Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Patch 5 combat encounter difficulty discussion

Hi all,

With the changes in patch 5 I am interested to hear other players perceptions of the game difficulty. I am interested in both "cheese" and also standard tactics. I am aware that many encounters can be "cheesed" and that certain things feel unbalanced but beyond this I am interested in how certain set piece fights feel without using anything which would be described as cheesy.

Personally I have noticed certain encounters feeling easier when playing in a "standard fashion" approaching encounters using regular tactics but also using a relatively min-maxed character.

For example I spent a little bit of time on the Commander Zhalk encounter today.

With a min/maxed Githyanki Tricker Cleric 17/14/12/9/14/8, along with Shadowheart and Lae'zel this fight is relativly straight forward if tedious. I know there are lots of ways to do it, but it is also do-able in a relatively straight forward manner: Lae'zel's Plate + Potion of Fire resistance + shield of faith (from shadowheart) + protection from good and evil gives 21AC + disadvantage to Zhalk. My cleric just sat in melee with him from when the Flayer died at c100HP to when he was killed, she was only hit twice, going down once. Meanwhile the others can just plink away from height with bow/crossbow (of course this does require height advantage which many do not like). We did overall something like 4HP damage per round (he has resistance) so at least 20 rounds - thats a lot of misses on his part. I was not fully optimized as the Cleric should have had Lae'zel's longsword for 1d8 rather than a mace for 1d6, and did not have the friendly little brain with us.

Zhalk has +2 (proficiency) +4 (strength) to hit so 21AC with disadvantage is very powerful, though this did of course require pretty specific pc with specific stats, and a degree of manipulation to stop the Cambions spawning in quickly. What was interesting is that this did not require the mindflayer to get any luck hits in, nor any barrels.

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I'm interested in hearing other's examples of different encounters and how the difficulty "feels" compared to patch 4, and in general. I am also interested in hearing different ways people have "broken" that Zhalk fight, though also any general stuff about difficulty.