Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Grymforge encounters

I don't mind a puzzle element in combat sometimes but the balance isn't right.

You don't need to throw all the D&D rules in the trash with some encounters just so you can let players solo them with exploits. Grym is just like that - total immunity or a devastating weakness. No grey area for D&D rules to matter. Puzzles should be about enabling some advantage or disadvantage, not about being the only factor.

It's stupid Grym would have such a glaring achilles heel weakness in his own lair he was created to protect. If he was anywhere else he would be completely unbeatable as you wouldn't be able to sink him in lava. It's ntirely backwards.

And the whole idea of a level 4 party being in such a legendary place, fighting legendary adamantine golems and crafting lackluster equipment using a legendary forge for reward feels completely off.

Especially when you realize that those dangerous weapons and powerfull armors forged deep in the underdark on a forge guarded by an adamantine golem will be outdated when we'll find random +2 items lol

I can assure you: I have used web, grease and ray of frost, mirror image, misty step and magic missile to win the fight. All based on 5e rules.

Well, what if he is powered by the very same lava and activated by the very same machine? The golem seems to have some control on the flow of lava and some defects in the system are possible after so long time. In addition, lava can cut both ways and to a less experienced or organized party, it is a death sentence. I agree the golem is stupid but intelligence has never been once of it selling points. My point is I do not think Larian should spent (much) more efforts on clarifying the lore around the golem. It' is not totally absurd (to me) and I am more interested into the overall story arc and the character development. He is after all... nothing but an optional boss.

The equipment is not lackluster. That's more than the average equipment an army will get.

We can pretend those things matter of course. But the only things that really matter in that fight are the valve, blunt damage and exploiting the AI. A level 1 character with a club can beat him to death once you learn how to exploit the required sequence. A small level 1 party beating up an adamantine golem is throwing D&D rules out the window.

Also, timing hits with the forge showcases the weakness of a turn based system. If they have enough movement to pass through the threat area, you simply can't do it. I'm not sure it's a brilliant idea to include stuff like that.

The crafted adamantine equipment is worse than the +1 armor the very first vendors you find have available. It is very lackluster to craft worse armor at the end of the game than what you buy in the beginning.

I've no strong opinion on puzzle battles other than they don't offer much replayability. They can be interesting to figure out, but after you know the solution, the fight becomes busywork on subsequent playthroughs. After understanding Grym's gimmick, the only things you have to fight are the inconsistent damage zones on lava. Not a great fit for a game people will want to replay to explore different story outcomes.

Grym is a product of the rule of cool overriding good sense in the end. Someone on the design team thought, "it would be cool if the players fought an ancient golem in the forge". Of course, an ancient golem would turn a party of 4-5 level characters into fine paste. So instead of listening to good sense and saving the golem for later, it was given an easily exploitable weakness. I don't know how we can go from this to fighting cutpurses or Flaming Fist members on the streets of Baldur's Gate, but at least we got a cool setpiece fight.

It was definitely not a hard fight but it's one of the few fights when I had my main knocked unconscious (the golem was moving faster than I calculated; things can go wrong in this fight as well). The golem was just an unintelligent machine so I would not worry too much about the fact it was exploitable. Not every encounter can be won with a brute force. Personally, I enjoyed it. Not my favorite fight but it was not bad. Once again, it is an optional boss.

@MrToucan plenty of things to deal with in Baldur's Gate. I can certainly think of a certain vampire lord and his lackeys, for example. I do not think we will be let down with the main story arcs.


Maybe. The turn based system makes an encounter more manageable and that's the reason it is used on a tabletop. In a lot of games as well. You can still manage to pull it off, though.



You've beaten me here. I admit it. I thought they are at least +1 armor in addition to being adamantine. I hope this changes by the time the game is fully released. You know what... Shadowheart looked good in her new armor!

As i am reading that a bit cry of easy fight topic i just got 1 question to all that dont like the fight that is expoitable and to easy due to hammering the golem - so the question is Does anyone force you guys to do that fight using that anvil big baddas hammer, is that the only way u can beat Grym ?. If u dont like that solution to a fight why use is, if you feel that it should be hard fight make it for your gameplay.

Its kinda the same as with Spider Matriarch - ofcource you can range kill her eggs before fight and then just destory the webs she's on, or just play a fight with like taking babyspiders in the face + try to destory as few webs as possible while killing her to make a fight much more chalenging - its up to Us how we like to play our adventures.

This first part might be due in part largely to EA, but Grymforge felt very undercooked. The quests and dialogue and area still seemed like it needed a lot of work.

I agree with someone in this thread who said even the mapping of the terrain and layout needs to be re-visited. It is unnecessarily convoluted and makes no sense as-is.

The combat encounters there are so annoying with everyone having bonus action shove. The AI is just constantly trying to push you into lava, into the water, or off the edge of a cliff for OHKO. It makes the combat just seem so gimmick-y.

I was excited to experience the area when it released, but I felt sooooooooooooooo underwhelmed after I did my playthrough.

I admit to be a little lazy to read through all the posts on here so please forgive me if this has been brought into attention already.

I found out the hard way that going into camp to switch characters, I need Astarion for Lockpicking duties, but not even resting counts towards the "Time Limit" imposed on the "Quest" to get Nere out of the Gas trap room. I tried following the guide over at the Baldur's Gate 3 Wiki on how to navigate Grymforge. And it said that if I took my time to get the Explosives then return to the wreckage that that will cause Nere and the Gnomes to die. But I didn't think switching out party members to get the character I needed for a specific situation counted as wasting time. I mean I didn't even rest for crying out loud. Anyhoo, it's not a major loss in my opinion just kinda stupid.

Grym died in 2 rounds to two level 4 batttlemaster fighters. He was blinded by the sorc, then both battlemaster fighters dumped menacing attack's on him with action surge, an an offhand attack with another mace.

"Was that it?" may have been spoken.

The lava elemental is also super underwhelming.. a chromatic orb can deal 40+ damage to it it you twin it. We took it down to like 7 hp round 1, killed it round 2 even after it got its 35 hp heal.

I don't think Grym should be weak to bludgeoning at all... and he shouldn't be resistant to so much stuff.. like even force damage? really?

But if monsters do have weaknesses, I don't think the right click examine should jsut tell youthem.. pathfinder gives you some information based on your arcana/nature/religion etc checks and I think that makes more sense. But just telling people what somethings weakness is doesn't make it a puzzle. Gryms fight would be a lot less anticlimatic if we didn't know right away that he was weak to bludgeoning.. if we had to experiment a bit to figure it out there would be 1 or 2 rounds of us freaking outthinking nothign was going to work before we finally got the relief of finding outtherewas a way.. but by that time we'd already suffered damage and be on edge.. that would be an interesting fight then.

"Just don't examine then" or "but players can always look it up on a wiki/guide".. It's different when it's part of the game itself.. like you're always able to look up puzzle solutions online, but games don't let you "right click -> solve" puzzles still, that would be ridiculous.

Revealing all monster stats just shows they don't fully understand why you have skills in 5e.

I don't think revealing everything by a simple mouse click is a good idea to begin with. They teach the player to metagame and know everyone's strengths and weaknesses automatically. There is no room for trial and error which can be much more rewarding.

But mostly it's a neglect to make use for skills like Arcana and Nature to let smart characters get their spotlight.

Larian seem to enjoy metagaming though. In a gameplay vid Swen seemed to enjoy ambushing and sneaking past enemies the characters did not know were there. I would prefer a playstyle that would not make heavy use of metagame information. In an RPG, if you are to assume the role of the characters and role play you need to relinquish your role as the omniscient player first. It's an immersion thing too and I don't think that's one of Larian's strengths so far.

And what exactly is stoping you? O_o