Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback BG3 Resting discussion

Mod edit: renamed. Original thread name; "Story Progression - Long Rest/Camping"


On my first play through I tend to not want to camp, and only rested maybe 2 or 3 times through the whole run (more towards the end). I didn't know the positives/negatives of camping and if that would cause acceleration of the infection in my characters head or not so I limited time progression as much as possible.

This resulted in my first run through missing out on a ton of character development and story line due to not engaging in conversations or having dream sequences.

Proposed that there be a little bit more "hand walking" into your first camp/long rest, to:

1) explain where the player camp is on the map and lore wise make sense as the end of the "first day" after crashing.
2) help tutorial game mechanics about recovering spells, advancing relationship/storyline markers
3) Introduce a forced save point and open up story to let players explore as a natural hand off point from the game introducing you to the world and letting you run off on your own.

+1

What's worse is the conflicting messaging in the game. You have Lez directly informing of the urgency of your situation and chastising you for for resting without sufficient cause the first time you stop. . .And then the game counting on you ignoring both her and the plot in order to develop your bonds with your party.

+1

I Think i'ts Really weird this behavior from going directly from where you are to the camp, i've seen a scene where the player is locked on a cell without a rogue on the party, so he simply take a rest, go to camp, switch party members to have a rogue and than picklock the cell, it was really immersion breaking.
My Sugestion is: if you are inside a dungeon, don't allow player to take long rest (why would you do that on a hostile environment) or simply during the rest skip the time and don't allow the user to go to camp, only allowing to go to the camp if you are in world map

no one else feels the same ???

A lot of people think the same; its just that this has been disussed what feels like a million times in this forum by now.

sorry then, i'm new here, i'll delete the post if i can

There are 100 reasons that long rests should be restricted to specific locations, and on long rest, minor enemies should re-spawn.

Mainly, you can’t exploit it. It gates player progress in a logical manner for scripting purposes, it builds immersion instead of breaking it.

I agree. I feel if you are on the open world then fast traveling to camp and resting is perfectly fine but in Dungeons it seems kinda weird to go to camp and then start right back in the dungeon where you were.

+1

As long as the game is really good about making and keeping auto saves so you don't get yourself in a lose/lose situation. I'd you push too far into the temple, say, and can't get back out without resting, you wouldn't want to have to restart the whole game.

Rethink short rest limit, make that resting away from camp, and require long rests in camps or settlements.

I totally agree.
It's actually very immersion breaking and it works like an exploit bug.
Resting feel totally disconnected to the story you're writing and it's absolutely not an interresting part of the gameplay...

We definitely shouldn't be able to click that button everywhere without any consequences and it shouldn't work as a fast travel.
Resting has to be part of the things players have to manage and think about. Not the cheesy way to heal/restore spell slots/skills...

Localized rest won't solve anything about that mecanic, but it will are least solve everything about immersion.

Yeah, you shouldn't be able to long-rest with enemies around.. or it should trigger some form of encounter, but you shouldn't be back at camp and then back in the dungeon.. that is indeed odd..

Maybe ability to long-rest in the dungeon but then have there be a possibility for encounter. That's what pathfinder did as well. instanced maps with encounters. I think camp should have been an actual location on the map you should be able to fast travel too.

Long rest should not change UNTIL other things change though. Right now there are lots of balance issues with multiple things so long rest should stay the same. Short rest needs to change, and ofc encounters.

It would be less immersion-breaking if the transition was explained in-game. For example, the MC starts the game with a ring of teleportation that moves the party to a campsite and back. That's basically what happens but it's not explained.

When it comes to manage rest, I liked a lot how Kingmaker managed it (carrying rations in dungeons, hunting in the wild, setting guards, etc).

I sort of wish BG3 would go for something similar. Well, let's say its "high production value" equivalent, where they could throw their character interactions at you.

P.S. On a side note, I really don't like the fact that you can still directly control your companions while you reach the camp.
Entering/browsing their inventory is fine (and if anything you should be able to do it even if they aren't in your party at the moment) but I think Larian is missing the chance to let them express their personality more doing their own things, rather than just standing around waiting to be clicked on.

I always wondered where all those mobs I just killed came from in a respawn system. I mean, are there limitless numbers of mobs hanging out in a dungeon? How do they feed that population?

It's also really easy to exploit, just not the way you're thinking. Clear a couple of rooms, do a long rest, clear those rooms again, do a long rest, etc. etc. That is, essentially, how dungeons in MMOs work, after all, at least, in MMOs where they aren't instanced. In MMOs where they are, the vast majority of MMOs that I've played don't have respawns in the dungeon.

If rests are allowed in certain areas, where you may have an encounter/ambush while trying to rest, is like there to be a mechanic added that shows a probability range. The accuracy of predicting that window could have factors into it based on skills like survival and other abilities. Perhaps even allowing to set up a watch, or other things to reduce the window.

Example area X
Pop up “resting here these is a 20-40% chance”
-use skill/ability/spell/watch/etc
Updated “there is a 15-20% chance”
Rest now?

Yeah, one thing that is kind of off-putting to me is the rest system. It was just unintuitive to me. I just finished my first play-through, and I love where the game is going. I'm also new to D&D, but I have played similar CRPGs such as Pathfinder: Kingmaker and I watch Critical Role so I'm not completely in the dark.

When I started my play-through, I saw that my Cleric and Wizard had two level 1 spell slots that could only be filled on long rest. Makes sense. I also saw some resources refilled with a short rest. With some research, I found out you get one short rest per long rest. This was good to know after doing a quick google search. I guess I could have found out through trial and error but nothing in game explains this that I know of.

So I figured that I better manage my rests and my spell usage, because I can only reset my spell slots after a long rest. I took my first long rest after my party was beaten up and I was out of spells. Great! I got all my resources refilled! Then I looked for some sort of debuff and/or timer that would say something like, "Your party has rested recently, you cannot rest for X time or until you do X amount of stuff..." Nope.

Ok, I thought. When I rest I go back to my camp. So maybe the cost is my time. If I'm in a dungeon or in the middle of the goblin camp, I can't just magically teleport to my camp and refill all my resources...surely? Wrong again. Once the battle is over, I can long rest and get all my spells back no problem.

I mean, I was relieved to have figured this out. "Cool! I can use my spells as much as I want!!" To be honest, I thought it made my Cleric and Wizard more fun to play once I realized I can just abuse the rest system. I do wonder if this is intended though. Is Early Access balanced around this infinite rest principle but will later be patched?

I just think of it as the player character uses the powers to teleport to the camp and back. I do agree they should explain on how you and the party gets to the camp and back.

I actually went the other way. I was terrified to long rest because there is almost literally a time bomb in your head. I thought the game had a time system built in to it and if I rested too much I'd die outright. I would go as far as I possibly could, working through many smaller fights on just cantrips alone. Once I discovered that food heals you better than a cleric I started scumming that and went almost entirely without resting at all. I got through the entire goblin fort, cleared all the bosses in there, the spider fight, etc and I have only done 2 long rests. Cantrips were/are my best friends. After reading the forums it seems due to my obsession with 'not' resting I'm missing out on some story elements with the NPCs.

I think this all needs to be more clearly represented.