Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General New Playthrough without one single save scum

I'm planning on my next playthrough to not use one single save scumming and gonna try to experience what the games is gonna throw at my face.
What you guys think about save scumming? Do you sometimes do it? Have you maybe already played with using it?

Looking forward reading your ideas.

The game is not that hard. Almost everything is dead but the myconids (goblins, druids, Tyr paladins, gnolls, etc.) and I:

1) Never save scummed
2) Didn't use barrelmancy
3) Elemental arrows
4) Any potions except heal potions
5) Long rested only when almost every character's spells and abilities were spent
6) Maybe three deaths (mostly from being shoved into an auto-kill zone)

I did use food to heal up, and some fights I think I had some lucky rolls (e.g Githyanki), but overall not hard at all.

My party was:

Drow Cleric (Light) using a shield and Shield Mastery perk
Astarion (the melee version, not spell caster)
Gale (who only got the OP magic missile necklace for the last three battles I did: Zhentarim and Hag battles)
Lae'zel (2H battlemaster, +2 stats instead of perk)

I agree that it's not hard, I just finished my first playthrough (100 hours, I'm a crazy person) and I never had a character die, never lost a fight, killed everything (not the druids or myconids), used no barrels or other cheesy stuff.

I do save scum some things, though. I save scum things that are based on my character's concept, like the things my character specializes in. So, my rogue is supposed to be very good at locks, traps, and social skills (took 16 in Charisma, plus proficiency in Persuasion and Deception). So when I fail at locks (more than a few times), trap disarm, or Persuasion or Deception, I save scum those. Everything else, I just let it ride as it goes.

I do want to play through with no save scumming, though. But I'll do it on a character who doesn't have any skills that I care about.

I had a very similar experience as @Emrikol, except I did some save scrumming just to explore some different outcomes.

When I do another playthrough (waiting for a few more patches to go through to iron out the bugs) I'll likely try something like you've outlined and not do any at all, minus some room for misclicks.
I also have this idea about not looting any containers that aren't either chests or quest/story related.

I want to do a lot less looting next time, too. I swear I spent 10 hours of my playthrough just searching containers.

It’s pretty hard - I die quite frequently but generally only the first time - I don’t use the barrels & I only long rest when I basically outta spells. I’ve not played any dos games before & I’m really enjoying this.
I think if your finding it pretty easy you’re well versed in the mechanics & do quite a lot of scouting & planning before combat. I’d likely do better if I was a little more patient and took that approach more often - I’m learning too.

Indeed I have SS at time, but not often. Like when I have a 4+ Arcana check with my wizard(proficient, obviously), and failure means lots of innocents die, and I roll a 1.... Yea, that was just a bad dream.... :P





The bugs are going to be in here for a good while yet. Remember, we are playing the rough draft, and Larian has a long laundry list of fixes and changes to make. After every patch, at the very least, I start over, just to see what's been changed.

I played DOS2 many times, always on tactician (hard level), so I am familiar with whatever mechanics are common to both games. One thing I had to do in DoS2 (especially at lower levels) was to heavily prepare for a fight, which often entailed dying a few times until I got a feel for the strategy needed. Just walking into a fight was a death sentence, unlike here where scouting and preparing was never needed.

On the original issue of save scumming, I actually did save at times in anticipation of maybe needing to reload, but I never needed to use it in battle (certainly guilty of having done it in dos2 though, but I was playing with only one character on high difficulty most of the time). Outside of battle, I think the only time I reloaded in BG3 was with the necro tome, because I wanted to see what it did (which seems to be nothing).

I save constantly not because of scumming, but because combat STILL bugs out leaving me unable to pass my turn after the death save when I'm downed sometimes.

I dislike save scumming but I've been known to do it for nettie. Dang lady keep tryin to kill me!

Of course I just thought it made sense to not get hung up on things that would get ironed out quickly (like the hag fight being incomplete until recently for example). Maybe wait for another class to be added or some such (shrug).

Anyone else have a problem with the "if someone doesn't play the game like i do, they are scum" mentality?

Is that a strawman I see?

I think a playthrough without save-scumming is fun one time. any more and it becomes very frustrating

I only do this a lot in EA to see the result of different options. I prefer to play normally without lots of save scumming. Only times I do it are when the outcome should be obvious but the game does not allow for the details to make it this way.

fine.. do it with a no magic group.

Impressive that you are attempting to play that way, but this is EA. I think the point is to do what people are calling save scumming. I am not knocking anyone for playing the game multiple times, but I try to get the most out of each play through to find all the glitches and breaks I can. When the game is complete that is when I will worry about playing a perfect or not-so-perfect play through on a character. Curious to ask though, did you run across any glitches? Because even when I wasn't save and reloading on purpose I had times there were glitches and bugs that I had to reboot from. I have noted though that since some of the patches there have been less of them.

Beware of getting addicted to the ecstatic highs you'll get from successful rolls. You can wage bets with yourself and reward your successes with candy or other treats.