Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General THE HAUL: 84,694 Gold In Treasure (Is there TOO MUCH loot in the game?)

So, I'm a pretty thorough player when it comes to RPGs. A bit of a completionist. Very much an explorer. And a compulsive looter. And after my 100+-hour playthrough of early access, I ended up with a lot of treasure. Like, a frankly comical amount, by the standards of any D&D campaign.

I've seen various posts from people about how easy pickpocketing is, and how much money and stuff you can get from doing it, and I have no doubt that is the case. I tried out just a wee bit of it, and it seemed pretty easy. But my wealth did not come from pickpocketing. I only lifted a few story items, a few cheap potions, and a very small amount of coin before I got bored with the idea of pinching purses. So almost everything in this post was gotten through adventuring, not by being a...



profligate pilferer predatorily picking pockets

personally pursuing purely purloined profits



sorry, sometimes that just happens



I didn't use much in the way of consumables during my playthrough. I tend to hoard these things, saving them up for when I "really need them", and in the case of this EA experience, I never really needed them. I just didn't find any of the encounters to be terribly hard. None of my characters ever died, even. But THAT also has a lot to do with my super-slow playstyle. So it's a trade-off.

Anyway, so this isn't quite EVERYTHING that I found in the playthrough. I used a few items, left a few things behind when I didn't want to steal, and also sold a fair number of magic equipment items as well.



So what did I get?

At the end of the playthrough, this is what I had:



Gold Pieces: 30,114



Keys: 28



Books and Notes: 187

- 6 to 8 not picked up (but I invisibly read them all!)

- (33 pounds of books and notes!)



Permanent Equippable Magic Items: 47

- also sold 12 to 14 others ()





Barrels: 82

20 Smokepowder Barrels - used 0

25 Firewine Barrels - used 0

21 Oil Barrels - used 0

16 Water Barrels - used 4 or 5 to put out fires



Healing/Buffing Potions: 172

86 Potions of Healing - used 10 to 12

16 Potions of Greater Healing - used 1 or 2

3 Potions of Superior Healing - used 0

3 Potions of Vitality - used 0

8 Antitoxins - used 0

3 Potions of Animal Speaking - used 3 or 4

9 Potions of Hill Giant Strength - used 1

9 Potions of Speed - used 1

7 Potions of Invisibility - used 1

4 Potions of Poison Resistance - used 0

1 Potion of Acid Resistance - used 0

5 Potions of Force Resistance - used 0

8 Potions of Fire Resistance - used 0

4 Potions of Cold Resistance - used 0

1 Potion of Psychic Resistance - used 0

4 Potions of Lightning Resistance - used 0

1 Potion of Flight - used 0



Food: 662 food items across 53 food item types

- (748 pounds of food!)

See my other post for the specific breakdown of food items, and how much each one heals for: Foods Post!



Miscellaneous Utility Items, Throwables, Weapon Coatings, Special Arrows, etc.: 302

12 Scrolls of Revivify - used 0

1 Lump's War Horn - not used

42 Thieves' Tools - broke 6 to 8

23 Trap Disarm Toolkits - broke 0

2 Basilisk Oils - used 0

26 bottles of Water - used 1 or 2

2 Wyvern Poisons - used 0

44 Basic Poisons - used 6 or 7

5 Oils of Sharpness - used 0

1 [Pacification Spore Sac] - used 0

1 Pacifying Spore Pouch - used 0

1 Bibberbang Spore Pouch - used 0

6 Void Bulbs - used 0

3 Caustic Bulbs - used 0

5 Spiked Bulbs - used 0

8 Bombs - used 0

17 Grease Bottles - used 1

4 Acid Vials - used 1

2 Poisonous Slime Bombs - used 0

2 Flammable Slime Bombs - used 0

1 Smokepowder Satchel - used 0

2 Fire Bottles - used 0

33 Alchemist's Fires - used 2 or 3

3 Potions of Sleep - used 0

2 Potions of Fire Breath - used 0

14 Arrows of Acid - used 0

12 Arrows of Fire - used 1

11 Arrows of Roaring Thunder - used 0

9 Arrows of Lightning - used 0

4 Arrows of Ice - used 0

2 Arrows of Ilmater - used 0

2 Arrows of Darkness - used 0



Spell Scrolls: 129

- also sold 15-20 scrolls I didn't want, and copied 5 or 6 into Gale's spellbook

9 Scrolls of Hold Person - used 0

9 Scrolls of Cure Wounds - used 0

6 Scrolls of Aid - used 0

6 Scrolls of Grease - used 0

6 Scrolls of Misty Step - used 1 or 2

5 Scrolls of Shocking Grasp - used 0

5 Scrolls of Acid Arrow - used 0

5 Scrolls of Mage Armour - used 0

5 Scrolls of Guiding Bolt - used 0

5 Scrolls of Detect Thoughts - used 0

4 Scrolls of Protection from Good and Evil - used 0

4 Scrolls of Fire Bolt - used 0

4 Scrolls of Colour Spray - used 0

4 Scrolls of False Life - used 0

4 Scrolls of Burning Hands - used 0

4 Scrolls of Disguise Self - used 0

3 Scrolls of Witch Bolt - used 0

3 Scrolls of Fog Cloud - used 0

3 Scrolls of Feather Fall - used 2

3 Scrolls of Animal Friendship - used 0

3 Scrolls of Lesser Restoration - used 0

2 Scrolls of Sleep - used 0

2 Scrolls of Ray of Sickness - used 0

2 Scrolls of Blindness - used 0

2 Scrolls of Bless - used 0

2 Scrolls of Healing Word - used 0

2 Scrolls of Shield of Faith - used 0

2 Scrolls of Charm Person - used 0

2 Scrolls of Invisibility - used 0

2 Scrolls of Summon Quasit - used 0

1 Scroll of Web - used 0

1 Scroll of Ray of Frost - used 0

1 Scroll of Blur - used 0

1 Scroll of Ray of Enfeeblement - used 0

1 Scroll of Entangle - used 0

1 Scroll of Armour of Agathys - used 0

1 Scroll of Magic Missile - used 0

1 Scroll of Thunderwave - used 0

1 Scroll of Mirror Image - used 0

1 Scroll of Inflict Wounds - used 0

1 Scroll of Bane - used 0



TOTAL HAUL:

3,523 pounds (1,598 kilograms) of stuff

84,694 gold piece value





(You doing all right there, Gale?)




(I put EVERYTHING into the chest so I could see the total value. (Do you know how long it takes to right-click and click Send to Camp on that many items?))



So, if you're wondering about how much stuff you can get in a full playthrough of BG3 early access, here you go. That's without much thievery, I mean. Obviously, you can get infinite gold by just resting and pickpocketing merchants over and over, but I didn't do any of that.



So what's the point?

In my opinion, this is an excessive amount of loot. Considering that this is just Act One of the game and we're only 4th-Level Characters! I mean, okay, probably I'd be 5th-Level if not for the cap. But even so, this is a ludicrous amount of items and wealth. This is like an ancient dragon's hoard. I can hardly even imagine how much stuff I'd have by the actual end of the game.

Now, I find this to be a problem in most RPGs, so it's not unique to Larian or to BG3. But in this case, it just feels very early in the game to have amassed so much. At least, thinking about it in D&D terms. This is like the most Monty Haul campaign ever!

What do you all think? Is our DM (Larian) being a bit too generous? Or am I just crazy?

Excellent work as usual.

Hope people will see the issue rather than just claiming this is amusing and then never give it a second thought.

As impressive as this unsettling feat of OCD is, most people aren't going to spend hours on end just dedicated to combing through every possible thing and for the sake of being able to make a post like this.
Most depths won't be plumbed and many containers will go unchecked, so the amount of sheer stuff that needs to exist does so to guarantee that even a player who is only a mild packrat will be able to maintain a respectable coin purse and decent resources.

So as impressive as this is and as for as good of a post as this makes for the sheer "huh, neat" factor, I really don't think that anything needs to be toned down.

That's rather irrelevant.
I don't think the point is if people are going to replicate the OP's exploits, as much as the fact that probably the devs should put at least some thought, if not even some effort ideally, into making inventory management less busywork.
The bgas can quicly reach "endgame" levels of cluttering before we are even entering Act 2. if that isn't alarming in terms of what i suggests for the pace of the future hours, I don't know what is it.

The data points you keep bringing up are great. The best/worst thing is that this is all compiled in a database on Larian's end and they would be able to give these exact stats. So the question is how to make that data relevant. What do we want to do with those numbers. As you bring up there is too much "stuff" and the management of it is tedious (admittedly we don't' have to pick it all up, but those are all interaction points and decisions, and often ignored items because of the tedium).

The value is somewhat relevant, because you want the players to be able to earn money. There are no repeatable fetch quests to do, so the only way to make money is to sell to vendors and/or to steal (beyond the occasional looted currency).

Vendor finances refresh and are an infinite supply of gold, while items in the game are finite, realistically the best way to make money is to pickpocket it and ignore the tedium....this is actually a problem because the items left in the world for us to interact with are in essence pointless.

Better reason/interaction with the world items and inventory management is needed.

More variable vendor wants may be good. Say, potion vendors will pay more for herbs versus a weapon/armor vendor. This could cause bad quality of life though because it forces players to jump from vendor to vendor when they just want to unload items.

Or maybe it is fine, and having a world with that much stuff allows players to do new and different things every time.

No real right answers, just thoughts.


(edit)

One bonus thought is that you just helped create a "right" way to play by listing out all the items such as spells. If, for example, a mage wanted to get every spell in the game, but there are some scrolls missing from the world....that would let them know what spells to pick to learn versus which ones they can just transcribe later.

I noticed "jump" is not listed in there, so now I know to learn jump as I level and just loot the magic missile scroll and transcribe it when I get it to fill out my spellbook.

Feel free to also address the rest of my comment where I mentioned the fact that the average person won't touch 20% of this stuff in any given playthrough.

I guess I just don't understand the purpose of the post outside of being informative to let people know that they can make a ton of money and get a lot of resources if they scour everything.
I don't know why the less than 1% of players who would go to these lengths should be penalized for investing this much time into busywork, nor do I think that things need to be toned down because most people won't do this.
As Larian likely isn't going to start gutting all of the objects in the world because they're worried that people who are invested enough will be rewarded for it, the question attached to the post is confusing.

Nice, since you have way bigger collection then I, how bad is the weight in the game for items. I know I have like 80 potatoes and they only way 8lbs total, wondering how silly does it really get.

It's an analysis of the game content and if it is superfluous or adds benefit. Is there too much clutter and it could be streamlined, or does the variety add context and immersion. Are the spread of items balanced or create a "meta" as I mentioned with the scrolls causing a more efficient way to level up by selecting spells not found in the world.

Not directly obvious by just listing items, but analysis of how/why/where these things are is always interesting. I think it is good to understand the game to the finest details, especially in EA for feedback. I have a feeling a lot of items are just placed just to place them to fill out the world as anyone who has built maps/rooms for a game before. Little things add a polishing touch. Normally they are just for decoration, but now these are interactables and also have "value". These objects were probably picked from an entity list and just placed, but not always considering how they impact the game as whole.

Good chance to identify issues here.

I don't know. As for useable loot I think the only thing you could really do is compare to other games. I mean, in IWD2 you can end up with an insane amount of magic ammo by the end of the game. BG gives you stacks on stacks of gems and jewelry. Potions and scrolls galore in all those games. In BG3 what I had was an impressive amount of junk.. goblets, forks, dinner plates, candles, etc. The amount of actually good and useable items seems fine to me compared to other games of this nature whereas the amount of junk seems on par with TES games which I'm not sure we need..... but then again we don't have to pick everything up.

Thanks! I mean, it's fine if people just think it's amusing, or they think there's no problem with loot. I'm not trying to demand that something be changed, here. I just want to have the discussion about it, see what other people think.

Yeah. I felt free. And I decided not to, because I wasn't interested.

Of course most people won't collect all this. But my point is kinda that this is SO much, that even if you only collected a THIRD of this, it would still be a pretty massive amount of loot for this stage of the game and this character level. Now, for some people that's really not a problem at all. I have one friend who only plays games for the loot, he wants all the loot possible, he would never, ever, think a game has too much loot. But I'm an old school D&D player, and a long-time DM. So I think in terms of game balance and what's really appropriate at a given level of character development. They won't even let us have a suit of plate mail (or splint mail!) at this point, presumably because we're "too low level for armor that expensive" or something, but they'll pack the world with 80,000 gold worth of magic stuff and cash.

With this, the colossal amount of consumable items, and all the barrelmancy stuff, and all the other weird little exploits you can do to trivialize encounters without actually having to play your characters like you would in D&D, sometimes I feel like the folks at Larian consider just using your characters' actual abilities to be BORING. Like, "sure, D&D is okay, but what if we could just use a bunch of crazy shit instead of playing characters with defined capabilities?"

Y'know, all the Larianisms were perfectly fine in the Divinity games. That was THEIR system, THEIR world, THEIR story, THEIR tone, THEIR themes, THEIR gameplay that they designed in THEIR style. And those games are great, they're tons of fun. You can't really criticize their excesses, because that's what the Divinity games are ALL ABOUT. It's their own original RPG milieu, they get to define it however they want. And I fully support them in that.

But now, they're making a D&D game. An official, licensed, D&D game, using someone else's ruleset, and someone else's world, and someone else's tone and themes and gameplay philosophy. I do NOT mind them making some house rules and adapting things to be a more enjoyable video game. To an extent. Of course they should have some creative freedom, both narratively and mechanically. But they should also pay attention to the way the source RPG feels and is designed to play, and try not to step too far away from that.

I'm not saying that they necessarily HAVE gone too far, I'm just wondering about it. I'm just pondering it. It's not terrible by any means. But it does give me pause. It makes me wonder if they really "get" D&D. Because no other D&D video game has been this Monty Haul, this quickly. You might amass a lot of stuff in other D&D titles, but you amass it by the END of the game, by the time you're high level. You don't have the contents of Elminster's Vault by level 5, 25% of the way through the game. And the reason you don't, is because that's not how D&D was designed to be played, it's not the expected experience. So I just wonder if Larian really intends this, and if so, why? It's not a Divinity game, they shouldn't just port over all of their normal game design philosophies one-for-one into a D&D product.

I'm not one of those people who are running around saying, "This isn't D&D! This is just DOS 3!" and so forth. I've argued against those people, quite a bit. I've been defending Larian in this regard, and will continue to do so. But I also think that Early Access is exactly the time when we should be having these discussions. When we should be asking these questions. When we should say, "okay hold on a second now, this might not be the best" when we feel things are off about the experience they've crafted so far. As far as I know, they WANT us to be raising these issues to attention. So let's talk about it.

Well, the thing with that is, a lot of the loot is randomized in this game. I mean, all the big items are always in the same place, but the contents of every little crate and barrel are not the same every game. So things like the scrolls are not always going to be the same ones, in the same amounts, every time. Just because I found a scroll of Blur, doesn't guarantee that you will.

Also, I did sell some scrolls, and scribed a few into Gale's spellbook. So it's possible that I did find a scroll of Jump, and scribed it, and then never found another one, so it's not on the list. I can't remember for sure. I definitely wouldn't have sold any Jump scrolls though, as it's pretty much my favorite spell in the game. I sold all the Speak with Dead scrolls I found, and there were quite a few, because I already had an infinite Speak with Dead amulet. There were a few other spells that for whatever reason I felt I would never use, so I sold those too. I did keep the vast majority of the scrolls I found, "just in case".

So anyway, that should not be taken as a definitive list of exactly what scrolls you can always find in the game. But it can give you an idea of how rare certain things are relative to other things. Like, I found roughly 50 Thieves' Tools. So that means they're pretty plentiful, and you probably don't need to worry about losing some. I found about 35 Alchemist's Fires, but only 5 Acid Vials. So if you're wondering which one of those you should hold on to, and which you can "waste", go ahead and burn (no pun intended) the Alchemist's Fire, because they're a lot more plentiful. Use all the Basic Poison you want, but be sparing with the Arrows of Darkness. That sort of thing.

I mean, most of the stuff I found, I didn't use at all. But apparently I should have, because there was so much of it available that I didn't need to hoard anything.

I don't think the question confused you, because you just answered it. And I appreciate you doing so, so thanks for sharing your opinion.

Oh, the weight gets insane. You can't carry all this stuff around, you have to keep most of it in your camp chest most of the time. I had 748 pounds of JUST FOOD.

I don't feel like actually testing this right now, but I'm pretty sure if you go and make a character in Baldur's Gate, and level them up to 5, and see how much stuff you have, it will pale in comparison to this.

So is the point being made that the previous Baldur's Gate games which were made 20 years ago and hampered by technical limitations shouldn't have a quality of life improvement such as an obscene amount of gold laying around for the 1% of people in the game who would do something like this to capitalize on? If so, how does that affect anyone's play experience?

Those like you who would want to hunt down every last scrap of junk in the world that's available would be rewarded for their efforts by an experience filled with riches beyond their wildest dreams. In that case, if you don't want to break things so badly, you could just edit yourself and not pick up every last thing to have 80,000 gold so that you're not tempted to wipe out merchants for their best stuff.

Those unlike you, the average player, will barely run across a fraction of this stuff and will have to manage their resources more carefully. And as video game developers make things that appeal to the largest possible base in order to make sales, Larian is unlikely to tone down the junk in the world so that those casually running through the game aren't pigeonholed into poking around through every wayward barrel so that the pacing of the game doesn't get killed by monotony.

If you're asking Larian to tone down the amount of available stuff in the world because there's just too much available, how do they balance what's enough stuff so that the average player doesn't end up in a resource bottleneck because an outspoken minority of hoarders think that the gold economy is an issue?

If the point being made is that the game doesn't feel like it's faithful to D&D because too many resources are available, and you're using D:OS2's easily-exploitable economy to make the point because the games share some similarity, then I wonder about the argument that's actually being made. It comes off as "this isn't as close to a tabletop experience as I was hoping for," which is likely going to be disregarded because that was never the intent and it's not a popular point that's being made.

I mean, I applaud you for the grand exercise and extensive playtime devoted to meticulously picking things up for the sake of saying "Hey, people have access to a lot of stuff if they're patient enough to collect it all," but I don't see how that's a bad thing for anyone besides the people who are upset for some reason that players have a lot of playstyle options.

Where does this 1% number come from? Did you just make that up? Neither you or I know what the percentage is of completionist/explorer type players. I have a friend who plays RPGs who actually has OCD, and he chides me for not being completionist ENOUGH. Maybe it's 5%. Maybe it's 20%. I don't think that either of us know.

Game designers DO think about how much resources to put in their game, how much to make available at any given time, how quickly players can progress in power, how easy it is to heal, how often they can use powerful effects in battle, and so on. Every RPG developer considers these questions, makes their calculations, and decides how to answer them. And the answer that they come up with determines how the game FEELS to play. In can even determine what subgenre the game is placed in. There are games which are entirely about loot, total loot pinata games, that's what they're known for. That gives one feeling of gameplay. There are games where everything is scarce and you're struggling to survive, and that's a totally different feeling of gameplay. So every developer has to decide where they want to fall on that spectrum.

Larian put all this stuff in the game for a reason. They want people to search those containers, they want people to explore and find the hidden caches and secret items, they want people to GET the stuff. They wouldn't have spent all the time putting it in the game otherwise. If anything, maybe I'm the one playing the way the developers hoped people would. Do you think all those devs who built all those places that I found and "the average player" as you put it doesn't find, do you think they got done designing those areas and programming everything and stocking them with items and then said, "I sure hope no players find THIS place."

People don't always know what's ultimately going to be fun or satisfying for them. That's why game designers have to be smart enough to know that for them, and when they do this correctly, their game becomes beloved. Eating a piece of candy is a delight, but eating 100 pieces of candy makes you sick. Too much reward makes reward meaningless, it takes away the excitement of further rewards. When you're new in the game and you are getting your ass kicked and you have no healing potions left, and then you FIND a healing potion, you're thrilled. You're so grateful to have found a healing potion! But when you have 200 healing potions, and you find one, you don't give even the slightest shit about it, you might not even bother to pick it up. Treasure has become trash.

If more was always better, devs would just give you everything right away. Every rat would drop 1,000,000 gold, because hey, why not, people like getting loot, right? But they don't do that, because it would cheapen the game, eliminate a sense of progression, and remove the aspirational aspect of working toward something and then having the satisfaction of eventually getting it. But as you say, "how do they balance what's enough stuff"? Right? That's the tricky part. That's what they're getting paid to figure out. And Early Access is the time when those very questions are still up in the air. They asked for our feedback. These forums are here for us to discuss these things. Just as it's appropriate for people to say, "we think you made X fight too hard" or "we think you should change how Disengage works" or any other balancing issue, it's no less appropriate to bring up the topic of loot density. Because maybe this isn't the best they could do, and maybe it's more than 1% of people who think so.

I do something simular, in games I am a hoarder of stuff. I am surprised of no monetion on gemstones, especially all the glowing gems you can mine in the underdark. 5 stacks of 99 units and some you can get worth 10k gold (less if you actually put them up

Hey I did a whole post on those glowing gems. https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=723522#Post723522

I got about 500 of them.