Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Baldurs Gate 3 is ridiculously hard

I am an avid Baldurs Gate fan that put hundreds of hours into both BG1 and BG2. I think you have done beautiful and amazing things with Baldur's Gate III, however, you have made it ridiculously hard. I have been a game developer for 16 years and this is one of the hardest and most frustrating games I have ever played. I hate to literally save every encounter multiple times as I die and get killed unless I have the perfect rolls continuously. It is not fun. This game should be fun, engaging and balanced You pretty much setup every fight where the enemy has the advantage of high ground, and the AI is brutal! It immediately moves to maximum distance and maximum height where as a player you do not have the benefit of that, or even figuring out optimal move position, as you can't take back your moves (often times accidentally clicking). So every fight feels like the enemy gets initiative, moves to the high ground advantage and just picks you off, typically targeting the weakest character. This has been one of the most frustrating gaming experiences I have ever encountered. But, I am determined. I love Baldur's Gate and believe in it's potential. PLEASE, balance this game to be fun and fair, because right now it is not. I have to tell all of my gamer friends not to spend any time or money on this game as it is so unbalanced and frustrating! Hoping for positive change!

What fights are you having problems with? I know some areas are level based and showing up early just makes it harder on you. The AI does have a problem with targeting the weakest character. Presuming it will be fixed before launch or the combat will be laughably stupid.

This is a guide to custom your difficulty level.

- (Very) Hard : use the rules of D&D

- Normal : use jump to backstab ennemies with your melee. Always go higher.

- Easy : use jump, highground, backstab, dip your weapons, coat them with poison, eat food during combats

- Very easy :use jump, highground, backstab dip, poison, food, shove your ennemies as much as possible, use scrolls, potions, grenades, barrels,..

There's always something more powerfull (and WTF) in BG3. The limit is the explosion of the whole map with barrels.

You should probably think a bit less "strategy". Just go higher before the battle begin and you'll probably win every encounter. Being higher is kind of "god mode".

Maximuuus is right.
The game is hard if you play it like a DnD game.
The game is easy if you cheese the hell out of it.

More advice:
- Multiple alpha strike
Send your party away from the enemy and separate them. One char sneaks to the enemy, goes to a good position and uses the most powerful ability against the enemy. Combat will start. Now select another char (still out of combat) and do the same (sneak to enemy and join combat from a good position with your best attack). Repeat this for every char and don´t forget your summons (warlock imp, ranger animal companion)
- shoot and hide
Use one character with a ranged weapon. Sneak to a position were you can shoot the enemy but you are outside of their vision cone. Shoot them, hide and move a bit. The enemy will just stand there and you can repeat this over and over.

@Maximuuus
> Extra Super Easy: use jump, highground, backstab dip, poison, food, shove your ennemies as much as possible, use scrolls, potions, grenades, barrels, ... and before every conversation sneak the rest of your party (except the talker) to advantage positions in case anything goes wrong.

I think it depends what you compare BG3 to. It is much harder than BG1 and BG2, but that is because enemies in the old games are, to put it bluntly, acting stupid most of the time. Their default action is to attack whichever characters from your party they saw first. On the other hand you have some encounters which can result in a party wipe, if you don't know what abilities & spells the enemies use, such as the infamous mage assassin in the Friendly Arm Inn in BG1, or Kangaxx in BG2.

But I've been playing BG1 and BG2 with the Sword Coast Stratagems mod for years now, and that mod improves enemy actions. They attack whomever has for example the worst armor (which can be very dangerous when facing enemy rogues), and they will switch targets if they cannot do damage. So for me BG3 is just the right challenge: enemies are not acting stupid, but neither do they have instakill abilities like Kangaxx' imprisonment.

For example, I am currently running a party with Wyll and he has a summon imp ability. So I sometimes use that imp to lure enemies to the party, making them abandon their terrain advantage.

This latest patch definitely upped the difficulty a noticeable bit in my experience. The AI are much more aware of the mechanics now and uses them more actively now it seems.

The best thing I've seen the AI do so far: an imp shot at a nautiloid tank, blowing it up to cause me damage.

I'd like to see the NPCs using more advanced tactics like that more often.

Regarding the original question, I'm also curious which fights are causing problems.

I've not found anything in BG3 harder than Kangaxx, the Beholder lair or the Irenicus fights. Kangaxx I simply could not beat until I read up some hints and tricks.

Sure, you're going to get party-wiped, or at least have a lot of resources depleted, the first time you come across some of these foes. But a little preparation - getting the best possible equipment/AC, taking on allies (familiars, sac spiders, Andrick & Brynna, Sazza, Flind/Rugan, Glut), positioning, potions, spell buffs - makes most of them much smoother. And as another poster mentioned, some encounters are just best left until level 4 (spiders, Gith, Minotaurs, Bulette, Kuo-Tua).

The spiders are a good example. If you wander in blind at level 2 with no prep and without having found the Spiderstep boots, yes, you're probably going to struggle. But go in at level 3 or 4 with all your characters having 18+ AC, the Boots, access to Misty Step, the ring of poison resistance and 2/3 potions of same, then sneak around and kill all the eggs, plop down some candles to light your bows on and a barrel to cast Light on, give Lae'zel a potion of hill giant strength/haste and THEN start the fight, it almost feels too easy.

Last night I was trying to do same and got spotted after killing only one batch of eggs, but still managed to take down the matriarch, the other 2 phase spiders and the spiderlings while total party casualties were 10 damage to Shadowheart and 7 to Wyll.

BG3 plays very differently from 1 and 2. If you want some tips on improving your tactics, try watching a couple of vids by, say, Retcon Raider or WolfheartFPS.

Considering a character with 16 constitution.
Considering a class that have D8 as hit dices (not the best, not the worst)

At level 4 this characters have 35 HP

Now considering some of the most powerfull monsters...

Minotaurs : 2D12+4 (attack) + 2D8+4 (multi attack) +1D8+4 (jump bonus action) - average damages 38.5/turn

Bulette : 3D6+4 +3D6+4 (jump) + 4D12 +4 (bite) - average damages 59/turn

Those creatures can OS anyone and many other can OS unadvertised weaker characters.

Gnolls archers : 3 * 1D8+3 - average damages 22.5/turn.

I think redcap and other underdark creatures are also very powerfull. And obviously the gith patrol.

Keep in mind we're level 4 and we haven't met ANY really hard bosses...

I guess there are more insta kill in BG3 than in any other D&D games. Hopefully rez scrolls are cheap so it just doesn't matter but if perma death was something in BG3 and if a rez scroll was not so cheap... I guess It would be an issue way more than in the old games.

Which is why I give my party members the Tough feat. There's many encounters where extra hit points make a bigger difference than a +1 to attacks.

One problem, imo, is that the movement system makes it very difficult to scout ahead. Therefore you have to lose and save and reload several of the fights at least once -- often more than once -- to figure out a surival tactic.
Many encounters even seemed totally unwinnable the first time I stumbled into them. After several restarts I know that, with enough foreknowledge, and luck with the dies, it is winnable.
But this method -- having to lose one or more times before being able to win -- IS quite frustrating.

I felt exactly like the OP when I started with Patch 3. I had played all the old games from the 90's and on (BG, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter and the Dragon Age and Pillars games), but this was the hardest and most frustrating game to come into without knowing how to fight properly to begin with. A few You Tube videos and some guide reading and I got much better. However, I don't think making a game with the assumption everyone will research best practices first is the best idea.

I don't do a lot of the cheese - I don't dip (I forget) and I don't jump around all over the place. But I do go for high ground and use magic/scrolls and eat a lot of food. I can now win most fights comfortably outside the Underdark.

For me now it is not the AI advantage that annoys me, it's the RNG. Both with and without weighted dice it still kind of sucks, at least for me anyway. I've never seen so many Critical Misses in a D20 based game (including 5 in a row for my team once) and I swear Shadowheart is cursed - she consistently misses anything whenever the tooltip says 70/75% to hit. This draws the combat out, especially in the bigger fights. The only plus side is the RNG hates the AI as much, so I don't get wiped out in a round when they inevitably win the Initiative roll.

Having to retry some hard fights is normal in a computer game.

The problem is that the game expects the player to cheese the hell out of it.
I mean that it helps a lot to perform actions that no sane GM would ever allow.

Edit: Because the game expects you to act like this, the enemies are very strong.
This means it is very hard if you play like a normal person would.

It's rumored (or maybe confirmed?) that when the game is released out of Early Access there will be a choice of difficulty settings. Presumably we're playing on the "Normal" or "Experienced with DnD games" setting, and there will be an easier setting below that. And something even harder for masochists, or those who already know every encounter inside and out.

So we're playing at an encounter level that gives Larian the best feedback on what is and isn't working with game balance. If it was any easier -- if we were roflstomping every encounter -- they wouldn't have as much player feedback to work with. The current difficulty is also a good way to find out where players have found exploits and other ways to cheese the combat, like the Multiple Alpha Strike mentioned above. And then they can decide to either remove those exploits or leave them in.

Personally, I haven't found the combat super difficult except when I wandered into areas in Act 1 where it's obviously intended to be a geared-up level 4 encounter and I'm not there yet. I'd rather have the game designed this way than with a "flat" difficulty where all encounters are the same, and after reaching level 4 every combat is a cakewalk. It keeps the challenge high.

About the only real frustration I have is with strings of bad RNG rolls, especially with spell attacks. It's a bit immersion-breaking to have the mage or cleric in my party miss spell attacks so often in a row. I guess it's better than having it hit every time and needing to be nerfed for balance, but it still has me yelling at the monitor when it happens.

I don't know, even on first playthrough, I only had problems with attacking grove and spider boss. But it was fun, first experience for a normal level of difficulty is quite decent. Main rule is don't treat it like a board game, treat it like a video game, and then you will quickly understand what's what.

I noticed that for many DnD fans this game seems difficult, a strange coincidence.

Maybe it's easier for DoS fans ?

I'm not a DnD fan nor a DoS fan and I played lots of tactical TB game... the first playthrough was difficult to me.

I guess we have found something.

The first playthrough was difficult for me too. I know nothing about DOS, but I do play DnD regulary and still had problems. It took me a while to learn the mechanics such as high ground, surfaces etc.

Maybe not a coincidence if DnD is all they've ever played.

I played all the early Infinity Engine DnD-based games, but also a bunch of other ones like DOS 1 and 2, Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2, and most recently Wasteland 3. I don't find BG3 especially difficult. Very tough in a few individual encounters but that's expected. Maybe it's a little easier for someone familiar with other game systems.

Except that "Experienced with DnD games" is actually detrimental because to succed you must not play BG3 like a D&D game but more like a turn based Overwatch.