So I went to the Druid's place and looked at the map and one of my companions tells me we're in Elthurgard. O.K., only problem is according to this map Elthurgard is considerably inland, so how the heck is there a beach and a cove?

It is meant to be a river, though it does look a little too much like ocean.

To the best of my knowledge, Rivers don't have beaches. Your starting point after you land is literally called the Ravaged Beach.

This map may help. Elturgard covers a fairly wide area but you can see the river that runs from Baldur's Gate past Elturgard - The Chionthar - on the below map.

Credit to u/Brylock_Delux from the r/descenttoavernus subreddit.

This is the river Chionthar. Just look at the game's worldmap (google).

And yes, in BG3 this river have beaches...

Does it reach the coast? Because if it reaches the coast I'm just going to assume you've landed further down the coast to Baldur's Gate, because I'll say it again, Rivers don't have beaches.

You must not see a lot of Rivers, as they do have beaches.

"Although the seashore is most commonly associated with the word beach, beaches are also found by lakes and alongside large rivers. Beach may refer to: small systems where rock material moves onshore, offshore, or alongshore by the forces of waves and currents; or. geological units of considerable size."

From the Wikki article on 'Beaches'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beach

Nope, got plenty of Rivers around me, not a single one has a beach, and if you're going to play smart Alec, the beach in BG3 is sandy. Beaches near rivers are often muddy or soft. Not my idea of a beach. The only thing missing from BG3's beech is Palm trees and a hotel resort.

Rivers absolutely do have beaches in the real world, as sand or small pebbles get carried downstream and deposited.
Some rivers can be very, very wide.

Here's an example of a real life river with many beaches, in Australia:
https://www.visitthemurray.com.au/p...ry/things-to-do/explore-the-land/beaches

Are you judging the geography of the entire planet by where you personally live?

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

The rivers where I grew up have sandy beaches. It's pretty common to hang out at them like one is at the beach, with parasols and sunbathing on towels. I am from a desert though lol...

Sorry, I was being a little snarky. I think you mean beaches in the sense of sand that is the product of Parrot Fish and others who eat corral as a form of sustenance and then they poop out tiny little bits of it digested which then becomes the super fine sand commonly found on Ocean beaches. That's right. You are lying on a giant pile of Parrot Fish poop.

But there are many ways that rocks can be ground down to make sand. Albeit not so fine as the sand found on many beaches. The regular flow of water can cause the grinding, and as the river changes course, gets dammed up it leaves those areas exposed. Living things in freshwater also sometimes ingest small rocks or bits of them and poop them out.

Its funny to think our world looks the way it does because of all our incessant pooping.

There are rivers that have traditional looking ocean-style beaches. However, this does bring in how people can have a bias with how things should look based on where they live, and many people are used to Rivers lacking any kind of beach or having a rocky grey-er style one.

That brings up the idea on if Larian should actually try to play to those biases to make it clearer that this is a River, or keep it as is thinking it is clear enough?

Sand can also be made from hundreds of teeny tiny bits of shells, which is pretty amazing. I remember a beach like that from my childhood, and examining all those tiny shells under a magnifying glass.

And anyway, there's also the example of New Zealand where you can drive for half an hour and find yourself in a completely different landscape. It's why they film so many movies there - all the landscapes you need for a setting are within easy reach. After visiting NZ's South Island, I stopped complaining about totally different landscapes in games being smushed so close together... Because they really can be like that in real life!

Listen if its not made of tiny bits of sun-bleached animal poop then I am not stripping down naked and lying on top of it. I have standards...

or possibly a fetish.

With how often you've mentioned poop for some reason in this thread, I'm going with fetish.

Rivers can indeed have beaches, although as you say, they're usually silty rather than sandy.

What really swings the coastal argument though is the Secluded Cove where the Harpies are. Rivers do *not* have coves.

Rivers most assuredly do have beaches. Beaches are not merely of sand; they can be sand, silt, rock, dirt, vegetation. Do not limit your imagination simply by what you think you know.

The geologist in me just died a little inside.

Well --- maybe a lot.

Please google erosion. For all our sakes.

And know that one day, the full game will be out and we can all leave the beach behind for lavender scented baths.

I was one of those who initially thought that the river was actually a full blown ocean, and that we landed south of Baldur's Gate rather than somewhere east. Although I think it has to do with the coloration of the sand looking quite a bit like Fort Joy, which WAS surrounded by an ocean, more than anything else. I forget, weren't there shells on the beach too, or do I have that confused with the DOS games?

I had a thought while making this post, though. It'd be a bit neat if NPCs reacted to thrown objects in their environment, so there should be shiny rocks around the river beach that you can use for this purpose. Precedence already exists with that rubber ball and the dog, after all.

Sure, this encourages ambush/alpha strike behavior more than before by potentially luring enemies into a situation that they wouldn't normally find themselves in, but at least it's interesting.

I also thought it was coastal and it took me ages to identify the location on the map of Faerûn that I found; not really helped by previously having zero experience of the place; and that the map significantly pre-dated BG3. While I haven't personally seen sandy beaches along rivers (just swamps; in fact Jarrow, the town where I was born, is thought to be named as such) I'll defer to other people's experiences, and only after locating it on the map did I zoom in to see that it is indeed a river, and a remarkably impressive one at that. Then again I have seen some IRL that are similarly impressive even far inland, such as the Severn.

Just after the nautiloid crash, your own character has a line saying something like :"fresh water, there must be a settlement nearby".

IRL, there is a worldwide competition for those river sands as they are required by specific concretes.

It might be worth during the cutscene of the nautilaud crashing there's an 'above' shot showing the land below to avoid the confusion, showing a large river (but both banks) and some blurry/indescript depiction of the above-ground bit seen in chapter 1, to help orientate people

Larian had better make those lavender scented baths a reality. My PCs need them, they're already starting to smell funny.

I think it's fair to say that most people without any additional information to say otherwise would think "Oh, we're near an ocean." It's a little silly to find the few exceptions and state "OMG, BEACHES CAN BE BESIDE RIVERS" (emphasis added ;))

I just defer to National Geographic which I'm fairly confident on betting knows a lot more than you're average poster in this forum. According to them, Rivers do not have white sandy beaches, they're silty and muddy. It's not a big deal, just caused confusion. The sound of waves crashing on the rocks in the Secluded Cove after the Harpy fight don't help convey the feeling of a river either. All it needed was a chippy and a few Seaguls to complete the effect. Seriously though it just causes confusion but it's not a big deal. I just couldn't find it on the map because I was searching for a coastal area. There's nothing about it that says River.

Oh and to the person who mentioned fresh water, yes the game says that. There are fresh water seas.

At no point playing this build I was ever under the impression that what we had there was anything but a river. I mean, it looks like one.
So I'm vaguely confused about why that would be even remotely confusing or controversial.

And no, "rivers with beaches" are not an incredibly rare sight, no matter how many of you try to argue otherwise.

Yes undersea, so probably a side-effect of the powerful tadpole virtually drilling hundreds meters down (usual procedure) to finally detect a fresh water pocket (and expect a deep gnome settlement nearby). All of that while your character, feet in the sand, is watching the river flow.
Hey I like you but you are too powerful, my tadpole cannot compete so, please, do not spoil, I don't want to know who the final boss is.

This is also a game with magical brain parasites that give you telepathic powers, evil octopus Cthulhu people, wizards shooting fireballs, literal cities being uprooted and dragged into hell, elves, vampires, people that transform into animals, and others who share ancestry with devils. IMO, a river with a sandy beach is one of the most believable things about the Sword Coast.

I meant real life, I have no idea what you're talking about, I'm not immersed in the lore, sorry


Well yes, because don't you realise how disappointing it is to not be able to book yourself in to the beach front Hotel for a spa after a hard day's fight? I reckon the wizard needs a lie down in the sun after missing so often with those fireballs thanks to the wonky combat balance. Also, Relyeh Zorg, not octopus people. Seriously though it's mild criticism of it being confusing, I'm not expecting any sort of development time spent on it.

Oh yeah rivers can have beaches. Look up river sand bars. I am from the South Eastern USA, specifically Georgia in the inland costal plain. Over the eons, the vast majority of this area was formed from the erosion of the Appalachian mountains. The beach front was moved farther out as the land lifted and mountain sediment, etc accumulated to our current coastlines. The rivers have cut into and exposed old beach sandbars. These areas erode the old fish poop sand down river and they collect in river bends. I have seen water wells being dug and hit the old beach layer about 200 feet deep (over 50 miles from the coast) and pull up old seashells by the hand full.

One good way to tell a river from a sea is to look at the way the water flows. Seas and oceans have tidal movement, perpendicular to the shore. At least on Earth that is the case. I don't know if the fictional planet on which BG3 is played out has any very large moons. In a river water flows alongside the shore.

I have just looked at the crash location. The water is clearly flowing alongside the shore, and it is flowing towards the west. The experienced adventurer then knows which way it is to the sea (or the larger body of water), should that prove to be of importance at some point in the story.

Some rivers are tidal such as the Thames and Severn to name a couple of largeish nearby examples. I'm not sure exactly how far upriver it can go but it can cause chaos in areas that are significantly inland.

I'm learning so much about rivers and geography from you guys!

Acording to this map:


And the fact that Tieflins tells us that "it takes around 3 days to get into Baldur's Gate" ...

I would dare to say that on this map:


We are by the river, somewhere between Baldur's Gate and that River Chiontar writing.

//edit:
I just noticed that there is scale in down left corner ... i really should zoom out.
So ... average (healthy, and well shaped) person is able to walk 20-30 miles per day ...
Since Tieflins are traveling with (or more likely at) Waggons ... i shall presume they should be able to travel 100 miles in 3 days ...
That would mean that on big map we are +/- here:

That map is super neat. I was always under the impression that Waterdeep was much further north than it actually was. But now I wonder where Chult is supposed to be on the world map.

*furiously scribbles notes for my tabletop character's background*

I've been using this map in my own pnp game!

In the case of the Thames, it is tidal all the way to Teddington Lock in West London. It's quite a surprise looking into such a large river at low tide to find it almost empty.

I am writing this post about 30m North of the Thames at Windsor, where the Thames is definitely not interested in tides or the sea. The land hereabouts is best described as "soggy mud", and much of the 200km through which the Thames has flowed to get here is also soggy mud ( this is actually quite a good description for much of Britain ). So, not surprisingly, any flat areas that occur along the Thames are deposition of mud, as sand is in short supply.

But, pre-pandemic, for about 20 Years, I spent several weeks each summer hiking in the western United States. The river basins of the Colorado River, Green River, Salt River and Gila River ( for example ) pass largely through arid sandstone landscapes rather than soggy mud, and ( big surprise ) the rivers are heavily fringed with sand. Not only sand, of course, as the geology of these river valleys is quite varied; but lots of sand, and very little soggy mud. Look on the Internet for images of "Canyonlands", "Bryce Canyon", "Capitol Reef" if you want to get an idea of how different this is from the rivers of western Europe.

What surprises me more is that BG3 seems to set the Chionthar in a sandstone valley setting, and Yartar ( the city the Nautiloid attacks ) seems to be a cross between Mediterranean and Sumerian/Babylonian architectural inflluences, when most other references to the area ( and prevous maps of it ) distinctly suggest western-European-soggy-mud would be more likely.

Well, we know the Teiflings started in Elturel, and are travelling downriver towards Baldurs Gate. We also know that Moonrise Towers is "next stop" downriver on our journey towards Baldurs Gate.

So, I guess that puts us much further upriver than where you calculate? At least according to this map.


I'm not too sure that Larian have done a common sense/consistency pass over the game yet

It's not tidal here in Oxford either (well obvs, since we're further inland) but the meadows and what-not about half a mile from here are quite prone to becoming mud and I've ended up with significantly muddy feet as a result. Not good for running away from the killer cows that like to menace passers-by. Then there's Tewkesbury in the other direction which can be menaced by the Severn in various ways, including tides, all of which seem to result in mud. And as I mentioned earlier, the town I was born in on Tyneside, which was named after mud. There does seem to be a certain common theme, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

I vaguely remember someone saying Baldur's Gate was about a tenday's walk from the grove? That would put us more in line with where etonbears suggests. Don't remember who said it though...

After being rescued, did the fishermen say that there are many days to Baldur's Gate?
I also think it was supposed to be about 10 days away. I don't remember anybody mentioning 3.

Ah, you really are in the soggy heart of England then! At least the Thames in Oxford, unlike the Tyne, isn't a disturbing shade of brown ( my Mum grew up in Birtley; rather before the Angel of the North existed ). As the pandemic is still wreaking travel havoc, we have booked a cottage in NT Cragside for later in the year to explore more of Northumberland. I confidently expect soggy feet from below and soggy head from above - such is my faith in the British climate

That certainly complicate things ...

And that would explain those things.

Its possible, i dint play for some time and in few last plays i skipped most of the conversations. :-/
I promiss i shal check next time i get there.
But, its totally possible that i was wrong. :-/

It was stated in on one of Interviews that Larian took Portugal as reference for both nature and architecture. So the river Chionthar's image in BG3 more likely based on Tagus river. And that river does have sandy beaches, cliffs around and so on.
Plus, yes, tieflings said 10 days, not 3.

Interesting, did not realize they referenced Portugal for stuff, kinda cool to think about where small details get their inspiration.

Hey i allready apologized ... just throw your rock and move along.

In my opinion, they should just spend a few minutes darkening the sand textures so it looks more like silt than coral. We now know from their Twitter that it’s their ‘thing’ to start games on a beach because of their logo – but I think they could easily avoid some confusion with a minor tweak.

This is a brazillian river (Praia do Tupé, if you want to google it)