Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Latest News Community Update #30 - Photo Mode, Cross-Play, and 12 Subclasses Coming Next Year

Like an aged mentor in an inspiring 1980s film montage, we’re filled with pride seeing all the mods you've been crafting and using since the release of our official mod tools in September. In just under three months, you've uploaded more than 3,000 mods, downloaded over 70 million, and created a spell to turn your enemies into cheese.

For those of you looking for an introduction to using mods, head over to Larian: Channel From Hell where Aoife will break things down and shine a spotlight on a few choice recommendations. While we’ll be wrapping up our feature-heavy updates for Baldur’s Gate 3 soon, this is not yet the end for our mod tools. With the continued support of mod authors in the community testing out new features, we have big updates still to come - including adding even more functionality to let you tell your own stories.

But before we bid Faerûn adieu in search of stranger shores, we have one more major patch waiting around the corner. Arriving next year, this update will introduce some of the most eagerly awaited features to BG3: cross-play, and photo mode, along with 12 new subclasses.

Let’s take a look at what you can expect to see in Patch 8!

Cross-Play
Whether you’re joining PS5 players from your PC, or jumping into a game with Mac users from your Xbox, Baldur’s Gate 3 multiplayer will soon feature full cross-platform progression, including cross-play - just as the gaming gods intended.

Once the update is live you’ll be able to invite your friends to join your cross-play lobby directly, regardless of platform and find available multiplayer lobbies with friends on other systems using the Larian Network.



Subclasses
Patch 8 will introduce a new way to play your favourite class, adding one new subclass for each of the existing Bard, Barbarian, Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Fighter, Monk, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, Warlock and Wizard classes in the game.

Expect new abilities, animations, VFX, summons and cantrips, and unique voiced dialogue lines for the Oathbreaker Knight with written reactivity for Oathbreakers, along with a touch of homebrewing on certain actions to enhance your role-playing experience.

Bard - College of Glamour

As a College of Glamour Bard, you’ll find you have the power to heal friends and command enemies in equal measure. Cast Mantle of Inspiration to bestow your allies with 5 temporary hit points. And should an enemy attack while it is cast, they’ll find themselves Charmed. Play your hand correctly and you’ll be able to use this to your advantage with Mantle of Majesty. Target Charmed enemies and you can command them to flee, move closer, freeze, drop to the ground, or drop their weapon.



Barbarian - Path of Giants

Opt for the Path of Giants, and your newfound giant strength will make it easier for you to yeet friend and foe alike. Forget chugging potions to pump those muscles, these Barbarians benefit from the Giant’s Rage passive that grants both strength and size - allowing you to deal additional damage with Throw attacks. Pockets weighing you down? Not for you and your increased carry capacity!

Cleric - Death Domain

As a cleric of death, you’ll find a few dark new tricks up your sleeves - from spells that specialise in necrotic damage to three new necromancy cantrips. This includes Toll The Dead, a cantrip that causes 1~8 damage when your cleric rings the bell of impending doom - a number that scales if your target has already been damaged. We’ve also added the homebrewed ability to explode nearby corpses, damaging enemies.



Druid - Circle of Stars

These Druids look to the stars for answers, accessing powers beyond those offered through the classic wildshapes. Taking on one of three Starry Forms for their power - the constellations of the Archer, Chalice, and Dragon. Each one favours a different play style and strategy - the Archer dealing radiant damage with astral arrows, the life-giving Chalice restoring hitpoints to you and others nearby, and the wise Dragon, allowing you to deal damage with an added bonus to constitution rolls. The Starry Forms offer not just a celestial aesthetic, but practical, powerful options to enhance your role as a healer, fighter, or strategist.



Paladin - Oath of the Crown

You’ve been sworn to uphold the principles of law. Stay true to your oath and you'll be rewarded with the power to aid your allies and disrupt your foes. Guide your companions in battle with Righteous Clarity, taunt enemies with strategic interrupts, and keep your party standing strong with Divine Allegiance, absorbing their damage while restoring their health.

Fighter - Arcane Archer

Mastering the dual arts of magic and marksmanship, the Arcane Archer subclass offers unique skills on top of new shooting animations. Banish foes to the Feywild, removing them from the battlefield for a turn, or unleash Psychic damage that forces enemies to make a Wisdom saving throw or be blinded until the start of their next turn.



Monk - Drunken Master

Putting the brew in homebrew, as the Drunken Master, you have the ability to consume alcohol straight from your inventory, as well as drink from bottles you see around the Sword Coast, in order to recover Ki. By sharing the bottle with your enemies using Intoxicating Strike, you’ll generate a buff towards your Armour Class and your Chance to hit Drunk targets. Drunk enemies are also susceptible to the Drunken Masters' other abilities, like Sobering Realisation - which sobers up drunk targets, dealing physical and Psychic damage.

Ranger - Swarmkeeper

The Swarmkeeper subclass provides Rangers with three kinds of deadly swarms to assist them in combat. The Cloud of Jellyfish deals extra lightning damage - potentially shocking your enemy. The Flurry of Moths deals Psychic damage, giving you the potential to Blind your enemy. The Legion of Bees deals piercing damage and forces the enemy to make a strength-saving throw or be knocked back 15ft. Each swarm also has the ability to provide you with teleportation capabilities!



Rogue - Swashbuckler

This Rogue subclass introduces a range of new actions fit for the piratical life. Play dirty by tossing sand at enemies to Blind them. Flick your weapon at a target to Disarm them. Or use your new Fancy Footwork passive while meleeing your enemy to ensure they can’t make opportunity attacks against you for the rest of your turn.

Sorcerer - Shadow Magic

As a Shadow Magic Sorcerer, you deal in a form of magic that makes you deadliest in darkness. This subclass gives its sorcerer Superior Darkvision, as well as the ability to Shadow Walk between places of dim light or darkness. It also lets you call forth the perfectly homebrewed Hound of Ill Omen to harass your foes, and use Strength of the Grave to prevent you from being downed - ideal for those attempting Honour Mode runs.



Warlock - Hexblade

Hexblade Warlocks make a pact with an entity from the Shadowfell that manifests in the form of magical weapons. Curse your enemies and force their souls to do your bidding. Slay any enemy that isn’t generally an element of nature, construct, giant blob, or already dead, and you’ll be able to raise their spirit from their corpse for ten turns. This new summon can deal necrotic damage and will rip away a chunk of your enemy’s soul to provide your Hexblade Warlock with healing.

Wizard - Bladesinging

The Bladesinging subclass merges swordplay with wizardry. Expect new spellcasting animations when casting spells with your weapon, a new Bladesong ability to grant you supernatural speed, agility, and focus, plus gives you a bonus to any Constitution saving throw you make.

Photo Mode
Finally, you can stop using pictures of fish you’ve caught on your dating profile and start snapping photos with your Hound of Ill Omen. Photo Mode is coming to Baldur’s Gate 3 in Patch 8!

Baldur’s Gate 3’s Photo Mode is a little like a photo booth that lets you set up pretty much any shot you’d like. This new feature introduces a whole slew of options to let you customise and edit your in-game photography, with various levels of freedom depending on whether you’re using it while adventuring, or during combat, dialogue, and cinematic scenes.

Camera Settings

Toggleable from the HUD, located near the minimap, or by using the hotkey binding (F9 on PC, and by pressing both analog sticks at the same time on console), you’ll get to choose which character you want to take centre stage, determine their best side, and adjust the camera position to suit.

As long as they’re in your party while you’re adventuring, you’ll be able to line up your scene perfectly - including summons and those in a Wild Shape! For all budding virtual photographers, you can also turn on the camera reticle and composition grid to make sure you’re lining up the perfect shot.



Lens Settings

Determined the angle and sorted the positioning? You’ll be able to jump over to the Lens Settings where you can play around with the Field of View, Exposure, Depth of Field, and Focus.



Scene Settings

NPC ruining your shot? Toggle off either Playing, Party, NPC or Enemy characters.

Now you’re ready for your close-up! Or, if you’re feeling creative, set the scene for a full-on Faerûn musical - choose a set facial expression, plus a range of over 40 static and animated poses, each with multiple variations to help give you the perfect layout.



Internal playtesting for Patch 8 is already well underway, and we wanted to highlight just a couple of the great shots our playtesters have been grabbing using photo mode, and how they’ve chosen to edit them!

Post Processing Effects

While you won’t be able to adjust your party or play around with lens and camera settings during cinematic scenes and dialogues, you’ll be able to colour-grade your shot and experiment with contrast, saturation, highlights, brightness and vignette.


Morphic Pool, by Celia Medvescig, Playtester

Frames

Add flair to your scene with a range of different frames and letterboxing to nail those cinematic shots.


Crèche, by Michael Simard, Playtester

Stickers

Choose from over 300 stickers and add up to 30 to your scene, including emojis, icons, blood splatters, textures, objects and items, and of course, cat ears.



In your hands soon, you’ll be able to take role-play to the next level with unique combinations of poses, stickers, and frames. We can’t wait to see what absolute nightmare fuel you come up with.


A romantic moment between custom characters, by Helena Van de Veire, Playtester

Patch 8 Stress Test
With your feedback and support, our last patch brought some big changes to the game with just two bug-fixing hotfixes post-release. That’s a win in our books, and we’re looking to do the same again for Patch 8. So let’s talk stress testing!

What are we stress-testing?

This time, you’re invited to join us for a period of stress testing, where you can jump in and try out the new subclasses, explore Tav’s best angles in photo mode, and play with friends together on other platforms. Yep, this stress test will be available to those on Xbox and PlayStation, as well as PC!

Why do we need to stress test Patch 8?

The goal is to go beyond our internal testing and help us catch things before they can become an issue once a patch has been released.

Along with all of the newness coming in Patch 8, we’ll also be integrating a large selection of bug fixes and polishing up cinematics, including ensuring Shadowheart’s hair dye no longer washes away when she takes a dip with her romantic partner. We’ll be sharing more on what’s been fixed in a future update!

When does the stress test begin?

We’re looking to begin testing in early January, and you’ll have the opportunity to register your interest before then. Things will be done a little differently this time ‘round, so we’ll be back with Community Update #31 to take you through what’s being tested and how you can take part!

Don’t wait up pookie, we’ll chat with you soon.

Best Community Support Nomination At The Game Awards 2024

We are deeply honoured by all of the awards that Baldur’s Gate 3 has been nominated for, and it goes without saying that our latest nomination for Best Community Support once again at The Game Awards 2024 has our hearts squeezing.

You’ve fuelled us with your questionably horny fanart, delusional tyrant fanfiction, and delightful array of mods, and we can’t wait to see how you bring this passion to our future games.

If you would like to support us at this year’s The Game Awards, you can vote for Baldur’s Gate 3 as Best Community Support before December 11th by clicking here. Watch the awards ceremony live on December 12 at 7:30pm EST on The Game Awards YouTube and Twitch channels.

A Very Larian Christmas

With December on our doorstep, we’re once again bringing back a little advent surprise, featuring a series of little treats for both the naughty and nice.

Keep an eye out later in December, for puzzles to earn rewards you'll cherish and remember!

After one of my friends shut me down for sending too many BG3 screenshots, I'm quite sure I can't be trusted with this new feature!

Ooooh, the Shadow Magic subclass looks really cool.

I like the new subclasses - that is really cool.

Circle of the STars is a subclass, I always wanted to try.

Is artificer still on the table? It would make so much sense with all the artificers in the game.

This is a sweet sweet gift TY! Peace to all!!

I was *not* expecting new subclasses. That is so cool!

***Puts the partly complete drunken master inspired monk run on hold until she can do it properly ***

The main thing is not to forget the option to stay on Patch 7 and continue playing with it!

Awesome! Do you have any rough idea when you'd expect a full release? Or would saying anything just stir up trouble when people inevitably complain if whatever date you suggest is missed?

Nope! What has been communicated is that we will get another update at some point in December for the
"Stress Test" and how to participate in that, and then we will go from there!

I was surprised to hear that they'll be new subclasses being added but I'm really excited about that!

I'm also really excited to try photo-mode and play around with the features. From what I've seen, it looks very promising. ^^

Shadowmagic for my Shadow-Weave spell slot. =)

Oh, my Dark Urge will sure fall in love with the Cleric's new Death Domain. What will be the chosen deity for the Dark Urge? From a certain point onwards you will also be able to choose Bhaal? Personally, it bothers me to serve any god, it would be nice if there was also the possibility of not serving any god... for the severe loss of memory.

These subclasses sounds great — a drunken master will for sure be fun, but I don’t see how I could be able to fit that in with wanting to play Bladesinging, Shadow Magic and Death Domain ☺

Thank you!

I wanted to add a big Thank you to Larian for still giving us new stuff and for free, after a year.
Those are all awesome features. I will for sure try out the Bladesinger, since I never played that subclass before.

And yay for photo mode and cross play.

cross play sounds nice but everyone would need to be on the same build which hasn't been the case for most of the dev, world wide lag will also be an issue but that can be solved with current servers

I appreciate Larian still developing the game, I'm pleasantly surprised. Haven't they moved on?
Most of the subclasses look like needless duplication of what already exists.
My first reaction to Swarm Master subclass was - ORLY? What sort of stupid joke is this? I think I like the Bard and Cleric the most.
There still are bugs to eliminate ... with such a big Patch I expect another to Patch it ...

Hey

Will this cause another delay for consolemods?

Thank you!

And very very excitee for the patch ❤️

Hey, new Subclasses are very welcome. I didn't expect it.

Photo mode AND new sub classes?? And here I was thinking 2025 would be just a sucky, but it's already looking up T^T)/ Thank you, Larian, and happy holidays!

I'm excited about the photo mode. A bit less about the new subclasses. So my question, with so many things in this one patch is, will it be compatible with patch 7 saves ? If it is not, it means I would have to playthrough with my same party through all the acts again to make some flashy photo's in the city. Could you find out about this savefile compatibility ?
If they are not compatible, and we get a separate patch 7 branch, would it be possible to add just the photo mode to this branch, so we can use our saves to make nice screenshots ?

No hiatus are planned during the stress test!


Saves should continue to be compatible going from Patch 7 to Patch 8!

Very nice. Dont really need any of that. But very nice.

BG3 was already the perfect game. With mods one can add new classes and subclasses.

I would have liked some final touches in the UI, like "sort by value per item" so I can for example sort a bag full of scrolls by the scroll level (which is directly linked to the spell level).

Which right now doesnt work because if you sort stacks you always sort by the weight or value of the full stack, not the single stack item.

Will even modded saves continue to be compatible? I think I know the answer, but it would be nice to have confirmation. Since I am guessing the answer is maybe but there is no guarantee/mods will need to be updated for this patch as they normally do (especially UI mods which many other mods even console mods rely on), it would be nice/essential to have a patch 7 branch so people can keep playing while mods are updated.

Kind of disappointed that Arcane Archer made the cut, considering that in it's tabletop form, most of those effects are so bland, they could easily serve as Wizard/Ranger spells.

However, I understand you guys want to make Bow focused builds on Fighter look more appealing.

I would recommend you alter these Arcane Shots into crafted Arrows that can be used by anyone...and maybe rename the subclass to Runic Armiger so that it better fits the class fantasy.

Trust me when I say that, mechanically speaking, Arcane Archer is rated by DnD community as being extremely weak.

I read that patch 8 will introduce new things to the modding does that include new assets and like letting us creating our own questq and stuff

If it does, I can guarantee those mods won't be on console.

Just like previous patches, there isn't a sure way of knowing the answer to this. If you are using hundreds of outdated mods, your save will potentially not be useable.
If you are using a few of the latest from nexus, or Mod.IO, your save will probably be fine, but either way it never hurts to be on a fresh new save.

They will drop another update at some point in December with updates to the "Stress Test", so if you have playthroughs you want to finish, you have time!  

Joyous news! The Death Domain!!! lol

It's like the X-mas stocking came early, but with a note that says 'don't open till the new year...' hehe. I'm having fun with the Mods so far.

My Durge has wings, Alfira is in the crew, I have a party of 6 with jumbo hotbar, the supped up Tactician, extra Scratch, all in mask black. I had to ditch the lvl extender mod temporarily cause Jaheira needs her Wildshape, but I imagine that gets fixed at some point. Otherwise all the mods seemed to hold up. I didn't know if I'd have the fortitude to resist updating the mods in order to finally finish a Jack of All Trades run, but we just kept flying.


I'm more excited by the Photo Mode thing, the more I watch those gifs. I hope the facial expressions and poses leads to some sort of portrait maker for use in-game, like for the little head shots we see on the sidebar, or for a character sheet view. I can't wait to see those menus!

Way to keep it going! Something to look forward to

What big updates? I thought this was be the last big patch. Will it be custom campaigns for pc?

Did you even read Salos post? Did you really miss the 12 new subclasses, photo mode, cross play etc?