Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Difficulty setting for your first playthrough?

I'll give normal a try and probably go to story mode if the Githyanki patrol remain so bizarrely powerful.

My first multiplayer team is going to go through on Hardcore Mode. We all have 2k+ hours in EA and have a really solid understanding of the systems. Right now we are discussing who is playing what.

Sub-easy. In other words, I expect and intend there to be significant amounts of cheating via mods or mod-like substances, as is (for me) tradition. It would be fun if typing CLUAConsole: actually had an effect - even a silly one.

Normal difficulty.
Have a sneaking suspicion the boss battles are gonna be pure torture on Hard difficulty if you don't abuse one or more homebrew game mechanics.

I hope they will.

No shoving bosses though. I expect they will see through greater invisibility and possibly sneak tactics if they have tremor sight.

I will have 2 healers and some burst damage though, so it will be a fun time.

Just hope there is room to hang back and burn down the minions first.

A near TPK is still a win and usually the most fun.


Now I'm having World of Warcraft flashbacks. (39 / 40 down and the lone Gnome blinks around and lands the final blow).

I enjoy when enemies are intelligent and seem to want to survive as much as I do, so I'll probably start with Hardcore. If I discover it requires Divinity levels of cheese I'll switch to Normal.

I want to be boiled slowly, but not stupidly.

Has it been stated that we can change difficulty mid game?

I guess starting over isn't all that big of a deal.

I picture hard as goblins throwing vials of acid and fire like machine guns lol , like when EA first came out.

I would go with Core Rules, not sure if that is considered hard or default.

If there's no weird stat based penalty ill start with the hardest.

Standard to start - after along time in ea though normal ain’t much of a challenge but for full release I’m expecting to get my backside booted a few times

I'll start on normal. I'm most interested in the story, not necessarily in very challenging combats.
The early access difficulty mode has been fine for me.

Hardcore = better AI = bring it on!

I will try Hardcore first playthrough.
I want to test out their AI changes, plus the enemies have more backup and more consumables.
More consumables might give the option to steal their equipment and get even more consumables!