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

What people call "hard" is basically being the victims of the poor RNG this game is so fond of.

Fights go radically different based on whether you're missing half your attacks or not, which is why uniformly this game is all about every single class playing like a rogue and sneaking around to high ground.

It's very one dimensional combat with an incredible amount of cheese available in terms of consumables and environmental actions like pushing something off a cliff or detonating a barrel doing half the HP of a boss but a spell that uses a spell slot if it's lucky enough to land does around 1/10th their HP at best.

Even without knowing any Larian gimmicks, I didn't think the game was too hard my first walkthrough. Definitely the hag and spider matriarch were difficult without prior knowledge. The gnolls and githyanki were also tough but only because of Larian homebrew.

I guess it wasn't as hard for me because I played the game somewhat straight, meaning I was careful of my spell resources and focused a lot of physical range attacks. I didn't know I could long rest at will so I budgeted my expendable spells. I learned by mistake, just how powerful bows and crossbows were in this game. I may have lucked out a lot on some encounters by getting height advantage without even knowing since I tend to try to find ground that is easily defensible (bottleneck).

Once I learned of all the Larian stuff, the game is a joke. I think the only encounter that is remotely hard is the koa-toa and only because they have a bunch of archers in height advantage and it's hard to get to them since you are surrounded by the others.

But I didn't play only DOS, for me DOS was just another isometry game after PoE. So I don't know, in DOS for me main difference was tactical pause, not fight difficulty.

The most difficult fight in BG3 for me was spider, because "bonuses" don't work. There is a specific mechanic with web and strategy with destruction of eggs. In theory, you can push a spider into a hole (I didn't know this first time), but it doesn't give a 100% guarantee, especially after patch 3. But it's boss so... It's fine. I mean, I think it should be difficult.

LMAO ... Sorry .. you cracked me up !

Looks like these days, this type of thread is getting popular, here's one from steam (although there's lots of emotion/drama in that thread: to me that's the meaning of "cheese" ):
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1086940/discussions/0/3109144584157646562/
I replied few times thinking of helping, but I think the drama was too high.

@maximuus and @Madscientist provided good summary & advise.

The key is positioning and don't keep all those scrolls & potions for the end of the game

This may be the case if they don't play video games and only tabletop, also a lot of groups don't start at low levels because they are "too hard" (more like you can't rush into something and expect to instantly win.) I play DnD but have never played DOS, and usually only play TPS or other types of real time games. I did not find this game difficult on my first playthrough but I tend to play ranged and stealth in most games and am also used to real time tactical positioning. The hardest part of combat for me is having to micromanage the camera so I can see where all the enemies are since there is no Z axis.

Stealth (and ranged) is something I really recommend for anyone having issues with combat, not because the AI is stupid, but because you won't walk into anything before you are ready to deal with it. Also in areas with higher ground, it is often possible to shoot ladders to stop enemies from coming up behind you. Use spells like Web and Grease to keep enemies where you want them or to lump them together so you can set them on fire (with cheese or spells.) Other than this, Maximuuus and Madscientist already gave the best ways to add varying levels of cheese to change difficulty levels.

Nowadays I don't have much problems anymore too. After I learned the mechanics, it became much easier. I never encountered the Kuo-Toa, searched the whole Underdark, but never found them.

I really think that the problem with the difficulty of the game comes from the two VERY unbalanced system they use.

D&D is balanced to be D&D.
Their homebrew are balanced to be powerfull.
But those systems aren't balanced together at all.

Players has to find something in the middle but most D&D things are not powerfull enough while Larian's homebrew looks like "cheese".

How could they create a normal difficulty level arround "cheats" and arround "weak" features/spells/attacks/weapons at the same time ?

A better balance between those mechanics could probably solve many issues with the difficulty and increase our viable/creative solutions to deal with combats. The easiest way is to tone down their homebrew/items/mechanics first. THEN they'll be able to balance monsters.

Missing is something else and according to me, it comes from a bad understanding of the rules of advantage.

Pretty much. I don'y agree on the missing your attacks part, i've played games where missing is basically all you're doing at higher difficulties (Kingmaker), but the rest is pretty much how it is. And i would also add that, for now, every hard encounter is basically the same. At first 'weak' minions standing on highground and spamming ranged aoe spells that deal high dmg/status effects, and then the boss doing the same but with way more hp and in melee range.

If it was the same in DoS i get why people say it gets tiring after a while. It's not there for me yet, but it's pretty stark there are no real tactics, just one way to handle things and having to do it over and over again.

Backstab and highground. I didn’t explore under dark in my playthrough (which I hear is the hardest bit) but all the topside content was a breeze. I died only once when fighting the Hag.

I really don't get the too hard thing.

In my rogue playthrough, I was scouting alone through the underdark and came across the kuo-toa. My rogue solo'd them.

In my fight with Gut, my rogue killed Gut while locked in the room with her while my party took out the other goblins outside the door.

I'm currently playing a beast master ranger, using a raven as a companion. I didn't do any prep work on the spiders. I just rushed in, started the fight and won. I didn't bother breaking the eggs; I fought the little spiders also. My raven companion and Wyll's imp did most of the work with the small spiders.

With the hag, I discovered the fireplace passage. That made her go hostile and attack me. Without landing a single critical, I beat her before she escaped to where she keeps Mayrina prisoner.

I'm not using barrels. I haven't dipped once. I haven't used a single specialty arrow.

Shrug. I get that other people are having problems, but I'm just not seeing it. For what it's worth, I'm really enjoying the combat, and I think it's interesting maneuvering through the terrain.

People are complaining when they miss 3rd attack in a row ...
I never heared anyone complaining about his character just survived double number of those misses in single round.

Since I've played DoS2 in Tactician Mode, I think nothing could be more difficult than fighting a lvl 15 boss when you are 5 levels under. Man, DoS2 on tactician mode gave me a lot of rage quits and screams and anything in my range I could throw at my TV. Ofc I didn't throw anything at my TV, but God knows the unraveling rage I felt whenever things gone (very) wrong in my gameplay. For me, BG3 is being difficult for most people only because of bad RNG when casting spells: same thing usually happens to me as I don't have luck with RNG most of the time.
Honestly, if you think BG3 is hard then you never really played a real difficult game.
Besides all the rage I felt playing DoS2 in tactician mode, dude, I absolutely LOVE that game. It is unfair at some moments, but at the same time the feeling you get when you beat some really hard fight is priceless.

Ofc there are some fights in BG3 that you aren't meant to encounter when low level, but this is what makes this game versatile: you can try even if you are underleveled. As I said, it may be unfair, but when you are victorious you don't even think about the unfairness nor the bad dice rolls.

Hard? BG3 is hard?....man have you ever played a single game of DnD? Have you ever had a lvl 4 character see an adult dragon an actually fight and win?
Really, how do you mean it's hard? "Oh I have bad RNG", yeah...true. But even if you had the best RNG, if you are a lvl 2 character and you are trying to fight 10 goblins in a true DnD session, you are going to be wiped. There are a lot of rules that go both ways in combat that are not yet implemented (I hope it's something that will be implemented), like flanking that would make every single battle with a lot of enemies really hard.

SO, if you want an easy game, go play something you don't have to think a lot. If you have 16years of game development and think BG3 is hard....man...what are you programing?

BG3 has it's flaws. I have a lot of things that I want to see how they will implement and honestly, it'll make the game probably 3x more hard and those are things that are almost necessary for DnD.

The curious thing is: BG3 is indeed balanced at some point. Dude, come on: the funniest thing I've saw happening in this game was when my boyfriend literally pushed the Hag down into the abyss with his tadpole skill. Man, we laughed for 5 minutes straight cuz even Sven couldn't do it. The funniest thing is that could easily happen with us as well if the enemy has a push/pull skill.

You don't need to get perfect rolls everytime since the enemies also miss their hits on you. You can't expect to easily win a fight against a Minotaur when it is lvl 5 and you are lvl 3. BG3 is not a MMORPG where you can win regardless your strategy, BG3 is based on a tabletop system and every single level counts, including the strategy you choose to follow.

Yesterday I've had a boss fight at Curse of Strahd tabletop session. We were at level 5, and if we were only one level above, we certainly would be creating new characters for the next session. This is why I'm saying: every single level counts in your fights.

Based on my experience with DoS2, I think we are playing on Normal-to-Hard difficulty setting on BG3. Enemies are smart and they use scenario elements against us in some fights, and usually attack our weaker party member randomly. If we were experiencing a Tactician Mode-like setting, I'd say enemies would fully focus on our weaker party members first, using scenario elements, scrolls and any environment shenanigans to completely wipe our chances of victory.

The AI can read our thoughts on Tactician Mode, dude, I'm saying this cuz I've been through it twice.

I'm pretty sure there'll be one or two levels of difficulty both lower and higher. I saw a Josh Sawyer video and he said to remember the EA fans were not likely to be the typical player because they were the biggest fans, early adopters and those who were willing to really understand the mechanics. You have to make a game for all the 'normies' too if you want to be successful. I'm sure there'll be a level difficulty for those that find it too tough now.

Reading a lot of the replies and the other threads in this forum I think people actually think the priority is to make it as close to 5e as possible, no homebrew. While I can't speak for WotC obviously, I'm pretty sure this is not the case. I'm pretty sure the priority is to sell as many copies and introduce as many people to the basic concept and world as possible. If they lose a few purists along then way so be it.

When Neverwinter Nights came out lots of people complained about the liberties it took. But it sold a lot and spawned 2 expansions and a sequel which also spawned two expansions. It did what it was supposed to do, made a lot of money and introduced a lot of people to dnd that wouldn't have been introduced.

That's why I don't think backstab and height advantage will go. It's a nice simple way for someone unfamiliar with the rules of dnd and unwilling to learn them all for a videogame to 'game' the system and enjoy it.

It definitely would be nice if you could actually turn these off as a difficulty slider for people who want it. I hope, actually, that they give a lot of options in difficulty that you can customise. That would be cool.

I totally agree with OP on this one, I’m finding the combat very frustrating and not very fun.

I see a lot of people putting out the advice: backstab, high-ground, scrolls! ...but this is supposed to be a ROLE-PLAYING game. I don’t want to have to resort to playing all of my characters like a ranged-rogue. I want to use all of my characters unique spells and skills!

And, I mean, at least in my experience the RNG during combat is so unfavorable towards the player. During dialog choices it feels a bit better, but definitely not combat. I’ve missed so many “85% chance to hit” shots that I now consider 85% to be more like 30% and anything below 60% to just being an automatic miss.

...and you know this would be okay if it also applied to the enemy AI but it absolutely does not. They have way better accuracy and damage.

Just tonight I was trying to take the goblin camp...I had the high ground with an 85% chance to hit using my Warlock’s Eldritch Blast. It missed 3 times in a row and when it finally connected it only did 3 damage. On the next turn a level 2 goblin from a lower position sniped me for 8 hit points and caused my character to fall off a cliff instantly killing me.

Like...I have never had anywhere CLOSE to that same kind of luck on my turns. It shouldn’t be this frustrating to fight a bunch of low level goblins.

As I said it before, the game gets hard when you play it as a D&D game.
Engaging enemies in melee without dipping, and things like cleave which does not exist in D&D the way Larian implemented it, without jumping behind someone to backstab, without using nonsense Larian grenades, without WMD barrels, without shoving being the main damage dealer and without having everyone being ranged and climb as high as possible or stealthing even though they suck at stealth which does not matter because of the short vision cones.

Obviously you never played games like Ninja Gaiden or Dark Souls. There are difficult fights, but I would say this game isn't even as hard as DOS2. Either way, more than likely, they will have difficulty modes in the live version.

4 companions is abit shit. Change it to 6 for cake. <link removed by Mod>

I’m doing that now and it’s fun because there’s more banter going on. I also find it comical they stand in a bowling pin triangle formation. I keep waiting for a big boulder to stomp them.

Hmm...I should go visit those guys smuggling the chest...