Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Help Tips & Tricks How often do you Long Rest?

I find myself struggling with spell-caster classes because i either recklessly spam spells - or i practically never use them by trying to save them for the "right moment".

I tend to favor ranged attacks with high-ground bonuses and so often finish most fights without taking any notable health damage.
So i end up needing to Long Rest for spell recovery much more often than i need the Short Rest feature, which kinda makes me think i am doing something wrong.

Also while the camping/food materials seem plenty i have heard that if you Long Rest too often then some story plots/events "secretly" proceed in the background which tends to block you out from a notable chunk of the story/events (like a person you could have saved might already be dead if you Long Rest too often).

So fellow BG3 fans, how often do you Long Rest - especially when talking about caster classes?

I don't long rest often enough I've found. There's often been times where I need to rest 2-3 times in a row to catch up to stories that should play out during long rests. Next time through I'll definitively rest more often, it's weird having progressions in queue when I rest.

Rest away friend, camp supplies are bountiful and stories need some camp time to progress, and you'll never know when.

I'm currently on my 28th long rest in the game (I've been creating a save each "night") and am currently some way through act 3.

I try to save long rests for times when they make some kind of story sense, and once it feels like I've accomplished enough for it to feel as though I've had a full and productive adventuring day. That's of course subjective! It does usually coincide with running down on spell slots, but I also try to ration spells and supplement with use of scrolls, grenades, special arrows and potions to stretch things out when I think that makes more sense.

Given that progression of companion quests seems to be linked less to long resting than it was in EA, at my resting frequency I've found that things tend to happen most but not all nights, so it doesn't feel either that there's a ton of stuff queued up or that nights are too uneventful. And I'm not sure if I've had any issues with quests timing out, though in Act 3 ...

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Overall though, I don't think there are any obvious right and wrong answers as to how often to long rest. We can each decide what works best for us.

Less than 10 times thus far. I dont like rest spam. I wish it was more limited.

Spoiler & exploit:

About the spoiler:

I think how often you have to do this depends on your party comp. I also find the further I am into the game, the less I have to do it.

You don't have to long rest to progress the story, you can go to camp to trigger a lot of the cutscenes and for the others, you can just do a partial rest. IMO long resting is just part of this type of campaign even for RP purposes, you wouldn't be undertaking a journey of this nature without food and I think an exhaustion mechanic might have made it seem less concerning to "rest spam", but OTOH it can also be abused (e.g. long resting between boss fights).

I have a melee emphasis on my current party (Paladin, Astarion, Laezel, and Gale). I can get by with a lot less resting than I could when I went in with a mage heavy emphasis (Wizard, Wyll, Karlach, Shadowheart), which I had to do before almost every major fight. The better you understand the mechanics or the more you swap gear around to get abilities, the less you have to do it.

I rest when I need to, which usually means either my casters have run out of spell slots, or the party has run out of short rests. As a practical result, that means I sometimes rest when it's not RP appropriate, such as when I rested after . In a "real" world I would have continued on from that point in hot pursuit of my enemy rather than resting for the night, but I keep in mind that also in a "real" world I would not be leaving any companions in camp and would have had a bigger party and thus more resources anyway.

There are some events like that, but *usually* the game pretty clearly tells you if a quest is on a timer. On the flip side, there are quite a few camp events that only happen when you long rest. I imagine you would miss out on those if you avoided long resting and progressed too far in the story. Because of that, I make a point of resting enough to exhaust those events before making any major moves in the story.

On average, I think I rest, like, maybe after every 2nd or 3rd fight? I don't avoid using spells, because spells are fun and I think "saving them for later" is a bad habit (much like hoarding potions and single-use magic items), and after a few fights my magic users are usually completely spent.

I try to go as long as possible between Long Rests. So I take advantage of items that give free spells, items and abilities that restore spell slots, and class abilities that refresh on Short Rest.

My current party makeup is My Warlock, Shadowheart, Gale, and Halsin. Though I also used Battlemaster Lae'zel before trying Halsin.

Shadowheart I've made super Healer focused with great AC. She has a necklace that gives a free Healing Word and Mass Healing Word, and different armor pieces with bonuses when Healing like a free 2 HP to the person she heals, she get healed for 2 HP when Healing someone else, and free 3 temp HP to the person she heals. It's made Healing super effective.

I gave Gale an item that gives a free Magic Missile and when combined with another item that adds an extra Missile to the spell when cast, it's great at finishing off enemies that annoyingly survived with low health without wasting a spell slot. He also has an item that gives a free Scorching Ray. Plus, Wizards have Arcane Recovery which comes in handy.

Halsin I like to use as a Wildshape tank if he needs to, and Wildshape refreshes on Short Rest for Moon Druid, so it's easy to stretch his spells. When he has to cast spells, I pumped his Spell Save DC through items and ASIs to make them effective.

Lae'zel I also use as a tank. She has decent AC with the Mithril Splint, she's using a bunch of Githyanki specific gear that give bonuses if a Gith is wearing them, and Battlemaster's are just strong with the right Manuevers, and they refresh on short rest. She also gets Githyanki specific racial spells like Misty Step. Unfortunately, she ended up with all three debuffs from the Zaithisk, so to make up for the slightly lower HP and to make her relevant when compared to Karlach, I gave her a Periapt of Wound Closure, which makes all incoming Healing automatically maxed out, like Beacon of Hope. So Shadowheart's Healing is even better, Second Wind is great, and I believe Short Rest Healing also gets maxed but don't quote me.

For my Warlock MC, he's a Pact of the Blade Zariel Tiefling. He's using the Blood of Lathander as his Pact Weapon, gets free Smites from his race, and I took Durable to make every Short Rest a full heal. I use big AoE crowd control like Hunger of Hadar when needed, Counterspell in the back pocket, Eldritch Blast for range, and close in for melee. Plus Warlock spell slots refresh on Short Rest.

To top it all off, I use the Pearl of Power Amulet thing that restores up to 3 levels of spell slots. It's free to use and recharges on Long Rest, but I keep it in my inventory at all times and usually swap it between Shadowheart and Gale to help stretch spell slots further. I also just recently acquired a similar amulet that restores a single spell slot of any level 1-6, so that'll stay in the inventory as well.

We get two Short Rests a day, so I can go a pretty long while before needing a Long Rest.

I have a heavy caster group and rest after every big fight at the minimum. You need to rest to progress the story anyway. Also it gives me a break to talk to everyone and manage the inventory before it becomes a huge chore.

So in case people didn't know, not long resting enough can lose camp scene progress, such as the owlbear cub never joining if you don't long rest before the tiefling camp party.

The characters do voice "I'm tired now" even though there's no exhaustion. So I certainly think about long resting then. It's fun to pick different places not just in the obvious wilderness. Some of the underground lairs have different camps.