Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Technical & Gameplay Problems Laggy behavior noticed after downloading patch 3

After downloading patch 3, I've noticed significant lag in certain behaviors. There is a noticeable delay between when you initiate a conversation and when it actually starts. Spell animation is taking a few seconds to occur after you cast a spell. Companions in your party delay following you (at least graphically). The delays are long enough that it really hampers the experience. It would be great if you could look into this and figure out/fix the cause.

After going through a combat, I found the behavior to be worse than I originally posted. The lag is crushing, with a few seconds required after pressing a spell icon to be able to target, weapon attacks taking 5-7 seconds to complete after initiating, etc. The game is playable but not enjoyable at all at the level of lag. To give you an idea of the lag, I clicked on a barn door to interact with it from across the screen. My character walked up to it and initiated a cutscene (lag was present before it started). This cutscene initiated a combat. The rest of my party (which was set to follow me) was far enough from the encounter to not initially enter combat. They hadn't really left the location I clicked on the door from. I've had other instances where I clicked on someone to initiate a dialogue, decided I didn't want to and clicked to walk away, and the dialogue popped up as I was walking away. That level of lag reduces game enjoyment to the level that I don't want to play. I just verified my game files, and the issue is still there. Please fix this!

P.S. Went back in to cast Speak with Dead to get an idea of the delay. The targeting popped up fast enough, but I counted 6 seconds between casting the spell and switching to the cutscene.

Hmm, no noticeable lag on my end (PC version). I just ran a quick test talking to several companions after installing patch3. Do you have mods installed by any chance?

No mods installed. Just the game files. I'm also PC (on Steam). I don't have the fastest computer, so I always had a bit of a hit at times, but this is pretty severe. I clicked on Astarion, decided I didn't want to talk just yet, clicked to walk away, started walking away, and then the conversation cutscene started.

I see. Does changing the game quality settings and/or lowering the screen resolution improve things? Lowering the screen resolution would only be a temporary test to see if your PC can handle the game better that way. Alternatively, enabling FSR in the game options may also help.

I came looking through the forums for the exact same thing. The game is unplayable now.


I am not OP, but I tried everything and nothing works. It is not limited to a specific save either, it affects all of them (retro)actively.

I've played around with the video settings, but I'm not sure that's the problem. I don't notice any video stuttering while moving around, more a lag in between performing an action, seeing the animation and seeing the results. For example, I click on a relatively distant point. My selected character moves there immediately. The other characters, while in group mode, mill around, sometime inching forward if I get too far, but don't really start to move to the selected character until after he/she stops moving. When casting a spell (for example, Guidance) the "in-progress" animation starts, holds for just a little bit and then completes. When I select the target, the previous animation drops instantly, but if I have to move to get close enough to the target, there is a slight but noticeable delay before the caster does so. However, the delay after reaching the target before the rest of the spell animation (for the caster) goes off is very noticeable (at least a second or two). Then there is another very noticeable delay between the end of that animation and the start of the animation of the spell taking effect, with a final small but noticeable delay before the buff text for Guidance appears on screen. The entire casting takes roughly 7 seconds after I select the target. Combine this with the fact that, based on the combat I initiated above, the other characters were indeed at the location shown, and it's more like the game itself is hiccupping, not the video card. Another example is Lae'zel jumping. I initiate the jump and select the target location. As soon as I select the target, she goes back to standing normally for almost 3 seconds before she does the little start of jump animation. After she finishes the start of jump animation, she doesn't actually jump, but returns to standing for almost a second before then jumping to the location. It's like the connection between the individual animated components of the actions are delayed, not just slowed down.

I’m noticing the same delay between my inputs and the expected actions after the patch on PS5.

I'm also noticing these delays, though they don't seem as bad. For what it's worth, they don't seem to be graphical issues. I messed around with the graphics and did some testing. The FPS doesn't drop at all when the delay happens, and I'm able to move around the screen and interact with other things during the delay, so it's not freezing everything.

Yeah, I should say I haven’t played enough yet to say how extensive it is, but I seem to be able to play the game.

I guess I should have tried this before, but I've narrowed down the behavior to one specific campaign/character. I started to notice some slight issues with it last night, but the issues today have been severe. It's not the longest campaign I have (I have one in Act 3), but it started to show after a significant Act 1 event and got worse this morning after Patch 3. The event in question is:
Things started slowing down after I completed the event last night, and they have been far worse today. I've checked all my other saves, and they don't have this issue, so something has been set that's causing the problem. I thought it might be:
but it looks like that is not the case. I dropped it and went into another zone, and the issue persisted.

I can give you additional confirmation that it is not that, I did just about the exact opposite of your run and I also find myself in a limbo of molasses.

I've had this on PC since day one and actually beat the game last night. I was running on Ultra grapics, no lag.
I went to load after the patch, and it's unplayable now with crippling lag. Even adjusting the graphics down did very very little to help, still not playable. Not sure what to do, but wanted to get this out there to see how many others were affected. Hopefully this fixes soon

I have the exact same issue with my evil campaign I'm currently playing through. Oddly, my Gale play-through which had over 600 quick saves works fine. It's made it literally unplayable - I'm gonna have to shelve this game until its resolved or someone finds a workaround.

Question to all of you also experiencing this lag
Did you destroy the statues in the secret grove tunnel (the one that has a couple of goblins with a passed out gnome druid)?
I've been trouble shooting my own experiences with this,
no lag on first save (right before finding withers)
no lag on any save in my last playthrough (sided with the grove, and no vandalism)
lag seems to be at its WORST in this tunnel, and the big statues themselves seem to move every few seconds

I wouldn't assume the game would even render such a thing outside of the area, but perhaps there is some code that says items should settle in place before they fully despawn, so you don't load back into an area with something mid air

resource monitor doesn't show CPU or VRAM being capped out, so this doesn't seem like a memory leak, it feels like the game is constantly rendering the physics of this

[img]https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd....7667E03032A4954E394D3195B641DC6E448CA57/[/img]

Same issue. Over 100 hours in without any problem on a PC with a Nvidia 3060. After patch 3, the game is unplayable. Tried lowering video settings, fast travel elsewhere, restart, reboot -- nothing works.

Going to have to pause until this is resolved.

That could most likely be it. Now we just need to contact someone (probably on Nexus) who can remove them to create a mod for it, because waiting for Larian will take three decades.

Comradewin, if that’s the area with the bear, eagle, wolf, and elk puzzle, then, yes, I did destroy those statues. It also happened to be the only area that felt slightly laggy before the patch too.

I also destroyed those statues, and noticed when I loaded a save that one of them wasn't falling like in the shared image.

This is lagging everywhere for me since the patch, even the loading screen when bringing up the save. No lag before.