Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Honor mode still too easy

I don't care if you play on explorer or balanced. I'd like *one* mode that I find challenging. And yes, it's way too easy to long rest. There's a ton of food. There's so much food, in fact, that it defeats the purpose of using it as a resource. Might as well long rest for free because the end result is the same.


I'm just looking for a challenging experience. All I can do is provide feedback and hope the devs can offer a solution.


I don't agree with this at all. Of note, making the game "more difficult" shouldn't be as simple as increasing hit points and bonuses.

Rather, removing excess potions and scrolls, removing rare, very rare, and legendary items, removing tons of food, making it so only certain casters can use certain scrolls, adding in stat restrictions for multiclassing...

...all of those things would shake up builds and tactics while providing more of a challenge to the player.

We all want that *one* mode we personally find challenging, but there are many of us. I don't want any food management at all.


I actually do agree with this one. In my ideal difficulty mode good stuff is scarce, and you don't spend 70% of your play time browsing crates and barrels, just to collect things you will never use.

Eh, I don't mind the food management. I always make sure to use up the Supply Packs before anything else, and on 80/Rest I usually make it to the end of Act 2 before ever eating other food. Currently I'm saving up Garlic to throw at Cazador, see if that does anything.

I just wish there was more to it. As it is, it's 80 when you only met Shadowheart and it's 80 when you have Volo, Selunites, Ravengard and eight party members running around with a dog, a devil and an owlbear in tow.

In any case. I play honour mode and fairly casually at it, to be honest. I try out new things as I progress, I yolo into the fights so as to not suprise anyone and just try to have fun with it. It's fine for me, difficulty wise. I still win all the fights, but occasionally things go *really* wrong, especially if I loose the initiative [D20's, modded] and I have to come up with a plan to survive all of a sudden.

BUt that's also how I like it. As soon as my heroes can't hit a goblin unless they have advantage+oil+precision, then it's no fun for me. Ultimately, I will beat that too but it will be so much button pushing that I don't get excited anymore. So, you resort to cheap lightning builds or stack up on scrolls of Invulnerability Globes and surprise every encounter. I wouldn't play that mode, it'd get boring to me.

I just would like a more restrictive mode. One where only Arcane Casters can use Arcane Scrolls, provided they have the required skills. Or, have Alchemy recipes locked behind an actual Alchemy skill and roll for succes. Where you don't get unlimited high end potions and elixers from every vendor.

Then, D20 Initiative is a *must-have*, the whole mechanics of turned-based combat falls flat on its face when it's 'this team goes before this team'. You either shit on everyone, or everyone shits on you. There is way more tactical thinking when your team is spread across the initiative order; prioritize targets, and so on.

I'd impose multiclass restrictions too, and give the races their ASI distribution back per 5E PHB. That way, you can consider playing a surface Dwarf, for instance, or a Dragonborn and still be awesome.

Please ask and hopefully you get the perfect combat challlenge for you one day. But in the meanwhile the suggestion to add some self-rules might be helpful to make your experience more satisfying.
In another thread you explained to us that you won the "House of Grief" combat using only scrolls and cantrips. Then you suggest Larian restricts the number of scrolls. Don't you see some kind of contradiction here ? Why not select a few scrolls and no more, and send the rest to camp instead of waiting for Larian to fix this for you ?

Also it is highly unlikely that Larian can provide a solution for everyone. Last time I peeked into an ongoing "honour mode" livestream, it went like "we go to this room because that chest contains a very powerful helmet". OK. So buffing and foreknowledge and actively seeking out the most powerful items is probably a thing that many honour mode players want to keep.

I'm quite enjoying it myself. It took me 7 attempts, but I'm finally in act III, at like 90 hrs and it's been pretty good times thus far! Maybe I just wasn't all that spectacular of a player to begin with I suppose, but Honour Mode has given me more than a few exhilarating moments these past weeks. Granted, mostly it has just made do lot more camp management routine type stuff hehe, but it does feel like there's more of a payoff for that tedium when the resources matter a bit more as they do here.

I think I'd get more mileage out of added achievements though, as just a simple way to keep it going that's flexible. So for example, you could have a Nightmare on Elm Street achievement for attempting to stretch out the long rests. Maybe an achievement for never using Withers at all. An achievement for not giving any gifts to merchants for approval, stuff of that sort. Just extra goal posts, but which the game establishes like that. If it's all the equivalent of a high score/personal best, then it's cool when the game acknowledges that stuff and spins it back on the player with a nod.

The initiative tweak could be interesting. Most of the weirdness I find seems to come from having split initiative, so maybe a mode where it's always shared initiative for the active party? That would change the game pretty dramatically though, so maybe a stretch there. The wonky stuff I saw seemed to happen when my characters were joining initiative separately, for things like surprise, but then if you play solo or for speed those things are the bread and butter. So I don't know, probably tough to change. They could add yet another difficulty tier, but I think what they have going here is pretty entertaining, so they should build off the single save for it.

I'm not sure I'd stick it out for a even more punishing game mode, like where it can all just fall apart just down to something like a targeting mistake or movement misclick, one little thing turns on a dime and you lose 40 hrs of gameplay to no real purpose. That's why achievements I think are more entertaining in the long run, cause they can be sprinkled around instead of an all or nothing type approach.

You know, like once I get the golden dice, probably it ceases to matter as much, cause you just get that the once. Whereas if there are different achievements for pathing through the game in different ways, or for adopting different comps or whatever, then that can just keep going. Less zero sum that way, where even a failed run can add to the sense of accomplishment. This allows them to also do some silly stuff, like perhaps reward players for doing random things like farming a thousand goodberries, or heroes feasting 100 night in a row, just so there's some absurdity at both ends of the spectrum hehe. Achievements associated with each companion would be cool, or maybe for approval/disapproval or inspiration, but like keeping a tally on it for each character.

I think if they want us to play it forever, then that's more down to party/camp composition. I think for that they should have more recruitable companions characters, but with a limit on the number of total camp followers. What they have right now with the zombies is ok, but they're more like warding bond support than proper bit players.

One thing I don't need in any difficulty mode is for the Scratch or the Owlbear cub to get permanently off'd once they are brought into the camp. It just means that I never want to bring them into combat, because the risk is too great. As a result they don't really get to have their heroic battle moments or the spotlight in combat during the course of normal play. Like just let us resurrect the dog with scroll. We're high fantasy here. If all our companions can be risen, we should be able to do the same for the pets.

Anyhow, that said, I'm still having a blast! Kept me busy all weekend lol. So nice work there!

Happy boxing day!

I'm in act 3 honor mode. It's still too easy. The fights are ridiculously easy. In most of them I don't take any damage because the enemy is dead before their first turn. The enemy in act 3 needs to be more flexible, not do more damage, but add more surprises, add more hidden enemies and additional support, assassins, more heals, escapes, resurrections, summons etc.

Food is absolutely pointless, but could be a fun game mechanic in honor mode. Scarce food might lead you to hunt animals or monsters, and maybe add in the survival saving throws as food mechanic somehow. Or nature to find berries. Or you have to beg for food if you are broke etc.

Stealing is a joke. I stopped playing for now, waiting for "survival mode".

1) A full-scale fight in House of Grief cannot be won with just cantrips and scrolls - I know it's easy, but let's not overstate it, okay?

2) The fight in HoG is not a good example with which to demonstrate how easy/hard BG3 is. It's a very manageable fight by design.

Why? The only high level potential enemy here is just a level 11 Cleric. All other possible enemies are capped at level 7 - very low levels in Act 3. Except for the level 11 Cleric, not a single enemy here is equipped with magical weapon or armor. They do not have scrolls, potions, special arrows or other throwables. None of them has access to damage-based arcane spells. Unless you defy their unique protection feat and choose to use Radiant damage/spells against them, thereby assisting enemies to kill your own party, you are supposed to have an easy fight here. This is essentially a duel between Shadowheart and her direct rival in the game. Story-wise, everyone else is supposed to be a bystander who may take a side to join the fight. Shadowheart, being a Trickery cleric if not respeced through the game, can take control of the entire battlefield from the start. If the player party is already level 12, the whole fight is practically a walk in the park even on the currently hardest possible difficulty settings.

My first playthrough at HoG: it was on Tactician. Once I examined every NPC here, Shadowheart walked down the stairs for a chat and then fought the entire House of 20 enemies. I chose to tease enemies. To tease them, Shadowheart disarmed 3 enemies and Jaheira disarmed 2 more, though my Dark Urge and Karlach killed 3 (I could have chosen to disarm more, but it was impossible to aim 3+ extra targets so I gave up). To have fun, Jaheira's Dryad laid down a spike field under the feet of that level 11 Cleric. All this was during the very 1st round of combat. Before the fight, I spent 2 spell slots to get 6 skeleton archers. Now, during the first round, 6 skeletons formed a circle around Shadowheart - it was her fight anyway. Shadowheart did not lose a single HP here, though she did receive a permanent curse. What else can I say? No scrolls, no potions, no consumables, no throwables, no tricks, no barrels, no fireballs, no Haste spell... Nobody used anything like that. It was just a 100% tavern brawl between Shadowheart backed by my party of level 11 and a level 11 Cleric with her 19 followers. When Viconia became the only hostile left, I decided to let her remain invisible. As a result, she surprised us with Divine Intervention, killing 3 of my skeleton archers. She then pleaded to Shadowheart for our life by demanding Shadowheart to hand over Shadowheart - definitely a bug. The full-scale brawl was an exciting, fun, very satisfactory experience.

Additionally, Shadowheart can limit the scale of the fight in HoG if she has taken a different story path.



=== My opinion about how to further increase difficulty ===

The difficulty comes from a lot of sources. Ultimately, if you want a challenge, you have to fight higher level enemies.

Why are the Gith patrols difficult for most players to fight? Because you can run into them at a (much) lower level.
Why do you get a clean party wipe, instantly, if you choose to defy a semi-goddess in the game? Because she is a very, very high-level NPC.

So, before Larian Studios decides to "level up" the existing NPCs to challenge you, how about you deliberately under-leveling your party?

That is what I did. Playing on Tactician for 500+ hours and I have not died once yet. On the one hard, what matters most is exploration and having fun. So the easier the game, the better. On the other hand, I think by deliberately under-leveling a bit and staying away from scrolls, potions and frequent resting, I have made the game just harder enough for me to enjoy combat. After all, I now have to be careful and use tactics to avoid damage and stay alive with as little healing as possible (ideally no healing at all). My main characters have never backed down or otherwise avoided violence. We didn't even kneel, though I heeded Lae'zel repeated warnings and avoided a disaster which would have broken my no-death record. Once I have time I'll get my Honour run done.

The natural gradation of the difficulty level in D&D is the difference in levels between antagonists and the party. To slow down the progression of the level ups is an effective and cheap solution from the point of view of development. I have already tested similar mods. It was a good change.

My two cents - this is a slippery slope and Larian shouldn't create a new mode thats even more difficult. There will always emerge a meta game that breaks the mode (or the mode will be rng/impossible/unfun) and there will always be people coming out of the woodwork that claim that the mode is 'too easy' after metagaming it. What makes things worse is that save scumming is trivial, even in honor mode and people certainly are abusing it.

Instead, I think there should be more options in custom mode to make the game more difficult: i.e. toggles for allowing or removing legendary and very rare gear, increased supply requirements, prevention of scrolls being used other than scribing, customizable attack roll penalties, enemy hp buff %s, etc. That way the min maxers can knock themselves out with pushing the limits of the game without Larian wasting their time and resources catering to a miniscule portion of the playerbase.

The game as is is plenty challenging for most players who aren't actively trying to cheese or break it. I'd rather Larian invest their time and energy in fixing act 3 bugs and coming out with DLC or better yet another game than wasting their time on this.

I wish people would stop making this assertion as if they're some sort of authority on the matter. It's simply not true.

ETA: it's one thing to say that you personally find it difficult enough. It's another to claim to speak for all the people who don't find it challenging in the slightest by saying they're "actively trying to cheese or break it." It's both annoying and insulting. It's also just weird. I don't find it challenging, and I'm not interested in cheesing or breaking anything. I've seen plenty of streamers who went into honour mode worried about the difficulty... and then relaxed when they realized it wasn't that difficult.

In short, please stop using the "cheese" players to undermine legitimate feedback.

I'm going to write something extremely controversial, but once the player figures out how different builds and combat scenarios work it's really difficult to make the game harder. And honestly, there is a line when Larian's responsibility stops when it comes to game difficulty.

Most of the suggestions on this thread are things that can be "added" to the game by personalizing everyone's own game style. (restricting rests, not using certain gear and, not min-maxing points etc). If Larian were to add a nightmare difficulty option, it would still be too easy for some.

If you know how all the fights will unfold, all the mechanics of every fight and everything about the game in general, *any* tactics game will be 'easy' because you put 200 hrs into the game and have perfect information. Its not a rral time game where reflexes matter; its a game of tactics and strategy where knowledge determines success, and once you attain knowledgr, of course the game wont be difficult any more. The only way to make the game more 'difficult' would be to add cheapos or rng which are inherently unfun. This is a single player game with fixed encounters and storylines.

I agree with this a 100%. BG3 is almost a puzzle game with some added RNG. Once you know how to "solve" the encounters the challenge is gone, and that is fine. They could increase the role of randomness and tweak some numbers, but that would not fundamentally increase the difficulty, just make things more tedious. Once you know how to kill a 300 HP goblin, you also know how to deal with one that has 1000 HP.

Guys, does anyone know a mod that only allows spellcasters to read/use scrolls?

In a truly strategic, tactical game, there cannot be a universal master key to victory. Tactics is a living process involving the work of the mind, and not the search for exploits in poorly thought-out game mechanics.

If that's what you are looking for, you shouldn't be looking at the single player turn based tactics genre. The flexibility you are looking for wont be found in a game restricted by rpg elements, especially with turn based mechanics. Every rpg suffers from this, including real time ones like dark souls where mechanics or the master key is discovered and then the game can be trivialised to the point where people are speed running it with no gear within a few hours.

I suggest multiplayer games like rts for a more fluid experience. Its possible to simulate optimal human like behavior in tactical games nowadays with montecarlo tree search pruned by neural networks (alphazero), but it requires an ungodly amount of gpu resources for a sufficiently complex game, although admittedly, once the networks are trained, its relatively cheap to execute. However, it hasnt really caught on or been accessible in mainstream gaming yet so i wouldnt hold my breath.

Ha! My friend, such a well-known game as chess is quite suitable for my criteria. As well as good old D&D mechanics, which I dearly love.
I don't need a game that tries to mimic or simulate human behavior. I am speaking of a game, with requires intelligence from the user, not from the emulation processes in the game itself.

You guys just need something equivalent to the "Veteran" difficulty in Call of Duty, or the highest difficulty setting in Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion. Even the "Insane" difficulty of BG2 is not hard enough, as many have claimed it is too easy.

However, I have never seen/read anyone who is bold enough to claim "Veteran" is easy. And the highest difficulty level of Oblivion (I forgot what it's called - probably not named at all) means, you start the game when any creature can kill you in no more than 2 hits. It also means: if you fight an identical clone of yourself, this difficulty level will make your identical clone do 36 times more damage than you do. Meaning: if you have 150 HP and can do 5 damage, your clone can always kill you in 1 hit. But you will need to hit your clone 31 times to kill it.

Yet, eventually there are players who have beat CoD on Veteran or completed Oblivion on that extremely hard difficulty level.

I guess in order for BG3 to please most players, it can be really hard for developers to figure out a way to make it hard enough to a small number of players without alienating the majority of players. Honor mode is a nice way to go. It's not a technically harder mode minus the spice of legendary actions, but primarily a mode that encourages a honorable run.

No, sorry. But that's how I play it anyway - and big consideration for ftr-EK and rog-AT.

Some of you don't seem to get it, but in these games knowledge is power.
The game is SUPPOSED to go on smoothly if you build your characters well, get good equipment and use their respective capabilities properly.

If you expect a game where even doing all these things properly would translate in having to fight tooth and nail to barely come out on top, you are going to get a game that is either completely frustrant for anyone who doesn't breath D&D all day or heavily reliant on RNG to luck out.
Not sure which one would be worse, either, but neither would be particularly good.

And "I went through this area easily while blowing hundreds of golds in consumable in one sitting" is frankly a laughable flexing.
Even in the tabletop scrolls are supposed to be more valuable than "camping supplies"; something that you try your best to keep aside for direr times (or sell for gold).


That aside, I admit I would be interested in a mode limited to:

- core D&D rules with no "Special Larian cheese on top".
- only mundane items (normal equipment, maybe their +1 and +2 variant unlocked later in second and third act and expensive, debatable if to keep into the game the few special legendaries).
- no (or very limited) consumables.
- no bullshit tadpole powers.
- Maybe fix all the bullshit way the players can manipulate the prices? Currently a Charisma-heavy character with high persuasion is going to play basically a different game from a barbarian with 8 charisma when it comes to shopkeepers... and you get even more ways to affect prices with silly tricks like resetting your level (respec) and gifting crap to the vendors. None of this is particularly entertaining or engaging, but once you learn about how it works, you feel pressured to either leverage the trick or being the sucker who pays everything 3-4 times as much.

... But of course it would need to be stressed to the players that this would not be intended as the ordinary way to play the game, but as a special "challenge" option.

Also, massive thumb down for the suggestion "Let the enemies use special equipment but you can't loot it". That's the worst of both worlds.
Let everyone play by the same rules. Either both the the players and the NPCs can access magic items them OR neither.

From Software's "Souls-like" games aren't as hard as their (inflated) reputation tries to pain them, either.
Most of them become immensely more manageable once people get familiar with the system.
On top of that, these are action games where rapidity of execution/reflexes/eye-hand coordination plays a role. That doesn't even happen in a turn-based tactical.
In a turn-based game if you know what to do you are going to stomp shit. Almost no way around it.

P.S. For what is worth, I keep reading people in other forums that from time to time start whining that the game is "bullshit hard" and super-unfair. Some of them struggle even going past certain fights on Story mode.
Now, OF COURSE I think that's because they lack the knowledge of the systems and they are doing plenty wrong in terms of planning and execution, but this should put things in perspective.