Larian Banner: Baldur's Gate Patch 9
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kinguez Offline OP
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Hey there guys! I've been playing BG3 since the first day of early access and progress has been palpable! There were many things to be fixed back then but the game already showed promise, and you've been delivering on all ends ever since.
With all that said, I've come back for another playthrough with patch 8! And while I will mention quite a few bugs in this thread, I'm pretty sure you are aware of most of them so I'll try to focus on some things that I thought would be fixed overtime, but never were!

[Doable but expensive, I guess!]

Shadowheart
- I feel like we kinda need to get rid of all the Shar tell signs. I mean, she plays coy and avoids the subject for quite some time and is also in what seems to be a covert mission, so why all the tells? Most players would not know, sure, and I get strong vibes that by the end game it will all be a ruse and she won't be a Shar cleric after all, with all the memory altering thing going on, but it still feels odd.


Astarion's first meeting
- It's been a while and I still see no reason to recruit him (aside from metagaming, of course). I mean, the dude literally puts a knife to your throat and in a few seconds all is well! Please join me! It feels wrong and I think that this conversation can be altered to include somekind of stalemate through conversation and as things escalate the tadpole kicks in showing you do have something in common without him getting at your neck.
- No companion reaction yet! Yes, I love the facial expressions added in this patch but it does not feel enough in this scenario. I understand that no one here is actually a friend yet but the dude has a knife to the throat of someone who was nice to you, they should at least pick up arms or get ready for combat, no?

Thievery
- New cutscene plays when you are caught! This is nice, but it seems to be bugged. I've been caught when people had no sight of me, as well as a very long while after the deed, though I'm pretty sure you are already aware of this. What worries me the most here is that you seem to be leaning towards the same mechanic that was present in DOS2, in which people will ALWAYS notice what you steal after a few seconds. This doesn't feel nice and it was somewhat easy to avoid in DOS2, making it feel more like a chore rather than consequence for lack of skill/poor rolls. The rogue already had to pass a check to get the item, so detections from here on should have disadvantage in most scenarios. I'd say that obvious and heavy things like pieces of armor or copious amouts of gold would easily be noticed, but a simple note/a few pieces of gold/an arrow from a quiver? Nope, not likely! So maybe you can have a second detection roll with disadvantage or have detections based on item flags, where obvious things would be detected after a little while and others not detected at all.

QoL
- I've noticed that quite a few times I'll open up a box or a barrel only to find food in it. It would be stellar if there was a "Send All to Camp" button.
- During trades, changing characters does not change your proficiencies and this makes it harder to know if anyone else is proficient with the item in question.
- Switching characters during trades will make prices float depending on you charisma. This would be logical if the party was split, but as a single unit it seems better to just show us the lower prices.
- Would be nice to use scroll wheel in the different sections of the skills/items bar to see what is further beyond estabilished limits without having to adjust the size with your mouse everytime.
- Would be nice to control Skills/Items bar's size on screen, horizontally speaking.
- Character portrait's backgrounds are not nice still! Maybe add a standard picture representing their classes? You could flavour this with subclasses, gods, cities, ancestry.
- Accessing the level up screen to check my new armor set at any time would be nice! Maybe this is already in and I don't know, though.
- The hair gradient effect added this patch is kickass! Can't help but think this would also be amazing for beard and makeup!
- More face types for some races!
- Vanity slots!

Blighted Village

- There is a goblin there that sometimes will check on the well. You must know what I want to do laugh

[Doable and not expensive!]

- Better loading screens! Come on, I've been watching the same wallpapers for years! And they are not even available at the site for downloading, how can I be completely brainwashed without those?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bellow you'll find some bugs that are most likely already being dealt with internally, but I thought to post them just to be on the safe side! I also try to group some bugs with areas for easy reading.

[Bugs! Or what feels like one.]

Misc
- Tiefling tails will not go bazooka across the screen anymore, yay! But their horns still clip through everything. This isn't an issue most of the time but it does get funny when tadpole dreams come knocking at your backdoor and you're poking their eyes.
- Many instances of holding weapon movement animation while weapon is sheated, as well as not being able to sheath weapon at all.
- Quickened Spell allows me to cast two spells, intended? Seems strong af! Can't wait to pop 2 fireballs.
- Sometimes when I press tab and click on character sheet it will revert back to the inventory, but "character sheet" button is still selected.
- I made a mistake and sold my shovel. Bought it again and noticed it would not work until I sent it to another character's inventory.
- Sometimes the bonus attack thief rogues get will state that the target is too far, but it clearly is not and it still works.
- Peace circles will show during cutscenes. Intended?
- Some facial expressions might be chosen wrongly or feel ill appropriate. The horror expression during the bard's song at the grove was hilarious.
- Second tadpole scene has a low res .jpg of Baldur's Gate in the background. Intended?

Camp
- Halsin does not show at camp after going to the underdark still.
- Astarion sucked me dry! I woke up in a pool of blood and since my hair had white strands, they turned red. Nice touch! It never went back to normal, not nice.
- Gale is gone after fighting the spiders in the Whispering Depths. He was not in my party and is not in camp either. He came back when I went to the underdark.

Grove
- Rune of the wolf cannot be placed while your inventory is opened.

Kagha
- After finding the shadow druid note within the swamp, going back to the grove and telling Zevlor seems like a path forward if you want to fight here. Not possible yet. Intended?

Flind Gnoll
- Camera showed me its feet all the time.

Waukeens' Rest
- Benryn gets stuck inside the room on fire everytime, but in different ways! If I break the door behind him and rush to Miri the quest advances and he will not die (whilst standing in fire!). He will also notice if I try to steal from her body even if not in direct sight of her body.
- Time does not pass anymore, it will be onfire 24/7 now.

Hag
- Mask of Regret was not wearing a mask, looks like it is intended but why not give her a name? It does seem we'll meet at Elfsong tavern eventually.
- - Also the green lights of the cave were behind her body, yet still reflected on the inside of her mouth.
- Mask of vengeance said she would tear my throat out when I told her the hag was dead. No combat ensued.
- I also cannot pickpocket the masks worn by servants, and there seems to be no forceful or dodgy way of doing it, yet. Just pointing it out.
- Mayrina already knew the hag was dead, but I killed the hag in her living room after Mayrina got teleported.
- I feel like the tiefling lady back at the grove (the one sitting inside storage) would've liked to hear that the old lady was indeed a hag. Not possible as of now.

Goblin Camp
- The 'breakable" wall by the drunk goblinoids will not break no matter what kind of damage I choose.
- Liam, the prisoner, won't run away anymore after being freed.
- Halsin's magic did not have an SFX during conversation.
- Some lines were also missing, with only silence and facial expressions to guide me.
- There seems to be no way of talking about the Shadow Druids at this point and Halsin assumes you are talking about the goblins.
- - There is also no option for that once he is back at the grove, and Kagha's rats are gone. The quest seems lost.
- Brakkal is teleporting after beeing freed!

Underdark Caves
- Rumbling Earth and it's peace circle did not leave map after death.
- When trying to go around the turrets near the Ruined Tower the characters are not able to climb the steps on the right side.
- Kuo-toa still shout Boaal and not Maksomethingsomething after convincing them. Disappointing followers...
- The ebonlake looks completely still, even worse in Grymforge. Feels odd, very odd!

Grymforge
- The dead drow close to arrival docks should be hanging it seems, but I can only see corpses on the ground.
- The button in the kitchen can be seen from afar, before entering the room itself and without a successful perception check.
- Thrinn did not have a cutscene attached the first time, just normal npc activation and choices. Like "Cinematic Pending" moments.
- - I freed true soul Nere with a smokepowder, no cutscene started so I prompted it by clicking on an npc but the game crashed as soon as Nere started talking.
- - After reloading my save, a cutscene with Thrinn did play out when I talked to her, things seemed normal until blowing the powder again and starting instant combat because she stepped into fire. This kept happening until I moved the smokepowder away from the spot she wanted to be in.
- - One time while battling Nere I started playing the lute after spending action and bonus action (I'm a sorcerer) just for kicks and the cowering npcs came over to listen. I feel like that is not appropriate laugh
- - Gnomes became aggressive for no apparent reason once.
- After the fight, removing Nere's head made his mouth become completely green, like a chroma key screen.
- Myconids happy dance seems in need of a song, nothing played.
- The Svirfneblin you save twice (Wroot?) says he goes to camp, never shows.
- I saved the gnomes but talking to Thulla yields no recognition of that. The gnomes showed up after I fought and defeated Grym.
- In general, camp seems quite mute during Gymforge, no comments on anything. Intended?
- That trap straight with the gargoyles and fire? There is something that takes me out of the disarm check every first time I click on any trap after the first ladder. No one gets hurt so I don't know why.
- Many instances of "Can't reach" when trying to move far away toward clearly walkable surfaces. This only happens in this area.
- Monk Manifestation Amulet's cord is stiff! And the whole scene was bugged, teleporting movements, shaking heads and everything!
- Clicking the itembox in the Grymforge will not prompt inventory.
- Lowering the forge locked me to 27fps everytime, and there were many times.
- Grym boss fight seems off? Piercing and Slashing damage are connecting but not damaging when not Superheated. Resistance to these types are still shown within tooltip instead of immunity.
- - Whenever there is more than one character under the hammering thing, boss will not move, and I retried this fight countless times. This makes the fight nigh unbearable since sometimes Grym will get stuck on a surface not affected by lava.
- - During this fight, once, I revived my MC and all the skills would be greyed out and movement was also not responding for the rest of the fight. A reload mid-battle fixed this.

And that's all folks!

I'd like to finish this by saying, once more, that progress has been amazing and this is shaping up to be a worthy sequel! No doubt a strong contender for game of the year.
I'll be back when dragonborns are out with another giant post like this one but, until then, thank you for your work!

Edits: Grammar & Structure.

Last edited by kinguez; 26/07/22 02:33 PM.
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It always bothered me about Shadowheart how she's all "I have so many secrets but I won't tell you anything". She's acting like a complete amateur, more drawing attention than avoiding it. If she's a secret agent of Shar on a secret mission of such a high caliber she would assume a false identity like a pro and stick with it. Instead, she introduces herself as Shadowheart which sounds exactly like an ominous Sharran alias and has Sharran symbols all over her gear. Why don't we get a Religion check to recognize that? The rule of cool does not apply here, it's just dumb. And they are completely ruining the chance of having a strong reveal scene later. She's the perfect example how having her as an optional "Origin" PC ruins all surprise and powerful storytelling concerning her character. And why ruin it? Does someone actually not want to create their own character in D&D?? Astarion is the same. Loadscreen art and in-game description just bluntly reveals everything Tav wouldn't know. But even the "Origin excuse" is not good enough for Shadowheart's senseless behavior.

If she's trying to get away with a stolen artifact as the sole survivor of her task force, she should first ditch all the obvious Sharran gear and call herself Karen from Baldur's Gate.

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I am, for the fun of it, turning it into a Tabletop campaign, so I rewrote Astarion's meeting. Only IF the PCs are jerks to him does he pull a knife. Otherwise, he pretends to be a noble elf from Baldur's Gate, dreadfully afraid of everything. Only after the tadpoles connect their minds does he reveal that he is a rogue who serves a Thieves' Guild under his tyrant master Cazador. Various skill checks can give players hints that there is definitely something more to him.

As for Shadowheart, she has the armor and circlet, but she lies and says she serves Melira Taralen, a minor elven goddess of bards and minstrels. Melira is a member of the Seldarine. Although she has no true foes of her own, she is opposed to the drow and goblinoid deities. She has a friendly rivalry with the god Milil due to some similarities with their portfolios. Melira Taralen is Chaotic Good, her symbol is the lute, and she dwells on the plane of Arborea. She is a lover of poetry and song, and her domains are knowledge, life and trickery. If she tells this lie, a DC 15 Religion check will tell a PC that her story doesn’t add up. Nothing about her apparel speaks of Melira, and there’s no way she could use her cleric spells and such without a proper holy symbol of Melira. An opposed Deception (Shadowheart) versus Insight (PC) could also let the PCs know that she’s lying.

And, on top of that, I allow the PCs to roll to see if they recognize the armor as Sharran. If they succeed, they can call her on it and she'll lie again and say she acquired the armor in some ruins. If they press the issue she will eventually give in and admit she's a Sharran, and it could lead to a conflict between the PCs and her right at the beginning of the game.

As for her having such tells, I wonder if that's actually going to tie into her backstory. The armor is VERY similar to the Dark Justiciar armor you find at Grymforge. Could she actually have been raised from the dead? Was she, perhaps, the Unclaimed mentioned in the book? When she awoke, was she already wearing the armor she'd died in?

Either way, I agree. Both of their intros need cleaning up. They just don't make sense, especially Astarion's. He's all alone, and dressed like a noble, but he decides to trick you and put a knife to your throat? Wouldn't he try to be more deceptive and crafty, trying to get info from you in a more subtle manner?

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kinguez Offline OP
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Originally Posted by 1varangian
It always bothered me about Shadowheart how she's all "I have so many secrets but I won't tell you anything". She's acting like a complete amateur, more drawing attention than avoiding it. If she's a secret agent of Shar on a secret mission of such a high caliber she would assume a false identity like a pro and stick with it. Instead, she introduces herself as Shadowheart which sounds exactly like an ominous Sharran alias and has Sharran symbols all over her gear. Why don't we get a Religion check to recognize that? The rule of cool does not apply here, it's just dumb. And they are completely ruining the chance of having a strong reveal scene later. She's the perfect example how having her as an optional "Origin" PC ruins all surprise and powerful storytelling concerning her character. And why ruin it? Does someone actually not want to create their own character in D&D?? Astarion is the same. Loadscreen art and in-game description just bluntly reveals everything Tav wouldn't know. But even the "Origin excuse" is not good enough for Shadowheart's senseless behavior.

If she's trying to get away with a stolen artifact as the sole survivor of her task force, she should first ditch all the obvious Sharran gear and call herself Karen from Baldur's Gate.

I think the idea here is that she understands there needs to be some sort of truth to this relationship for it to work at least on a barebones level, so she makes herself private while not outright lying because omission is a different kind of lie. And even with all the tells, I have been playing dnd with some friends for years and they have no clue about Shar, let alone her symbolism, so I can see how people would not care for this change at all. That said, I agree that it doesn't seem proper, especially for those who know.
About the origin characters, I beg to differ! Options are always nice and I see them there as a plus. Playing God of War is great, but would it work the same if Kratos was a built character? Part of the thrill is to discover these character's identities instead of building one, so even in dnd you still want to know about Elminster instead of creating one.


Originally Posted by GM4Him
I am, for the fun of it, turning it into a Tabletop campaign, so I rewrote Astarion's meeting. Only IF the PCs are jerks to him does he pull a knife. Otherwise, he pretends to be a noble elf from Baldur's Gate, dreadfully afraid of everything. Only after the tadpoles connect their minds does he reveal that he is a rogue who serves a Thieves' Guild under his tyrant master Cazador. Various skill checks can give players hints that there is definitely something more to him.

As for Shadowheart, she has the armor and circlet, but she lies and says she serves Melira Taralen, a minor elven goddess of bards and minstrels. Melira is a member of the Seldarine. Although she has no true foes of her own, she is opposed to the drow and goblinoid deities. She has a friendly rivalry with the god Milil due to some similarities with their portfolios. Melira Taralen is Chaotic Good, her symbol is the lute, and she dwells on the plane of Arborea. She is a lover of poetry and song, and her domains are knowledge, life and trickery. If she tells this lie, a DC 15 Religion check will tell a PC that her story doesn’t add up. Nothing about her apparel speaks of Melira, and there’s no way she could use her cleric spells and such without a proper holy symbol of Melira. An opposed Deception (Shadowheart) versus Insight (PC) could also let the PCs know that she’s lying.

And, on top of that, I allow the PCs to roll to see if they recognize the armor as Sharran. If they succeed, they can call her on it and she'll lie again and say she acquired the armor in some ruins. If they press the issue she will eventually give in and admit she's a Sharran, and it could lead to a conflict between the PCs and her right at the beginning of the game.

As for her having such tells, I wonder if that's actually going to tie into her backstory. The armor is VERY similar to the Dark Justiciar armor you find at Grymforge. Could she actually have been raised from the dead? Was she, perhaps, the Unclaimed mentioned in the book? When she awoke, was she already wearing the armor she'd died in?

Either way, I agree. Both of their intros need cleaning up. They just don't make sense, especially Astarion's. He's all alone, and dressed like a noble, but he decides to trick you and put a knife to your throat? Wouldn't he try to be more deceptive and crafty, trying to get info from you in a more subtle manner?

Oh my! The thought of the effort to turn this into a campaign makes me tired already. I hope you can succeed where I didn't even try! hahaha. That said, its an interesting way of garnering feedback for a story, no? Your players might have interesting solutions or ideas.

And you do raise valid points regarding her background and I hadn't thought of any of that but it is possible. Still at least 6 more months of waiting unfortunately!

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Kinguez said:

Shadowheart
- I feel like we kinda need to get rid of all the Shar tell signs. I mean, she plays coy and avoids the subject for quite some time and is also in what seems to be a covert mission, so why all the tells? Most players would not know, sure, and I get strong vibes that by the end game it will all be a ruse and she won't be a Shar cleric after all, with all the memory altering thing going on, but it still feels odd.

I think her dialog is set in stone.

My issue has been that we cannot kick players from the group, which is pretty essential for role play.

When my character learns that she is affiliated with Shar, they should be able to part company (because my character doesn't have the clues to guess she may be a victim).

Because of a mod conflict I had to restart and this time I didn't wake her up on the beach...just ran strait for the Goblin village to get the artifact cut scene.

Now I tried to engage her to tell me about Shar...but no go...As far as my character knows, they just murdered her for the artifact...sooo not cool.

The other option to invite her, then kick her didn't work as well as I thought...cuz there she is in my camp (and she starts approving me)...slaps forehead.

Quote 2:

If she's trying to get away with a stolen artifact as the sole survivor of her task force, she should first ditch all the obvious Sharran gear and call herself Karen from Baldur's Gate.

...and Karen ain't Sharin'.

Last edited by Van'tal; 26/07/22 03:04 PM.
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As for Astarian...I'm over the knife thing.

I just sass him..."I haven't done anything to you yet".


He is just not my cup 'o joe, and he gives me CTDs...shrug...not worth troubleshooting.


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