Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Overwriting conversation triggers.

I just dont get it ...
Why this even still is a thing? :-/

People are complaining about that since start of EA, some romances (Gale for example) become almost impossible to achieve, without spaming long rest after every single conversation or affection change ... many scenes between companions were never even seen since aproaching them requires this so unnatural behaviour. O_o
Do you really want all your work go to waste like this, Larian?

And what is even worse, if you have at least ONE additional custom character in your party, ALL conversation triggers in the world are overwritten by some meaningless "chat between PCs" where everyone state their mind wich can be only picked in one of two options (either entirely refusing the situation, or entirely accepting it), and then, if you pick different choices, the one who triggered it simply states there is no point in talking about it!
Actualy i agree, there indeed is no point in this talking ...
I mean, dont get me wrong ... its good that even people who will not be at Discord (or some other comunication) will be able to discuss their intentions and goals ...

But why, just bcs our PCs want to tell each other why we saved Sazza ... we can no longer listen to Gales tale from Waterdeep tavern ... or Astarions snarky coment about Tieflings?

Why there can be only one conversation unlocked? :-/
Is there really no tool in your engine, that would allow you to use multiple triggers? :-/

On the contrary, I find the fact that we are already getting maximum approval and intimate scenes at act 1 quite hastened. It will make more sense at release since romances and overall discussions will be able to be spread on a longer time span.

That is completely different topic ...
Im talking here about conversation triggers, not about romance.

IF you are looking for romance topic ... you may try for example this one:
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=834304&page=1

+1 to the multiple triggers per long rest

Also more triggers during the exploration would be appreciated.

From your first post :
Romances are part of triggers, it was merely an exemple to illustrate my point. I get that some people have acute FOMO but I am not like this. Being able to get all triggers up until romance before even having completed act 1 is for me already too fast considering it isn't even the end of the first act and we will get 3 of them. Check WotR where relationships start to develop at act 3, it takes time and dedication to get there.

+1
I would much prefer if we were able to talk to all of our companions after certain events (like in DOS2...funny enough), not just when using long rests but during the day as well (like the companions reactions after talking to Kagha or Nettie).

I think the excuse might be "replay value". I don't like that excuse at all 😑

1) Even if the game is asking us to focus on one companion (which, I'm not on board), we need a minimum of interaction with them before being able to choose who has our preference. The recruit scene is not enough. Some of the hard-to-trigger cutscenes offer much needed information about the companions. in order to be able to appreciate them.
2) Even if I were to accept this "focus on one companion" (again, I'm not and I won't), which companion gets the spotlights is seemingly random (especially during the day). Some companions seem to have the priority over others. In my case, it's often SH who has the priority. So, this "system" doesn't work, in my opinion, because we can't choose.

The biggest one to me, is that I have to kill SH (temporally, but still immersion breaking) if I want to trigger the scene where Astarion talks about *SPOILER* his nightmare about Cazador scaring his back *END SPOILER*. Which is a key one, it gives important information but also it's needed to unlock another scene with him.

Obviously, this is all just based on EA information.
They did say Act1 will change on full release, maybe this will be part of it? I sure hope so 😶
Because, this turns what could be "story-rich" into "story-poor", in my opinion.

Well said! I agree.


I definitely agree with your main points, @Rag, but while it's cold comfort I did find on my patch 9 playthrough that you can still get Gale's romance and personal quest even if you don't spam long rests and his attitude soars in the early game. At some point he did pipe up and tell me about his magical artifact problem and propositioned me at the party. It seemed pretty unsatisfying as a story arc as other interactions (such as the weave scene) were skipped, but at least it's (now) possible to progress his story without over-resting.

This sounds to be like you were simply lucky.

I mean, technicaly curent state requires you only to catch each trigger before its overwritten by another one ... wich is what i dislike ... but its definietly possible! Spaming long rest after every conversation, or affection gain/loss is just easy way to make sure you make it.

Curent state, single PC: (notice that i didnt say player, it was intentional)
While you go trough the world ... you unlock:
Conversation A - in the world (you can have right now and there)
Conversation B - in camp
Conversation C - in camp
When you get to your camp, you can have Conversation C ... but B is lost for you!
Wich sucks ...

Curent state, multiple PC:
While you go trough the world ... you unlock:
Conversation A - in the world (you can't have, bcs your PCs overwrite it by Conversation Z, by their meere presence, there is no way around it!)
Conversation B - in camp
Conversation C - in camp
When you get to your camp, you can have Conversation C ... but B and A is lost for you!
Wich sucks even more ...

What i want is:
While you go trough the world ... you unlock:
Conversation A - in the world (you can have right now and there ... then, if you have multiple PC, you can have Conversation Z, or other way around ... the point is ho have both!)
Conversation B - in camp
Conversation C - in camp
When you get to your camp, you can have Conversation C and B afterwards, or other way around ...

I mean, can you even imagine game that would allow you complete ONLY the last quest you did? And everything you did before would be lost forewer? Me neither.

Well, perhaps. I thought I’d just done the same things that in previous patches that resulted in zero Gale romance or personal quest progression, but you’re right that I may just have come across a slightly different permutation and nothing has actually changed.

I don’t usually spam rest in my playthroughs unless I’m specifically trying to romance Gale so I’ll see what happens in my other patch 9 runs.

Okay, an update based on my new playthrough. Putting in spoiler tags as it's long and only tangentially related to the topic, but thought some of you might be interested in the weird and wonderful permutations of Gale's wonky conversation logic that I've been trying out.

TL;DR It is now possible to get Gale's quest and romance if his approval jumps too quickly in the grove, but not always and not always in a sensible order.

Wow, that's just...wow. Thank you for your report on this.
Some of the commentary made me laugh 😄

That is indeed weird and wonky and, I would say, shows that, without meta gaming (including weird gymnastics and Long Rest spamming), it's not really possible to enjoy the story, and in this case the romance with Gale, in a way that's coherent and sensible. Which is not ideal 😐

Side note : I also truly wonder if the romance would have continued after the party (Path 2) 😶 But I won't blame you for having enough at that point 😅
That was a lot of work!

Thank you!

I agree it would have been good to see if path 2 actually led to lurve with Gale, but that would have involved doing the whole goblin camp again which, much as I'm enjoying playing around with my moon druid, I couldn't face!

Now that I know a bit more about what may or may not move things along, I'll try on a future playthrough to see if I can get the romance flowing a bit more naturally and without rest spamming. But you're completely right that this will involve (a lot of) meta-gaming, which very definitely shouldn't be required!

On the plus side, if you don't care about romance with Gale and just want his quest to progress, it looks as though that might now trigger at some point anyway without you needing to do anything fancy. As long as you don't mind some dialogues happening in the wrong order, anyway!

Thank you for doing all the hard testing for me.

I just got the Weave scene too and I did get his approval at very high very quickly. But I had the death scene and the scene, where he confesses, that he needs magical items

I got Gale’s weave scene for the first time in patch 8. 😊 I rest plenty but still didn’t get it in previous patches. He didn’t die before I got the scene, and I got it after talking to Nettie (some said talking to Nettie too soon was previously one cause of not getting the scene).

Yup, or might I add, like in Baldur's Gate 2. Storylines triggers felt nicely randomized throughout the world. Could be at an Inn, after a bloody battle, while exploring the wilderness...it was a bit chaotic but still felt really atmospheric within the world. Didn't get you out of the game by making you think, oh I need to go back to camp to advance xxx story.

This sounds like a hold-over from D:OS where ( in single-player ) you control 2 "Heroes" that have frequent conversations like this. In D:OS this actually had a purpose, because the choices you made in these conversations defined the character of your heroes, and more importantly, gave you in-game stat modifications that affected game systems ( I have no idea if the stat modification also applies in BG3 as I have not used more than 1 custom character ).

It was an interesting experiment, I suppose, but I never found the conversations to be very satisfying, particularly once you had worked out the stat modification metagaming and chose dialog on that basis.

On a more general note, yes, the dialog progressions can be a mess, particularly with Gale. If you make an effort to play the game in random ways rather than following the breadcrumbs, you will get all sorts of weird dialog, most of which is comments that imply you have seen or experienced something that you have not.

If there is an abundance of "flavour" dialog in the game, I don't feel the need to experince it all in every playthrough, but if important dialog
is missed or order-dependency not maintained, then that does imply a weakness in their current system. A recent interview had a developer describing a late-game branching conversation needing 800 ( I think ) decision points from previous game activity. This does not fill me with confidence, given how broken some of the EA dialog seems to be.

Gale's weave scene for romancing is essential. you do need to rest spamming if he didn't die and needs resurrection. although you might need another scene if you didn't show him your imagination of intimacy(you get the options of what you can show him but choose not to). you can ask to get closer than friend when the next scene you got from him.

Make it +2