Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Feedback: Running into fights which aren't winnable is no fun (small Spoilers inside)

That is the thing ...
There isnt such fight in game curently ... yes some are tough, and yes some require player to use head differently than smash your oponent with it ... but every SITUATION is solveable, even if that mean simply walk away and return later. :P

I had to re-do that battle several times and we still got our arses handed to us on a platinum platter. Couldn't figure out how they were getting multiple attacks each to our one attack each. And what really got me is how they were connecting and killing Shadowheart who has a 19 AC and used shield of Faith which is +2 AC for a total of 21 and they were killing her as if she had nothing on? They couldn't have been that lucky to kill her like that there and they didn't even have + weapons.

Well, let's see the Matriarch spiders killed 4th level Shadowheart with a 21 ac in 2 hits how is that there even possible? After all they don't even have + weapons and believe me I tried everything including oil barrels and fire

Because as you can see, no one else here is having those problems. Ive played several play throughs, if I ever had an issue I learned from it and applied my knowledge to try a better route or solution. Its called playing a game. I dont expect games to hold my hand I expect them to challenge me. There are multiple routes you can take the game, it does not force you to go in one direction. Just because you chose to follow that route doesnt make it a problem with the design. If anything they should increase the difficulty in this game. It holds your hand and practically begs you to exploit it.

The first time I fought the spider, It was very difficult and time consuming and I won.

The second time I played against the spider I knew what to look out for and I examined the creature prior and took notes and prepared properly for battle. It sounds like you arent preparing properly and expecting to win battles based on superior leveling. This isnt skyrim. You have to properly prep and use different weapons based on the enemies resistances, use candles to light your weapons on fire, bless your party, save and use scrolls for buffs so they dont take from your spell slots, cast any buffs that are not concentration required or that can be recharged with a short rest, armor buff the caster who blessed your party or who used any concentration spells, short rest after buffsx, split up your party members and take multiple routes, drink poison resistance potions, remember to light up the enemies for better vision or cast vision buffs on your party members, and surprise attack while other party members are all hidden and separate from eachother. Then use each to join the fight one by one for their own initiative and first attack. These are all just options you can take to get better advantage towards an enemy before you fight them and you don't have to use all of them to win.

This isnt hack and slash. You should spend time learning how to get better and not try to change the game to suit a lazy playstyle. If you dont like playing methodical and using strategy to win difficult battles then its probably a deal breaker and this isnt the game for you.

You can get unlucky and fall on the spider queen without noticing her first.

My first time, I was level 2 (!), and was on a spider "bridge" in a dead-end : the mama spider destroyed us hard !
I will not pretend it was fun.

The 2nd (MP) and 3rd time (SP), I took my time more, and it was fun.

Yes, it is possible ... sometimes there are casualities, usualy either if you do some misstake, or if you came to fight unprepared ... but Shadowhearth downed dont mean "no way to win no matter what you do". :-/

The spider matriarch fight is one of my favourite in the game so far. Don't get me wrong, it's not easy, she usually downs at least one character before I finish her off, but you can drop most of her health from shooting the webs out from under her and killing her with fall damage (at least now that they've fixed the 'crash every time I damage a web' issue...). It's a challenge for sure, but that's the fun of it for me. As for their lack of +weapons, they will have natural +s to various attacks. It is possible for them to take down someone even with a high AC.
The Gith fight was a massacre the first time I got into it. Now as far as I'm concerned the cutscene and massive red dragon were enough of a hint that this was probably going to be a bad time. I thought I'd try my hand at persuading them anyway, failed, and Lae'zel was down and out before I'd taken a breath. And then I laughed, took the L, reloaded and made better decisions the second time. Without fights like that I'd be bored.

That said, I'm sure the full release will have a variety of difficulty settings for people who just aren't into that, but as far as I'm concerned none of these fights are actually unwinnable. If you want the game to give you the freedom to play as you want, that also means having the freedom to make bad choices.

I don't think the game is too hard or should warn you more - I think Lae'zel really doesn't come off as smart or trustworthy. And if its just about the Gith fight - ok, you have a moment where you get your lecture in - "You are a nobody, there are more powerful things than you." I'm fine with that.


My issue though is that it doesn't play the way you would expect a D&D game to play. I finished pretty much every battle in the game, no barrelmancy at all (only enemies used them against me), no grenades at all (only enemies used them against me), but I did use stealth to pick the fights on my term. I did constantly shove people. Race to the top was a thing in the game. In short, it barely mattered who I was using, from heavy armored Lae'zel to my ranger they all constantly sneaked and attacked someone first. If there was a conversation, my party was split up, already in position (sneaking) to kill people I was talking to because the game expects this 'tactics' and is build around them. So yeah, many incounters can be trivial - minotaurs? Sneaky archer that they can't find. Also there is the invisible mage pushing a 1000 pound minotaur of the cliff. People are calling it plaiyng smart - and while I love tactics and strategy games and I can truely appreciate smart solutions this doesn't feel like playing a game, it does feel like abusing systems.

So I don't mind though encounters, but to me the combat gameplay, pretty much the same way I hated it in DOS2, is off. It has no flow, you either know the combat and its ridicolously easy or you don't know the encounter before you and likely you get your ass kicked. To me DOS2 and BG3 are games thriving in metagaming, but utterly lacking in the suposed gameplay as its presented to the user itself.

I had a lot of trouble with some of the fights and died a lot at first. But after I figured out, that you have to use your environment and even can throw oil barrels, it did got a lot easier. I didn't tackle the spider lady yet, because I'm not that fond of spiders and leave that for last, but I managed to kill the minotaurs first try, the duergar group, I found really hard and that Mykonid guy, that you have to kill, if you don't want to kill the Mykonid colony and the beholder .
I even feel confident enough to have a go at the bulette while in the Underdark.

Some of the fights are harder than they should be because we are capped at level 4. If you go in at level 5, none of the fights mentioned should be very difficult. Level 5 is a major level where classes get a major ability (ie level 3 spells, extra attack). Those abilities are game changers.

I stumbled into the Gith encounter my first time. Gale dropped twice and Shadowheart once but I made it out. I was level 4. My group was poorly positioned and surrounded.

But then I learned how this game altered combat so I got rid of Gale and everyone carries crossbows with special arrows along with jump and misty step spells or scrolls. There’s nothing right now currently I can’t destroy.

THAT is my issue with the game. Not difficulty, but THAT. You ain't playing 5e no more, you are playing D&DOS. Even though I didn't use the same specific approach, but I definitely didn't use an approach based on D&D knowledge. Sure spells are from D&D, but they were just deco and fillers in between advantage, stealth-abuse, bonus-action-economy,...

It’s my issue as well but the people who love Larian will say otherwise.

That being said, it should be interesting to test a fighter at level 5. Extra attack with action surge. Fire off a fire, acid, ice, lightning arrow from my longbow. Tiamat got nothing on me.

This game is ridiculously cheeseable. I feel like if you're willing to spend enough time on a fight, there's nothing that can't be beaten. I decided to see what the minimum I could beat the phase spiders with. I snuck to the Whispering Depths waypoint with level 2 Astarion. Then I sent in just level 2 Lae'zel. I hid behind the column near the waypoint, and repeatedly cast Githyanki Psyonics:Mage Hand. I hid after casting it each time. It starts off invisible, and not in combat, so you can put it in whatever advantageous position you want before taking action. You usually get surprise, so you get two shoves and a throw before the mage hand is killed. You can throw spiderlings, you have a 45% chance to shove spiders, and a 10% chance to shove the matriarch. You can throw spiderlings into the web that the matriarch stands on, each time you cause the matriarch to fall it causes 25% damage. I killed every spider and spiderling in that area within 90 minutes, and had the Matriarch down to 46 hp before I sent in the rest of my characters to finish it off .

Off topic, but you can one shot the spider queen by shoving her into the underdark. Shoving from stealth or invisibility has 100% success chance. I did it by accident during the fight so I do not know if it works from her initial position. Shoving her from the pillar into the hole in the ground did 205 damage and I found her corpse in the underdark.

I guess its known, but a perfect display of what the game's difficulty issues are


Sounds fun at first, but again this turns the game into a 'goat-fight' (whoever here came up with that term - cudos to you, perfect summary of the mechanics). Classes are meanlingless. Skills are meaningless. Just be invisible and shove the enemies of the cliff with 100% chance.

lol I didn't even know Minotaurs were bosses? I thought it was just mobs, unlike the spider. if you do not drive the spider into the web (for which you at least need to think of this) she will most likely kill you all, this is really the boss and the first passage took me a long time. you have to learn something before you can use it. and before that, you can die 1000 times. and this is at a normal level of difficulty, in the future you will be able to choose the desired difficulty for your game. I don't see that as a problem.

also I think that the invisibility feature will be changed.

Invisibility shove was changed as of the most recent patch. You lose invisibility when you shove and most shove paths of instakill cliffs aren't valid anymore. Most reliable way to get the Phase Spider Matriarch down the hole now is to lure her to the lowest web over the hole and destroy it while she's on it. If you never want any other fights to be hard, Getting her down the hole is the easiest way to get her on your team with Glut, and I think she's the best monster you can get on your team this patch.

Glut raised dead zombie army for the win.

Create character, fast track them to Underdark, then fast track them to Myconid Colony, talk to Sovereign, recruit Glut, go raise all the dead bodies laying around (latest vid I seen, you can get 16-17 raised), then go trash Minos, Bulette, and Spectator = game over.

Larian not fixed this broken arse crap yet? At least limit the number that can be raised, but yeah, even with a raised undead limitation of say 3-5, walking around with 2 Minos, Bulette, and a Spectator/Matriarch = game over. GG, Larian, wtg.


/sarcasm.
Good grief.

Sounds to me like battling the syptoms instead of dealing with the causes. But maybe I'm underestimating their changes. I willl see soon enough I guess,