Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Latest News Community Update #13 - Breadth & Depth

Hello once again! We hope you’ve been doing well since Patch 4 released, because it seems a whole lot has happened since then. The ocean burned, the West Coast boiled, UFOs may or may not be a thing, and that was all just this past month. But while the world invents new ways to surprise us, at least there’s one thing we can always count on like a dependable old friend, which is the rise and fall of floods as they lap at our Belgian office servers once again. Through all of that we’ve been hard at work to bring you Patch 5.

So what can you expect from this patch? New game-changing mechanics, tons of combat and AI improvements, a bigger focus on roleplaying, a tantalizing step toward unearthing Shadowheart’s mysteries, and more Owlbear cub content to make your heart burst, just to name a few.

And, well, we’re partial to some of the incoming fixes as well:

· Skeletons are no longer in a celebratory mood when emerging from coffins.
· Fixed being able to eat some buckets.
· Fixed being able to cast Charm Person on yourself.
· Liam will no longer run away while unconscious

This update features a ton of improvements directly inspired by the community, many of them addressing things you’ve raised in your feedback so far. We’ve been listening closely to requests you’ve made throughout Early Access and we hope you’re really going to be excited by these changes - We definitely are. Together they improve the game a lot, and they bring Baldur’s Gate 3 yet another step closer to its 2022 release ambitions.

We’ve got lots up our sleeve this update, so let’s jump right in.



Active Roll: A new way to die (as in dice, it’s a dice pun)

One of the biggest improvements coming in Patch 5 are Active Rolls, our new dice mechanic. In addition to a full upgrade of the old UI, the biggest change here is in how you can influence dice: While previously, the accepted method for attempting a skill check was to tightly cross your fingers ahead of a roll, now you have the option to apply spells and bonuses to these checks to help increase your odds.

So what does that mean exactly? Well, let's say the chances of you passing a certain check seem pretty slim. Rather than leaving you at the mercy of the RNG gods, you now have more agency in the outcome of those rolls. For example, cast Enhance Ability to add an Advantage bonus to the skill check in order to roll twice, or you can cast Guidance to bump that number up for good measure. You can also cast spells from your other party members, although in multiplayer your teammates will have to decide for themselves whether they'll let you use their spells during these rolls. You’ll be spending a spell slot any time you do this, so use them wisely. That is, unless the skill check relates to recruiting the Owlbear cub, in which case we’d recommend you let your heart guide you.



Get rewarded for roleplaying

In this patch we also wanted to find new ways to really celebrate roleplaying. Enter, Background Goals.

You know how the character creator includes an option to choose your character's background? Folk Hero, Acolyte, Urchin, and so on. Now every character will have their own series of secret miniquests based on these roles. Finding out how to complete them is part of fun, but for each you complete you’ll receive an Inspiration Point. Players will get a maximum of four Inspiration Points which can be put toward rerolling dice whenever they wish. Or alternatively, if you’ve already reached your IP cap for the moment then any further point becomes XP.



Camping 2.0

One of the main comments we've received about our resting system has been that it's far too lenient. Before Patch 5, you could initiate a Long Rest and recharge all your spells and HP between every fight without penalty. A lot of players felt this just didn't feel right, and we couldn't agree more. So we've fully revamped how camping works.

Camp Resources are a new feature that will make you think a little more strategically about when to activate a Long Rest. Now in order to make camp, you first need supplies. You know all the food and scraps you find around Baldur's Gate 3? Starting this patch, those can be used to unlock camp for the night. So if you ever wondered to yourself “how much Waterdhavian cheese wheels could one person possibly need?” the answer is as many as you can physically carry, for cheese is now one of the sacred doorways to sleep. Alternatively, you can still initiate a Partial Rest without using any resources but this won't recharge you fully.

Another new addition are Mini Camps. Previously, any time you camped for the night, you would return to your HQ down by the river regardless of how far away it was from the area you were exploring throughout your day. This made us feel sorry for all the characters who were being forced to partake in marathon hikes just to go to bed. So we’ve now introduced smaller localized camps. From the Chapel near the Ravaged Beach to the Underdark, we've recreated every landmark as its own isolated location that can be accessed when you’re ready to hunker down for your Long Rest.

Smarter enemies, revamped spells, and a little something for the pacifists among you

This update comes with a lot of combat improvements, from smaller fixes - we’ve now made sure Mud Mephits are no longer afraid of mud - to more substantial alterations. Let's have a look at some of those below.

Enemy AI:

You’re going to discover a lot of AI improvements in this patch, so expect to see enemies who are a lot smarter and more resourceful in combat. For instance, now if there is a weapon nearby, unarmed enemies will grab it to defend themselves. Not only does this make fights more challenging, you can also use this behaviour to your advantage: if you disarm an enemy, they’ll have to use up an Action Point to go retrieve the weapon, which puts them at a disadvantage.

You can also expect better resource planning from enemies – when it comes to deciding what spells to use in a fight, who to target, whether to use actions like Dash, or to throw a health potion to a character in need, they’re a lot more adept. And all of these actions are new to friendly NPCs too.

Spellcasting Upgrade:

You can also expect to see updated class spell animations, which are looking awesome. Spells that are specific to a class now have an identifiable look, and spells that are usable by multiple classes have had a full revamp to create more cohesion with the class-specific ones. Oh and by the way, you can now cancel a concentration spell. That’s a small quality-of-life change but it’s something a lot of you have been asking for.



Non-Lethal Combat:

We’ve done some tweaking to the game which should please our pacifist players, too. We have added a new Nonlethal Attack Mode. This means that if you steal something from NPCs and they start attacking you, you can actually just knock them out instead of killing them.

In another widely requested change, we’ve separated the jump and disengage actions! So now players have the ability to either Jump to gain some strategic positioning during combat, or Disengage from melee range with an enemy and move to a safe distance. Finally, we’ve introduced a shortcut key for Jump, so it's much easier to navigate the various intricate levels as you explore the world. This has been a big request from the community too, and if there are other situations you wish you could solve through peaceful means let us know!

Nested Tooltips offer extra clarity to the new and confused

The world is a bewildering wilderness; games should not be. In this patch, we've updated our old tooltip system and created something we feel will make the rules and concepts of BG3 much easier to digest. Nested Tooltips are essentially hyperlinked tooltips. Think Wikipedia. If there's a term in the text that you don't understand, we got you. Just hover over it for more information. And you can now pin tooltips to your screen so there's no fear of losing previous tooltips along the way.



Shadowheart’s storyline just got a little more mysterious

Shadowheart got extra love in this patch. Not only does this update feature extra dialogue permutations with her, her storyline was also kicked up a notch. Expect to start hearing a little more about the mysterious item she carries with her. Oh, and you can now free her in the tutorial! Or leave her of course.

And now introducing Point and Click dialogue

Speaking of dialogue, let’s take a look at our new Point and Click dialogue system. This is something fans have been asking for from the beginning: Your character will now speak as you click through the world, reacting to the story and environment around them in real-time. A lot of recording power went into making this feature come alive - not only is the dialogue context-sensitive, it also changes depending on which character you're playing. But, of course, if you're of the 'less talk, more game' philosophy then there is an audio option to change the frequency of their barks.



These are just some of the improvements in this patch. We didn’t even mention the new dog. There are also a ton of visual and audio improvements and tweaks. You'll be able to jump in to experience these changes for yourself when Patch 5 releases Tuesday 13th July! And you can see Swen going over all of these changes in our Community Update video below:

Great, thanks you! And the show was wonderful, thank you for such an exciting presentation. It makes everything special.

I'm sure many local critics will be very happy about the changes. I'm surprised that you decided to change the camp locations, this is a really strong and difficult change, but now I see that you are ready to change a lot to improve the game. That's cool.

Question ...
Is there any way to STOP those gifs? :-/ Its incredibly hard to read, when your eye is still dragged to something moving next to that text. :-/

//edit: Fixed ... i just readed it in quote.

//edit2:
There is few things i would like to adress ...
Feel free to speculate with me.

1a) Can you still send items (read as food in this case) you find magicaly directly to your camp? O_o
Bcs if you can ... its nice feature, but im affraid we would still be able to easily rest twice between each combat.

1b) I wonder how will goodberry work with this feature ...
I really, REALLY, hope its primary use was not oversighted.

2) Just quick question ... do i understand it corectly that while we will be in surface-wilderness, we will still travel back to our camp to rest ... but while we will be anywhere else, we would use this "smaller" version? O_o
Or will we never travel to our camp again to long rest, unless we pick that specificly in fast travel option?

3) Im really looking forward about how would this work with AoO, or other reactions from Battlemaster for example ...
I guess i presume corectly that spells will remain unaffected by this option?

4) I really wonder if that option will also alterny frequency of other NPCs barks.

Hi Jess/Larian,

I don't know how extensively I'll be able to play with Patch 5, but the QoL improvements (hotkey for jump, stop concentrating, as well as Active Roll UI for Ability Checks) sound great already.

I do have a pair of questions though.


How does Larian process feedback ?

The Panel From Hell 3 did not really talk about that. I was hoping this would come with Community Update 13, given that the Hotfix 11 notes say "We will be back soon with a larger community update, that goes into some detail about how we process & parse feedback and data we get through talking with you, and the telemetry we have in the game".

The changes implemented certainly echo the feedback communicated by the players, but I feel we still haven't been told much about how feedback is processed (and how we should preferentially give feedback).


Early Access philosophy : what goes in and what doesn't, what is the EA for ?

I'm still a bit confused about what you choose to roll into the EA build and why.

In this Patch 5, we have new systems that you want to test (and that you explicitly flagged as "feedback sought here" in the PFH3). We also have a couple of great QoL improvement. These are always good. And fewer complaints about the generally-poor UI means more airspace for the feedback on mechanisms and systems.

But then ... we also have some pure gameplay content. I'm sure you have heaps of that in stock and continually develop some more. There's also a bit of bug-fixing (e.g. Liam).

I just hope you're not wasting too much time adding code to the EA build that requires extra work (compared to a straight copy-paste), due to the EA build being potentially quite outdated compared to your internal working builds.


Finally, I second the request for a way to pause the gifs. It really makes the reading more difficult.

This is such a good thing.

So are enemies going to attack their immediate threat instead of Gale? Or will enemies be attacking Gale with even more impunity?

Oh nice so instead to tell people to take responsability for they choice of exploit things like the longs rest they opted to complicate it for us who had no problems. Obviously to change the fixed menu about difficulty would require too much effort so here it is, let's go with the complains of the more vocal part of players (that exploit the game to ruin it for themselves and then complain loudly on how bad the game was because it let them to purposely exploit the game).

By the way thanks a lot.

So I guess for the difficulty we will have the same soup that is standard this days and thatthey implemented with Dos I e Dos II.

Let us players choose, instead of a fixed menu let us decide, the crucial points are few (barrelmancy, height and backstab vantage/disavantage, long rests), in the difficulty menu what kind of "unfair cheesy methods that kill immersivity" we want to switch on or off.

It's very annoying when people unable to control and use their freedom make a fuss to have stricter rules thus ruining everything for people that knows how to manage freedom.

[I just hope this is not going to become, in the final release, a game as frikingly annoying like the Baldur's Gates of old litterally enojoyable only for a niche of ultra nerds that approach gaming as a second job, because I would be quite annoyed to disinstall the game].

Moving to another point, while Larian decided to listen a certain kinf of issues, the other complaints over the lack of new material, and no the minigames don't count as new material, by the way another system that falls, to a critic eye, in the exploit system that breaks immersion and makes the game cheesy. I get that there was a pandemic, that smart working, with some irony for a job based on the use of computers, slowed things, but there are still no new material, we are still blocked in act one.


The more days pass the more I start having the feeling of Vampires the Masquerade Bloodlines 2.

It's comunity update number THIRTEEN and Larian is still going on and on sharpening and refining the same old part of the game. Thus giving all the time they need to professional exploit searchers.

I gonna wait for another two months after that I'm gonna read the contract to see if I can get a refund, however it comes out if this the path Larian is going on I'll delete the game because I can accept an early acces, but here it seems that Larian has opted not for an early access but to exploit the player not for an early access but for beta testing of the first development phases of an alpha version of the game.

Normally I would take your thoughts seriously... Except a lot of the post just consists of beating up strawmen and that one of your last few posts basically insulted half the forum and assumed that people asking for all of these changes were a minority, when community polls over the past two months showed that most people were actually in full support of these kinds of things. Even now the discussions over all this on Reddit, which is usually unquestioning Larian fanboy central, are overwhelmingly positive.

I am sure there will be difficulty options to turn off the resting stuff in the final game if it really bothers you that much. If not, merchants will sell everything needed, and you can just steal that crap from them because Larian shows no signs of touching the thievery system. Which is fine by me, because it's such a minor issue at the end of the day compared to things that affect actual encounter design. There was one item in the resting interface that said it had a 40 supply value, which was the amount needed for a complete long rest.

I don't think the devs ever said we'd go past Act 1 in the EA. I think all the clamoring for it mostly revolved around an implied level cap increase to 5 to go along with it, which is what people REALLY wanted. So now that they put the possibility of allowing us to test all the level 5 features on the table, putting content beyond Act 1 is suddenly no longer a high priority compared to things like getting the rest of the classes working, which we all know is coming in EA no matter what. Everything that's in this patch consists of major backend mechanics adjustments that are among the major issues that needed to be addressed first, so that progress on everything else can proceed much more smoothly.

Oh please lets stop with the feelings.

It doesn't requires a data analizer that social media traffic is generated but a hard part of posters. Just a quick analysis of the traffic in this forum shows that the core of the traffic is done by the same utents (I'm one that is on the medium level of posting) discussing a item, same goes for reddit and so on.

If people get insulted by a mere analysis and feel hurt because I say that we all better re calibrate the weight we have and to start to understand that we don't represent the full range of player thats not my problem. Because seriously that's something really wrong if to stat that the self perception we have has to be re calibrated and humbled means to be insulting (and being a latino, homosexual, agnostic, adopted man I know two or three things about insults).


To be the loudest doesn't mean to be representative or be the majority, it means being louder.

Said that the "Early Access" argument after months starts to be stale. I can quote the point made in 2019 in an article by screenrant after the cases of DayZ and Anthem early access.

While is true that Larian didn't say a word about move past ACT 1 it's also true that the company wasn't transparent about the time schedule while profiting from the relevance of the name Badur's Gate and of that of Larian itself.

EA can not be an excuse to put out a game that is clearly far from the alpha version itself. If they want funds I prefer the pre order option, at least with that I can get a refund if things go south. There's a feel that I don't like, and is that of being scammed, that is how I am currently starting to feel since Larian, after the two DOS, is far from being a indie developper (so much that accomplished to land a project tied to a big name like Baldur's Gate) thus doesn't have a justification tu use EA to get funds by probably not refundable purchases and place a celarly far from the alpha version game.

For reference on my views on EA (that I'll never again be part off) here it is the screenrant's article:

https://screenrant.com/early-access-broken-fix/

My grades for the update.


A- Mostly because I didnt know I could eat buckets, but good for catching bugs. So many games now just leave bugs in unless they are significant to gameplay experience, or if it costs the company money in gatcha games.


A+: Reminds me of the assist system.


B+: I like this but I think this should have been implemented at a later date, i dont think it will affect much of the EA gameplay. Rewarding roleplay in a significant way and getting XP for roleplay is part of a good DnD campaign, however we are hard capped at level 4 and so a lot of the reward is going to be meaningless until we get a level increase.


B+: Food/rations are a required part of DnD, right now though the issue is economy and down the road Tavern activity (hopefully). The orignal BG games allowed you to buy drinks and talk to the barkeep to get tips, If I buy a bunch of food and drink at the tavern do I need to eat the same amount of rations at camp? If the bar is at an Inn will I be able to use the inn and not have to buy food if I buy a long rest. More pressingly for the moment, I tend to have to use the food I pick up for the stupid pricing I get from vendors. Pick up rotten apples I can still sell for a gold when in DnD table top Id get laughed at by the shop keep or offered a copper or two, not a gold. get the prices in line with tabletop prices (for everything) and it wont feel so bad.

A+: for the camp location change. I always feel like having to leave the dungeon to go to forrest camp would bring about a random encounter on way back, which I know we dont have random encounters in the game yet, and maybe wont ever, but i feel like its not realistic to go back to the forrest on every sleep.


Grade TBD: So this comes down to does it feel like the balance of normal mode feels just as difficult and does it get more or less hard at the same scale rate as you change the difficulty. If the AI improvement makes it feel like the DM is just out to kill Gale because the player tried to sleep with the DM's sister (or brother?) and is doing his best for a TPK that just ends up being a meta against player meta trying to outmeta the computers meta (A dude playing a dude disguised as another dude?)

Spellcasting improvements meh, give me fireball. It can be garbage animation to start

We’ve done some tweaking to the game which should please our pacifist players, too. We have added a new Nonlethal Attack Mode. This means that if you steal something from NPCs and they start attacking you, you can actually just knock them out instead of killing them. [/quote]

Disengage/jump An okay improvement back to closer to DnD mechanics, I think?

Tooltips: I never had an issue with


Im glad to know a bit more about her, but I feel how hard it was to get her to open up was justified (you stopped trying in prologue at behest of someone saying leave her) so it should be difficult.


A-: More backstory and improvements in tutorial, yays. Most interested to see how her interactions with Pinky the Brain and the NPC that makes me want to roll melee classes as an extra excuse not to take her in the main story get along.

A+: This is going to be one of those things that make the game feel more like a Baldur's Gate game, Theres still no butt kicking for goodness, but its a great start.

Overall improvements B+ lots of good things that improve

Currently feeling like a BG game: C+ I still feel like I am missing some of the experience, outside of things lacking due to early access, it still feels like its a game that exploits the name of the original 2/3

Currently feeling like DnD: B-, the gold system (no copper or silver), no taverns, no stat rolls, no face palming due to a stupidly timed/aimed fireball but youve got the basics down and most of the tweeks to the system dont detract from an overall DnD feel.

Also congrats on being the one WotC licensed game that isnt hot garbage since what magic online, maybe Neverwinter?

Yes Larian, how dare you didn't tell us from the start about an impending global pandemic that would impact the game development schedule? Was that really too much to ask?

@Bufo:

I think you're the only one that's really feeling hurt here. And if you're really jumping on the feelings train that fast, it may be a good time to step out and clear your head for a bit (and going as far as to bring up your IRL circumstances, I could talk about MINE but it'd only be a sheer escalation and it's hardly relevant to what actually matters here), and come back in a week when the patch is actually out and we see the practical effects of all these adjustments. Like for one, I am particularly happy about the disengage adjustment, but not happy that it was done by itself without addressing the other issues of height advantage and backstab advantage along with it because it's a straight nerf to player action economy while hardly doing anything to enemy action economy in turn, but I can understand that Larian wants to take it step by step first.

Larian has always been clear about how the EA is structured. People like myself don't like it, but at the same time, a lot of this update was precisely aimed at proving that Larian actually is listening and nothing really is set in stone anymore. We've always operated under the assumption that a level cap increase to 5 was out of the question, but not anymore.

I find it amusing though that a couple months before, people such as you were telling us that our complaints amounted to nothing, that this was just Larian's vision for the game, and that we had to suck it up. But now that Larian has decided that something needed to be changed, you've suddenly decided not to respect their vision anymore and making giant posts about how you suddenly want to get off the EA train now? You must be lacking in self awareness if you're not at least realizing that you're now basically doing the same thing as you accused a bunch of other people of doing before, in a slightly different but fundamentally similar way right now. The point being, you're accusing a lot of people on this forum about being a loud minority, but I wonder if you've ever stopped to consider if your views may be in the minority too.

Honestly, I am really happy for this mechanics focused patch and can't wait to mess around with it.

My ramblings:

* I really like the implementation of food as a requirement for resting. Not because of exploit limitation, but because it brings an additional roleplay element into play. I'd like to eventually see a hunger and fatigue element added (at some point) so that if you're trying to just power through on nothing but short rests you'll really start to suffer from the lack of eating and sleeping.

* The ability to juice up your dice rolls using spells and abilities from your own character and the rest of the party is nice. I'm still really hoping for a larger party and the ability to create all of my own party members so that I can completely bypass the built in NPCs, but that's a topic for another discussion. In tabletop RP experiences, fellow party members often assist with checks and such, so it is very nice to see it brought in here.

* A new dog is nice, but a few new races is the "new" that I'm really craving.

* How about obliterating that level cap, huh? I mean, we've already got scores of 1st level NPCs with (at least 20th) level backstories. How about we get the ability to level them all the way up to where they actually should have started according to their lives prior to the game... whaddaya say? At least then, I might be able to tolerate having them in my party... doubtful, but it could happen.

* A smarter, more resourceful, and more tactically minded AI sounds devilishly fun. So much more challenging (possibly) that it has me giggling with anticipation.

* It is great that you can roam around knocking people out and all, but they should wake up before too long (or be able to be woken up), and you really should be able to tie them up and interrogate or extort them. Rangers? Or maybe it is Rogues... one of them at least... even have a skill relating to this that I have been unable to find any uses for in any of my playthroughs to date.

* Others have asked, but I will add myself to the list of inquiring minds that want to know. How DOES Larian process & parse feedback and data? ...and what is the best way to give feedback if you're really, really hoping to be heard?

* Things are coming together very nicely so far. It's obvious that you've been going hard at the task of making this game all that you think it can be. Keep up the good work, and please move your servers out of the flood plane at some point.

How can people even think this when Larian already made a massive change to dialogues when people complained about past-tense narration. Larian are ready to make changes if people make valid complaints, it just takes time and persuasion.

I like most of what I'm seeing here. We'll see once I play around with it a bit.

I have to ask, why is there so much emphasis on Shadowheart changes every patch? The other characters need love too.

This is the kind of update I wanted. I honestly couldn't care less about more classes or races. These things are things we know for sure we will get so we just have to be patient.

But what we got this time is much more interesting. The disengagement change is hopefully just the start. Swen also said quite clearly they are thinking of ways to improve reactions which is also awesome.

These kind of gameplay changes are much more important and will impact the quality of the game substantially more than the number of races it has. So I'm a little more optimistic. Good job Larian keep experimenting

Interesting how, rather than actually adding a proper day-night cycle, you just decided to overcomplicate rest with the idea of long rest resources.

For me it sounds from the update that this game just moved to the right direction on the gameplay front. I can just repeat what others already said: i dont care about new races or classes until the core systems are not fun (for me at least) but it seems Larian is listening and willing to turn around things to a certain extent.
Im really happy of all mentioned changes, can wait for the full patch notes and to test the new things.

Thank you Jess and Team Larian! You guys rock! Can't wait for Tuesday!!

I cannot wait to play this update! Thanks for giving me hope again for this game. You have really shown that you are listening to feedback, that's great.

Well said, Bomor! LOL...

I mean seriously, the level of beeotches in this forum and their constant tunnel vision complaining. Buncha egotistical, rude "me, me, me" selfish brats with too much time on their hands.

That's to say, your post says everything perfectly in a single sentence. Brilliant!

With restrictions on long rest I really hope they make cutscenes/events with your party trigger in a more stable way. Right now long rests are needed to trigger all the events

The Patch looks like nothing but great stuff. I am excited to read the full patch notes to see the details and hopefully those get released soon.

The Main thing though is this patch makes the game more properly challenging for people. Hopefully they also revisit barrelmancy as well soon - and maybe they made changes to that and throwing.

This. After all, in fact, for most people, "rest spam" is not associated with recovery spells, it is associated with the cutscene.


I think it's important for the plot... I don't really like it either. If I take Shadow to a party, then in most situations only she speaks. But I play the cleric myself, I don't need a second cleric.

And now they get option to "long rest" without spending any resources ...
They get the cutscene they desired, but will not recover every single spell slot & hit point ... (dunno if they will recover anything at all btw).

Seem interesting to me.

//edit:
It might give Larian data about how often we long rest for actual resting, and how often we rest bcs story kinda forces us to.

Someone else must have suggested the whole adding in cantrips into discussions etc skillroll events earlier, i suggested this in the patch announcement and here it is a magical 2 or 3 days later
Finally the petty magic gets into its own right as it should be. Friends, assistance, thaumaturgy.. Which can be so much more powerful than a mere fireball.


Also the (dumb but strong & charismatic) dwarven guild artisan wizard can maybe finally figure out how to craft the purple gems into something.
And with friends, a good price negotiatior too! Maybe.

Anyways, we do need food supply traders. Traveling mayhaps, up , up and down, down, down along the rive..ee..er
So far food has been almost scarce aside from worgpen pork, goblin party dwarfribs and infinitely untrustworthy hag apples (i bet they will reveal themselves as poisoned).

But this also opens up the world to those nifty little non-combat magical items like a cauldron of 60 meals a day (should be handy if feeding an army of goblins or a camp of refugees), maybe even have the allies ask for it and being able to set up a restaurant for free campfood and coin to boot. Or a chest of heroes feasts (bonus health, etc boosts for the whole day like +1 or +2 to all rolls) Maybe even a gnomes perfect magical invention of infinite prosperity and happiness: a wand making a random 2d20 2-40 apples a day to keep a whole temple of priests away? Or Nakor the blues bag of infinite oranges.

This update got me to revisit this forum again just to express how excited I am about it! A lot of small changes that will hopefully lead to a more immersive experience. Anything that enhances rp is good in my book. I'm only a little bit nervous about difficulty ramping up with some updates (like the long rest stuff) but I guess we'll see.

A lot of people were hoping for new races/classes but I think these type of changes are just as important and essential for the game as a whole.

This is an awesome update! Thank you for listening to our feedback and all the hard work and passion put into this.

Just one gripe/concern:
It may get super annoying having characters speaking whenever they go into stealth/sneak. Especially if the whole party is going into stealth... also, why would someone be saying anything when they're trying to be stealthy?

Remains to be seen how it works; Baldur's Gate I and II had the option for it to be once (so you selected someone, told them to move, they'd do a movement line and then never say another until you deselected them and reselected them) all the time or never. I expect something along those lines.

Hello !

Larian said the frequency of sentences will be customizable in options, so don't worry !

Looks like there is some good content to this patch.

I'm most excited for the:

• Nested tooltips. These are essential for understanding the mechanics and lore of BG3.
• Dice rolling updates. It looks like bonuses are now ADDED to die rolls instead of lowering the DC. Also, being able to use spells during dialogue is great.
• Splitting jump & disengage, and making disengage a full action. This will make combat so much more tactical and less Super Mario.
• Maybe non-lethal attack toggle. The fact that the previous "knock unconscious" left combatants hostile when you encountered them again made using it worse than useless, because the enemy would often then cause all nearby NPCs to often turn hostile. It's unclear if Larian has changed this with Patch 5, but it's possible. This is something I'll definitely check.
• All the camp changes: scenery and restrictions. Especially since the item "Camping supplies" has been added, which is enough food for a single rest. So you can just buy X of those from merchants instead of having to collect miscellaneous food items. There's also an "auto select" button which is a good QoL feature.

Importantly, many of these changes have been asked for by a sizable portion of the community. This patch really marks the first one that been mostly dedicated to making changes that align with community feedback. I am happy we got this patch instead of a patch that simply adds new content (classes, races, story) to EA but changes little. Keep it up Larian!

Right! I mean race and classes new content but some ppl dont need new when u dont fix/change old. It's much easier to add something new to a more reliable, well-established build.

IN that video, someone posted around here (THIS one) you can notice that, when they are entering (or are in) stealth ... they are whispering ... wich in my opinion is very nice detail. ^_^
Also, as mentioned ... you can tune it down in settings.

This looks like a great update. I was admittedly hoping for some new race options but these mechanical changes will make the game feel more alive so I am all for it.

Small suggest; doing a long rest without enough food should make your allies grumpy. Maybe nothing big in dialogue but just some random comments about being hungry and tired. Doing it too much could even cause a "disliked that" pop up that hurts your standing with the team to represent them getting irritated that you're not starving the group.

I am fine with the spoken lines as long as the frequency can be toned down a bit, and "I'm on it like ugly on an orc!" is not one of them. :P (Imoen, BG1)

Only if it comes with the option of offering the complaining party member to a certain rogue as a "snack".

Halsin should be able to provide free goodberries for the team!

This is a good point actually. Druids who remembered to save a spell slot for goodberries should be able to use goodberries to pay for a night's meal in a pinch.

... Then add some little dialogue clips of your party groaning about only ever getting a single goodberry to eat if you do it too frequently.

"Oh, a goodberry? Again? You know, just because you can live off it doesn't make it a meal."

The goodberries overdose dialogue is hilarious. I want it now. @ Larian pleeeaaaaase.

Boring, five months of waiting and not the shadow of a new class in sight.

The warlock still only has one evolution.

We end up with purely cosmetic novelties.

Frankly I am tired of having to wait for an early which has now been going on for over a year.

Bugs still not resolved (such as the magician can learn priest spells), or enemies that are knocked out and that the game considers dead.

On a live of 2:19, 10 minutes of waiting, 2 hours of delirium between developer which personally I do not care at all, 9 minutes on the new update. I paid to have BG3 and not a Divinity 3.

Basic D&D 5e races are missing like the dragonborn.

Class: Paladin? Bard? Monk? Sorcerer?

Personally your part of the escape game, I take it as a provocation.

Stop wanting to put your "personal touch" on it, we want dungeons and dragons with the rules of dungeon and dragon.

A French studio has made Solasta a DnD like much closer to a DnD than BG3 at present. They reproduced the rules of DnD5e as closely as possible and it works very well.

Yes Divinity 2 has been a success, but stop having the big head. You don't give any follow-ups in 5 months between update 12 and 13, and you land with finalization additions when 40% of the game is missing.

Anyway, I hope you will quickly release the game, because I personally am tired of replaying Act 1 over and over, it's just not fun at all. And finally I'm going to stop waiting and go look elsewhere.

Then...don't replay the game over and over, wait 2 years and play when it's released?lol?

I always turn the narrator's volume to 0. I think it's great that Larian provides this as an option--always have enjoyed it. Hearing the narrator breaks the immersion for me--don't know precisely why. The disembodied voice just doesn't flow...reading the narrator's text takes but seconds and doesn't seem like an affectation or an artifact--it seems a part of the game, whereas the audible voice just doesn't really belong.

Liked the presentation, though I have to really question continued use of "From Hell"...as all of the corny Beelzebub playacting is gone. Next time, consider dumping "from Hell" and just calling it "Community update."

I think the changes are terrific! 'nuff said!

So...what time roughly does the patch come out on the 12th? ^_^

Regards,

B.V.V.

Interesting. I always viewed the Narrator as potentially the Absolute; like she is telling the story. So I have no problem with her. 😁

I would also love to know this
Last time the hotfix dropped in the middle of the night for Australia... so likely I will leave my computer on overnight to download the patch, but won't be playing until Wednesday after work... though for most of the rest of the world it will still be Tuesday.

Roughly or not it doesn't come out on the 12th.

I'm hoping Pact of the Blade makes an appearance for Warlocks.

Not in the PHB. It won't

Mee too.

but for some reason it seemed to me that the voice of the narrator should change depending on the gender of the character+1

yes it is in the PHB. maybe you're confusing it with hexblade?

I'm truly surprised they didnt include it already. Wyll's story fits the Pact of the Blade most. Why else could he use a Rapier?

in 5e you can use all weapons even if you're not proficient, afaik... you just have less of a chance to hit

Pact of the Blade is a 3rd lvl feature you pick, not an archetype. Though Hexblade would be really nice to have too.

Me too! Blade Pact Warlock is my absolute favorite type of character. It gives me magic let's me play high-charisma and lets me use a sword.

I still hope for Hexblade too ... :-/

Oh sorry, I confused the two
Definitely in the PHB !

(Not sure this is a very good english sentence... But you'll probably understand)

I would like the Ranger sub class Gloom Stalker... but that ain't out of the PHB either

There is many interesting sub classes that is not in PHB ...
Some might even say that every sub class that is most interesting was added later.

But as far as i know, Swen never said that they will not include anything outside PHB ... only promissed that every(class/race)thing from there will be included for sure. :P

Almost. I still think the Arcane Trickster is the ideal Rogue subclass for me and it is from the PHB. It became a lot stronger when Booming Blade was introduced though.

And here I am just waiting for the update to drop...

Wouldn't it be nice if we had a countdown timer for that like we did for the announcement that it was coming?

So far i didnt come to taste to both Arcane Trickster, and Eldrich Knight ... many people say they are both totaly awesome, but they seem to me like they are something in between wizard and fighter/rogue ... but neither properly. :-/

In matter of Rogue, im mostly curious about Assassin ... that is also from PHB, i know ...

When i was talking about interesting subclasses outside PHB ... i had in mind thinks like i dunno ...
To give few examples ... it would be Druid: Circle of the Shepherd, Fighter: Rune Knight, Monk: Way of the Drunken Master, Paladin: Oathbreaker ... and many more. :3
Maybe i expressed myself poorly.

+1

Gloomstalker is awesome fun to play.

Eldritch Knight is truly set apart in pen and paper by Reaction spells Resist Elements and Shield, which are both missing from BG3. It gives them the ability to survive truly tricky scenarios, move where they shouldn't sometimes, pull off stunts, etc... Without those 2 key spells, honestly EK Fighters in BG3 feel subpar and it's no wonder you feel the same.

As to Arcane Tricksters, there's two things missing. First is the 2nd level Illusion spell Shadow Blade (It deals 2d8 psychic damage on a hit and has the finesse, light, and thrown properties (range 20/60). In addition, when you use the sword to attack a target that is in dim light or darkness, you make the attack roll with advantage.) is not in game. Secondly, all of the truly cool things you can do in pen and paper with the Mage Hand cantrip is missing as well.

That's just some of the cream of the crop picks, not all. So unless Lariant adds some cool features to make up for the ones they're not putting in those 2 subclasses really don't shine like they do in 5.0.

The patch is delayed to thursday.... (Larian's discord)

Yes, they also tweeted about it, eh... I really wanted to play today.

As long as the delay is communicated I can wait.

cant say im surprised...whats two more days, i guess. no luck on the patch notes tho?

And that's why they couldn't give you any exact time and especially a countdown - "bugs" happens!

i mean, they did give us a time - today. im just wondering now when the famine is gonna hit since larian has already dealt with the plague, floods, and now locusts.

in all seriousness, i want bg3 to succeed and be a great game, but ea has definitely made me question larian's overall project mgmt skills

I was so ready to play today .
Back to cleaning it is then.

I think they want to make sure the patch notes will only include changes that make the patch.

I am greedy for the patch notes too though...

Had just ordered delivery for today too to camp out in bedroom for 2 days.....

mhmm, we're on the same page fam - i just would have hoped that by 12pm est (<-when they tweeted about bugs/delay) on the day the update was supposed to drop that larian would know what changes are making the long-awaited patch 5

For you to know sometimes the way to deal with a bug is to cut out the feature causing it for a while. So no, as long as they are testing and finding bugs they are not sure what the patch will contain.

For you to know - i agree with your premise, but think you are kinda hand-waving here. So no - i think larian should have an idea of whats gonna be in the patch after ~four months of testing changes. sure bugs can delay the update, but saying that larian doesnt have any idea of what the next patch will contain is disingenuous.

Well ... after all, Swen did warned us in PFH. :-/
Its a pitty, but 2 days are quite fine. :3

Oh, maybe I'm hand-waving. And you're assuming a bit too much about how they spent those "~four months" of testing changes, implementing new changes, postponing some changes for the next patch... and you're totally ignoring the fact that they delayed this patch because of bugs.

Yeah, 2 days are survivable, even if just barely .

i literally said 'sure bugs can delay the update' - lol. now youre straw-manning and looking for an argument.

'And you're assuming a bit too much about how they spent those "~four months" of testing changes, implementing new changes, postponing some changes for the next patch' - i dont even know what you are trying to get at here. like, yes? i hope they spent the last four months doing all those things?

i think we both should just move on and wait for thursday for both the update and patch notes before we 'assume' anything further, bc we know how that makes ppl look.

Ok. Just let me put it in more simple way. Your first mesage in our dialog seemed to imply that Larian suppose to release the full patch notes before the delayed patch because they "would know what changes are making the long-awaited patch 5".
And I'm telling you that they wouldn't know till the very last minute (except they gave us in this exact thread some information on what they are going to release for sure). Because before that last minute they are still testing, debugging and maybe even adding things and may find bugs which may make them postpone certain implementations.
And then you're telling me that it shouldn't be the case because they had "~four months of testing changes". You see now why I'm saying that you're assuming and ignoring the fact about the bugs? You're forgetting to apply this fact to the possibility of postponed in last minute things and that it's not 4 months of pure testing and something could be changed and bring new bugs just yesterday.
I'm not searching for an argument, I'm searching for you people to start understanding why Larian would avoid talking earlier about anything and stop filling the forum with your mispleasure on the matter. In Swen's words from his own twitter:
"I try to avoid talking about what we’re working on now or what’s planned. Not that I don’t want to talk about it but I learnt it brings unneeded pressure to the team. They’ve got enough as is." - and that he answered exactly on demand to tell if they're fixing a certain bug.

Some people just presume that creating next patch is matter of one busy afternoon ...
And then just waiting for few weeks (or months) bcs, developers are simply pure evil ... then testing in last minute, and find bug ... so they can delay, bcs it makes them happy to see us suffer (again, pure evil).

If y'all would prefer, there is a simple way that Larian could release full patch notes and always patch exactly when they say they're going to. All it would take is for them to finish with what they intend for the patch, wrap it up in a pretty little bow, work all the bugs out, and THEN announce the release. Personally, I'm good with the way that we have it. 2 extra days of waiting sucks, but it is 2 days that we know about. If done the other way we wouldn't even be hearing about a patch release for another couple of weeks (at least).

lmao ya, ive already moved on and recall why i became disillusioned about posting in here with ppl gatekeeping comments/feedback...but keep making assumptions and condescending remarks in your non-search for an argument. you even contradict yourself in your own response so much so that i dont even know what your ultimate point is other than just having the last word - so have it. <3

as an aside, idk why you feel the need to search thru threads for 'you ppl' that fill the forums with 'mispleasure' - call me crazy, but this is an early access where larian themselves said they wanted player feedback and open communication about the game (despite the studio essentially going dark since the last update) so i dont really put much stock into Swen's corporate speech there tbh.

Honestly I just really want to see the full patch notes more than the patch itself. Is that odd?

Is patch 5 out yet?? how do you know if patch 5 is installed?

It would be lovely if they released the full patch notes before the patch so we could read them while waiting.

delayed to Thursday the 15th according to Larian.

Aaaarrgh!!! Sven... "C" Tease..., Knew I was gonna be disappointed on the release time for this patch. Perhaps it will be that much more perfect upon release.

Thanks

Yea yea delaying the patch for 2 days doesn't really matter... But after such an announcement and a spectacle, delaying it the D-Day at T-Time is really wierd.
Did they found new breaking bugs today that couldn't wait a hotfix a few days later ?

This patch release and the whole communication (or lack of) arround it looks like a joke.
Obviously two more days won't change a lot of things but it looks like whatever they said, we can never trust their deadlines...

they still don't write all the changes, for example, the cutscenes added or which ones they changed / improved. it is interesting see it for yourself.

Thank you for the update.

Point well said. I will wait.. Anticipation is a B#@T%ch. No One Wants To Play A Half Ass Game, There's Plenty Of Them Around. I Trust In Sven and The Larian Crew To Pump Out Some Quality. A little disappointed.., but do your THANG, Larian.

Welcome to the world of development and programming. Bugs happen. Last minute bugs especially.

We only have to wait 2 days... we'll be ok.

We will. Not sure about Larian. Brothers and Sisters! Time to start our crusade!

The Monolyth! If we destroy it, everything will be over! For the emperor!

Yep, that's what's so great about the volume control--it's really a very nice option! The player can tailor the narration to his preference! I'd been turning the narrator to 0 volume since D:OS, actually. Glad you like hearing the narration...I've always wanted to talk to someone who does...;) (J/K) I can read the narrated bits at least 3x faster than the narrator reads them aloud without even trying--It's like this, my player character will walk over to a green door, lets say, and open it--all at my direction, even as the narrator would be saying "...what's behind the green door? He walks over to find out..." while on-screen I'm opening a purple door even as the narrator says.."find out"...and etc. But...that doesn't mean my size fits all...hence the genius behind doing the narrator track on separate channel with its own volume control..;)

I'm also delighted to see they are working the CAMP into the game logically as a known location not outside the game stage, and providing the ability to sleep where you are if you have the requisite camping supplies. Nice...

Looking forward to Thursday...;)