Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Let's talk new UI.

+1 to everything
So I am not crazy, the minimap is much bigger then it used to be.

Futher additions from my side:

Hotbars still mess themselves up with every addition/removal of the spell/item making it difficult to use it extensively. For me it means using hotbar as little as possible to avoid fuss required to maintain it.

I believe that "sorting" options would greatly benefit from greater organisation. So if I press "spells level 1" it would be nice to have full action on the left, seperated from bonus action on the right. Similarly with weapon actions, it would be nice to have clear visual distinction in what resources they use, if any. It applies to pretty much everything: spells like chromatic orb, like Rag mentioned. Oh, I do like that spells that can be recasted, now pop up in a seperate tab on the right, instead of polluting even further main hotbar.

I would like for weapon actions to display when using the weapon regardless if they are on the hotbar or not. Personally, I would happily remove all of those out of the hotbar, and access my selection of weapon attacks through weapon (my brain just works better that way). I need them on hotbar, however, or they will not properly display. That's how spells work - at the moment I have cantrips on my spell hotbar only, and in spite of that all 1st level spells available are displayed when I click on "level 1 resource" icon.

I would prefer if "items" tab wouldn't lead to a fuller view of already visible hotbar, but to display of all consumables in characters inventory (a bit like spells do) - and with them being sorted by type. What I want in my "main view", generally isn't what I am looking for when I am diving into "items" tab. Having to auto-add items to have them accesible through "items" tab, just makes having your "main" view useful that much fussier.

OK. I actually do like it better. However, it's as it was said in the PFH. You have to get used to it. There is a learning curve. Also, if you don't use hotkeys, it is a bit more tedious without certain movement mechanic buttons always right there in your face.

But, I do like the click on Actions to pull up just the Actions hotbar. Click on Actions button again and close the Actions hotbar so you can see your standard actions like Jump, Crouch, etc. Same with Bonus, spells, etc. Click to open and click again to close. I do think it's more user friendly. That said it is too easy to accidentally drag and drop an icon out of the hotbar. We do need a lock feature. Some buttons are too big, like Flee and End Turn, and the map is huge. A resize feature would be good.

I LOVE Group button and Group Stealth, though. I also think that it looks cleaner and more professional.

Could it be better? Yes. Is it better than the previous? Yes.

Oh, and I almost forgot, I turned off all the Auto-Load features. That's big. If you don't it does constantly jumble your hotbars.

But I do like the new character sheet and the ability to drag and drop from character sheet to hotbar to world to hotbar to character sheet universally.

Anyway, that's my two cents about it.

Its called party pannels now ...
Its on the top of that new party ui on left side of your screen ...

Then, if you want ONLY to work with inventories, you simply expand them over your character by that tiny and easily to oversight arrow in top left corner of your screen.

If i missunderstand your problem then sory.
But i thought this could be helpfull.

Personaly i had to completely change my binds ...
Since Equipment no longer do anything (???) i use it now for character panel, all is there so quite fine.
And i use Party Pannels instead of Inventory, since that shows whole party.

I would call it first move in the right direction ... now they at least no longer take us space on our bar ...
Still their original cast do tho and we rarely need those again. :-/
And they "kinda" takes the place that could have ben used for our bar.

I still believe to let that icon either change from original cast to re-cast version ... or add recast to pop-up bar would be thousand times better.

Potentially, having recast pop-up appear in the say it won't take hotbar space could be desirable (honestly I doubt it will become a problem, but we will see as we continue using it).

I would be against casting changing into re-casting, because:
1) there might be situations where we do want to cast the spell on new target (for example switching target of a witchbolt)
2) If we cast a spell, we will probably want to recast it as well. Not an issue with spells one uses often that will be on the hotbar already, but as we gain levels, I suspect more and move players will be using spell level tabs to access spells they don't use in every encounter. As it is, they will be able to easily recast spells after an initiate cast, without having to dig for the spell again.

Yes, I turned them all off, outside items - which at the moment are a big mess for my PC.

Yeah ...
I kinda keep forgeting about this one.

I had in mind more like things like Speak with Dead, Hex, Hunter's Mark ... you know, those spells where the only difference is that it no longer costs spell slot to cast them again.

Well ... adding it to pop-up "bar" would be sufficient in my opinion.

This is a lot of work and you can tell they had fun with some of the animations and stuff, so again, thank you Larian for working on this.
Love the new button shortcuts for ungrouping/grouping. There's a learning curve, but a major improvement over what it was before.

Agree with everything that was said in this thread concerning the rest. My biggest complaint is:
1) No more ability to add buttons or to extend the action bar
2) No UI Scaling. The UI takes up too much screen real estate right now. Would be great to have a slider in the options menu that allows us to scale it to our desired size. The game is beautiful, I want to enjoy the scenery, unimpeded by the UI.
3) When opening the inventory, can it show the extended version by default ? i.e. when clicking "I", I want the inventory, not the character sheet. It's OK to have them grouped, and very convenient, but the extra click to extend when I specify that I want to pull up the inventory is a bit annoying. I do like that the sorting was fixed though. I would still like to see a quicksort button that sorts everything in one click rather than 2. Exactly the same as DOSII.

Some nitpicking items that have already been pointed out:
- The flee, turn based buttons are huge. I get there needs to be symmetry, but why not replace those with the actions that most new players will be using anyway -> Basic melee and ranged attack? Those buttons feel a little incongruous, like "WOW those are so big, probably something I'll be using all the time".

It also occurred to me that the black bar along the top that accommodates actions, spell slots etc is a fixed size no matter what character you're using. Should it not resize to fit the number of buttons needed, so you can see more of the game? Having a long black bar up there at all times seems a waste of space. I can imagine when we get into multi-classing it will need to be more flexible anyway.

Big +1 on this. When they said that on PFH, I felt "okay, so I'm not going to like it, but I should give myself a chance to get used to it." And I'm glad I heard that and gave it a chance. It's not perfect, obviously, but I'm glad that made it clear this was a "get ready for a big change" moment.

Another issue with the new hotbar. I got my custom bar into something manageable but the bloody thing won't even stay up. As soon as I switch characters it goes back to the one with the red lines on it. I would prefer to just have it default to the last bar that was up or to have the custom bar take priority, all this extra clicking stuff is unneeded.

Has anyone found a way to filter food items in the new inventory? Nothing I tried as search criteria worked.

It does work when I enter a name of a specific item, such as "fish" or "apple". But I'd like to see all of them together, so I can move them to camp faster.

This particular bit looks like it's definitely worse than it was before.

+1 I tried to make a use of custom bar, and that very quicky made me return to fighting with "main view". According to steam patch notes:


Seems like the feature is still very much in development. With different options, the game must have a way of setting up, which option we want to use.

It's just incomprehensible to me how bad the user interface still is. What's the point of placing icons in the hotbar when, once you glance away for a second, the icons reshuffle themselves? Why even have numbers as keybinds when every time I press a number, some different ability is triggered?

Also, not exactly an UI feature but related to randomly moving icons: stop changing my spells when my characters level up. The best would be to just have an empty new slots. Second best is if the game selected some spells into the new slots. There's absolutely no reason for this game to forcefully change my selected spells, removing the ones I've memorized and replacing them with different spells, when leveling up.

character portraits were adjusted so people can't call it a toilet chain anymore...

anyway chat box on bottom right needs npc chat seperated from combat log, on the ship was spammed to death by two people having a convo over and over. ui needs a scaling slide so it can be reduced. crap still needs tabs so you can hide elements, there is no need to have a mini map open 24-7

Agree. Hotbar is still a mess, but now I can just give up on it, rather then having to fight with it after every level up or change in spells.

i was disappointed to see that removed spells find their way back to the hotbar and mess everything up.


+1 combat log needs a lot of love I’m general. I want to be able to have minimap close and combat log open by default.

@Wormerine pretty much

just two different tabs for general and combat would be fine for me but presuming other people would want something else maybe.

But functionality has not changed, so it remains strongly related to shit.

Okay there's a lot to say about the UI and after I played a few jours, I have an opinion about a few things.

1) The very good
1.1 The "initiative bar" - I absolutely love it. It's way smaller than before and way less intrusive (smaller portrait, no more space between them, follow the upper border,...).
1.2 The tooltips - Definitely better. Easier to read and understand. I noticed a few bugs in descriptions but whatever, the revamp is very good.
1.3 The new inventory/equipment/character sheet/spellbook menu. I like it a lot too. All the missing informations are now there and it's way easier to read and understand.

BUT : The inventory management is still a pain.
- the game lack real filters to only show certain types of items like we have in the trading window (weapons, armors, consumables, food, misc, quest,...). Auto sorting items by types, weight, value and so on can be usefull, but it's still a big sorted mess...
WoTR also allow us to pick up a lot of items but the inventory use / management is easier, especially because of these filters.

2) What is not really good
2.1 The mini maximap. I like that you remove all those icons unrelated all arround. But the minimap is unnecessarily big. I find the minimap almost useless but if I have to live with it, I'd like it to be smaller. The texts on it should scale the zoom level.
2.2 The portrait on the left. Looks pretty good when you're outside combats, but it's something else when you engage. These dotted lines are awefull tbh and it gives no additionnal informations. The portrait move a bit to the right when you're in combat, eating 1 more centimeters of the screen for no valuable reasons. The combat icon (2 little sword) could somewhere else so the portrait stay aligned on the left of the screen. In exemple, in the middle of the portraits... Or on the right, depending what you plan with the popup appearing when you move your mouse on a portrait... And here comes the very bad.

3) The very bad.
3.1 The popup on the left when you move your mouse on a portrait. This one require screenshots.


- This popup repeat a few informations you have everywhere else (HP, buff/debuff) => not necessary to repeat.
- This popup also show you information you just don't have to see on a popup and that you can usually find elsewhere (race, speed, AC, "action points" available) => not necessary on a popup.
- Weight and gold is something you easily see when you click the "group panel" button => not necessary
- Everything else can be seen elsewhere and ofc, you can always select another character to see something else, like the remaining actions/bonus actions if you need to.

I'm not playing multiplayer so I'm not sure what is really usefull and what is not for these players, but for solo players this whole popup is almost useless.
In the end, if something is necessary in it, it could result in a way smaller and more elegant popup rather than this big thing that, on top of that may hide a bit the portrait of characters when they're engaged (because the portrait is a bit more on the right, you get it ?)

==> shadowheart, cleric level 3, eventually half high elf, (action left for MP ?), End.

3.2 The popup on the top when your mouse is on an engaged ennemy portrait.
This one is the same but even worse because it completely hide another part of the user interface (with the same informations, once again).


Just a reminder : right click on a creature allow us to check everything about it.
Back to our popup, "buggy position" aside, do I really need to see all these informations "fast" ?
Name : YES
HP : YES
Buff/debuff : YES
Level : NO
AC : NO (%to hit is life)
Speed : NO
Race : not sure, but I'd say NO
Actions left : NO
Weight and gold : Definitely NO

Once again, most of these informations are useless.
- IMO, you should put some informations on the portrait : HP and Buff/debuff. About conditions it would be way easier/faster to move your mouse on "small conditions icons" on the portrait to read the tooltip than having to click "T" to fix the popup and read the tooltip...

Nothing else is an information you have to see fast in combat. Right click on the creature and check his creature sheet is enough.
You got it, I really dislike this popup window !

Takes too much time for now : hotbar and "red upper bar" for the next time