Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Take as many long rests as you can or you miss content

I'm still in my first playthrough and currently in act 3. I became a bit confused, why no romances were developing and about a few other things. Now I learned that I probably missed a lot of cutscenes because I always tried to take a long rest only when I had to (no spellslots left). I tried to keep them to a minimum.

I'm actually a bit frustrated. The game tells you that you don't have a lot of time, so from the RP perspective I thought they cannot rest all the time. Also there are quests with ingame timers. As my first playthrough is with a good paladin, of course I want to save everyone, so I try to get everything done in time. Now I wonder how much I actually missed in terms of dialog options and cutscenes. Can't romance Gale as I wished I got suspicious when I had the option to tell him that "we had the chance to get things further but now it's too late".

I wanted to do another playthrough, so it's not the end of the world, but with different companions etc, so no chance with Gale. I just whished there would have been some kind of information about this.

So I guess it's probably the best if you do a long rest after every quest you finish. Or do you have any recommendations?

(Please no spoilers, I haven't finished the story yet, thank you)

For romance, you can go to your camp and chat with your teammate after each quest or event; you can go in and out without sleeping for your roleplay. 
By being friendly and doing your captain duty, some of them will think you want to start a romance ^^!

I play in tactician mode, and the only "timer" I can think of was in the underdark at the end of Act 1 when you have to save a true soul and Wulbren.
In Act 3, there is only one quest that will require you to do it without sleeping, pretty obvious when you get it.
Without spoilers, and in order to help you get some rest, it is in lower town.
There is also a turn-limited quest, but you are safe as long as you don't go to a particular place.

Worth stressing that while there's no particular limit to how many long rests the player can take, people should absolutely be wary of WHEN they take these long rests, because there's plenty of "skippable" content if you rest at the wrong moment.

In early access, a lot of companion content was tied to long resting, and long resting frequently, but that's not been my experience with the full release. Some previously camp-locked content will kick off in the world if you have the companion with you, and even for companions you don't have in your party it now seems more than one of them will talk to you of an evening.

I guess if you long rest really infrequently then you could miss content that way, but for me the party scene was about a week in (and the last thing I did in that wilderness area) and I don't think I was missing stuff.

I've been out in the field and clicked on a party member instead of the terrain and got a camp-style conversation. That's happened a few times (I really need to get a grip of my clicking).

I've gotten multiple close ups with ominous music for sleeping but nothing happens. I've generally sleep when needed and ran into a few sleep events and ran into old sleep events that triggered in the world. Kind of wondered if I did miss on stuff while needing to sleep.

You get the same options out in the world that you get when you just enter the camp. But there can be different options or cutscenes when you choose to take a long rest. So it's not always enough to talk to them outside or go to camp, talk and leave without long rest, you need to end the day, all put their pj's on etc, so certain events can be triggered. At least that's my experience.

There's actually a video about it on youtube, I don't know if I'm allowed to post it here.

Second playthrough, Chaos side, I have noticed that if I take too much time looting corpses and crates, Gobelins will clean the grove without me (even kill Wyll, but there's still some events that require me to be there).
It is true to say there is a time and space (exploring or taking some path) mechanic even without triggering night/sleep.

IMO, outside the quest update notification that triggers after a night/sleep and/or quest/event completion, it is just some minor/extra things.
Depending on your play style and goal, you may want to use your saved points or have multiple playthroughs.

Actually, it may be a good challenge to finish the game with only your two short rests, relying only on magic scrolls and potions.

I don't know, it's just really weird that I totally missed the option to romance Gale. There were two cutscenes were my character sort of hinted that she had a thing for him, but nothing ever happend after that. And now it's too late. Had to go with Halsin instead

I'll do an evil run next, so maybe it'll be easier to take more long rests, as it's not as important to finish timed quests.

I remember someone writing about having sex too easily with every teammate.
And it was really easy to start a romance on my first playthrough by doing the usual team chat (what do you like, who do I have to call if you die, and so on).

With two exceptions: Astarion and Wyll.
Fun fact: I always played with Astarion (my 1st class scout) and never used Will but managed to get his achievement while having his best life at the camp (and still at level 2)
About Gayle, I turned him down during the first act then came an event in Act 2 where he did not want to be alone at night and had to turn him down a second time ^^!

You are perfectly right and it is a good advice for new comer, Do not hesitate to take a long rest.

The game should simply allow multiple long rest events to occur in the same rest.

Why would it be impossible for a "hey lets romance plotflag" conversation and getting woken up by Scratch and Birdbro dealing with nightmares to happen in the same night?
The answer is that there is no reason why.
Once you get around to a long rest, every queued long rest event should happen. All of them. Regardless of how many.

Coming back to this thread, I was at the end of act 1 and ran into something interesting and stupid. Before swapping over to the new act wanted to test to see if I would get additional cinematics if I spammed long rests. I actually came across multiple different dialogs. One possible important one and the rest is just companion dialogs.

Going to use spoiler tag for them, along with a funny side note related to one of the dialogs.

As I understand it certain quests are tied to a set amount of long rests. Take to many long rests after you started this quest and this person dies, and so on.

In some cases no rest is even required. Just move away from an area after triggering the initiation of the event and the event will progress automatically (typically to a failure state or at least a less than ideal one).

Which is part of what makes the suggestion in the OP misguided at best and openly awful in certain situations.

There is no single "right" way through the game, which is why Larian recommend you just go with what you first choose. You cannot see all of the content in one playthrough because various choices and actions ( or inactions ) will advance some paths while locking others. Not to mention that various bugs can force you to make choices you might not otherwise have made ( in my case, looking at Halsin here, sulking in Minthara's room until near the end of act 2, and never actually returning to the grove ).

I've made a couple of choices that led to outcomes I didn't want, but have continued with the choice anyway. I've also deliberately made choices that I indend to roll back just to see the cutscene ( particularly those that will lead to game over/party wipe ).

As for the camp, that can be divided into 2 parts.

Most (not all) of the banter is flavour that can be obtained day or night (or in-world for your current party) and is of limited importance except for romance approval. For romances to progress you do have to taIk, and probably have to do at least a few things that the NPC likes. I don't know whether character build choices make a difference, but my character (Good Cleric 1/Bard 11 with very high CHA and persuasion) that panders to every NPCs apparent preferences in dialog, has had almost every NPC falling over themselves to share private time, from about the second long rest onwards.

The second type of camp activity is the "event" that happens when you sleep, which can include actual romance scenes, but also additional scenes that trigger due to in-game progress. These do sometimes trigger in a janky manner, and I suspect that if you have both a romance scene and a in-game progress scene ready to trigger, you might lose the romance.

But, as Tuco points out, resting at all possible times has its own risks with certain in-game progress. Personally, I have settled into resting when I am low on resources.

Quests with timers need to have those timers outright displayed in the game UI.
Think about it, the only way to have a conversation is to... randomly have it play out one night? Because we can't initiate conversations on our own? Or gods forbid have TWO or MORE conversations in the same day!?
If you insist on players randomly long-resting to talk to people, don't randomly punish them with hidden mechanics and timers and shit that they have no reason to expect, if you outright TRAIN them to not expect that shit.

Y'all know that really important long rest event in Act 1 for Dark Urge?
My Dark Urge is about to enter Act 2 without that event ever happening.
Just because I don't need to rest every 30 seconds and other events happened instead of that one.
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=106882&Number=890937#Post890937

I agree wholeheartedly

The OP has a point and I find a lot of people in the same situation once they realize this.
The game gives you this sense of urgency and you would think that long resting should be used only when absolutely needed, but alas if you play like this, you get heavily punished and lose on a lot of companion content.
Adding to the confusion is that some events are timed, so if you take a long rest when you trigger them you could lose them altogether.

The camp night events queue up in the background without the player having any idea and after a certain point they get removed, I bet a lot of players miss out on scenes without even knowing they should had played.
We shouldn't have to spam long rests in a row every now and then, just to make sure we don't miss out on something that should actually happen.
The system needs a better function and communicate with the player that an event is pending or a companion wants to talk to them.

Fortunately there is a mod that does this, but be warn using mods could disable steam achievements.
https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/1879

"BG3 is full of events at the camp that players miss due to not resting often enough, or not resting during certain windows of opportunity that the game expects.
This mod regularly checks for pending/available 'Camp Night Events' and adds a floating exclamation point above your main character's head (similar to the one that shows on companions when they have something to say to you).
When this symbol shows up, you should go to camp and talk to your companions and/or long rest, to avoid missing out on these events."

I feel like this function should had been in from the very beginning.