, then be invited to join a game using the same save file on the Host’s computer.

-Inviting the Guest to a save file in Act 3 that had previously been played exclusively in single player. The Guest will eventually still crash in Lower City.

Our Situation/Specs

-Both of our computers are capable of running BG3 in single player at maximum graphics settings with no issues whatsoever. I am usually the Guest when we play in multiplayer, but I have beaten the game with no similar issues whatsoever in single player. My partner as the Host has no issues loading this area on his computer, and his computer is newer/faster than mine.

-We play sitting next to each other on the same internet connection, same network etc. We don't play with a VPN enabled.

-In our most recent playthrough, we did play with mods enabled, but we have experienced this exact same issue with 2 separate playthroughs that had no mods. When we did play with mods, we made sure that we had the exact same versions of the exact same mods installed with the same load order.

We’ve been experiencing this issue since the game launched, sinking hundreds of hours into these playthroughs we can’t finish. Every time a patch comes out that promises to improve Act 3 performance, we hope that we will be able to finally finish the game together, and will usually start a new playthrough instead of loading up old “broken” saves. So far, nothing has helped and the issue persists.

Thanks for reading. If anything has worked for you that I haven’t mentioned above, let me know! We are desperate and will try anything at this point.

Just to give it a push.

My brother and I do have exactly the same problem. We didn't try all the things the OP did, but it seems it wouldn't help anyway.

The game did run very good until we reached Lower City BG. In all the hours before we only had one or two game or synch crashes that affected both of us.

But now I (as the guest player) get stuck in the loading screen (loading status number showing 100%, no loading art, only black, loading circle not moving) when joining his game. It mostly works when task-killing the game and start again, but when I emerge from the sewers or a cellar, I get stuck again or the game loads and I see a little bit around me, but my avatar and party member, almost all textures and UI is missing. The game gets stuck very soon after.

This is no fun.

We will try to go to camp when saving and sending me out first and try to pursue only the main quest, to bring the run to the end. But if this doesn't work reliable, we will have to stop the run, which would be a real shame, because we had so much fun until now and the game is so great. ;_;

Same exact issue for me. Tried many "solutions" to no avail.

I am completely stuck on 2 play throughs at this exact point and am extremely disappointed that we haven't seen a fix for this issue in such a long time.

I'll be watching this thread with great hope and interest.

Any hope for a fix before the end of the year? Vacation time dwindling away and can't play this with friends with our time off.

Same issues here during our play through with a friend. Has completely halted our progress in the lower city. The first load into the area is fine but if we load into any of the other areas and back the issues start (t-posing npcs, assets not loading in, cant cast any spells and just generally not loading the game and crashes). No issues whatsoever up until the lower city. Pretty annoying to say the least.

I hope to play with a friend or two soon, and it sure will suck if we get to act 3 and this happens... Did y'all submit official bug reports via the link they give?

I did submit a bug report months ago, but didn't receive a reply. It was kind of a pain to submit, but I pulled the crash reports, included screenshots, etc. I think this was back in September-ish when the game was still fairly new, so they were probably flooded with reports. Might be worth trying again.

It's definitely not a new issue -- I've been researching this since the first time we hit Act 3 way back in August and seen it posted by others both here and on the Baldur's Gate 3 subreddit, but none of the patch notes or hotfixes that have come since address this issue specifically. My partner and I started playing on launch day and still haven't beaten the game (:

I submitted a bug report about it on November 2nd, and on November 6th got a response:

Hello,

Thank you for your report! I've passed this on to the team to investigate.


Regards,
Diego


I haven't heard anything else on it. I might submit another one at some point so that they know it still hasn't been fixed with any of their patches yet. This has been such a frustrating blocker. My wife and I have multiple playthroughs that can't move on to Act 3 together. We have resorted to hot-seating one of the playthroughs, switching who is playing while the other watches, which kinda works to some extent, but is not nearly as fun of a way to do it.

My friend and I have the same bug. We couldn't progress at all.
The only temporary fix we've found so far is to teleport back to camp. (Leaving the camp and walking through any door/portal makes the bug appear again.)

Have any of you received a reply from Larian so far?

No reply at all so far. Pretty disappointing to say the least as this has completely halted our play through for pretty much a month now. Have submitted a bug report through the form as well but haven't received anything apart from a generic connection issue troubleshooting guide which obviously isn't what this issue is about.

Same problem here, I saw this bug in the first few weeks of the game's release and it still exists, it's so critical but so far no fix.

Same, friend and I had no problems until we got to Lower City. I'm the guest and always crash when loading into any part of Lower City, sometimes loading in but with half the assets disappearing and mostly everyone T posing while I can't move my character. The only temporary fix is host sending me to camp and teleporting to Lower City from camp. It's mostly a gamble though. Disappointed that this seems to have been a problem for a while, I thought it was just a recent bug. Both can run game at max so I know it's not a performance issue, no mods, yada yada. Particularly frustrating since it's an honour mode run. Patiently waiting for a fix.

I've found a solution that worked for us.

H-> Host
J-> 2nd player


1. H have to stay at direct X11 at all times
2. H loads the game then moves all characters to one party, dismisses all summons, go to camp with all characters.
3. H starts a conversation with NPC with main character of J.
4. J load game with direct X11.
5. J joins by steam friend list.
6. J leaves camp.
7. J TP with any kind of portals/doors/etc. that changes location.
8. J Bug appear (Missing walls, no walking animations, T-pose NPC)
9. J Using portals/doors/etc. that changes location ONCE MORE to stay at loading then alt + F4
10. J launches the game with Vulcan
11. If white screen at the start, WAIT. Do not click anything, just wait (this one took us 8 minutes - I guess the time could be lower, depends on pc)
12. J Joins by steam friend list when H chooses the dialog option.
12a. When J loads his character MUST BE MID dialog.
13. J might have graphic Artifacting - when loaded wait until (in our case black squares) they disappear.
14. Fixed

Now you can move 2nd character to your partner.
I don't know if it'll help everyone - it helped us.

Location where we ungliched (spoilers ahead):
Who we talked with (spoilers ahead):

As of Patch 6 it looks like this is still not fixed.

I am having this exact same issue in the coop game I am playing with my partner, however this has only begun since Patch 6 for us and we fine before hand.
Have tried using both Vulcan and Direct X but have similar issues.
Direct X causing missing textures and T-posing when changing areas.
Vulcan will simply fail to load into the new areas.

This needs more attention! I have been experiencing the same problem, exactly the same as OP, this seems to be a multiplayer Co-op issue that only affects the guest. I've tried pretty much all of the same methods too and nothing seems to fix it. I can also confirm with OP that this is still a problem even with patch 6, I only started and experience this at the tail end of Patch 5 Hotfix 17 and this was always only in Act 3 Lower City.

Larian please look into this, I love this game but we have 2 playthrough that have slowed to a crawl because of this. But for those that, if they can deal with constantly closing the game (P.S this works for me not sure if this works for you too.).

A temporary solution to get through Act 3 is to always send the guest player to camp before they join the game. For some reason I've been able to play through Act 3 by having my friend sending my character to camp, and when I join the game and leave camp, I can go through the lower city until I enter a new area and reenter the Lower City. You will need to do this every time you enter the lower city, and make sure that the guest Alt+F4.

Our game would sometimes work if we continuously restarted, but the loading screens were so long and it would only "fix" the issue sometimes that it didn't feel worth it.

We did try different variations of host loading in first with the whole party at camp and then the guest joining. I usually didn't have issues (as the guest) loading into camp (either the Lower City outdoor camp or the Elfsong camp) but leaving camp was a mixed bag. Hitting "Leave Camp" would usually make the issue happen and the game lock up, fast traveling to a waypoint in the main city area like Basilisk Gate or the main Baldur's Gate waypoint would work sometimes.

Ultimately it's just so disruptive to the gameplay and we spend more time restarting/reloading than actually playing that it just doesn't even feel worth it to play.

On Patch 6 launch day I sent in another support ticket to Larian with screenshots, my game save files, and all the text from my original post included. They actually wrote back this time!

No definitive answer yet, but the first time I submitted a ticket, I didn't even get a response.

Yeah I totally get what you mean, it really sucks but me and my friend really wants to keep going so this is how we are dealing with it and we at least are getting through Act 3 but it is so tedious and ridiculous. The fact that they wrote back at least is hopefully a good sign that we get an answer for everyone that has had to deal with this problem!

Yeah I am all for a workaround, but I don't think that sounds very feasible. I have basically given up on the coop game right now and I am just going through so solo campaigns until this is resovled and I can play with my partner again.