Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Patch 7 new items !

I don't want D&D to turn into making a "Lightning build" or a "Momentum build" to get a crazy movement rate by stacking similar items. I prefer just wearing Boots of Speed which are powerful and special and wielding a Staff of Thunder and Lightning.

Building sets from an abundance of magical junk is entirely different from a Necromancer Wizard collecting a set of legendary Vecna artifacts. Or a Fighter collecting Balduran's items.

The more magic items there will be, the weirder, more gimmicky and less impressive they become.

And the names are getting too ridiculous when these gimmicky items are being mass produced.

Larian just cant help themselves. We WILL get DOS2-like magical items in huge quantities.

I used to play BG2 with a mod that made EVERY single magic items UNIQUE, no copies, and shifted them around in the world (even regular magic +1, +2 , ...weapons) And just that ALONE made the game incredibly fun and rewarding. You had only ONE Longsword +2 in the world, or 1 pair of boots of swiftness or a single ring of protection xxx...Not to mention the amazing item historical descriptions/stories we had.

But yea, doing this in 2022...rofl. Me wants my MMO COLOR CODED green /blue/ orange /purple /red /black / indigo/ LOOT lv1, and more LOOT lv2 to replace my LOOT lv3. GIME LOOT lv4.
Ive mentioned this before, for DOS2 if you removed ALL random GREEN, BLUE, PURPLE magical items and just added tons more unique ORANGE items, just called them MAGICAL ITEMS; the game would already be 2x better. The itemization alone in this game made me quit after 10 hours.

‘Combustion McFarty Leggings’ anyone? Grants extra jump distance when cheese has been consumed and an area effect gas damage.

Am I the only one who wants the magic items to at least have some kind of Enhancement Bonus? I've just been selling everything because I get more mileage out of the +1 weaponry and armour. :P

SKP

No, you're not.

The best exemple are probably the stupid adamantine armors you can craft deep in the underdark after an epic quest leading to an epic reward that nearly have the same effect than the first magical +1 armor you can find in the druid grove...

It would certainly be nice for some ... well, probably most of them ... but i dont think they "all" needs it.
That would on the other hand quite diminish its own value. :-/

Gith weapons for example should certainly be +1 (not excluding Vengeance enchantment) ...
I mean its reward for one of hardest encounter in EA ... reward should be fitting the work. :-/

On the other hand i would not make their armor +1 ... its allready strongest AC we get, why boost it even more? We need to also get option to move somewhere.

Same goes for Leather armor from Minthara.
Or any other Drow armor as the matter of fact ...

Honestly i would not make Everburning blade +1 ... i mean it would be cool and certainly strong ... on the other hand, then we would definietly get arguably strongest 2H weapon in tutorial. :-/
Wich sounds kinda lame. :-/

Do you have anything specific in mind?

//Edit:
Ah ... Adamantine ... still forgeting about it, since i usualy get it at the very end of my gameplay.
And i agree ... those armors could use some second look and prefferably complete rework. :-/
After all those talk how "the person who control the forge would rule the Underdark" it was quite disapointing find. :-/

Also ... am i the only one who finds it weird that Sharites used the forge, and yet none of their armor is made out of Adamantine, nor the Adamantine armor we create contain any Shar symbols?

Pardon me? You rage-quit the game because the magic items had different colours? That sounds a little irrational, I only look at what the item does

Yes, the way Larian present their magic items reflects the expectations of most current videogame players, most of which are probably more familiar with MMO or Action games. That's just good business sense, which is why most videogames follow each other ( i.e. copy ) when anyone gets traction with a game concept.

Unfortunately, it's the 5e rules that are responsible for the nerfed magic items along with squashed level advancement and other things that were good about the 2e rules used in BG1/2, so we are pretty much stuck with shit magic items.

That said, I definitely prefer my shit magic items to not require me to be subject to stupid conditions before they actually do anything. There are far too many items that do nothing 95% of the time, and then do not very much the other 5%. Simple low-bonus items that always work are much preferable, which is why the 2H Sword with 1D4 fire damage you can get from the Nautiloid remains one of the best items.

There are some "sensible" limited items that don't do much, but are useful for what they do. Those that give access to spell effects, the item giving extra psychic damage to magic missile is pretty good for an arcane caster, several items that enhance a divine caster's healing. It's just unfortunate we have so many magic items that it is difficult to believe anyone uses. Maybe Larian should use their aggregated game data to determine which items are just never used.

You should allready know that you get that a lot around here.

There are two items granting invisibility as well, aren't they new? One is leather armor and the other a light armored helmet I think. Found them in the Underdark.

Where can I find the Chain of Liberation and the Sparkswall?

This is one where I'm siding with Larian. Bring on the treasure hunt. Gimme magic loot.

This is true to the spirit of BG if not DnD. BG 1&2 had soooo much stuff you needed two bags of holding to carry it all. It's just something that will be true of any videogame adaptation of D&D rules: many more magic items and many more fights than you would ever see in a campaign.

And putting Larian's additions to D&D rules into magic items allows anyone who dislikes to just ignore them.

Judging by the cover art and the name I suspect the full set of lighting items was designed for "Gale" -- I'd rather have those rules put in this way instead of creating a new elementalist mage class.

It just occurred to me that this game has been in development for a long time. It has been in early access for a loooong time. Players are playing multiple playthroughs of an unfinished act I over and over again.

Is that why they are adding weird gimmicky items? Because everyone, including devs and internal testers, and us fanatics on this forum, are getting bored playing through the same unfinished content. You eventually become blind to what's enough and where less is more and just desperately need any new stuff.

They said in the beginning of EA the magic items would be in line with D&D, i.e. rare and significant. But a year later they changed their minds and started adding this MMO style gear in greater quantities. Why I wonder. Personally I hate the new items because they are just another step away from what makes D&D cool and unique, towards generic soulless MMO crap you have in just about every game now. I don't remember a single magic item from DA: Inquisiton or DOS 2. But I remember Varscona from BG1 from over 20 years ago.

I doubt that would be the reason.

The need of test such effects sounds a lot more reasonable.

These are not humble +1 swords or Boots of Elvenkind; these are the kinds of items you'd get in World of Warcraft or Everquest. With the exception of Fourth Edition, D&D does not ape MMORPGs.

Been like that since 3.5, my group used to power build back in the day trying to tailor there character as far as they could go. It's not "mmo" its just a style of game play.



Maybe I'm missing something but both those are known d&d items

used to go from basic gear, masterwork, +1 to +5 from what I understand now since 5e nerfs everything is basic gear & +1 to +3

Edit* actually ill do some digging after I get off work.

D&D has never been about gimmicky items like "when you jump make a thunder AoE" or "when you heal pull target 3m" or "when below 50% HP get +1 Persuasion checks against medium size Oozes".

They've also completely flooded the game with new conditions with minor effects. I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here. BG3 is heavily homebrewed and the homebrew is a very clear departure from the spirit of 5e, and every edition before it.

This casual historical negationism in defense of Larian's "color" is discouraging.

And now it is ...

The new items promote a DOS:2 style of play. Regardless if you feel this game is or is not DOS, these items are basically shifting the combat to use the same schemes and rotations as DOS.

And now, they are slowly introducing the predication of using surfaces and more and more surfaces every fight.

Surfaces are low hanging fruit for them, as the systems are already there. I’d much prefer to see proper climbing, and swimming, and true flight… but those are much less likely.

Something else that is very strange in BG3 about items. Not sure we have already talked about it... The color code.

The color code is used in many games for decades now. We can like it or not but this code help the players to see what item is better than another one.
More bonuses or more powerfull bonuses,... It depends the game but the idea remains the same.

Except in BG3.

A few exemples :
- Sussur's weapons are blue, but exactly the same as the green +1 weapons.
- Adamantine armors have different, but not more (or more powerfull) bonuses than the green ones.
- Some green items allow you to cast level 0 spells while some others allow you to cast level 1 spells. The blue staff of Sicnkess also gives you a level 1 spell and nothing more.
- Mourning Frost is "legendary" and it's a good weapon but not an extraordinary one.

It looks like the colors are really used to define what is uncommon (green) and what is rare (blue)... But with a total abstraction of the code players are used to for years : rarer items (blue in BG3) are better than the green ones (uncommon in BG3).
They could have created their own code but they choosed to take a part of a well established one to give him another meaning.

I don't know why they're doing this but it's disturbing when you have finally understood than your green weapon is better than the blue one.