Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Patch 4 Feedback

I have a few major issues to report.

Firstly: Gales quest is gone. Just completely not there. At the party he talks as if I have given him artifacts to absorb, but I haven't. He never asked me to, and in fact I never had any cut-scenes with him at all. This has never happened before. Also he does not want to romance me. Which makes me sad. Even though his approval is "Very High".

Secondly: Wyll's quests still does not work, but it never did for me. He never tells me of Mizora, and pretends he never talked to Spike.

Thirdly: The underdark is a maze of crashes and corrupted save files for me. Ever since I went down there my game will crash regularly, and then the two newest save files I have made get corrupted, forcing me to load a decently old file every time. I think it has something to do with the Myconid colony, as that is where the majority of the crashes happen. One did happen back at camp however.

Fourthly (Is that a word?): Some good things. The burning inn now works for me. No crashes or corrupted files for the first time, and the quests can be completed. The top-side is generally much more stable now than it has ever been for me.

I couldn't find the gloves of the absolute among the goblins corpses anymore. Bug or left out on purpose ?
The raindancer staff cannot create water anymore, so it is just an expensive normal staff.

I had 0 crashes with earlier patches - I also went to the underdark briefly (after Zhentarim), then was OK (I didn't stray out into the Underdark, just stayed in the Zhent enclave down there to loot it, then back of the lift), then entered temple of Absolute (Gut's place). Then the crashes started. The games appear to save fine, but then when you load a game, it crashes part way through the load. I freed Volo...it was fine. Freed the prisoner being tortured. Save, load crash. Reloaded older game, freed Halsin, save, load crash. It seems that each time I now save after some combat, the game will crash when it is reloaded. I have a druid in the party - maybe it is related to the introduction of that class somehow...

I've had three CTD's now with the new patch and all in the early part of the game, just doing all the Druid Grove stuff. I never had a crash with the earlier version of the game, so this one does seem less stable. I haven't noticed any pattern for when it happens. Also no druid in the party, so I don't think it's related to the new class. The game always resumed on the last save, so at least the save files don't seem to be corrupted.

I've noticed some glitches with cut scenes not showing NPC lip movement here and there, but nothing else major. I'm getting the initial Gale and Shadowheart cut scenes at camp, not sure about the others yet.

I noticed the merchant pickpocket exploit is still there -- separate a rogue from the party, sneak and pickpocket only the merchant's gold and run away under stealth, the party takes the heat and gets off free. Same as DOS2, so I guess this is Larian-approved behavior. I thought they might patch that out.

It kinda works if you have character than already cast the create water spell. Give it to shadowheart and one of the create water options becomes "recharges after rest". That's the rain dancer. This should be included in the description -- "allows druids and clerics . . . "

Yup, definitely crashes more than before. I've always had the game crash after too many (quick)loads (memory leaks?), but now the game sometimes crashes also when entering equipment/character screens. I've also had crashes where everything just stops, not even the crash reporter window opens afterwards, because even the launcher etc. just dies.

Patch 4 Evil Route Feedback

• Drow can't torture the prisoner, Spike leaves the room instead which means he doesn't introduce us to Minthara and we have to go find her ourselves.
• When we find Minthara, there is still an option to say we tortured the prisoner even though we couldn't
• Minthara still suggests that we speak to Priestess Gut to be healed even though that ultimately makes us hostile to the goblins. I think this dialogue line should be removed, its hard to think of a reason why we would side with the goblins after Priestess Gut tries to kill us.
• The Grove was not prepared for the goblin fight after fast traveling back, I had to long rest first.
• After killing everyone at the gate and grove, there is no indicator that we should follow Minthara into the tiefling cave, the quest should update to indicate this.
• The druids don't avoid their own moonbeams and commit suicide frequently

ps. There's now some companion dialogue from Shadowheart when we approach the goblin camp again to try and explain why the goblins are hostile to us even though we sided with them.

After seeing the below mentioned elsewhere I was thinking of having a set place to record new changes to the game that didn't get added to the Patch 4 notes. Please if we can let us refrain from debating if the changes are good or bad in this thread. I'd just like a list for people to be able to refer to. Note my patch messed up and I had to re-DL the whole game so I will not have time to get in and do testing myself till probably this weekend but I'll add more as well when/if I find it.

Starting off...
I've read that the Beastmaster Spider companion has been balanced and brought more in line with the others by dropping its HP from 32 to 12.
The Raven appears to also have been rebalanced with 10HP up from 1HP and had it's AC boosted to 16 from I believe 12.

I have noticed crashes happen a lot of times when pulling up vendors. I do think there might be some more memory leaks since this latest patch.

Shadowheart's ghost still hangs around to disapprove of my choices. I'm starting to actually enjoy it.

Especially when you start trading and then select another character. I had the game (P4) crash plenty of times now.

After playing for some time and the party hitting level 4, I have to say I have very mixed impressions about this patch. On the positive side, I like the druid implementation, buggy shapeshifting included. The new roleplaying options in the grove are well incorporated into the story and the utility of various shapes is fun.

But mechanically, the game feels more clunky and unpolished then before. The pathfinding ai of the companions remains as useless as ever, but with the added issue of this new "folllow jump" feature. Now the companions will occassionally harm themselves in my game. I can't even pinpoint what exactly is happening, but suddenly a companion will be lying prone & hurt next to a ladder or a cliff.

Inventory bugs out quite often, with issues I haven't encountered in previous patches. E.g. a character's inventory will become inaccessible, and the only way to fix that is to reload. I haven't used any mods in any of my previous playthroughs, so that is not a possible cause.

Cutscenes have all sort of graphical issues, usually due to weird actor positioning, that I haven't seen before. And this happens very often.

I also supect something is going on with companion dialogues, because despite spamming rest I only got two, both related to plot (dream caused and Gale's confession). Similar with non-party npcs. E.g. my party had to climb the stone next to the windmill, because walking on the road would cause all goblins to immediately go hostile. But standing on the stone they were suddenly willing to talk.

I played patch 3 during 50 hours and patch 4 same time more or less.

I second that path finding AI is no better than it was in patch 3:
- characters don't avoid dangereous areas, or manage to fall/hurt themselves
- characters move a lot when collecting items at the same place (going one side, then another, etc...) this wasn't happening with patch 3

Not sure if related but:
- enemies sometimes get stuck and do nothing during the whole fight (they search for a move, but find none, and timeout somehow, very annoying)

I also second the inventory bug where one character has an empty inventory in Inventory pannel (but one can still access items from hotbar or equipment).

And finally I also experienced very weird cutscene cinematics, sometimes you see nothing but the leg of the character or the like...


Bugs:
- Kagha's key doesn't work.
- book in the crypt (near the crashed ship) is bugged
- sometimes dialogs stop and it isn't obvious you have to do something for it to continue (it looks stuck, but pressing space works and the dialog then continues)
- the goblin in cage near Priestress Gut disappeared from the cage
- picking locks use 2 picking tools
- disarm traps tools don't work (or I miss something)
- a character equipped with a torch has it in the back during dialogs, and the fire is on his ass...
- metal shield in goblin camp (near the goblin trader) is shown as wooden shield in the inventory
- only few shields (I could only find +2AC, one metallic, all others wooden)
- some weapons with existing profeciencies are almost impossible to find (darts?)

Wishes:
- a better battle AI, sometimes enemies are just coming one by one to get killed, instead of hiding and waiting for characters to come.
Also once the battle started, if characters hide well enough, enemies aren't actively searching for them, and just stay there.
- a way to distinguish story items from others in the inventory
- a library for books you find at the camp
- reading books should not close inventory
- jump should use remaining movement (if you jump far, it costs more)
- jump should not disengage, but disengage should be an action by itself (disengage then move, disengage then jump)
- in dialogs, one should be able to choose which character answers (and then use this character's attributes for checks)
- replace lock pick progress bar by a visual lock: visually break tools if it fails, visually open the lock in case of success
- the long rest option is weird: I'm deep in the Underdark, and suddenly I'm back to camp... at least, make a camp looking like surroundings characters are in
- random encounters: no merchants on roads, no one stealing or eating cadavers you left, no surprise attack when travelling or resting
- pile of books should contain books, barrels shouldn't contain anything but food or liquids
- equipement lack of visual variety (same specs, different aspect)


Overall, the game is definitively enjoyable, especially for an early access (I spent 115 hours on it, with different teams).
Keep going!

I know folks have been asking for more body styles in character creation and sliders. Mostly this would be a cool "nice to have" in the game. Here are my thoughts on this:

On of my favorite aspects of making a character in D&D is using my modifiers to create my characters appearance. Below are some recommendations to have from the PHB. I think it would be great to use modifiers to affect appearance.


For example, the body style would change once the character has:

• +2 to con and +2 to str. (strong and broad)
  +2 to con and +2 to dex (lean and fit)
  -1 to str and -1 to dex (choice of scrawny or plump)

Patch 4: A Step in the Right Direction

Overall, patch 4 is an improvement from patch 3. A lot of small noticeable improvements added up to make the game slightly more enjoyable. Weighted dice, is by far better implemented than previous dice rolls. Druid is a nice addition, while changes have been made to the class it is still in a healthy spot in the meta.

Combat

• Some, but not all, combat encounters have improved AI and it sped up combat encounters where this was improved.
• Noticeably when raiding the grove fighting the druids was more engaging. However some enemies still have AI issues and run straight into the interior walls to never attack the player.
• High ground advantage and low ground advantage have a minimal threshold. This improved gameplay a lot. It really highlighted the issues this brings for casters. I’ll make the same point I made in a prior post. High ground advantage forces the player to move their squishy characters into areas they would not otherwise. It does not make sense for magic to get advantage or disadvantage from elevation. And, the player should be allowed to zone with their squishy party members appropriately. The game would be a lot more enjoyable if players were allowed to play casters as intended.
• I still wish for combat and combat related mechanics to be more true to the core rules.
• I’ve been looking forward to out of the box solutions with combat. But Barrelmancy and superfluous spell scrolls are not engaging.
  Specifically I’m thinking of the fight where the player defends the grove from Minthara. Zevlor went ahead and buried oil barrels and the player has no agency in the preparation of this fight. There’s a whole hill that could be improved with better defenses, there are other items in the PHB that could come into play in this fight.
• It would be nice to control your allies during either side of the fight. If the tieflings are on the player's side, let the player control them. If the goblins are on the player's side, please let the player control them.

Visuals
Spell buffs need better visual effects. I like most visuals in the game but these have been a sticking point for all of early access. So many of these are just drab. The constant pulse of these are not pleasing to the eye either. I hope these are placeholders, I'm just burnt out on seeing them. I've waited to post this feedback as I wanted to phrase it in the nicest way possible.
Bless reminds me of Warner Bros cartoons where after getting hit on the head a character would see birds or stars. I would be okay if it was only a visual on the portrait. I don't like the the animation for Bless at all.
Hex shows up on the warlock and it's target. The animation is a pulsing red/purple stain that reminds me of when a guest has spilled wine on my carpet. I don't know how else to explain how unappealing the animation for hex is.
Mage Armour & Shield of Faith are just white stains pulsing on the character. Again I'd prefer just a graphic on the character portrait with the animations on the character model removed. I don't want to use Mage Armour because it makes my character look ridiculous.
Armour of Agathys makes your warlock look like there is secretly a freezer underneath their armor. My character looks like they are more concerned with carrying Ben & Jerry's safely across Faerûn instead of getting their tadpole removed. I expected Armour of Agathys to look more like a pair of ice shoulder pads.

In conclusion patch 4 has been good, but has not addressed enough of the concerns with combat in this forum. I hope the visuals described are changed in a future patch, and improvements to combat are coming soon.

A couple of things....
1) From a Looter's Perspective (who want's the good druid ending at the grove), dang.....the Ritual area and Druid's Chamber got A LOT more difficult to ransack without setting folks off on a "Kill the foreigners" rampage/battle. Good job!!! (Just, can you please fix the bug with Korga's Key)
2) Found an....Interesting....visual glitch. To recreate:
Use Shadowheart's Disguise Self ability, or get Astarion, Gale, WIll, or Lae'zel that ability through leveling and have them use it to turn themselves into a dwarf or halfling (male or female doesn't matter) then, with your main character talk to them. Watch your companion do some weird straw man morphing. Also saw this effect when I had Will disguised as a female Tiefling.
3) The graphics are great, and getting better with each patch. Still, consider perusing the available mods and recruiting some of the Mod Authors onto your team. Two in particular would be A100N who's done spectacular work pushing your graphics into HD with their HQ World. And ANTEMAXX who has made some absolutely amazing outfits. (Their outfits prior to Patch 4 were significantly less "powerful", but no less pretty.)

Oh, yeah, 4) I see you added/activated a couple more Guardian Statues in the Druid Tunnels....Could you please, for the love of all that's holy, give us some way to avoid them that doesn't involve destroying the statues at range. (like wearing one of the Druid Circlets or maybe a panel or even the statues that we can use disable traps with).

I was hoping for combat improvements in patch 4. Once you know the story, you can still replay the game for the combat and to try out different classes and character builds. But the tactical combat still suffers from many issues.

Backstab is too easy and powerful. It could be turned into Flanking that gives +2AB and requires two attackers. So it wouldn't be the default attack mode that gives free advantage.

High Ground / Low Ground should similarily be a +2 / -2 swing at most. Even at +2/-2 it would still be a 4 point swing that would single handedly win fights. The real "advantage" of high ground should be that you can move back to break line of sight with those below after you attack rather than a flat attack bonus or penalty.

I was also hoping for a more robust Long Rest / Short Rest system that would be more meaningful and integrate the eating food part of the game.

And since we are not getting more story in EA, I would very much like new clothing / armor / weapon models, and class building options for replayability. Starting equipment to customize your character properly.

Level 5 would be nice too, since that's where the classes are starting to come into their own.

I agree we do need level 5 in the next patch as it would bring some more balance to classes. It would be nice to see a few more items for classes so you have a few options or at least a little more random loot options. +1 shield would be nice for shield users. The options for heavier armor choices. More class options also needed like a easy to impliment subclasses that dont require that much effort to add with little change like champion and some mage subclasses. As well would be nice to see barbarian and different body sizes. Body size limitations are disappointing when there is helsin whos basically bigger than your characters even when you have an 17/18 str fighter who should be far more buff than helsin. But you dont have that choice to be buffer and a barbarian would be nice to see. I am still on vote for paladin / barbarian as next class.

Well... I think the classes are perfectly balanced. Everyone can shove into pits, make barrels explode, backstab and jump to high ground. No other abilities are required in this game.

Heh... sadly too true. Also, everyone can cast any spell with scrolls and wizards can learn spells from all other classes.