Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Location in Faerun?

So I am curious where Act 1 is taking place at in the game world.

Looked at the map of Faerun and know we are supposed to be near Baldur's Gate. When we crash you get the impression we are on the coast of the ocean or a large lake. During a dialog I am told we are along the Chiothar which is the rive that runs through Baldur's Gate and feeds into the Sea of Swords.

The city sits just up river of the Sea of Swords, likely not more than a couple of miles from the coast, so easily within a days walk. Since we know we are further than that from Baldur's Gate and with a Druid Conclave I would surmises that we are likely in the Cloak Wood across the river from Baldur's Gate.

Any other ideas? Would love if one of the writers from Larian would give us an "official" answer.

We seem to be in Elturgard. Maybe someone more familiar with the Realms can narrow it down further than that.

There's also this page on the wiki which shows Moonrise Towers in relation to various landmarks.

When you end act 1 you see the world map. We are up the river to the east of Baldur’s Gate. Nowhere near the coast.

It's halfway between Baldur's Gate and Elturel, just north of the river Chionthar where it bows northwards slightly.

Edit:


I made the same assumption and spent ages looking at the coastline trying to find it! But if you zoom in so the camera is horizontal when standing at the bits where it looks like a lake, e.g. the cliffs or the edge of the swamp, you can see the land on the other side of the river. So it's big, though not unnaturally so for that stretch of a major waterway.

Where are we?

The song makes the answer clear.

We're down, down, down by the river (Chionthar).

here you can see the location of the moonrise tower , our destination for act 2

https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Moonrise_Towers

Hello, this question has been bothering me for years.

I've been going through a bunch of maps, faerun locations and landmarks and this has entirely been annoying me. None of the terrain really fits anything between Baldurs gate and Elturel being smack bang in The Fields of The Dead noted as being miles and miles and miles of rolling hills and grassland, and On the actual river which takes any and all instances of mountainous terrain out of the equation entirely. This is my Dilemma.

Using the 2 instances of images provided by Evil there and using other images of the land. Trying to research the location of Anga Vled (which is only estimated in the research I have come across), The angles of the river in Act 1 I can only find 1 or 2 possible locations.

Firstly, let me show a fraction of the image that I use for most of my Faerun geography and large scale campaign settings that I find reasonably accurate.

[img]https://postimg.cc/ygb24N7x[/img]

Next I Look for distinguishable features in the actual BG3 Map. The most notable is a 90 degree bend north in the river and mountainous terrain surrounding it. After Scouring the 2008 forgotten realms campaign guilde and The Sword Coast Adventurers Guide these have proved very poor. Even The Code of The Harpers, an old 2e book only heightened my worries.

My main issue is with the 2nd image where skuldask road is. If this is in fact accuate (skuldask road appears differently nearly everywhere with this image being the closest to that angle)

[img]https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/f...ad.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20110623185348[/img]

This would indicate that Moonrise Towers are essentially right next to Elturel, placing the game's landing location east of or in Elturel

So.... one of a number of things has transpired here... The devs got it very very wrong (most likely. considering their incorporation of D&D ruleset in to their game rather than being a true D&D game) or simply changed the location positions in the world. Every source I have found places moonrise essentially directly to the west of Elturel.

There is another that the locations given are wrong, but as the Crescentcoat high office would imply it is indeed very close to Elturel, the variance in positioning isn't really an issue.

But let's look at the situation as a whole.... The Tieflings have been on the road from Elturel to Baldurs Gate due to being exiled after elturels return, Moonrise is due west of elturel and they would reasonably be following skuldask road and thundars ride to Baldurs Gate. If we look again at the map I generally use, look at the geographies of the map and the game I have come to settle on that the game is using this area marked and changing the positions of landmarks and pois to suit. None of it should be considered canon.

[img]https://postimg.cc/Fd6W7ndH[/img]

the area to the left is the one I'm convinced they're using due to the river angle and a the most likely (exaggerated from hill to) mountain terrain, corroborated by western heartlands map. possibly the smaller one as it's closer to the road with moonrise, in this game, being west of the hills next to my mark.

So that's my idea on "where" this game takes place.

Comparing maps between AD&D (2e) and 3e D&D brings up numerous unexplained changes, mountains, coastlines, positions of towns,...continuity just wasn't a very big concern for the new owners. The 2e hex maps were very abstract, so when you saw a patch of trees next to a line of hills, you could assume that the hills were wooded on at least one side, even if there was a stretch of lime green standard background showing in between. There often were descriptions in the books that explained how these blank areas look. The Sword Coast hinterlands are described as jagged in the area we're looking at, so we can safely assume that the rocky wooded terrain depicted in BG3 matches the original concept.

The Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter areas more or less disappeared from tabletop sources during the late 1990s, so there is very little material outside of the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting when it comes to the Chionthar Valley between Elturel and Baldur's Gate, but as a DM - or game dev, you can of course always decide how things are in your campaign which is why these maps leave many blank spaces to be filled out in your games. You can always invent new towns and say there's a river bend or tributary, even if they don't show. Those maps have a huge scale and intentionally omit some details. In my 2e AD&D home campaign which is set about 120 years before BG3 and before the onset of the Shadow Curse, Reithwin is located on the southern bank of the Chionthar, north of the Wood of Sharp Teeth or rather on the edge or a prong of said forest. This would also place the Wilderness somewhere along the edges further east. If the Tieflings wanted to leave the jurisdiction of Elturgard as soon as possible, going south of the Chionthar would have made perfect sense. The liberty Larian took in this scenario was placing a mountain chain between Baldur's Gate and Elturel called the Trielta Crags. On the old maps, Triel is north east of Elturel and the Trielta Hills named after it described as pastoral rolling hills, not at all like the tall peaks we see in the game.

In Act 3, we're coming from Reithwin and have to cross the Rivington bridge from south, so I assume my other observations are correct.

Any geographical inconsistent with past editions can be chalked up to the spellplague.

From a the fan made wiki: https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Spellplague

The Spellplague affected the landscape, making the ground rumble and heave up and down like the surface of the sea.[4] Curtains of blue flame swept the landscape, reshaping the land by cutting crevasses or lifting and sculpting the plain into hills and ridges.[33] Shards of earth wrenched themselves free and became earthmotes.[34] Such areas changed by the Spellplague came to be known as "changelands".[12][13]

Thanks, I wasn't completely aware of what the Spellplague did. At least the changes for 4e/5e and Baldur's Gate 3 can easily be explained this way. 3e was set before the Spellplague. Back then, some players explained inconsistencies in-game by saying the (2e)multiverse got destroyed after the events of the final adventure Die Vecna Die! and formed anew. I'm quite glad my players were able to stop the rotter before this happened!

I’ve never been a fan of the upheavals to explain the effects of the new editions in the worlds. Some were fun one off events like the time of Troubles, but each new edition just gets old to me. But that’s another topic 😂