Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Suggestion on How To Improve Spammable Long Rests and Encourage Item Usage

Agree that being (relatively) cautious with long rests should be the way to play. That'd be more immersive, tactical, and fun in my eyes. The current encouragement to frequently long rest feels silly and makes the combat encounters trivial, which completely destroyed my desire to play through the game. I did not enjoy feeling like I needed to long rest after every encounter/new area/important dialogue or risk missing companion content. If companion dialogues were untied to long resting and there were actual consequences for resting too frequently (Lae'zel disapproves and/or goes on ahead, consumables expire, you start turning into a mindflayer, druids progress on their ritual, something), I think the game would be better.

Restrictions on long resting would work too (e.g., can't rest until X resources have been spent and/or all companions are willing to rest), but I'm less in favor of such hard restrictions.

Oh yes. This is a kinda, but not really, whole separate issue. I mean, it pisses me off to no end, and is a HUGE downside to this game, that companion dialogues are tied to long rests. HUGE downside to this game. Basically, if you want a lot of companion interaction and you want to get to know them, you need to long rest after every dang fight.

So yeah. The first time I played the game, I was in the same boat. I barely knew any of the companions at all. When a bunch of them suddenly wanted to have sex with me at the camp during the celebration, I was floored. It was like 0 to 60 in the romance department. I didn't feel like I knew any of them.

They ABSOLUTELY need to tie dialogues to short rests or simply to trigger points in your journey.

For example, after meeting Shadowheart, you take a short rest. This triggers her dialogue about "I'm not sure this is such a good idea." It still fits with a short rest. After all, typical ceremorphosis should have the tadpole eating the person's brain within a few hours after infection. So although she may not totally know this, she at least feels that every moment could be their last. Taking an hour break might not be wise. This helps to keep the player moving in the game. Although they're taking a short rest, which is fine, the player is urged to keep moving and not long rest anytime soon. Also, a long rest shouldn't be available to use right away. The game should be set to not allow it until at least the player has used 1 short rest, at least at the beginning so that the dialogues are triggered first.

Another example is after meeting Gale, after you enter the crypt - IF you enter the crypt - when you reach the chamber with the fireplace, suddenly he gets an exclamation point over his head, indicating he has a dialogue, and he says, "This looks like a good spot for a rest." If you click on him, cutscene. He's standing before the fireplace. You approach. "Go to hell," he remarks. Cutscene continues where he talks about being in the hells, etc. Note: It's a short rest that does not use up your 2 short rests nor does it give you any HP back or anything. It's just a short rest for dialogue purposes.

Another trigger point. You're about to head into the Silvanus Grove area, just before triggering the battle at the gate. It happens again. Gale gets that exclamation over his head. "Say. Let's take a break. Shall we? I've got something I want to talk to you about." You trigger it. Cutscene. Takes place in broad daylight instead of night.
He's looking at a mirror image of himself as you approach. He then launches into his explanation of ceremorphosis and why it's weird you haven't started changing yet.

This would be SO much better than the current system. SO much better.

And again, it would really help to keep people from long rest spamming. If they get these dialogues outside of long resting, they imply that although it might be okay to long rest, it's definitely not a good idea to do so frequently. Sure, Gale's saying that you aren't changing as fast as you could, but he also explains how horrible ceremorphosis is. He then says that you still could change at any moment, and when you do change, it could be swift and sudden and far more terrible instead of taking a whole week. After that warning, psychologically, the player is thinking "Okay. I can long rest. However, the more I do, the more likely that I could turn suddenly and horribly."

And then - this is the most important part - Larian has the game follow up on the threat - just a bit, though. Just enough to remind players that "Hey. You might not want to just spam long rest." After 2 long rests from the time you landed on the beach, you have your first Dream Lover sequence. Boom. Right there. If you know that you're going to have a Dream Lover sequence potentially at any point when you Long Rest, HECK YEAH, most players are going to associate that with the tadpole and think, "Dang! The more I long rest, the more likely I will have one of these weird Dream Lover sequences. I'd best avoid long resting if I can help it." And if the player is all into the Dream Lover, then they will long rest more which is totally fine at that point. Let them. Then they can embrace the Dream Lover.

And I'm not talking every 2 long rests. I'm just saying that maybe the first one is after 2 long rests. The next Dream Lover dream could be 8 long rests later, or something like that. It would be like a reminder. "Hey. Keep long resting and you'll get more of me, your Dream Lover." The next dream could be 10 long rests later, or if you use your tadpole powers, it comes sooner. Whatever. The point is that they could EASILY use this system to dissuade Long Rest spamming, it wouldn't be a hard time limit at all, you'd actually eventually get to see the Dream Lover sequences even if you aren't using tadpole powers, and so forth.

That, to me, is a MUCH better system for "limiting" long rests than camping supplies and such. You wouldn't even need to do other consequences but the dream lover to discourage long rest spamming. I still think other consequences, like Lae'zel leaving temporarily, make sense and would be fun and provide even more replayability to the game, but at the very least the dream lover being a consequence would make sense, and it would work to deter people more. Especially after the second or third dream where the party starts to show signs of transformations, and you are given even more illithid powers. Yeah. I think players would be a bit less long rest spam happy if they thought, "Holy crap! We're transforming into mind flayers!" Even if they aren't.

I completely agree!

The system of "Go to camp = Unlock key-content related to the story or companions" is not a perfect one. Worst, it's currently not intuitive. At all. And it leads to easily missing some great content. I like what this video suggests.

That being said, expecting them to completely change that mechanic seems unrealistic at this point. Meaning that limiting long rests would be a big issue in my opinion.


EDIT:

Oooh. I think I like that idea. A lot! At least for some of the dialogues this seems doable.

Completely agree. Even if Larian do nothing at all to the resting mechanic, they should absolutely change the way companion interactions work so you don’t need to long rest to get the content that’s related to conversations you have in the world and you don’t get locked out of other companion camp conversations when approval jumps too quickly. It’s ridiculous at the moment, potentially needing to rest every couple of conversations the first time you visit the grove (particularly with Gale, for whom you can easily lock yourself out of pretty much any interactions), and then companions seeming so quiet later in the act when they’ve run out of things to say.

That said, unless it was going to be made downright impossible to rest without food or supplies, this doesn’t have any bearing on the OP’s suggestion at least. If you’re only resting to get camp content, then a partial rest is sufficient, and you can do that without supplies. Though granted some of the other suggestions here would only be feasible once the camp dialogue design was fixed.

I don't care if people spam long rest. That seems like a personal decision. In my opinion, the ability to spam long rests isn't the problem.

The problem is the opposite. The natural inclination of the player is to avoid taking long rests because of the tadpole. This keeps the player from seeing certain scenes. That's the problem: not having enough incentive to actually long rest.

In my opinion, the best way to solve this is to introduce a simple exhaustion mechanic. Something that makes the characters have to long rest.

*

Just to mention two things:

1. I've noticed some folks only talk to companions with an exclamation point over their heads at camp. That misses some of the scenes. You can still talk to the other companions and get scenes even if they don't have the exclamation point.

2. An above comment mentioned the frustration of not being able to get every cut scene easily. While I sympathize with that feeling--because I also like to explore everything--I'd like to suggest that maybe *everything* isn't meant to be seen in one playthrough, by design. That way there are surprises for later playthroughs or things that feel special when you actually manage to trigger them organically.

Please no timed quests! I hate missing story content and quests because I took one too many long rests or rested at the wrong time!

I have some sympathy with this point, and generally I don’t worry too much about cheesy mechanics (at least ones that enemies don’t use on me!) and am fine with just not using them if I don’t like them. I do feel a bit different about long rests as my preference for a cRPG is that it challenges me not only to win each battle individually, but also to manage my resources over the course of a number of encounters to achieve a larger objective. Without any disincentive to long rest at any time, this challenge is missing.

It’s not the end of the world, I grant, and I can always set myself the challenge if the game doesn’t do it for me. It’s just a preference on my part to have at least a soft constraint on resting to work against.

With respect to the problem with camp content, encouraging people to rest at certain points may be a partial solution, and I’m for it, but it’s not going to fix, for example, the problem with locking yourself out of Gale’s story just with approval increases you get on a single visit to the grove.


Again, I have some sympathy. And I’d certainly expect to miss out on some companion content if I don’t have them with me at certain times. I do think triggers for some content are just badly designed, though, like the Astarion star gazing scene. I don’t think I’d ever have seen that if I hadn’t read about it, as getting it involves doing things in an unlikely order and resting at an unlikely time. At least it used to!

MORE reasons to long rest? But that makes absolutely no sense to the story. Any part of it. Name one thing in the story that says resting a lot makes any kind of sense.

I'm not suggesting timed quests that cause you to miss story content and quests.

I'm suggesting that things happen the more you long rest. You start having the dreams, Lae'zel might skip out on you untill you meet up with her again at the Gith patrol, Wyll might skip out on you until you start heading towards the goblin camp. Things that aren't locking you out of any content or quests. And I'm suggesting that these things only happen if you really spam long rests. Not like you can't ever long rest or you have to long rest at just the right times.

I'm honestly not sure what you're asking. Why does sleep not make sense?

Anyway:

Because people who get tired have to rest and resting increases the dramatic tension involved when there's a looming tadpole to consider.

It also allows for downtime so the characters can get to know one another.

Again: the problem is that players are naturally inclined to *AVOID* long resting. The story already incentivizes them to avoid long resting, by the nature of what's happening in the story.

*

Knowing that long resting isn't going to hurt you is meta information that the character doesn't have, at least not for a while.

So, don't you think that the tadpole plot directly contradicts with the long resting mechanic? This was his main point I think.

So many people talking about how to improve spammable Long rest ...
Nobody mentioned why should we. O_o

I for one certainly dont think that.
For reasons countless times mentioned in countless other topics ...

That's not entirely fair. I mentioned why should we.

I'm not at all sure why anyone else cares if anyone else spams long rest or not.

That sounds like reason why we shouldnt to me.

Unfortunately I have to disagree due to established story reasons.

The tadpole itself is dormant and in Netherese stasis. Time does not make it any more powerful exactly because of this stasis. This is established by Halsin, hinted by Nettie and outright confirmed by Omeluum (who even gives you a ring to forcefully discourage you from making it more powerful). And we have other True Souls who are living proof of that. So by making dreams appear after X amount of long rests regardless of whether or not we use the tadpole would heavily contradict the story and the tadpole's existence.

Contrary to the party's belief who don't know better yet, we are under no danger from the passage of time whatsoever due to story reasons established.

So once again it is important to add; unless the story is completely cut off from the mechanic, trying to discourage long resting is a big NO from me. Instead they need to implement it better so that it feels cohesive with the story and events within it.

I think the big reason they actually need to be fixed is because of the way they're tied to companion story progession. If you want to experience all that the companions have to offer, you HAVE to spam long rests, because there's no other way to be sure you're not missing things. And often, it feels like you definitely will miss stuff if you don't spam them. This is an occasion where the game really does make you do something you might not want to do, which is your constant argument against changing things. If you don't like resting really often and don't like how much easier that makes the game, but you also want to experience the companion story, which is a significant aspect of the game, then you're out of luck. You have to choose between either playing the game in a way you don't enjoy or missing out on a part of the game you do enjoy. Either way, you're losing. So for that reason if nothing else, the long rest system needs to change somehow.

Unless they changed it, there are several people who indicate that although you aren't changing YET, you will. It's only a matter of time, and when you change, it will be sudden and terrible, and everyone around you will die. Off the top of my head, these include:

The hag
The elf guy in the Hag's Lair who sees his reflection in the mirror
I'm pretty sure Gale says it or hints at it
I thought Halsin also suggested this
Nettie gives you a vial of Wyvern Poison BECAUSE she's afraid you'll turn at any moment
Raphael CERTAINLY says it
And I'm fairly certain Omeluum also says it. That's why he offers the ring, to help you prolong your situation to buy you more time

Yes. Characters need to rest to recover, but when you have the potential of transforming into a monster at some future ambiguous time, you would naturally ONLY rest if necessary. I don't care if someone tells you that it won't manifest right 3. You have a brain eating monster in your head, and every moment you waste is a moment closer to it eating your brain.

Need I also remind you that while with Omeluum the tadpole actually delves DEEPER into your brain. He actually causes it to wake up and stir. Yeah. Sleeping after that makes no sense to me.

There's also the tiny little detail that, on the mindflayer ship, we pushed a button and turned a person instantly into a mindflayer! I don't believe we have any reason to suspect our tadpole situation is different from that person. So it's perfectly likely that, at any moment, whoever has control over these tadpoles could instantly transform us. Maaaybe we would have to be captured and put in a special pod for that, but maybe not.

If this forum is anything to go by, a significant portion of the players on their first run will try to avoid long rests as much as possible. You get more and more information on the tadpole, but nothing really that should make you feel comfortable doing it, beyond necessity and metagaming.

That would be really strong argument indeed ...

Too bad this topic is about expiration of food huh?

//Edit:
As for attitude towards tadpole ... most people will probably dislike what im going to say (again) ...
But i quite honestly dont really think this is important. :-/

You see, there is no universal truth in my honest opinion, no general rule about how our characters should be thinking about their tadpole ... that should be up to us.

Our character can freak out as Shadowheart ... do whatever it takes to get rid of that thing, even if that would mean do whole Act 1 within single Day (read as: Long rest) if that will be necesary.
And i think this is legit approach.

Now here comes that controversial part:
Bcs i believe that our character can also chill like Wyll, Karlach, or Astarion ... simply dont give a shit, or care on more pressing matters ... and rest whenever they want.
And i think that is just as legit approach.

Therefore i simply see no reason in argumenting if our character "should or should not" rest in story perspective ... this is each one of us decision, and im infinitely glad that at least someone in Larian gets it.