Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion How has Honour mode affected your story?

I got the same thing. Normally I would have reloaded but since it was honor mode I decided to take on Moonrise. And it was great! I'm sorry I didn't try this before. All the harpers lived, all the flaming fist lived and I got tons of loot and experience.

Seems the murder hobo route is the best route.

Not by much. In general I do not reload unless I have a TPK. And I guess I got a bit lucky because I have managed to survive until the final boss without a wipe. We will see how this will go further.

That being said, I have a slow paced mulitplayer game with a friend of mine. My friend claimed he has made a very powerful build and I was like "I think there is the perfect difficulty test for you". And there... it went wild. More than half of the goblin camp slaughtered (my friend blundered there, twice) and all of the tieflings and the druids dead (I blundered into stealing a potion so we ended in alliance with Minthara; she does not mind some killed goblins + there were no witnesses). At least we are rich (we also stole Dror Rogzlin's gold). And have slaughtered or angered any merchant we have met (the goblin, the Zhent and the druid merchant are dead and we angered Ethel as well).

I don’t tend to save scum in general, and let the dice play out as they will except in the case of TPK, so I don’t think it will change the story in a fundamental way. But in my truncated and unsuccessful first Honour Mode run, I did find myself resting more, taking fewer risks and less willing to try novel ways of approaching encounters. I’m not really qualified to judge given I didn’t even make it to level four, but my sense is that a successful Honour Mode run will require patience, and I’ll admit that’s not my strong suit. In fact, my early demise in the Spider Matriarch’s lair was at least partly due to getting bored of caution and wanting to try something at least slightly different from what I’d done before.

This does change the story to some extent, as for me how my different characters approach challenges and encounters *is* part of their story, and I feel Honour Mode gives me fewer tenable options to roleplay this element of the game. And the roleplay is the most important factor in my enjoyment of the game. As a result, while I intend to keep trying until I make it through the mode once, I can’t see myself continuing using it and will probably revert to a Custom mode with Honour Mode difficulty but without single saves … if I ever manage to survive to the end.

That said, I do think it’s an interesting challenge, and I’ll try to keep an open mind. Perhaps if I can manage to make it through Act 1 without dying I’ll feel more positive

This.
I find Honour Mode a different game.
If I die I restart - after a few quick TPKs I now managed to get to the Shadowlands (twice). Instead of F8 I bravely run away like Sir Robin. Use a Potion of Invisibility/Scroll of Misty Step for the last survivor to bugger out

I'm pissed at the game ATM - after bugger out (by the skin of my teeth with one PC) from badly going fights with Death Sheperds 3 times and spending over 1500 gc on resurrections I got TPK by the elevator bug.
[cue snarling noises]
And this run was exciting, as I copied the idea I read here of doing the minimum in Act I, beeline to Moonrise Towers and go back to Act I with Best Drow. Doing it at lvl 5 and no Moonlatern/Pixie Blessing was exciting
Still undecided whether to continue as Custom or start a new run, this time as a sausage-free Princess Karlach and the Three Dwarves party (TAV and the Dwarvette Hirelings).

What is the elevator bug, are there special places/elevators where it does happen or can it be any elevator?

I have currently parked my Honour mode playthrough before Orin and the brain, all other fights done, and started a new playthrough with Custom mode and some mods. Maybe I will finish Honour mode later, but I lost steam.

As I played the most part of Act 3 for the first time in the Honour mode run, it was an interesting and fresh experience. Quite intense. I was very cautious and anxious overall and often decided to run instead of fighting it through, also because I did not know what to expect. From some fights I ran without good reason, like Ethel. In some fights it was a bitter necessity. With Ansur for example I had to flee two times to avoid a wipe before I managed to win on third trial (the only instance in the game so far where I used Globe of Invulnerability). Some bitter experience was when we almost wiped in a minor fight against undead because of a mean curse they used. Only because Shadowheart was out of the fight at start and could change spells, we survived. The fight against Raphael was long and difficult. Hope died and strangely I deeply regretted to have killed Raphael, it broke my spirit to play further to a certain degree.

What I have noticed now in my Custom run is how differently you can approach combat. In Honour mode I used Cold and Lightning a lot together with the vulnerability from Wet, and had some concerns about the cheaty aspect. I avoided to use Haste mostly. In my current run the vulnerability from Wet is modded out, but for the first time in game I started to use Radiance, Reverberation and Arcane Acuity which I totally ignored in my Honour mode run. And they make life even easier than the Wet nonsense because enemies are debuffed (which is really needed now) and control spells become so strong. I now can understand why some say that Honour mode is easy.

Luckily I had only one crash during Honour mode, with no bad results. BG3 for me is an extremely stable game, since start of EA I had only 4 crashes. No noticable bugs so far. I feared Error 516 which I had in my first playthrough in Rivington, but it did not appear.

I was killed by the "elevator" - or better, suspended cable car - between Thielta Crags and Rosemorn Monastery. I've heard from my son - also a player - that the "elevators" at the underground Shaaran Temple in Act II are well known TPK'eyers in Honour Mode, with players ferrying over their parties in parts.
You get on the platform and it moves away, your party falling into the chasm below.
I've experienced only one "exit to desktop view" crash since August 2023.

After the third attempt, I was able to complete my Honor Mode last night. The first attempt failed against Myrkul, the second against the shepherds at the Githyanki Creche.

I played a Dark Urge half-evil, ascend Astarion and played carefully for my standards, but the Urge still wiped out Last Light Inn and had Nere kill the gnomes, so I had no relevant gnomes left alive and I did very difficult for me in the Steelwatcher Foundry. After the fight also Toobin died in the fire, I can't talk to his corpse, so I have to see how to destroy the foundry. In some places the Urge chose answers that weren't always advantageous and I could certainly have avoided some fights. But no risk no fun and ultimately I killed Orpheus and took control over the brain. Now I'm about to create the next Honor Mode, of course as Dark Urge. This time I want to reject Bhaal's legacy and not let Astarion ascend. Let's see how long the Urge can manage not to do evil things. (Yes, I knock out Alfira and Minthara...maybe). Also, I didn't get to see what happened to Lae'zel and the Githyanki egg . Is she going to be a mom? I owe them an ending with an epilogue.


But I have learned to steal EVERYTHING, have an alchemy, thief and buff hirelings. I play very slowly and think before fights about how I can best defeat them using my groups skills. With the Netherbrain I thought about it for two days before I went in there. In my game, Astarion was Gloomstalker/Assassin/Fighter and I always sent him out alone first and let him kill the groups. If something went wrong or there were still mobs left, I sent my Lae'zel, who was Monk/Thief/Fighter, to clear away the rest. As a Dark Urge, I need two more nights anyway so as not to get confused with the story or miss parts, so I take a lot of rests at the beginning and later for every Boss. I tried using potions and scrolls and every type of arrow and control every possible enemy.

It was a lot of fun for me, and it's different every time, can't wait my next run.