Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Loot too stingy?

First, let me say that I'm not looking for Diablo-style sprays of gold and fancy objects every time I kill something in this game. But does anyone else feel that we're not getting much satisfaction from the loot aspect of the game?

For the majority of Act 1 the Wizard in my party has been running around with the same robe he started with. My MC Rogue/Thief has his same armor. Everyone has +1 melee or ranged weapons now, but there are few variations to choose from, to fit my play style. No belts, no rings, just one amulet (talk to the dead) that's only useful out of combat.

I realize there are balance issues, and we don't want a level 1-4 party overpowered. But I think Larian could do more with variety of lower-level weapons and armor of roughly the same level. It would give us that occasional thrill of finding something special when finding a fancy chest.

My wife and I played co-op through the BG games and the DOS games. She's one of those magpie players who has to loot everything in sight, and enjoys the variety of new things to wear and use. I haven't tried co-op with her yet because we'll wait for the full release, but so far I don't think she'd like this game. The loot is unappealing, and I hope it's just because it's EA.

There is a serious lack of loot right now. But I think it's already better than what we had in dos2 that every minute you find a new piece of armor.

I think that if anything the game is being rather generous with the amount of loot it offers for the level we reach.

That said, more than stingy it's... poorly distributed in terms of variety, I would say. For instance there isn't a single decent heavy armor in the entire EA. While on the other hand you can find, say, at least 3 very good two hand weapons and a couple of excellent pendants.

I really think it's due to early EA.
There isn't any heavy armor in the game if i'm not wrong.

But yea actually the game is not enough rewarding.
Many magical items whatever they are green or even blue just suck. I'm not waiting to find absolutely awesome items in act 1 but there I equip items just to fill empty slots, not because they are usefull.

I think (hope) that the whole itemization of the first act is far from finalized.

There is a weird abundance of 2handed martial named weapons (I think I found 3 before level 4, before finding another magic weapon from non-vendors).
There is far too much vendor trash loot (shortsword 37x, ok...).
Then there is flavor loot (1g and 1 pound, no use in game) - I could do without any of this at all.
Most of the locked chests I opened had 15g in them.
There are about 5x more containers then there should be, most of which are empty (not advocating they all have something, please reduce the number of containers!).

I can see them making certain slots like rings more rare, or at higher level so you wouldn't get them early, but yeah... it still doesn't seem very well distributed.
I'd like less loot overall, but more well rounded and meaningful loot.

That's common in pnp, you usually don't change your items all the time, and if your are buying them they are usually expensive so you have to save for some time to be able to buy something good. Heavy armor should be rarer too as it is more expensive.
Remember that a common complaint about dos2 was that there was too many items and you would keep changing it every level. I particularly don't find that immersive.

I'm of the opposite opinion. There is a bit too much loot, especially in shops (these druids and tieflings have multiple +1 weapons in their shops and don't use them for defending the grove!?!? What?!?!!)

@Frumpkis: I've found like 3-4 rings, 5-6 amulets, no belts though. There are even more in game: check out [item SPOILERs] https://baldursgate3.wiki.fextralife.com/Accessories for the full list of magic rings and amulets alone. There are also numberous boots, helmets, and shields to be found.
In my casual playthroughs where I don't try to find absolutely everything, I can often get ~2 rings and ~3 amulets pretty easily

I think the number of magic items found in the world is fine, but vendors should have less items and less powerful items (The Sapphire Spark is pretty powerful!). Maybe one +1 item at most.
Then we could find more generic +1 items in the world.

Exactly. Decrease the quantity and increase the variety.

It's not a good idea to shift it the other way either. Of course, in the full game it will be much more than the pnp.
It is difficult to determine how many items the player should get so that he does not get bored and at the same time not to overwhelm him with too many items.

Larian tends to balance loot a lot later in development. That said, loot sucks. I discovered a semi-hidden chest that you need a high-STR character to leap across to reach, and it contained a single 12 gp agate stone in it. And in this game 12 gp is nigh-worthless.

I don't think there's too little loot, they could reduce the magic items by roughly 75% if it were for me. I prefer loot to be logical rather than getting showered with magic stuff.

The complains about shops admittedly feel a bit weird to me.
What's in a shop inventory is not equal to available loot. Even Kingmaker had a certain amount of +1 magic weapons immediately on sale by the very first merchant you meet... And yet chances are at that point of the game you could hardly afford any.
Did people forget that in BG2 some merchants(shops were already selling "end game" items the very first moment you crossed them, which was potentially minutes after leaving the Irenicus tutorial dungeon?

I'm fine with shops in Baldur's Gate having a bunch of generic +1 weapons and armor. But it just feels weird that I can find so many (like 10?) magic items being sold by the Grove vendors. One is a druid (he literally says he has "odd bits and ends" for sale) and the other is a refugee (who somehow has a bunch of magic weapons). I feel that it doesn't make sense and cheapens the specialness of magic items.

I don't remember the beginning of P:Km. If a similar amount of +1 weapons were available and that merchant had a similar status (i.e., refugee), then I probably would argue against that too. But also, magic items are much more prevalent in Pathfinder than 5e.

I didn't play BG2 so I can't really comment.

I wouldnt say that magical items are hard to come by, specially amulets the game seems to have in abudance. Martial weapons are also foujd very frequently.

That said even mundane heavy armor is exceptionally rare in the game atm. Same goes for simple magical weapons, they seem to be quite rare..... whats more the issue (imo) is that the vendors sell alot of em. And the few ones that we find are actually suprisingly power.

DnD isn't really a game where you're expected to constantly be upgrading your gear. Typically you choose your starting equipment so you can play your basic build out the gate, which is something BG3 could very much use. Then you save up gold for upgrades that are few and far between, which each upgrade being a pretty big deal rather than a negligible improvement.

And when you find a really good magic item that could reasonably stay with you the entire game. Players don't typically replace their magic equipment with superior quality every couple levels like in most loot-based RPGs.

I like this method because it makes magic items stand out a LOT more. In my first game I got that bone-club of Yeenoghu and it was my main weapon for the rest of Act 1, and I'd honestly expect to keep it as my main weapon for the rest of the game. Or, if I find a magic item I like the enchantment of more, I'd feel inclined to keep the bone because of its unique healing properties and whip it out for emergencies because I can be reasonably sure I'll never find something that is just a straight upgrade from it, just sidegrades.

This allows the magic items you find to really shape your character's build and story. A knight with an enchanted blade that has been with him through countless battles is way more interesting to roleplay than a knight who keeps finding new, slightly stronger magic swords and abandoning the old ones as he goes.



Yah, this is the real problem. The only heavy armor in the game is absolutely garbage. 14AC and disadvantage on stealth? That is on par with a mid-tier medium armor you can get from the very first dungeon crawl you'll find in the game. Off the bandits outside that dungeon at that!

Considering a fighter should start with chainmail, yeah its garbage....

Since it sounds like some people aren't aware, there is 16 AC chainmail a bit further into the EA. It should definitely be accessible much sooner though. I'll let someone that knows how to add spoiler tags tell you where it is. Or you can find it with a quick google search.

Why bother with loot when you can rob all the merchants like in the other Larian games.

I mean, you’re right. Loots are bad as is, but I’m currently leaning more to say that there’s too much potions & food across the world map
It’s not evenly distributed and some special chests aren’t rewarding.

I mean, because it's not one of the past Larian games where loot could literally materialize out of every crate and every single meaningful item in the game is handplaced?

As in most D&D adaptations (unless Larian fucks things up too badly) by mid game we will easily reach the point where the single right drop at the right moment will be more valuable for the player than anything else in a merchant's inventory.

That aside, I wish they could handle pickpocket in the same way BG2 did: where the vendor has just one or two notable items in his "pockets" and doesn't let you loot his whole inventory.

Looting inventory seems to be harder, i.e. triggering a pickpocket failure than just looting the merchant's gold, so you can buy whatever you want. I can't remember how it worked in DOS2, but I don't think we could pickpocket their gold, just the inventory items.

Just removing merchant gold as a pickpocket item would be a start to fixing the merchant pickpocket issues, which are not the quite same as the "loot too stingy" issues although they're related.