Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Patch 4 enemy healing out of combat = Bulette being the worst encounter ever devised.

So Larian, your bandaid answer for people cheesing broken stealth and killing enemies without being detecting, is now to make them autoheal all damage outside of combat, has broken your already broken Bulette encounter even further.

Now, if you don't manage to kill it in one instance, it returns, with full health again. I've faced it 3 times during my druid playthrough, the last encounter being with sovereign and a reanimated minotaur, and even getting it down to 40 HP, it burrowed for a 4th time, and I'll have to face it for a 5th at full health.

This encounter is completely broken under the existing (terrible IMHO) rules modifications.

I've had the bullete appear in both the minotaur and hook horror fights. It sure seems to get around.

But what I've found interesting is that it can turn other Underdark denizens hostile, I assume by catching them with its aoe. In the minotaur fight one of the minotaurs went from attacking my party to attacking the bulette (and killed his companion in the process). The same happened in the hook horror fight; they went after the bulette once it appeared. They actually helped my party defeat it.

I've not been "lucky" enough to have it show up in any other fights. In this playthrough, I did have a hook horror jump all the way from the branch of the tree, land on Gale and Wyll killing them by doing 50 damage to each of them, and take zero fall damage itself.

Larian's meddling with creature abilities has utterly broken all semblance of balance. If the final product is anything close to this EA in terms of cramming DOS mechanics into a shell of DnD, then I'll most likely wait till someone mods in some more accurate rules before I attempt to play the full version.

I'd not call it "lucky"; the bulette managed to kill two character in that fight, but it also angered the hook horrors in the process. :P

But I think Larian should add different difficulty options in the EA for people to playtest before the full release. The difficulty doesn't seem consistent.

You know it's not even really about difficulty. The minotaurs are plenty difficult without being able to jump 80 feet. Same with the hook horror battle, 4 hook horrors and a mage, is plenty difficult without letting giving hook horrors jump attacks that can one shot anyone in the party, the bulette is plenty difficult without being able to spit AOE acid. Phase spiders are plenty difficult without giving them the ludicrous ability to spit poison.

The jumping/disengaging from combat is also completely broken, and makes melee combat 2nd class to any form of ranged combat, there's literally no benefit to trying to tie up someone in melee when they can jump out without penalty or risk, and that goes for enemies and party members.

it's almost as if Larian is trying to make the only viable tactic in the games to be using the DOS features they've thrown in with AOE/surface spam, along with mega-jump and 'push FTW'.

I wouldn't say the "DoS" tactics but I understand what you mean... And I agree.

The difficulty of this game is only based on their OP rules.
Players that don't know them find the game very hard... Players that know them find it very easy... That's definitely not what should be a normal difficulty level.

That's something we have said in many threads... I really hope they'll fix this because such a "learning curve" is not interresting at all in a strategy game

P1 : The game is too hard
P2 : Use highground and push ennemies...
P1 : Thx, now the game is very easy, I'll try with a solo character
P2 : So use dipping and backstab
P1 : This game is easy even without companions !

You feel really good after defeating it though, even more so after Glut reanimates it for you.

I think the bulette is fine. Keep in mind, the party will probably be level 5-6 when meeting this creature in the final game.

It auto heals if you rest. Otherwise, it just gets a smaller health boost from it's Burrow ability. It makes sense to me that if you get to heal from a long rest, it does too.

If you have misty step and invisibility, you can force it to fight the minotaurs every time. It wins/loses/burrows about 1/3rd of the time each.

Then it's broken in the patch, because I've faced it 4 times now, done plenty of damage to it, with only short rests, and by the time it comes back it has full health again.. As to your solution, gaming a broken system being the most effective way to beat an enemy, means that the encounter and/or enemy design is broken, and it's the complete antithesis of DnD.

I've been investigating a bug where someone claims that they killed multiple bulettes, because I want to collect them, so I've killed one at least 15 times this patch. Most of those times letting it burrow on purpose. It regains ~20 hp when it burrows in and another ~20 hp when it burrows out, if you don't rest.


That being said, what I will concede, is that, if you are invisible or out of range when it comes up after being burrowed, it will auto heal for full health within a couple seconds.

Edit:Also, in your case, I'm not sure if you can even have 5 shots at it. I believe it only triggers in 4 locations, and they seem to be one time use.

I don't believe that it's limited to 40 HP gain. I didn't do a full rest in the underdark, on the second battle I had it down to 49 HP, when it came back for the third battle it was full health again; similar for the 4th it was down below half before burrowing.

It's the law of unintended consequences played out on screen, coupled with bad modifications to an already 5e balanced foe. There was no need to bump the Bulette's AC from 14 to 17, as it already has 94 HP, or give it an acid AOE attack. If Larain was concerned that it would be too easy with AOE/surface spam and barralmancy, then they should cut those DOS features out rather than butcher 5e to try to make a poorly designed encounter work.

Even if we go with the "you'll be higher level in the release game" you still are going to be hard pressed to survive this fight given that it can push you off a high spot and then belly flop you for near 250 damage; cheesing it shouldn't be the most viable option.

My 5 battles were as follows, 2 x minotaur area, 1x altar area just beyond the hook horror battle, 1x at the small chasm leap near the myconid entrance, 1x at the top of the climbing wall opposite the path to the tower.

It's not bullshit to kill Bulette, killed him without stealth or elevation. If you survive the first turn with enough team members, Lazael has a 80% chance to land Frightening Strike from behind and with Action Surge Lazael alone can do at least 40 of the 105 damage needed to kill him.

I legit walked up, got half my team knocked around by his burrowing out and still killed him with a Moonbeam> Frightening Strike>Action Surge>Melee>Hex+EB>Exposing Bite>Inflict Wounds combo. Notice I haven't even included 2 turns of possible imp damage.

If you have Shadowheart and a druid you have 2 characters that can rez from range with a cantrip spell that you can use on top of your offensive skills to get people up during a turn with Healing Word. If you start the fight with Mirror Images it's even easier.

Can it be difficult? Yes, as it should, not a complete pushover boss outleveling you by 1 level being made into a ragdoll by stealth/range cheese mechanics.

I guess the people whining about out of combat healing are probably the ones trying to cheese from range and stealth.

I certainly hope they do something to fix stealth cheese and fix the elevation games.

If you're not using a 2H fighter in this game, you're doing it wrong. It's the only class that can get some semblance of CC to land because for some reason Charm at max Wisdom still has a pitiful 30-50% hit chance, as does Charm Beast and Hold.

Frightening Attack is the single most reliable CC setup in the game, and 2H fighter is the most powerful class by far, especially if supported by a Bless bot cleric supplementing damage with Inflict Wounds.

There's no betetr class than fighter at the moment, ~40 damage total with a high chance CC for the next turn in a single turn is the most powerful utility you can have in this game, as you can neutralize the biggest threat in any fight and kill it within 2 turns.

Of course, if you try to run gimped ass casters, you'll miss half your crap even from elevation, so you're doing it wrong.

Ditch the casters, bring only Wyll or Gale for a 4th, and use Shadowheart+Lazel+Melee or Moonbeam druid for your other 3 since casters are worthless in EA. Personally I prefer Wyll because of an imp, and between Hex and Poison Ray with poisoner robes and the magic missiles neck you can do some work with Hex and the imp provides a worthwhile distraction.

If you're not building all your team around medium armor+ shield and mirror images outside Lazael, you're also doing it wrong.

With mirror image+ 19 base AC from medium armor+ shield and then bless on top, you end up with like 30 AC at the beginning round so you can survive the initial volley and proceed to CC chain any boss to death.

Don't blame the encounter.

Blame Larian for making this game all about Armor Class to survive and land skills, and making light armor/robes and staves completely worthless.

At least none of this is as bad as save scumming for half an hour to roll the dice for the 5/10/15 rolls of Necronomicon of Thay. The game would be better renamed into Baldur's Dice.

I don't know the exact dice that can be regained, as it doesn't say in the ability description, but I'm guessing 4d6, 3d8 or 2d12. The highest value I've seen is 24 per burrow.


I just ran a similar test as my previous vid where had it down to 8. Except after it burrowed, I slaughtered the Myconid colony, levelled my characters up to 4, short rested twice, and triggered it from the location by the Sussur tree. It only regained 32 HP.

In my playthrough Bulette didn't even burrow out until I reached the Sussur tree loaction.

I'm also not sure why people are even attempting a lv5 boss without having a source of Bless in the party to actually land skills on a mob 1 level over you.

In that party comp 3 out of 4 didn't even have Darkvision.

I'm not really doing normal playthroughs at this point, I'm breaking things, looking for bugs. That being said, with only 40 damage left to do and 2 wizards with magic missile, one wearing sapphire spark, one invisible out of combat, had I cared and not quit after taking that screenshot, it wouldn't have been a problem.

Your playthrough is the exception and not the rule given that the Bulette can and does regularly show up near the minotaur patrol area and can show up during the battle. As to bless or being 5th level, I'm not sure how you can type that with any seriousness considering the bulette can take flying bellyflops off of high ground and do 250 damage to multiple party members.

Bulette legit knocked me down while crossing near minotaurs, but it's pretty obvious she has specific spawn points to trigger out of. The lower ramp near minotaurs and the sussar zone are examples.

And why would Bulette have high ground on you to begin with. She did a Bellyflop on 3 of my teammates and missed 2 thanks to mirror images, bless, and armor of faith granting me 30+ AC.

I don't get the complaint.



Legit 2 shot of Bulette.

Some of you are exaggerating the difficulty of the encounter or running really suboptimal comps.

And the answer to that is to blame Larian for making so many classes and spells and companions sheer, weak traps, and making consumables and martial classes so comparatively strong.

Doesn't help the elven races are vastly superior to the rest thanks to immunity to sleep, darkvision, saving throw against charm, and +2 DEx giving more initiative and one more AC.

Meanwhile Tieflings get trash racials with fire resistance and +2 charisma which is only worth anything to a warlock. And humans even worse.

Elves+ Dwarves>>>>every other race by a long shot.

How does the Bulette get height advantage on you? It all depends on where it lands.


Your AC doesn't matter when it comes to the leap, it can be 3 or 30, if you don't make your strength or dexterity save, then you take full damage, half with a save.


As to that video, I've seen it, it's a prime example of how Larian has broken DnD with their homebrew rules, and ridiculous choices, like allowing anyone to use scrolls. It breaks the game, and the only way the bulette is 2-hit is by exploiting the poor design, and the fact that the player knew exactly where the bulette was coming out of the ground in that encounter. It was cheese just like finding a spot on the map that was inaccessible if he put the flaming sphere in front of him, and blocked out the minotaur.

It's a poorly designed encounter; one of many.

This is by far my biggest complaint about Baldur's Gate 3. It is anti-fun to have martial classes + consumables overshadow classes and spells.

Wish I would have youtubed my kill on Bulette to put this crap to rest. If you get it to spawn on you with Minotaurs, you had crap luck, and you do what you do when you fail dialogue rolls; you reload the save.

The Strength Save on his leap is completely negated by potion of giant strength or being an elf character with a DEX of 18+ by that point.

You pulled the one time you got cheesed by a mob to complain about it being OP. If you spread your team before he burrows out the leap may at best kill two people.

And in that video no scrolls were used. In his other videos he's killed the minotaurs without the flameball trick or push tricks. His battle wizard just hammered down the first minotaur in 1 turn and then the other one died shortly afterwards since they are weak to hammers.

And if he can learn where the mob will spawn, so can you. I learned the mob doesn't spawn unless you walk down the ramp of the minotaurs while it's there. Otherwise it spawns at the Sussar tree. Instead you walk the highroad to the Myconid colony to the right side and Bulette never spawns.

Not that it matters where he spawns if you bothered to kill the Minotaurs beforehand. All you need is a single Lazel Frightening Strike to CC him to death.

The point isn't even his cheese, it's that he killed the mob in two turns with a single character. You have 4 to do the job.