Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Latest News Community Update #21: Forging Your Legacy

From Cauldron To Vial: Mastering The Art Of Alchemy

A new crafting feature comes to Baldur’s Gate. The domain of magic-wielders, conjurers, and anyone with a passing interest in mysterious fumes, Alchemy allows you to turn your collection of herbs, wild mushrooms, crystals, and monster limbs into useful items you can prepare ahead of a fight.

In Baldur’s Gate 3, you can use ingredients found in the wilderness to create a variety of extracts, then combine extracts to create potions, poisons, and oils to imbibe or coat your weapons with.



Meet The Third Major Villain Of Baldur’s Gate 3 – Orin The Red



Completing the trinity of villains in Baldur’s Gate 3 is Orin, a practitioner in the art of inflicting pain and a grandmaster of murder. Orin has killed for many years, but has yet to be caught, thanks in part to her shapeshifting abilities, which enable her to take the form of anyone – perhaps even someone in your camp.

She hides her cravings to commit murder beneath these numerous masks, disguising her intentions and herself to lure unsuspecting victims. It’s during the act of murder that she is her truest self. At that moment she is murder.

Orin is voiced by the incredible Maggie Robertson, known to many as the voice of Lady Dimitrescu (Resident Evil Village) and Skjóthendi the Unerring (God of War Ragnarök).

Split-Screen Co-Op Multiplayer



In addition to having online multiplayer for four players, in Baldur’s Gate 3, two of you can grab controllers and jump straight into two-player split-screen couch co-op.

Baldur's Gate 3 comes to life in multiplayer, empowered by all those extra fingers poised to tip the dominoes and unleash a cascading chain of events upon the Forgotten Realms. Players can join a party before the start of a playthrough, during Character Creation, or during an ongoing game. Each of the playable Origin characters can be chosen only once, or, should you prefer, you can mould a creation of your own.

Players will share most of the information that the game provides them, like Journal notes about ongoing adventures, minimap discoveries, and alchemical recipes. Player inventories are also shared by default in multiplayer, but there is an option to lock your inventory from your thieving pals.

Players also share Inspiration points that they gain when fulfilling goals defined by their chosen Background. These points can be used to reroll checks in dialogue. In multiplayer, you can listen in on conversations started by another player and vote on which dialogue option you want them to take. Some select scenes are private by default in your options, however, including romance scenes. But players can make all secret scenes public to their party should they wish.



A Cinematic Kaleidoscope – Showcasing The Breadth And Depth Of Your Choices

Baldur’s Gate 3’s 174 hours of cinematic content is a reflection of all the possible choices players can make in the game, and the narrative permutations that will come out of each of those decisions.

With more than 2000 characters for you to interact with, different reactivities based on your chosen species and class, and a golden path that takes over 80 hours to complete, you can expect to discover a staggering amount of previously unseen content in your second or even third playthrough.



If you caught Panel From Hell last week, you'll have seen just how those decisions affect your experience once you set foot into Act 2. Trek through the mountain pass as Shadowheart then explore the Sharran territory of the Shadow-Cursed Lands safely as a cleric of Shar. Or you might instead choose to traverse the Underdark, then find safety within a hamlet of Harpers – led by the long-standing series icon herself: Jaheira, #mommy.

Whispers And Headlines - The Echoes Of Your Deeds On The City’s Gossip Mill

Upon reaching Baldur’s Gate, your choices will begin to express themselves throughout the world in other ways. Crowds in the city will systematically gossip and talk about your escapades and failures, and can even be influenced through you directly modifying the paper and printing the most favourable headlines.

Don’t Worry, You Can Stream BG3

As we near release, we thought it prudent to remind anyone looking to stream Baldur's Gate 3 of some useful tools designed to create a better experience for you and your audience.

Some of you have shown concern about mature content that could potentially become flagged by your chosen streaming platform. For those of you who want complete peace of mind, you will find two new user options within the Options menu: “Show Cinematic Nudity” and “Show Genitals”. From here, you can enable or disable this content at your convenience.

We’d also like to remind you that there is a really cool Twitch Integration that, once enabled and connected to, lets your viewers see your Party View, track your quests, and vote on dialogue options.

The Road Ahead



We’ve updated our Steam page to better reflect the content of the game and bring the Early Access section up to date, as well as the specifications. On that page, we’re recommending that players don’t buy the Early Access version of Baldur's Gate 3 with a view to play through that content, partly because it’s out of date but mostly because we’re so close to launch and want to make it very clear that saves in the Early Access version will not transfer into the final game. This is due to technical reasons.

Essentially, the game is so vastly different that it’s not possible to make those save files compatible. Early Access will, of course, remain playable up to launch.

A purchase of Early Access is essentially a pre-order, and will still grant you access to the Digital Deluxe content for Baldur's Gate 3 on PC, granting you access to: an exclusive in-game dice skin, the Divinity Bard Song Pack, Treasures of Rivellon Pack, Adventurer’s Pouch, Digital OST, Digital Artbook, and Digital Character Sheets for D&D IRL.

The PC Digital Deluxe Edition does not include a 72 hour head start, which would have essentially made the game’s release date July 31st. Shifting the release date – and thus communication around the Digital Deluxe Editions across PS5 and PC – came with a few complexities that we didn’t manage to communicate very well, so we thought it best to clarify it here, given that a 72 hour head start on PC wouldn't have been plausible.

But isn’t it wild? Our PC launch is just a few weeks away! Baldur's Gate 3 is set to release to PC on August 3rd, followed by its PlayStation 5 release just a few weeks later on September 6th – or September 3rd if you pre-ordered the Digital Deluxe Edition for PS5.

For those of you who have been with us throughout Early Access, we want to thank you for all your support over the years. One of the reasons we chose to release Baldur's Gate 3 in Early Access is because it would give us an opportunity to listen to your feedback and make meaningful changes in return. As a result, your participation has been instrumental in helping us bring the Forgotten Realms to life. Everything you play – be it Act 2 & 3, or a return to Act 1 – will reflect how we’ve gotten better at making the game, thanks in no small part to all of your feedback, comments, and love over the years.

We also want to send out a very special thank you to everyone who’s been sending us hyperrealistic Halsin fan art. It inspires us, it sustains us, it frightens us to our core. The meme game has been real.

We still have some work to do, but we’re thrilled to learn that those who played the game at our recent press event really enjoyed what they experienced, and we can’t wait for you to experience it yourselves.