Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Making Long Rests Meaningful In Terms Of Story

the rest \plot system is the main part of the story and Larian already tried to make it clear we should rest by giving us foodstuffs and extra camp scenes so if "Lae'zel" wants to have the talk she can actually say "i need to camp" like BG2 or even an icon like SWTOR... i think its a good idea either way

On the other hand tho, thime should pass naturaly ...

Yes, you may "not yet have all your hp and spellslots used" ...
But 24 hours is 24 hours ... no matter how much you "dont want to rest yet" ... i dont think we should be able to squeeze ten day march into single Long Rest ...
And therefore, it seems quite logical for story advancing to be tied into long rests, after all they are the only way to measure time we have. :-/

That's a great point.
I suppose I would use real time as an abstraction of game time.
If I played for 16 hours of real time then I would be forced to have my party rest, however 16 hours of playing the game gets me pretty far into the story.

You could also compare it with live sessions of D&D.
When we play D&D an adventuring day is 10-12 encounters with at most 2 short rests.

Either way frequent long rests don't make sense and that's without the belief that your character could at any point turn into a Mind Flayer.

/shrug ...
Whatever suits i gues.

Personaly i satisfy with "covenient" sunset every and any time i want to.

I agree with every single line you wrote from the start of the topic.

I don't really see any dissonance there. After resting a few nights, you trigger the night scene where everyone at the camp is suffering. You then just wake up the next day like nothing happened. At this point anyone (players and characters alike) should reach the logical conclusion that the transformation wont happen for an unknown reason considering you know how fast a transformation happen after the symptoms.

I don't really think that's a logical conclusion though. We even hear the characters say that they think it was just a bad meal or setting like that. I certainly never thought that it was the change being stopped, and clearly in-game none of our companions think so either.

Even if players trust that sentiment/belief (and not everyone will), there's still the issue of having to long rests an abnormal/illogical amount of time to unlock all scenes that trigger at camp (tadpoles, Raphael, and all companions scenes). That and the fact that having some companions in the party prevents certain scenes with other companions from happening. Which prevents further scenes from happening.


Hopefully, this is just an issue because this is EA, because this doesn't feel like a properly thought-out/executed mechanic.

Plus, as I said before, I'm not a fan of hiding content for the sake of "replay value". It feels awkward and prevents certain types of RPing.

I looove the game...but this part is...not good, in my humble opinion.

A couple issues here:

Your phrase "after resting a few nights" can be very late in Act 1. Until you get that cutscene, it's reasonable to assume that there are some consequences for resting. As it is easily possible to get to the Underdark+ with only a few long rests, some players might play through the majority of EA, rushing through and resting infrequently, before they realize this. They'd miss a huge amount of content.

Camp cutscenes can get overwritten by newer ones. In my first playthrough, my first rest was after reaching Nettie, and thus my first long rest cutscene was with Raphael. And afterwards, I never encountered the "feeling sick" camp cutscene. This phenomenon may or may not have been updated since.

My solution(s): the game should essentially force you to rest before reaching the Grove, to ensure players get that "feeling sick" camp cutscene early. E.g.,:
- After rescuing Lae'zel, or otherwise getting similarly close to the Grove, the game could give you a cutscene where you have to avoid an overwhemingly huge goblin patrol and thus the party finds a secluded camp to hunker down for the night.
- Or, BG3 could give characters levels of exhaustions, along with companions voicing their feelings of sickness, strongly encouraging players to rest. The most dedicated players could try to push through, but at least there would be a game-given sign that it's okay to rest.

+1 to OP's suggestions

Right now, i have played approx. 600h in the EA with several different classes (but never went into the underdark or freed Halsin, I always restart before going to the Goblin encampment, as I do not want to spoiler myself too much before Full Release).

Normally I never use the Tadpole powers and usually kill Lae'zel on the ship to get her armor, as for me the character is not interesting, so I also usually do not use the Tadpole to communicate with her when she is in the cage with the tieflings.

So I never triggered the "feeling sick" scene - except for my last playthrough. On my last playthrough, I deliberately used the tadpole powers, and only discovered then that the scene even existed.

At the beginning of playing EA I really disliked the story telling, as a lot of the story content seemed so disconnected, awkward and clumsy. I thought this is due to the game beeing in EA, before realising this is because I have to rest much more.

So after the first two runs, I deliberately worked out a plan when I had to rest and how often, so that I could see as logical and complete an order of the camp scenes - a.k.a. the story itself - as possible.

e.g.:
SH joins --> rest
Gale joins --> rest
Astarion joins --> rest
One comes to the Grove, picks up Wyll --> rest
You finish stuff in the Grove and go towards the Blighted Village --> rest (Raphael scene)
Discover boar --> rest (Astarian Vampire reveal scence)
Go to owlbear cave / Selune shrine --> rest (SH Shar reveal)
etc. etc.

So even before I get to the blighted village, with Gale, SH, Astarion in the group, I have to rest 7 times. 7 times! If I DON'T do it this way, then later scenes and/or comments from companions MOST OF THE TIME / ALWAYS don't make sense because previous scenes have been skipped.

IMO this is definitely BG3's biggest problem at the moment.

So as for e.g. the "feeling sick" scene --> maybe always trigger it on your second rest? As I also feel the dialogue the next day dampens the feeling of urgency a little.

The reddit community seems to agree that this needs fixing :

https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGat...ke_cutscenes_that_tell_us_story_on_this/
https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/zn5luk/im_concerned_that_the_long_rest_companion/

I really hope they are taking this into consideration.

Huh, that's a lot of people. Hopefully they do make it better and intuitive, in fact it would be really easy to do. But we'll see I suppose.

I wonder if there's some script I could take a quick peek into and see about increasing the number of scenes available or even the number of prompting dialogues.

So, I might have changed my opinion a bit during recent playthrough - not whole 180d., but closer to 90d.. I don't think it's great, but it's not as big of a problem then I thought it was, or it used to be (for couple patches now I have been mostly skipping dialogue, so it is difficult for me to gauge how has the writing developed.

Nettie makes it clear that our tadpole is not changing us into mindflayer. Helsin states that attempt to remove tadpole could trigger the change, and we need to proceed carefully and understand the magic behind before doing anything. As such, at the very least, I think the game makes it clear to the player, that they can take all the time they want. Does it make it reasonable to playercharacter to chill out? I don't think so, but I think there is more to support this behaviour then I originally thought/was the are launch.

I'm just going to quote myself :


So again, even if we accept that as enough, even when trying to do all quests/side-quests, the amount of time one needs to long rest to unlock all the different cutscenes is disproportionate.

Plus, there's still the issue of missing content if we long rests "too late" (or not at the "main" camp).

I ran into this problem and I have never tried to avoid long rests. Just trying to do long rests when I'm out of juice or when companions complain about it.
Doing that isn't enough and leads to missing dialogues.

Not good, in my opinion.

On my patch 8 playthrough I did finally get Gale’s weave scene for the first time! It was after talking with Nettie, too. So, it looks like they are making some improvements and fixing some bugs with these scenes.😊

I hope so, but for now, to give an example :
- I talked Zorru, which triggers one scene with Astarion and one scene with Lae'zel.
- After that, I used Speak with the Dead on Sazza (only a couple of meters from there), which triggers one scene with SH.
- Then, I used long rest. Unfortunately, I only had access to the one scene with SH.

I think all those scenes should be made available at that point.

Oh I am fully aware that in terms of story there is no danger from the tadpole in relation to time passage by resting, even when I wrote this feedback. The Dreamer pretty much solves that issue straight away the night we get sick. However even if you toss the story straight out the window, there is still the issue of having to extensively rest and rest and rest in order to not miss out on dialogue, in a very tight timeframe. Because there are scenes that are permanently gone if you do not do them prior to story advancements.

Which is why I included this very tiny, but important image in my original post;



That little beauty shows that I in total rested for about 37 days throughout my entire playthrough. About 15-20 however were for the pre-Grove and in-Grove content. The rest were for everything else that is outside the Grove. And not a single rest was necessary to me, I purely did it for the story. An average player can do the entire pre-Grove and in-Grove content without resting once and at maximum twice.

I personally can do a full playthrough without taking a single rest and this is pretty much how. Pure accumulation, enough to equip an entire army, let alone a group of 6 people. So I wouldn't even rest if the story was not tied behind it.


Unfortunately however in order to not miss out on dialogue, I have to rest about 7 times minimum before I even get to the Grove gates, as Shadowheart and Lae'zel have unique scenes which are permanently missed after getting to the Grove or meeting Zorru. So I just stand there like a dummy spamming long rests to drain all the pre-Grove scenes before actually heading inside the Grove. And then I have to rest consecutively back to back inside the Grove to not miss out on other scenes for Wyll, Astarion and such.

So even if we ignore the story, it still changes nothing. I have to rest 15-20 times before I head out of the Grove to ensure I experience the full dialogue within the camp. It could be severely reduced however or made more intuitive. Even a simple notification telling me someone wants to talk would help.

+1

That seems off to me. It usually takes me three rests to do all of that. Though I may not be representative of an average player, I don’t think you are either, Crimsonrider.

I can’t even fathom how you could finish ea with no resting. Counting level ups, Gale can cast 10 ish spells, Shadowheart 8 and Wyll 6. That’s about the amount of spells I need to clear just the goblin camp!

In any case, it seems likely to me that the average player rests more than the average forum member. While I would like an unmissable cutscene telling the player in no uncertain terms to relax about the tadpole, I’m not too bothered by the other missable stuff.

Finally, as has been pointed out, companions will queue up stuff to say even if they’re not sporting an exclamation point. I don’t think you need to chain rests to unlock dialogue, just talk to them over and over again when you do end the day. (If you ever do, Crimsonrider, you insomniac…)