Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General POLL: What difficulty levels have you completed the game on?

Hi all, after taking break from this series of BG3 birthday stats themed polls to allow us to focus on the patch 7 release, continuing with a poll about difficulty settings.

What difficulty settings have you completed the game on? If you have played but failed honour mode, how far did you get and what was it that killed you (this is a bit raw for me today, just having died in one of my honour mode attempts in act 2!)? And if you failed honour mode, did you delete the save or keep it? What difficulty settings do you find most fun, and if you've played custom mode which settings do you prefer?

I've enabled multiple selections in the polls.

Links to previous polls:

• What classes have you played?
• What races have you played?
• What origins have you played?

What difficulty settings have you completed the game on? multiple choice
	Explorer
	Balanced
	Tactitian
	Honour Mode
	Custom
	I haven't completed the game yet
Votes accepted starting: 18/09/24 07:42 PM
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If you failed honour mode, how far did you get? multiple choice
	I've failed an honour mode run in act 1
	I've failed an honour mode run in act 2
	I've failed an honour mode run in act 3
	I've completed the game in honour mode and never failed an honour mode run
	I've not completed an honour mode, run but am currently attempting one and haven't failed one yet
	I've not tried an honour mode run yet
Votes accepted starting: 18/09/24 07:49 PM
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If you failed an honour mode run, did you delete the save? multiple choice
	Yes
	No
	I've not failed an honour mode run
Votes accepted starting: 18/09/24 07:54 PM
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My first ever game completion was the 2nd Honour Mode run.

First Honour Mode attempt (which was also my first ever playthrough of ACT III since I was saving myself for it up to that point) ended at the very finale as I went in completely blind and failed to foresee Lae'zel possibly betraying me during the endgame. Was roleplaying an evil Dark Urge who intentionally deceived everyone into becoming Chosen zealots of their own deities, so that when I dominate them I'd have powerful individuals to doom the world with. But Lae'zel's massive persuasion check at the finale was unexpected so by losing her I lost the run due to lack of damage during the final fight


Immediately started the 2nd run with the exact same choices as before, but this time came prepared for her persuasion check and succeeded in world domination as was originally intended


Now I just play Custom Honour Mode without the single save restriction because I really love its unique challenges, but have to be able to save for bug reporting purposes.

1 - so far I've only completed the game in HM. Twice. Once by blowing up the Absolute with Gale in Act 3, once in Act 2;
2 - I've managed to get myself killed in HM in every Act, at various points. The fastest death - Shadowheart on the beach . Or the brain bugs a moment later. Most often TPK location - meeting the Duergar Lake patrol. Sometimes bad rolls, often my stupidity, including not reading tooltips (e.g. failing to notice the 5 turn limit to get to Orin's lair);
3 - I honourably abandoned most of my campaigns. The ones I did not delete (a substantial minority) I ended up removing a few days later, never taking them far beyond that point. I'm an obstinate donkey and sometime during the winter I decided that I will only finish the game in HM. Gold die or bust! So I explored the game past mid Act 2 in Honour Maode ... Took me over half a year and several dozen attempts to finish. TBH well over half of PTs ended in Act 1, I died in Act 3 maybe only half a dozen times or so.

BTW - most irritating TPK - the cable car to the Rosemorn Monastery - it bugged and dumped my party into the chasm. Now I never move the entire Party by any car/pod/etc.

I completed Balance and Tactican in multiplayer, Tactican also solo. I completed Honor Mode 3 times solo and 1 time in multiplayer. My 4th solo is in Act 3 and is waiting for me to install all the mods.

I often made mistakes, almost always Act1, once with Kethric in Act 2 and Act 3 I never lost a run. I delete lost runs, I'm not interesseted in playing in another modus.

For me the challenge is just fighting with Astarion in a duo, using every dirty trick and don't avoiding any danger. I try to deliberately provoke as many fights as possible, pickpocking ist the best way to unleash chaos. For me the greatest fun is fighting my way out of such situations and having to think tactically.

I've only played on Tactician and Honour Mode.

In the Honour Mode runs I failed, I deleted the save because my only reason for playing the mode was for the achievement. As for what killed me, usually it's stuff like random crit at an inopportune time or failed spell save leading to catastrophic results (LIke having a strong character get mind controlled in the Nere fight and instantly murdering a party member)

As far as the most fun, I like Honour Mode's inclusion of Legendary actions and some encounter changes. But I hate single save...

So I had more fun in Tactician (Also, the fact that a majority of my game time was before Honour Mode was even a thing so Tactician was the most difficult setting possible)

There may be custom settings for Honour Mode + Multi-save these days, I dunno since I haven't really had the desire to play since finishing Honour Mode (As I'd already played out all the different class/race combos I cared for by that point)

I've completed the game twice, both on balanced mode.

I've also failed honour mode twice. The first was my dwarven monk against the spider queen in Act 1, when I was trying to sneakily destroy her eggs but failed miserably only to have her teleport on top of my poorly positioned party who were trapped in a corner and mainly out of spells. They didn't survive long. I did initially keep that save but then deleted it and started again with the same character (he's just made it to the Last Light Inn this time).

The second was my cleric of Mystra/divination wizard who perished today in Act 2 when Gale blew up a horde of corrupted shrubs with a fireball only for the Needle Blights to all explode on death and take my party and all the enemies with them, apart from a nearly dead shambling mound that finished off my KOed party. Aargh! I'd forgotten those blasted things did that. And I didn't mean to delete that run as I did want to finish the story with the character, but pressed the wrong button. Aargh again! But I'm not counting it as a save deletion as I had taken a zip copy of a save when I'd almost finished Act 1 to attach to a bug report, so I don't have a lot to redo. (For info, as I wasn't sure until I unzipped and tried it, you can continue an honour mode run from a copied file, and it seems the same as continuing a failed run in that it's treated as a custom difficulty, single save game.)

I also have a Durge tactitian playthrough that's towards the end of Act 1. But I think I'm going to start a new honour mode run with a new character first, and come back to my other in-progress runs later. I feel I need to let today's pain dissipate before facing the Isobel/Marcus and Kar'niss fights again!

I do enjoy the challenge of the honour mode settings, but don't much like the more cautious play going for the achievement encourages in me (even though it's clearly not cautious enough!) I will keep trying honour mode until I complete it, but if that ever happens then I'd probably play custom mode with the honour mode settings but multiple saves (which, yes, is now possible, though not unfortunately to move to multiple saves after failing an honour mode attempt).

I am in the "enjoys playing cautiously" camp. The number of fights I've fled with the last character! LOL! I loved that! I made Withers FAT with my "donations".


BTW - In my current multiplayer PT (we started in HM to get the ruleset, intentionaly died in first room on Nautiloid; died only once so far - Duergar Lake Patrol :), now in Rivington) I can see the difference in gameplay between me and my son. As previously he always had access to F8, he likes to fiddle with coatings/spells/scrolls - "let us see what does this do", "it will be cool if this works" etc., while I'm focused on "kill them quickest possible" - fearing that the baddies may land a crit/possess you/whatever.
He jeers at his old man that I should post a "how I beat BG3 with nothing but Fireball and Potion of Hil Giant Strength" video on YT

Beat the game once on balanced.

I started a 2nd run on Honor mode, which got abandoned halfway through act1. I just lost interest and moved to something else, and with modding support on the way I decided to not continue and wait for the game to be finalised.

Now I see that with recent patch finally one can have "honor mode" features without one save so once I eventually return to BG3, I will likely start a new save using custom mode.

Where is the option for "Cheaty McCheaterson" mode? Maybe I can file that under 'Custom'...

I have completed 3 times on Custom mode (enemy power set to tactician) I also severely limit myself in several ways regarding the number of consumables, magic items, and use of scrolls etc.

Currently on 4th run and first playing as an Origin character