Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Options for people with poor Internet

I'm interested in playing BG3. However I have a spotty Internet connection with a limited data cap. Are there any options for playing the game for someone in my situation?

Option 1: Simply download the game over a period of time. Obtaining chunks of data as and when your internet permits.

Option 2: Physical copies for consoles provide the base game on disc(s). Meaning you only have to download the patches (Which you may or may not need to stagger download like in the aforementioned step, however, to a significantly lower degree)

I used to have very bad internet. 1 MB/s on a VERY good day, usually 200-400 KB/s.
I simply downloaded the game at a different location, on my son's broadband.
You do not need the internet to play the game. You can even play when offline. Still, the 450-700 Kb updates were manageable.
For the Patches - which be 10GB or so - either repeat the experience and download at a different location, or simply leave the PC on overnight (like I did).

Now I can reliably expect 1-3 MB/s. At night - even up to 5MB. That was enough for me to reinstal the game (overnight).


PS. 1 MB = 8Mb

Do you have a net/cyber cafe? Can you take a USB 3 external enclosure and login to Steam (Make sure you have MFA/Steam Guard), and then restore BG3 through the files you have on your External HDD, and then proceed to let the game update the files on your external enclosure? Just check if they have fast internet. Otherwise if you have a good neighbour that has starlink you can give them the enclosure and ask them to download the files for you.

Alternatively you can buy the Console version. However you would still need to download the Patch 7 files which are coming out in October 2024. Once done you can put Steam to offline mode and Steam will no longer require any internet and BG3 will run just fine (After you have signed into your Larian account for the first time to link it). Turn off Gameplay stats, and Multiplayer.

I only know GoG and PC, and I have like 2.6 MB/s, which AFAIK is the absolute bottom end for my country. Its basically 100% reliable though. Takes me half a day to download the game if I keep sufficient attention on that.

GoG gives you the game in 4 GB chunks.

For V7.0 there are 31 chunks of 4GB size, one that is 2.6 GB, and one small .exe thats the actual installer. Windows says the directory 125 GB in total size.

This is only slightly smaller than the earliest version I still keep around, Patch 1, which had 27 chunks of 4GB size, and its the exact same size as 6.9.

The main problem then is to download the whole game fast enough before GoG puts up a new version, because then you have to start again from zero. Unfortunately GoG doesnt keep up old versions, not even for a limited amount of time.

Especially version 6.9 was around for ages, so that would have been an easy option. Now that 7.0 is out, I dont know how fast a new version will be out.

Downloading patches wont work. For example the patch between 6.9 and 7.0 is basically the size of the whole game. At that point you're better off just downloading the whole game again.


P.s.: Oh and the other reason I dont usually bother with patches is because for the longest time they demanded absurd sizes of free space. At the worst point it was like 2 TB free space. I dont know if GoG or Larian have since fixed that.