Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Long rest needs rework

Done with my first playthrough and wanted to share what I thought was the most glaring issue from my blind run: the long rest. Looking at some of the other feedback I've seen, it's surprising to me that most people seem to be commenting on the combat, which I found to be one of the most stable parts of BG3. My biggest issue had to do with long rest and all the very important story elements tied to it. There are two main things I want to address:

1. It is available way too often
Unlike tabletop and every other game based on D&D, there is no obstacle or risk to long resting in BG3. You can long rest at any point. It is as available as a short rest. At first, I tried playing as I would in a campaign or any other game, and I long rested only when I had fully run out of spells and potions. This playstyle seemed to also be encouraged by the game telling you about the tadpole taking over you and time being of the essence. I quickly found out that not only is long resting extremely important to advancing the main story, not doing it enough can also make you miss out on a ton of content. I started to long rest more often and found everything became very easy. I could long rest after any out of combat spell cast, ensuring my characters always had full spells without missing a beat. Not only does this remove the main hindrance for spellcasters, tilting the balance in their favour over martial classes, it also doesn't make much sense. How can I long rest in the middle of a temple with a bunch of enemies right around the corner? And then keep doing it after every single fight in said temple? Why would I ever short rest when I can just long rest instead? I'm not sure if this is still actively being worked on by Larian, but the whole function of long rest doesn't make much sense from a gameplay/immersion perspective.

2. It is tied to companion dialogue
Maybe the reason long rest is available constantly is that you need to spam it to progress the story and side stories. The worst thing I noticed from not long resting enough is that I missed out on a ton of companion dialogue and quest progress. A lot of the scenes, some of which are required to advance romance with certain characters like Gale, I missed because other cutscenes took precedence over them. Even when there wasn't a main quest cutscene, you could only speak to one companion per night. If you have a full party, this ensures you have to long rest many times in a row (also significantly breaking immersion) to be able to progress with your companions. While someone could argue that it makes sense you wouldn't stay up all night talking to everyone and that you couldn't befriend everyone perfectly in one playthrough, the randomness of this doesn't make much sense. For instance, I got Shadowheart cutscenes almost every other time I long rested. I only got one or two cutscenes with Wyll my entire playthrough. I had both of them in my party. If I wanted to talk to Wyll more, I couldn't because I couldn't choose who to talk to at camp. This mechanic makes no sense. Furthermore, many of the cutscenes did not need to play out at camp at night and could (maybe should) have happened while you were adventuring organically.

Overall, I enjoyed my first playthrough, but I'm going to hold off on a second one until this issue is fixed, as it made the experience feel inconsistent and half-baked. One of the things I really enjoy about Larian games is the sense of choice and options they give you, along with risk. The linear progression of random cutscenes tied to long rest really goes against this ideology of player choice. Risk from random encounters is also significantly less dangerous if you're always fully refreshed. I hope this is fixed before launch, as I can imagine many people complaining about missed dialogue or romance with their favourite companions because they were forced to talk to another one they didn't much care for instead.