Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Technical & Gameplay Problems Post patch 4: Act III is profoundly broken

Are they sure about that I a pretty sure I played w/o stealing or dooing any crimes. Of course I can be wrong because I don't really know what npc's consider as crime. For me it looks like it have something to do with high end system and low end system. Ppl with low end computers (ak: commodore 64)have zero issues.
Also I like to know what about SteamDeck?? It's not compatible any more.

By the way this is the second time you grow in my eyes.
So I want to say thx for hearing our cry for help.

Yay, really happy for the update and really excited to see what they add with patch 5! I’m hoping for hugs for Shadowheart haha

I dont care what they add. For most of us I think the fix to act3 split screen and SteamDeck is more important. Actually they added a different behavior for scrying eye what they believe caused this. So I hope they don't add anything else rigth now.

When you look at their answer logically, you see that it is pretty obvious that Dark Urge playthroughs have been mostly affected, because the AI is effectively trying to keep track on all the bad stuff we've been doing, but can't process it in a normal way and thus, breaking the way the game operates. I am glad that they know the cause and I hope they get the patch out soon, I am itching to get my platinum trophy!!

It makes me wonder if they had the fix for weeks (or many days), but choose not to release it instantly just to adhere to an established release schedule. Based on that description it does not look like a bug that is hard to detect and fix, so I'm assuming they didn't consider it that important to hurry.

Well that explained a Lot. I was playing as the dark urge when the patch came, i had a bug so bad on act 2 that i had to restart the game (could not start dialogues or cutscene), Just to get to act 3 and Discover that,once again, i reached a wall of bugs, It was simply unplayble. Just because "some Men Just want to watch the world burn"

I have a friend who fixes other people's coding for a living, I mean, that's not the total extent of his job, but when he joined, he pretty much spent his first 6 months doing exactly that before they realised that it would be much better to just have him to do it in the first place. It does actually take a lot of effort to find these bugs and so I'm not going to criticise them for perhaps not finding it immediately, after all, they have to identify the bug, then find out what causes it, then find a way to fix it, so the fact that it is being tested, ready for release makes me happy. The radio silence on the other hand is what I found disappointing. In my personal opinion, it is always better to keep people informed and to be honest, be humble and appreciate your players. That being said, at least they are going to fix it, unlike a lot of devs who have just abandoned their games after release and said a massive FU to their players.

Thank you so much for such a detailed response. This explains a lot about the severe lag I experienced midway through Act 2, and the game being unplayable at the beginning of Act 3, as someone who had been playing a chaotic evil Dark Urge run. I really appreciate you and the team taking time to share this information and would be really grateful if Larian as a whole considered making pre-Patch/hotfix quick announcements about major game-breaking bugs a normal part of procedure in the future.

So a summary seems to be, if you get to ACT 3, and smash a few faces in to get past the gate, to the first town area, the NPCs hate your guts and don't forget.

Like some rain man they sit there thinking and looping "they killed some of us and stole our stuff... They killed some of us and stole our stuff.... The killed some of us and stole our stuff".

This also explains why it's an ACT 3 as this is where you kill some NPCs with many other NPCs around to progress the game.

I can only guess there is some non-combat way to progress past there that I don't know of, that the people saying "there is no bug" are using.

What doesn't make sense is why if I start off at the end of ACT 2 with an old save and do the same thing, why my old save doesn't have the issue.

Salo's explanation makes some sense, considering my latest file which is unplayable after reaching Wyrm's Rock is not a Durge but is an Urchin background klepto who steals everything not nailed down.

What I don't get is why the lag reaches an unplayable state at the exact same spot (Wyrm's Rock area, roughly) for so many players. I know nothing about game dev/coding so maybe this is a dumb question, but if the bug is caused by an accumulation of these events in the pipeline, wouldn't the lag reach unplayable state at different stages of the game, depending on the players' actions?

Yet almost everyone reports Wyrm's Rock area. For me it was the checkpoint before. I skipped it entirely by MIsty Step/Jumping to the side balconies around the buildings and the lag still triggered. Tried skipping the bridge and entering Wyrm's Rock through the prison. Lag still triggered. That bridge area is a death zone for Patch 4 game files for some reason.

This explained why I got the weird lagging after I killed the guards (my 200 gold is not for them) to enter the Sharess's Caress area lol

I wonder if it's because how strange the aggro range guards in the Wyrm's Rock tower is. I once aggroed literally the whole tower because I failed that persuasion check at the potential vendor. Perhaps having 20+ NPCs constantly checking me for my shenanigans broke the game.

I'm kinda intrigued about this bug.

Am considering to rush ACT 2 immediately now just to see what happens in ACT 3 before the update drops. I am a looting maniac and took everything that can be taken in both acts, so to see how much I can brick ACT 3 because of it is more of a compliment than anything else

Something i Felt a Little bit Weird on the Explanation Salo Gave.. was that in My Last Game i did not Steal or Sneaky Nobody in act three and the Crazy Bug just starts when i get close to the entrance of the Circus.. if i get the Main Road..
if i go from the Back Nothing Happens.. Same in the Bridge.. if i skip the guards and go using the Box.. evrything go ok..
but when i get to the Main Bridge to the Fortress.. jesus.
i cant cross and i Cant enter No matter what i Try or way i Chose to reach inside to get to the City.

(i indeed kill all the Guards in the Prision in act 2.. to save evrybody.. i always do this..)
but in all my games since i Play normally as Hexablade and im a Char Based.. Never need to Steal anything..
im always so Rich that i can buy anything i Want.. no matter What. i Can Buy. Trust me. im a Loot Goblin.
Yu can only consider me Stealing something .. when the game bug and the Body counts as Stealing.. Like Nere.. till this day i never saw his boddy showing like lootable without been Red for stealing..
(and i even Kill the Duergar after siding with then becouse its funnier betraying then after ganking Nere.. yeah i like to Be a Ruthless Bastard.. No Duergar that love slave people will left standing.)
it this then that coused ?! becouse Sneacky, Stealing Cheese.. i never do becouse i dont need.
By the Time i Get to the City i already Have almost 30k or more.

BTW i do the Same with the Zentharin.. Side with then do the quest. Free Picasso
then Kill then All. lol
and play some Master of puppets in the Back it helps a lot the mood. haha
(just Trow some simple cantrip in the Barrils. Beutiful thing.)

Thank you for the update. I just find it odd that everyone seems to be experiencing the same issue - whether on PC or console - at the same spot, even those of us not playing sneaking types or, surprisingly, murderous ones (despite playing as a Lolthsworn Drow Necromancer Durge). Anyway, just glad that Larian (through you, thank you!) has finally addressed it with their community and look forward to getting off the damned Wyrm's Crossing bridge with my Durge so that we can start giving Gortash some much needed heartburn (in the form of the lovely Karlach).

From what I've seen reading through Reddit discussion of the issue, some people seem to have not experienced any lag in Act 3, or no more than was typical prior to Patch 4 (because Act 3 has always been pretty laggy when you reach the areas with high-NPC activity.) A not-small number of people said they experienced issues which went away when they lowered their graphics settings or turned off Dynamic Crowds, or whatever the setting is called. I saw that some people who are playing "Good" alignment playthroughs might also have "stolen" items without realizing it (looting items from Moonrise after everyone is dead, is still considered theft due to the containers or corpses being marked red.)

I think that it's just that Wyrm's Crossing is the first part of the game that really puts strain on the player's system, because of the high number of NPCs and other assets being loaded in, on top of the pre-existing memory leak issue that Larian has been working on since the game launched. The added issue with the stealth-pass check constantly cycling through processes was kind of a 'straw that broke the camel's back' situation, it seems.

I'm glad to know the issue is going to be fixed by the end of the week and I'll be able to see the ending of the game, though. Thank you Larian.

It started getting lag in Act 2 at the Last Light Inn and or surrounding shadow areas, into the toll house after patch 4. Even quitting to the main menu would keep the video lag on the grassy overlook and menu /options on PC in patch 4... I would restart the whole game and could get small spans of decent frame rates. Went back to patch 3 hotfix 9 and things were smooth again. All I see mentioned is act 3, but it was clearly effecting more than that. They did seem to word it that "by act 3" things became horrible, so I am hoping that that means they still noticed as the game went on it got worse and worse... I should have tested a new game from act 1 to see if I still had issues there... But I feel like the proof is that when I went back to the last patch, things returned to normal as far as performance goes.

Okay - this makes sense for Act 3 where most folk are experiencing issues. Though I encountered in Act 1 after Creche - Underdark was unplayable. I think I'm still going to wait a few patches before playing again.

Found this from Larian:

“In Patch 4 we introduced a fix that would prevent the Scrying Eyes in Moonrise Towers from immediately calling the guards on you when stealing, even if you were sneaking, or invisible for example. This fix had the unintended consequence of causing unnoticed thefts & acts of vandalism to remain stuck forever within the ‘did anyone see me’ pipeline, rather than timing out and moving on, as is intended. Essentially, your ‘DM’ – in a real-world sense – constantly thinks about the acts of theft & violence the player keeps doing, without ever moving on or verbalising them. Mulling on it ad infinitum.

These unnoticed and eternally-active acts of theft & violence eventually bogged down the game. The more a player commits those acts, the more the game is trying to keep that all up to date and in memory, and so the more slowdowns start happening. Essentially, the ‘DM’ eventually becomes unable to operate. By Act 3 this caused slow-down issues, which after some sleuthing we’re extremely happy to say we’ve solved in Patch 5, which is in testing and scheduled to release this week.”

I sure hope that's the real issue here.

I'm running a (non-Durge) Paladin on my current play-through and other than the occasional five-finger discount, I haven't really done any "criminal" stuff, so I doubt I have a huge amount of unpunished crimes hovering above my Tav's head.

I've also avoided any actions that could've broken my oath - I only just now found one instance that will break it and that was telling the weird fish-priests near the Foundry "I'm not getting involved" when they're trying to get me to kill the submarine captain. Time to hit F8, of course...


Anyhow: I still feel this is at least in part related to certain areas on the map: The Lower City Wall waypoint for example will *always* make the game hang after I teleport there - while other waypoints in Act III do NOT trigger slow-downs.


S.

Update: Patch 5 is out and has fixed the laggyness for good. At least for me, it did.

Patch-notes are epically long and they must've fixed a ton of other stuff in this one - one issue that also got fixed for me was the game instantly crashing to desktop when I tried to set DLAA to "off". Tried this last night with patch 5 installed and it worked again as it should.


S.