Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion 'Send to camp' in beginning Ravaged Beach area seems out of place

OG and Enhanced BGI/BGII player here. I'm loving BG3 so far. It's just amazing what Larian has been able to do.

One thing I found a bit odd is the 'send to camp' option when you try to pick up your 5th party member at the very beginning of the game. I just crash landed, in a foreign land, and yet I'm telling people to meet me at my camp that I've never been to and know nothing about. Whoever you tell to 'meet you at camp' also, out of the blue, seems to give you more info about their personal quests before heading off.

I'm just wondering if there's a better way to handle this. Maybe you tell them something along the lines of 'Wait here - I'll be back' and they bitch you out and take off, only to end up in your camp anyway, with a believable couple of lines like they were following you, or spotted your camp, or something.

Thoughts?

In my opinion, you should long rest at your camp at least three or four times before you even get to the Grove, so before you pick up your fourth companion even. Long rests are so important for story progression in act one! You get some really cool early cutscenes long resting before the Grove. What I do is tackle the temple to the east first, and get a few long rests in while I’m doing that.

So yeah, long story short, the problem goes away if you long rest a few times early.

Thanks.
Maybe I am just unfamiliar with the game mechanics. Do long rests set up this camp where dismissed companions are sent to?

I really didn't have a reason to rest before I picked up the cleric, wizard, fighter, and rogue. Are there any timers that long rests works against? (things I can miss if I become a narcoleptic protagonist?)

Oh ... one can do that? I tend to do the beach, crypt, grove (without beach and tunnel), pick up Scratrch and Karlach, and do the owlbear mauled cultists before a Long Rest ...

Yes, the game sets up camp automatically.

Not that I know off. Or that matter.
The only thing you should look out for is straying into the Mountain Pass area, as that closes several quests and storylines. But that game shouts "u so gonna get kilt!" at you when you try to go there :P

There's at least two unique cutscenes you get by long resting before the grove, one after Nettie and/or Zorru, not to mention early camp interactions you miss out on by not long resting early and often in general since act 1 has most of the camp events in the game.

Personally I usually pick up Shadowheart, Astarion and Gale, long rest (well, partial rest since I have no need to recover spell slots etc. at this point usually), get Lae'zel, get Withers, long rest, go to the Grove, do stuff there, then long rest (if I'm playing Durge I go see Alfira after this long rest just as a precaution). After that you can be a little more lax about stuff, I think, but long resting is still important in act 1. By act 2 it becomes less important for companion quest progression, and in act 3 there's only a few camp events.

Basically a good rule is that you should long rest after doing main quest stuff and companion stuff (recruiting Karlach has an immediate unique camp event for example).

You should have enough camp supplies by the end of act 1 to more or less carry you through the entire game, but if you don't want to use them and you feel like long resting is pointless to recover hp/spell slots etc because you're full on those, just partial rest. You get the camp events but use none of the supplies.

Also regarding this:
There are a few times when long resting affects things, like you go to sleep right next to a fire where people are screaming for help or in the Grymforge before dealing with the situation there. I think the game even warns you about that one. Most of the time you can do whatever you want, though.

I'm not really worried about the camp supplies, etc. It's more the idea that I am telling someone to go to my camp when I haven't even been there yet.

I'm clearing out the Dank Cave and noticed that a long rest puts me in a similar looking environment, so I was determined to at least find before resting. However, it doesn't appear to be in the Dank Cave(?)
Does the long rest camp exist outside of the normal areas you can explore on the map?

That's it. It looks as if you set up camp in the environment you are currently exploring, but it is really its own little save (-ish) haven.

Ahhh. Thanks. For some reason I thought it was a physical place on the map I could go to.Instead of a place it's more like part of the rest function of the game.

You miss a ridiculous number of interesting camp interactions by not frequently long resting in act one. Act two and three, it doesn’t matter as much. But yes, you do get unique cutscenes if you long rest before you get to the Grove. You get unique dialogue options with companions if you long rest after you talk to Nettie and before you leave the grove.

I can’t emphasize enough, how important long rests are to the story and bonding with your companions, especially in the beginning of act one. The game makes it seem like your problem is urgent, but it actually isn’t. It’s counterintuitive, but you miss great content if you rush.

An aquaintance was certain that he was to be Illithid'ed ASAP and made most of Act 1 without long resting ...

How on earth did your friend get that far without replenishing their spell slots! Anyway, it feels like they intended for the game to be replayed again and again because the plot actively encourages you to miss so much the first time. If you’re going in blind. I know I missed a lot! I’m trying to spread the gospel on this thread, to take your time because there are rarely consequences (a couple of things noted above by another poster).

The major takeaway here is that your camp is not an actual location on the map that you have to go to, but just a function of the resting/replenishing system of the game.
One of the non-spoiler reviews I read talked about going to your camp and I read that as it being a physical place I have to find.

I still think sending a companion to your camp, before you've even been there yourself, could be done better, but at least I know that I should be long resting regularly to go through unique dialogs and advance stories.

Thanks all.

There's a mod OIO that flags up when camp events are queued. Act 1 has an absurd number of them. Even doing long rests whenever I did something I still had something like 4 queued up at one point.
It is unintuitive I agree but once you get into the habit of doing them often it becomes more second nature.
I get to a new bit of the map, I set up a camp. I move back to original area I set up camp. I think about it as if it was real life, you wouldn't really be involved in a major crash, and not want some rest afterwards, you wouldn't go into a fight with some thugs on a street corner and not feel a slight desire to go back home and have a hot drink and a nap etc etc. And as for some of the major fights - in real life you'd probably need a weeks R & R afterwards.

You can actually pop into camp more or less at any time when not in combat even if just to swop over a companion or change a weapon load out , and use the camp menu to leave camp (which takes you and party back to wherever to were before you went to camp) it becomes very useful.