Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback S&F. Exploration

In this thread I’m going to collect some nitpicking about world exploration, fluidity of it and it’s connection to the narrative side.

1. General.
1.1. We got a lot of books which cover the history of the places we visit. Some of them are written in past tense, some in present tense. And not all of them mention any dates. So it's a bit hard to get the whole picture of events and their place in the timeline. I suggest to fix this by adopting common practice of our world:
A) Add a small text on the first left page with publishing details: author, publisher, manuscript creation period, printing date.
B) Add the starting date of our adventures somewhere in our journal or in the opening cinematic.
1.2. The map's existence makes no sense in our circumstances. But I'm not talking about the UI, I'm talking about the map which is mentioned in dialogs. Lae'zel asks Zorru to mark the place on the map, Ethel marks her home on our map... While we just fell out of the Nautoloid, we didn't know at first where we were and certainly weren't prepared to visit this area. In addition if our character has the map of the area, why are we forced to open the UI version of it by exploring the area? I would like this immersion-breaking detail to be fixed one way or another:
A) Remove all mentions of the map from dialogs.
or
B) Replace all mentions of “our” map in dialogues with something more suitable. Lae'zel could demand Zorru to give her the map. Ethel could draw a crude map for us on some peace of paper meant for a label for a potion.
or
C) Provide us the literal map during some hard-to-miss moment. Zevlor could give us the map of the area as a small reward for the help at the gates. In this case it would be better if we also get some less detailed version of the map opened in the UI in advance.
1.3. Please, improve our interactions with traps. Every click on a trap starts the disarm attempt and we can't decline that, while the click can be totally accidental and some traps have their turn off “buttons”. Plus if we are capable of disarming a trap we should be capable of recognising it as a stand-alone trap or a part of a system. And it would be cool to be able to place traps of our own. So here are my suggestions:
A) When we click on a trap open a dialog window with options: Explore (Perception), Disarm (Sleight of hands), Leave. Both Explore and Disarm should lead to the check with the same difficulty, but successful Explore on traps which are a part of a system should reveal the whole system to us. Also successful Explore could reveal alternative ways of disarming in a form of a voice-bark, for example “I can just put something heavy on it!” for gas-vents traps.
B) Allow us to pick up those traps which are not built-in the walls, floor, landscape after disarming. Or allow us to craft and buy them from vendors.
C) We should be able to set a trap we possess in the same style as using an AOE attack of the same form. It should consume the action point at least, but preferably it shouldn't be possible at all during a fight.
D) NPCs should pass perception checks as we do to recognise our trap as a hazardous part of the environment. The DC may be a fixed number or it may be determined by our Sleight of hands.
1.4. Fall damage and being prone after jumping down during exploration is nothing but annoying. The fact that Prone status works not like in D&D 5e and contains Unconscious status is the biggest part of the issue. If we are being stupid enought to jump from a really big height, full HP loss and being Downed is pretty equal to Unconscious and should be that way. But being Unconscious just because the dice decided so after jumping down from not that big height leads to nothing but annoying delay. So, please:
A) Detach Unconscious status from Prone status. We should be able to stand up immediately.
B) Allow us to avoid fall damage and being prone after jumping down through some equipment and teamwork. It could be ropes used as improvised hanging ladders, strong characters and thieves helping others to get down in a more safe way.

2. Nautoloid.
2.1. It seems strange that illithids put their Eldritch rune in some human chest. Maybe it wasn't them but the human, but in such a case I suppose that Shadowheart should be aware of the situation. Suggestions:
A) Make Shadowheart tell us that someone already tried to free her but broke the console and hid a piece of it in the chest and ran away.
or
B) Move the rune from the chest somewhere else.
or
C) Leave the rune where it is and leave Shadowheart anaware, but somehow tipp off why would the human put the rune in the chest. Maybe it’s someone from her group? Then give the corpse with the key the same armor or an amulet with the Shar symbol and give us some dialogues with Shadowheart on the matter later.
2.2. We practically have no motivation to click on the tank with Shadowheart aside from it being clickable.
Please, add some cries for help coming from the tank with Shadowheart.

3. Roadside cliffs.
3.1. We practically have no reason to go in Astarion's direction aside from the metagaming decision to check every corner of the map just in case. His direction looks mostly as a dull dead end from nearly all perspectives. I think it’s better if something would lure us closer to his position or he would be positioned closer to the most likely route.
3.2. Harper's cache and Harper's lookout seem to be somewhat mixed up. The lookout is really easy to find and there is supposedly Harper's corpse in it. And then we can go in totally not obvious place that looks like just a dead end and we can find there the literal cache with much more expensive loot and the Harper's notebook, which he supposed to keep with himself to be able to make notes, and with the map which marks the lookout as the 'CACHE'.
A) Put Harper's notebook on Harper's corpse. Its text may also mention the existence of the cache.
B) Put the Harper's map in the purse inside of the spider's nest in the lookout. (You see what I'm doing here? It shouldn't be a cheap loot)
C) Change the Harper's map mark position to the real cache on the beach.
D) Make the cache revealed without the Nature check if we got the Harper's map.