Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Hotbar UI improvements

Coming from DOS2 I'm familiar with hotbar UI being used in this game. I generally like it but with a few tweaks I think it's functionality could be greatly improved.

1. Add keybindings for switching between hotbars. I'd suggest something like Ctrl-1 => hotbar1, Ctrl-2 => hotbar2, etc. Having to click on a little 10x10 pixel scroll arrow to switch hotbars is a PITA.

2. Have hotbars organized by type: hotbar1 => Spells, hotbar2 => Scrolls, hotbar3 => Potions, hotbar4 => Arrows. When new items are picked up they are automatically added to the appropriate hotbar.

When I'm in the middle of a battle it should be easy to determine what things I have at my disposal. I don't want to go digging around my inventory to see what scrolls or potions I have but forgot to add to my hotbar. The game should do that for me automatically. Otherwise it distracts from the game play and role playing. These two small improvements would go a long towards helping with that.

Personally I despise the hotbar system used in BG3, DOS, and Pathfinder Kingmaker. I find it to be a pain in the butt that requires too much micromanagement.

I'd rather see a logical, automatically organized system like the original BG games or Neverwinter Nights. Let me tag favorites for quick use, but also group things like spells, abilities, and items.

The option for auto assigning new spells does not make up for the fact that the system is cumbersome and places the onus of making sense out of the chaos on the player. The current system is even more frustrating when you've got several characters to manage and with every level up I've got to start the infuriating process pretty much from scratch.

I do not like it, Sam I Am.

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I think it is just too limited and unsorted. I would like to have it split between consumables, skills and spells. Right now the hotbar is a mess of all things you can do in a turn, which is pretty overwhelming. If you could also customize them and move them freely on the screen that would also help.

Otherwise it is fine, because it visualizes all the options that you have, which is good, since you need to use them, too.

On 1920x1080 the entire UI is tiny. But the hotbar scroll buttons are ridiculous, you need a microscope to use them. Please scale the UI better for different resolutions.

It feels really messy when everything goes in the same bar, spells, abilities, items, ammunition, everything. It could be sorted better.

And because casters end up getting a lot of spells, I would like spells to get their own interface. Something that sorts all prepared spells cleanly by level and has a more elegant solution for up-casting using a higher level spell slot than creating a separate icon for every possible up-cast spell combination.

I would like to see more "pop up menus" similar to what you get when casting Hex, or use the throw action.

I speak more of it in this thread: https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=695941#Post695941

All in all having each spell level being their onw "pop up" menu, same for arrows, scrolls, consumables etc.

Then have a small hot bar for things you use a lot.

It's a turnbased game, having hotbars isn't as important honestly, but "click economy" needs to be relatively low

FWIW, I played at 4K, 1440p, and 1080p and the UI was equally small and unreadable at every resolution. Surely UI scaling has got to be in the works.

What I find funny is that during combat there are *ten* or more different ways to see your hit points on the screen at once. Each portrait pic alone shows your hit points three different ways at the same time. What is going on haha

Completely agree, the hotbar is too much hard work, I have different level spells mixed up with items and i have to give each tiny item 1 by 1 to find something useful and to understand the spell level. Spells and items are very much different things and a player thinks about them differently, so why put them all together in the same bar?

Some of the things people have mentioned were in DOS2 and I assume just aren't in yet because of EA. This still is definitely an area that Larian should strive to improve in.

Some personal thoughts:
Having multiple hotkeys for 1 skill- It didn't feel intuitive for polymorph skills and it doesn't feel intuitive for skills such as: sneak attack melee/ranged, hordebreaker melee/ranged and hordebreaker-followup melee/ranged, and upcasting spells.

Autosort for backpacks would be helpful for in combat consumable usage- Bags are currently very EA right now and will be improved, but an autosort and lock-in place feature for bags would greatly help with inventory management.

Reactions- If reactions stay as is mechanically, they will need to be able to be much more reactive. Right now I can click them multiple times, and nothing will change for an extended period of time. You need to be able to decide in a split second on if you want your reactions to be activate or not.