Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General What should I know before playing?

Hey everyone,

I apologize in advance if this has been answered elsewhere or this should go somewhere else. I'm a longtime DnD fan (still have some of my dice and rulebooks from 30 years ago) who grew up playing ADnD 2nd edition and who also immensely enjoyed playing BG 1 and BG 2. Really looking forward to playing BG 3, especially as I plan on making it my main video game for the foreseeable future. While I've been doing my best to keep track of the latest news and reading the forums, I must admit it's all a bit overwhelming for me, especially as I have NOT played any of the Divinity Sin games (yet) and haven't played DnD in a loooong time.

With that background in mind, do folks have any general advice for what I can do, or sites to visit, or things to read to best prepare myself for release day? For example, I have a copy of the 5th edition rule books - should I read those to better understand the ruleset for this game? Any helpful websites I should check out before starting? Any other suggestions for how to best to prepare?

It always takes me awhile to get comfortable with games of this size, and I feel like I'm already way behind because I've been out of the DnD world for so long, so any general advice folks have would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Just read the PHB. BG3 follows the 5e rules exactly, with no deviation whatsoever. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar. Don't listen to them. :P

Kidding, but seriously, you should head to the Larian Discord and play with some folks over there. Fastest way to learn and you can get answers to questions in real time.

This site is having some issues right now with lag.


Here is the Larian Discord
https://discord.gg/cUJX6e5B

Also Wolfheart has a discorbs that is really active with a lot of knowledgeable peoples.
https://discord.gg/rK5P7Xnd

Good Luck.

Welcome!

Certainly I found researching D&D 5e incredibly useful in getting my head around the game. While there's a lot you'll find familiar, there seem to be some very different concepts that I didn't recognise from my old BG1/2 & NWN days, such as actions, bonus actions and reactions. And while a lot of the spells have the same name, the precise ways they work are often rather different.

Hopefully the full release of the game will do more in the way of teaching newbies how to play than EA, but some advance familiarisation with 5e couldn't hurt, as long as you then don't expect to see it exactly replicated in the game. Larian have definitely homebrewed a lot of stuff (and we're getting more info about changes now that may or may not align with changes planned to the D&D ruleset by Wizards of the Coast).

In terms of 5e websites, I've found the 5e wikidot and DND Beyond useful, plus there are sites like Black Citadel which go beyond the rules as written and can help clear up uncertainties. And absolutely tons of other resources online!

But most of all, I'd say don't worry about it. After some initial bewilderment, I found the D&D rules implemented in BG3 reasonably straightforward to get started with, and though the tooltips we had in EA weren't perfect and were sometimes buggy, I expect they and the combat log are going to be really useful helping us understand what is going on.

I suspect it is going to take me a long, long time to master the ruleset properly, but it wasn't too hard to get started. And from that point, I could then just continue getting into more and more detail and dipping into web resources as and when I decided I wanted to understand a bit more about a specific aspect.

I hope you have a blast with the game when you play!

EDIT: And Blackheifer has just reminded me about WolfheartFPS who has been really active producing YouTube vids on BG3 over the course of early access and I think generally explains things really well. There's a risk looking at any of his early access vids that much will be different in the full release, but he did say in one of his more recent streams that he was planning to do some guides when the game releases.

As well as the channels Blackheifer suggested if you're looking for advice on mechanics, there's quite a few '5 things to remember for BG3', or 'beginner's guides to BG3'. It doesn't take watching too many of these for the algorithm to recommend more. The rulebooks have gone through a fair bit of changes in 30 years but 5e is well known as being quite newbie friendly.

As well as Wolfheart's youtube channel which does lore videos too if that's what you're looking for both Harbs Narbs and Spell and Shield on youtube do deep dives on particular bits of lore. It would be pretty handy to get a bit of lore about the Dead Three and Shar particularly as they seem relevant.

There are also lots of books in game too that really fill out the lore of the setting

Good sources from The Red Queen.

The martial classes are a little easier to play.

Barbarian has high health and takes reduced damage. Wild Heart totem of the bear takes half damage on everything except psychic damage.

Being durable makes play easier.


Fighter and Rouge are also great choices and the rouge gets the most skills and bonuses.

Take expertise in stealth and slight of hand and you will never have trouble with locked containers or be short on cash.


If you want spells too, Bard has it all.

Spells, skills, healing, martial skills to a lesser degree if you want them, and they make a great face of the party.

They can also stealth and do sleight of hand as good as a rogue (just not in the middle of combat).

Biggest thing is to know you can, and should think out of the box in combat.

Lots of game studioes thing of how players can beat fights first before thinking of immersion.

Larian focuses on immersion first. If you decided to face tank a roadblock checkpoint, you'll probably have a bad time.

If you decide to charge head long into a bad guy base, you'll probably have some problems.

Also know that npcs will lie to you.

Best prepare for release day? Be prepared to be patient. There's a lot of speculation that Steam and GoG will be smashed, and that speculation is pretty reasonable.

Getting a 5e Player's Handbook isn't a bad idea. Even with all the changes, I've found it helpful to have a quick reference to class and spell descriptions in something that's indexed, rather than needing to google. And it's a PHB, and they're always enjoyable to flip through.

I'd also plan on starting over a few times. Larian have tried to address this with a respec-is-cheap-and-easy mechanic, and this is the first time I've given that advice since that was announced, so I don't know if it's relevant. But if that mechanic didn't exist, I would plan on two or three false starts before you land on something you want to commit to.

In terms of feeling way behind, don't worry, we all are. Even those of us with hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of hours in early access have learned about so many changes in the last week that we'll likely feel very much like we're starting fresh when we kick off 1.0.

In the new community update, Larian recommend *not* joining EA now in the hope of getting a little progress in first, because save files won't carry over, they would only recommend you do it for the "Digital Deluxe" upgrade. I disagree. If you join EA with only weeks to go, and you do with the knowledge your saves won't carry over and everything will be significantly different, I'd reckon it's worth it to try out a few classes, get familiar with interface, etc. Yes, there will be changes to all that stuff, but if you feel nervous about settling in to games of this size, a few weeks of throw-away time might be worthwhile, and I promise you they'll be fun and immersive.