Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Killing the edgy divas on the Nautiloid

What's wrong with the portals? They seem kinda cool to me.

You might remember Grymforge Travel Cheese

There was also Fast Travel Limitation Poll and others I'm sure.

I'm not against the portals, fast travel in service of player convenience is something I'll overlook to a point, but when you start being able to cheese exploration, and dungeon crawling, it becomes an impediment.

I saw someone ask how to reach the Temple of Shar recently, and all I could think about was what might happen in the final version of the game, where someone featherfalls down, finds a portal, and bob's your uncle. There's already a place in Grymforge where you can bypass a party splitting exploration challenge by just cheesing everyone over with the portal.

If there are consequences, it'll likely be in the case of missed content and narratives, but the 'missed' content part might be subjective since it could just be the missing character not being there for an event. Divinity Original Sin 2 is what I'm thinking of for this.


Hate to say it, but cheese is just part of these games. They're too large and too complex to block all cheese. It's okay. It's a singleplayer game. You just don't cheese if you don't want to. There was a lot of cheese in both Divinity Original Sin games too, same with Kingmaker/WoTC, and same with other RPGs like Skyrim i.e. sneak leveling. The more complex a game is sadly the less balanced it's going to be the further you get into a game, because developers have to account for too many variables for that to ever be possible.

I guess there’s nothing more D&D than abusing an op magic item the DM gave you.
Missing out on content is its own disincentive but there’s a difference between clever play being rewarded and abusing an already dodgy mechanic.

I like that we can drop down the chasm in the Spider Matriarch’s lair, it’s clever, and its great the game has that option. I don’t like that you might be able to seriously game the system using portals to, for instance never fight the goblins outside the temple, or suicide run one guy to a portal for the purpose of bringing the rest of the party through with magic where otherwise they’d be unable. And then there’s the magic camp to consider, we’re carrying around essentially a pocket plane we can use whenever we want.

What’s wrong with avoiding the goblins outside the temple. I almost do that fight because it tends to take a while and not really be worth it.

It isn't avoiding it that I take issue with, it's that to avoid it you just; open map, teleport away. There isn't really a way to avoid it, at least I don't really understand what's going on.

Given I don’t think that all the goblins should become hostile immediately anyway if no alarm has been sounded, this is one of the few instances I’m perfectly happy to just use the teleport function when there’s not a clear path to a circle and headcanon a jump from Dror Ragzlin’s room as “the party sauntered casually out of the goblin camp before anyone found the bodies of their leaders”. Though generally I’ll tend to make sure the path to the Underdark is clear so my party could feasibly make it to the teleport circle down in the temple and jump from there, or try (usually, but not always, unsuccessfully) to sneak away, unless I feel my character would want to wipe out the goblins entirely.

Regarding other places, such as Grymforge and getting into the goblin camp, where the portals can be used to shortcut challenges, I will tend to use them sometimes and go the long way other times, depending on what approach I think most suits my player character. But as a player, I’m always interested in seeing what different approaches are available and testing them out, and the fact that some are easier than others doesn’t bother me at all. I’ll still want to see if I can pull off the trickier ones!

I only use the portal if I can walk up to it and touch it. That's the only way I go to camp also.

For me, that works well.

I usually take the same approach. I don’t generally bother walking up to a portal to use it as I’m perfectly happy to skip the actual trekking, but I’ll only do it long as I know I can get there without any encounters.

But as you’re probably aware, even with this restriction it is possible to use the portals creatively to bypass challenges. I see this as a plus, and adding to the variety of ways we can approach the game, but I do understand why some folk would call it cheese. For example, Wyll’s invisible imp or a druid in wildshape can just fly into the goblin camp and find the portal there missing all the challenges from guards, after which the rest of the party can jump into the centre of the camp from, say, the village and the goblins will assume they’re allowed to be there. And there are other situations where it’s easier to get a single party member to a portal then jump in the rest than get the whole party there.

Personally I hope that Larian don’t remove opportunities like this in the full release, even if they do restrict some of them, such as having at least one challenge from a goblin if/when they first see you in their camp.