Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Mega-threads and Guides Camping and resting.

I also think cutscenes should occur in all camps (the companion ones at least) not just the forest camp otherwise you miss so much because you camped in a cave/building/Underdark etc with no party story progression.

The more I play Solasta, the more I am seeing that Long Rest mechanics are an absolute must to figure out for BG3. Although you can't just rest wherever you want, there are rest areas in Solasta which kinda sorta limits you. Still, it's not enough. After level 5, my Sorcerer can cast Fireball and Fly, EVERY battle. Just long rest and regain them, just about every battle.

Example: I'm going into the Tower after you first go to Coperann. I fight undead. I fight wolves. I fight something else - can't remember - drakes I think. I find campsite. Ah. I can now long rest at any time in this area. By level 6 and 7, and with goodberry, I can rest anytime I want once I find a campsite. So, I fight undead at the door. Long Rest. I go into the tower. I fight ghosts. Long Rest. I fight main boss. Long Rest. I go back outside to do side quest and fight really tough undead. Pretty difficult fight, sure, but all spells in the arsenal once again. Kill him. Long rest. No real restrictions. No real limitation on spells.

I honestly don't know what the solution is, at this point, but something has to be done. Maybe the whole Earning Long Rests would be the key. In other words, as someone previously mentioned, as you complete story objectives - whatever they are - each objective awards you a certain number of Long Rest points, simulating that you've done some substantial things that day which then lead up to you earning a Long Rest. Bigger quest items that you complete provide greater Long Rest points, or whatever, so the more difficult the encounter, the more points you earn so you can Long Rest.

This would then encourage doing side quests that aren't so difficult. A bunch of easier side quests could then lead up to a Long Rest that you might need just before facing a more difficult quest.

Example: It takes, let's just say, 50 Long Rest Points to Long Rest. You crash on the beach. You meet Shadowheart and befriend her. 5 Long Rest Points. You fight the devourers. 30 Rest Points. You meet Astarion. 5 Rest Points. You encounter the fishermen and the mind flayer. 10 Rest Points. Ah. Now you can Long Rest if you need to. Otherwise, you only have Short Rests to be able to recover HP and such. (Again, Short Rests trigger dialogue. I can't stress that enough.) You meet Gale. 5 Rest Points. You find the Harper stash. 10 Rest Points. You find the chest near the ruins. 10 Rest Points. You rescue Lae'zel. 10 Rest Points, because you had to deal with the tieflings first. You face Gimblebock and company, 20 Rest Points. You've now earned 2 Long Rests, and if you haven't even used one, you're doing pretty good. You face the mercs within the crypt. 20 Rest Points. You face the traps and scribes and find the book and meet Withers and everything else in there, you earn another 50 points in all. 3 Long Rests earned by this point. At lower level, this is good. If you haven't used them all, you are storing them up for later. If you have used one or two in order to just get through, that's fine. You've still got a 3rd you can save for later.

With a game like BG3, I have to wonder if this is the only approach that will really work.

Its been said many times before but as you're repeating things I might as well... Just because you CAN do something doesn't mean you have to. Larian's entire engine is based on cheesesploitation. Choose not to do it and move on. If someone else wants to play the game in full-on easy mode - who cares? It has no impact on your play experience whatsoever.

Sure it does. If the DM allows a player to rest after every fight, why wouldn't they? Imagine playing Pokemon - any Pokemon game - and they gave you unlimited Master Balls. Then they said, "Um. You want a challenge? Just don't use the Master Balls. YOU decide which PokeBall to use and when. We aren't going to control any part of the game like that so everyone can play however they want. You want a challenge. Challenge yourself. You want to just go around easily catching all the Pokemon. Use unlimited Master Balls."

That would make for an INCREDIBLY boring Pokemon game.

Not limiting Long Rests is like giving Pokemon trainers unlimited Master Balls and potions and revives, etc.

I'm really hoping for some sort of difficulty settings so that if you want to play on GG easy mode, fine, but let me set something so it feels like I'm not making myself abide by some decent rules.

Besides, let's see what happens when you play multiplayer with a wizard at level five who wants to Long rest after every battle so he or she can replenish all their spells. Their argument will be why not because I can. Watch What happens. They'll OP everything in the game and leave you with nothing but clean up duty.

You are definitely overcomplicating things here, I think. A certain difficulty level or a setting (not the default for everyone, mind you!) needs to add just 2 things:

1. Drastically reduce the number of Camp Supplies available in the game.
2. Make them mandatory for Long Rests.

Done. No artificial constructs begging for Occam's razor, just the standard DnD mechanics. Only, I wouldn't expect Larian to implement that; this probably will have to go to modders.

Also, personally I don't think Long Rest limitation is a good idea. You can hit a particularly long streak of bad rolls, for example when you deal with traps, and your party will have one foot in their graves. What do you propose us to do in this case - save-scum? A TT DM can always adjust Long Rest requirements, but will this game to the same? Don't answer, it's a rhetorical question.

Agree, I think this is the best we can hope for. The ideal would be a day/night cycle with the 5E restrictions on hours between long rests and the potential to be interrupted during rests.

I think a nice simple solution if they added day/night would be to have every battle or major story event move the day forward about 4 hours (meaning the daylight would change, not having a literal clock). So after about 3 battles or story events, it would be dark and you could then long rest. That would also give you a good indication of when it was time to rest so you don’t miss camp-related story events.

It would still seem half-done at best ...
Imagine you would walk around for litteral hours intentionaly avoiding combat ... and the time would not move even a single second.
Then you would kill Karlach, Scratch, and those 2 Goblins who are guarding Blighted Willage from Swap site ... combats barely long enough for 2 rounds ... and sudently, 12h passed. :-/

I’d be ok with that.

Then simply don't play with that person. The whole game doesn't have to cater to how you want to play it.

I thought there is some confrimation window that all players must accept before you go to Long Rest.
So this really should not be a problem. O_o

Here's what I'm getting at:

Played Solasta. Long rested and then fought big undead fight. Yay! I won. Used lots of spells. I'm thinking, "I'll just long rest again and be fine. I leave the area.

Random Encounter strikes while we're camping in the Badlands. Remorhaz Offspring. 2 of them.

My half-orc barbarian is keeping watch. He's the only one awake. The two creatures win initiative. Crap! They burrowed underground and came up under my half-elf sorcerer and dwarf paladin. Well, they're awake now, seriously hurt, but awake. Half-orc druid fails to wake up. She's sleeping through the fight.

Round 2. They strike again. Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch! My sorcerer is almost dead. My paladin has 21 HP remaining. My barbarian goes into rage frenzy. Attacks one. Does some serious damage, but they're tough. Real tough. The paladin heals himself 45 HP with Lay on Hands. Sorcerer risks using her sorcerer points to get a spell slots. Casts Fly. Risks Opportunity Attack from one. Escapes safely into the air. She's safe, for now. Druid's still sleeping.

Round 3. Remorhaz attacks druid. She's awake now. Barbarian is also struck by the other. He fights back. Paladin joins him. Sorcerer casts Magic Missiles at higher spell slots. Shouldn't have used so many high level during that last fight. Dang!

Three rounds later. Barbarian is down and the paladin is trying hard to get him back up. Remorhaz 1 is dead. Druid's hurting. Sorcerer is still flying and raining spells down, but she's out of spell slots. She's just using fire bolt. Druid gets hit. She's down. Paladin gets barbarian up with a potion by moving next to him and spending an action.

Next round they manage to kill it. MAN! That was a close fight. Level 7 characters almost got taken out by random encounter because of an unexpected surprise and because I used a lot of high end spells earlier. I was thinking I could just dish out top spells all the time and I'd be just fine. Nope. Kept me on my toes. Now, I know better. You gotta be careful. Maybe short rest first after a big fight. Heal up a bit. Then risk making for a long rest spot. Don't just assume you can expend all your spells and heal up right away.

What an exciting encounter. I tell you. They know how to do it well.

The point? Though they still don't have strict long rest restrictions, they have some, and it makes the game more fun and interesting. Just when I was getting cocky and thinking, "Hah. This is just as unrestricted as BG3," they hit me with a tough random encounter that I was not prepared for. The game was starting to get boring, but the random encounter at camp shook me up good.

This is what BG3 needs. It needs potential unknowns to happen if you rest in places you shouldn't be resting. Just when you start to think you can rest after every fight, BAM! Random Encounter.

So, I'm back to this:

1. Long Rest Camps on the map. You can't rest until you find them.
2. Random Encounters chance when you short or long rest in dangerous places. The more dangerous, the greater the chance.
3. Random Encounters chance when you fast travel, even to camp. The further you fast travel, and the more dangerous the area, the greater the chance.

Chances wouldn't be high - like 1-10%, but it would keep players on their toes and make the world more alive. Also provide more chances of running into more variety of monsters.

That's exactly what random encounters are for. Having to think/ to plan your rests without any limitations.
Often boring and overwhelming in games but only because you travel a lot.

In BG3 traveling is instantaneous so it would never mean "10 miles * 10% chance to have a random encounter" + "2 rests * 10% chance from point A to point B.
It could only mean 10% chance when you fast travel + 10% chance (or more depending the area) when you rest. Nothing more.

It works very well in another "open world" tactical turn based rpg named Wartales in which you also often have to rest (currently in EA too).
On top of that, you can control/limit your % to have a random encounter.

Even Icelyn and Ragnarok would probably not complain about random encounters in this game.

All I know is that it was fun and exciting. I was on the edge of my seat. I've been finding the random encounters in Solasta more fun and exciting than the scripted ones.

I believe we both allready did. O_o

Random Encounter enthusiast was exited by Random Encouters ...
Im shocked. SHOCKED!!!

I was talking about Wartales. You would not complain about something you haven't try, will you ?
(even if you like "complaining" about things you don't really understand, things you can't really imagine or things you haven't experienced yet in video games)

In another thread when I was talking about random encounter, GM was far less enthusiast than he seems to be now

Yes. I've gone back and forth on Random Encounters, but after the Solasta experience, I'm on board. I didn't like BG1 and 2 random encounters or Pathfinder's. I found them boring and pointless. Done right, however, they REALLY make the game more fun and exciting.

It would be cool if random encounters could still feel tied to the plot with a little bit of dialogue at the beginning or something. So they don’t just feel like random battles but like the enemies have been searching for you.

That's scripted encounters.

Random Encounters could have dialogue, but I would recommend unvoiced dialogue for those.

Example: You short rest in the bog. Boggles find you. "Hey! Who you? What you doin' in our bog?". Dialogue options pop up. No need to be voiced with cutscenes.

Your options:. Attack, Deceive, Persuade, Intimidate.

Another Example: You spot a goblin patrol as you're long resting near Bogrot. Options: Stealth (Avoid), Surprise Attack, Deceive, Persuade, Intimidate.