Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback The Arcane Turrets encounter needs Improvements

Sounds like a lotta bad fun to me. Who do we call?

i agree 100%. they need to find a solution to allow you to react faster to things happening suddenly in the environment without making it too easy to cheese certain situations. i have the same issue with perception/investigation checks with discovering hidden items and traps where im running so fast i dont even notice it until i've gone past it or fallen into it etc - maybe they could introduce something like 'emergency pause' where if you pause within a certain time frame after a perception check (and include perception checks before traps and stuff detonate) the game time immediately pauses regardless of how far into the 'turn' you are so you can react quickly

But I didn't ask what you did or advocated for. I pointed how that type of exploit IS a viable solution right now and it probably shouldn't be.

Because "What character I wanted to be" and "What needs to be done" are NOT things that I should be entitled to see overlap, for once.

IF a combat option has to be contemplated among the possible solutions, it should probably be one that can't leverage metagame tricks.

That has absolutely nothing to do with the issue at hand.


IF literally any puzzle can be circumvented by "I'll just click on the barrier that separates me from the reward until it goes down" then you have a potential design issue to solve.
And to be clear, I think it's perfectly legitimate for the player to do it if it works (even if I wouldn't), which is PRECISELY why it's a designer's job to attempt to prevent, defuse or discourage approaches that trivialize a scenario.

Do you want to hear a very loud burp?

all that making the turrets immune to damage would do is force certain players to disabuse themselves of their own personal method of problem solving and further restrict what kind of characters they're able to roleplay as. the game actively encourages breaking the environment as a mechanic - you can literally break shadowheart out of her pod by snapping the thing in half if you play as a barbarian within 10 minutes of starting the game.

it's a valid tactic that the game presents to you - taking that away from players would only introduce inconsistencies and logical fallacies in the way players can problem solve. in a game where you can die pretty easily for making the wrong move, confusing players by robbing them of certain tactics in illogical ways is much worse game design than allowing people to smash up the environment if they choose to

I wasn't even talking about turrets there, but I already addressed alternate options to the "immunity to some type of damage" (which incidentally is also very different from "immune to everything") in a previous reply:


And this is always assuming that "it's not supposed to be a combat scenario", which is the (legitimate?) claim made by many in this very thread.
If it's meant to turn into one at player's desire, on the other hand, it also needs to be better as a combat scenario, as the OP is suggesting.

The whole encounter with turrets was quite disappointing to me, because there does not seem to be any logical or intellectual way of dealing with the defenses. You either:

• Abuse their line of sight by hiding behind an object and shooting them because their projectiles have big hitboxes and cannot hit you
• Use Invisibility on one companion to bypass all of them
• Use meta knowledge from previous playthroughs to go around them by jumping on mushrooms to the bottom of the tower to disable them

As a final experiment I thought that wearing Myrna's collar would make them friendly, but even that is not the case, which was incredibly disappointing. So far I don't think the encounter is properly finished and I feel that the dog collar should play a bigger role in going through the defenses.

Which reminds me...
What is the collar supposed to do (or being used for), exactly? I don't remember ever finding any proper use for it except when I pressed a button that made it vibrate on one of the tower's floors. And I wouldn't really call that an useful discovery, anyway...

Wear the collar and press the button for free steak

definitely agree that this should be an option so that they ignore whichever party member is wearing the collar.

would also be cool if after you knock someone out via non-lethal attacks, like the duergar in the harbour village below, you could throw their bodies to the turrets to distract them for a bit while you sneak past - distract them for longer if you heal the KO'd person first so they have more health lol

That would be the kind of really neat thing I find about on Youtube.

On the 3rd level of the tower there is a dispenser machine with a button in the corner of the room by the windows. Was meant for the dog to be automatically fed, so if you wear the collar it gives you something. I think in my last playthrough I got a bone, but some people mention getting a steak.

Disagree ...

They are "magical" turrets ...
Sussur flower disrupts, any magic ...

Also, unless i remember it incorectly, you are told that Lenore was experimenting with Sussur trees.
(Yup, i just checked, Blurg complains to you that her experiments of Sussur bark took priority, when he offered her place in Society of Brilliance.)

This seems like purely logical and intellectual way of dealing with this.

I think this is a great summary Tuco. I'm not going to try to read Larian's minds/intentions, but the current design feels conflicted.

If the Arcane Turrets are not supposed to be a combat encounter, but rather a "trap" to be bypassed, than they shouldn't be so easily destroyed AND offer 50 XP per turret (x4).
For comparison, the Gith Patrol gives 60 XP per person, and powering up the tower offers a total of 25 XP. Destroying them is currently by far the more rewarding approach (you can't go back to destroy them for XP after shutting them down).

If they are meant to be a combat encounter, than I think they should be made more fun and interesting than a 100% guaranteed victory, where the only cost is the player's time. It should be run like a proper encounter (i.e. initiative, etc). Maybe the encounter is eventually meant to be the missing "enemies can use Readied Action" tutorial or something.

Sorry to revive this thread. I managed to destroy the first turret, but can't seem to be able to damage the second.

How can it be done? I don't even know why and how it worked for the first Arcane Turret.

Any hint welcome!

1. You don't want to waste your resource to destroy the turret.
2. what you want is to get into the base of the tower, if you pay attention to the terrain surrounding the tower you'll see a subtle passage that allows you to jump down to the base of the tower.
3. You need 1 character with good lockpicking skills and 1 feather fall potions.
4. If you managed to go to the "back yard" of the tower, pick the glowing flower.
5. get in to the building via locked door.
6. solve the "puzzle" to turn on the tower "electricity" + deactivating the turrets.

Thanks! Good fast anwer!