Topic: Baldur's Gate 3

@JohnnyShoulder 🤣 @Ravix 🤣. @KAIRU 🤣 Loving the comedy. I would have joined in, but I rolled a 1. Even guidance won't help that.

@Elodin Oof. Critical Failure! Draws Weapon.

I’m completely new to the series and started the game yesterday. Do I know what I’m doing? No. Am I having a blast? Yes. I’m a Rogue Half-Elf, and I have about six party members, one of which a dog.

I haven’t done much of the main quest. I’ve been exploring and talking to characters, gaining side quests, some I’ve stumbled onto and completed unexpectedly, and just getting a sense of the world.

A part of me is surprised that I’m not entirely overwhelmed in the beginning hours. I find the onboarding to be quite decent, though there are many things I had to experiment with the somewhat grasp. As of right now, the combat is what I’m trying to get a firm hold on, particularly with positioning and how to tackle combat encounters. I read someone’s story on here about a town of Goblins and they snuck on the rafters and vanquished the area purely by stealth. I know exactly what part they are referring to, and I had a completely different experience even while trying to “hide”. I also just saved a gnome from being tied to a windmill blade and swinging around which was fun.

My only complaint so far, which again, won’t be much of an issue (I hope) once I get more comfortable with the game and its various systems, is how dense the game is. I feel like I haven’t really had a chance to breath and focus on a specific task because I find a new character to speak to, or a random location that can lead to a dungeon, or what-have-you. Aside from that, this game is amazing so far.

Wow @Kraven you're literally up to where I'm up to, but I've had it since Saturday/Sunday 😆

What I did for that town (technically I'm just a little behind as I've yet to do the windmill bit) was:

Casually walk in and convince the goblins I'm totally safe. They then send a message so you don't get attacked in other parts of the village. I then split my party and stood behind each of them on the rooftops, totally unsuspicious like, and then tried to push them all off the roof 😆 this then led to them being temporarily hostile ha ha. I finished them off, working out the party split mechanics as I went. (You can enter battle with one, then switch manually to another and join the battle after, still not quite got the hang of how to best utilise that, as I assumed all 4 would enter battle at once as I was next to each goblin anyway) I kind of want to be able to queue up actions out of combat so I can perform tactical manoeuvres like this a bit better. I.e. attack them all at once to begin combat.

I then had a wander free from prying eyes, looted a bit, killed a sleeping bugbear, took out the ones in the back garden who were digging.

I spoiler tagged some of these next bits, but on my page it just shows everything? So beware of mild encounter spoilers, I guess. It's nothing plot based

I then casually walked in on a bugbear f*cking an Ogre over the corpse of a mangled fellow. I then proceeded to bardically spoil the mood by saying how people would pay good money in Baldur's Gate for this type of smut. The Ogre was upset with the bugbears virility, and I was trying to lighten the mood, but they left in a huff anyway. I hope they move to Baldur's Gate to become performers of lurid acts because of my suggestion ha ha

I then had a nice chat to some Ogres, one of whom was a well educated chap, on account of the fact he absorbs the wits of the people he eats (I think that's what his deal was lol) they were hired by the goblins to check people for the mark of the absolute, and it turns out they are happy to sell their services to the highest bidder, so I said if they help me they can eat whoever they like from anything we have to kill

These reminded me quite a lot of the kind of thing you'd find in TW3 😁

Now I just need to sort out the windmill situation next time I'm on. And explore some more 😄

Okay, so seeing @Ravix come up with a backstory, I've been somewhat inspired to come up with one for my own character. Here's the backstory for my Wood Half-Elf Rogue, known as Kiera.

Kiera came from quite a poor family. Her Elf mother worked long into the night at a brothel in the next town and her Human father was an abusive collector of empty mead and wine bottles. At eight years old, she began thieving when her father told her to get him wine and mead from the stalls in the market square. Kiera wasn't given any coin to pay for the bottles, but she was desperate to avoid another of her father's brutal beatings. She stole the bottles and for the first time in her life, her father gave her a look she had never seen before. He was somewhat proud of her, thus becoming the reason Kiera would enter a life of crime.

Over the years, Kiera would continue to steal for her father. He sobered up and began to exploit and profit off of her talents. It was no longer bottles of wine. It was picking the pockets of wealthy aristocrats, it was breaking in and stealing paintings and antiquities which her father would sell for mass profit. Under this criminal guise, they were no longer poor. They could live comfortably. That was, until, the greed got the better of Kiera's father.

When she was sixteen, Kiera's father wanted to pursue riches in the big cities but Kiera was reluctant to go with him. He was furious at her and beat her harder than she had ever been beaten. He then had her locked away and he has presumably assumed a new identity.

Five years pass, biding her time after all these years, Kiera somehow steals the key to her cell and escapes. She's on the run, but she's as desperate to find her father as she was to please him all those years ago. As for what she'll say to him, time will tell...

EDIT: That ended up being a lot longer than I thought it would've been. Sorry. 😅

@KAIRU that's in the spirit of the game though, right? More detail, longer than expected. All good 😄

We're a roguish downtrodden bunch, aren't we haha

I had a bit of time this lunchtime to quickly do the windmill section. And I've surprised myself with an amazing cheese that I shall probably stick on Reddit or somewhere. Took no hits, and wiped out the entire hord of goblins and worgs, and then played a ballad over their bloodied corpses 🤣 it's making me consider upping the difficulty, as I split the party, and only Shadowheart and Gale were listed as in combat, as Me and Grumpy Gith stormed the front gate, while I basically looked like the Zorro of backstabs (due to my Cape, curing hat and rapier combo)

Absolutely amazing sneaky cheesy fun 😆

Auntie Ethel 😁

@Ravix Thank ya, mate!

I gotta admit, sneaking around enemies and getting to high ground and sneak attacking them by surprise is proper good fun. I’m loving it so far. I’ve already got plans for an ‘Evil Druid’ playthrough. 😂

Also, I will say, the Windmill section has given me the most hilarious moment I’ve ever witnessed in video games. I laughed so incredibly hard at the honest error I made. I don’t want to spoil it but it’s brilliant.

@KAIRU I know exactly what you mean. What I did was stopped the blades, saved, and then reloaded, just to see what happens if I accelerated matters 🤣 I mean, there must be two levers for a reason, right 😁

Also, my evil playthough that I have in mind will be a Drow Paladin of Vengeance or something like that. I'm probably gonna be too evil for even the drow to want me on their side 🤣 and make sure to select all options like "stand back and watch" before absolutely melting both people involved in arguments 😁 problem solved, everyone wins via the "no problems when your dead and gone" rule

@Ravix I found it funny because I didn't even realise there were two levers until after I sent the poor fella flying to his death. I was laughing for a solid ten minutes when I done it. I did reload a save to actually save him though. 😂

@KAIRU aha yeah, I wish I'd messed up like that. It's a great little addition by Larian, as a lot of people will have got the full on moment as intended when clicking quickly to save the guy haha. I'm sure there will be many more moments to come xD

What im doing right now is trying to work out if my Bard, who likes a good fight, and is acting as second main Melee in group, as well as jack of all trades, face of the party, inspiration and taunter of foes, can handle taking a dip into Fighter class. On the surface it would just help with everything I'm doing anyway, boost my AC for shield and lead to medium armours if needed. But in the menu it has a star next to strength, and I'm not sure of that means it will override charisma. My strength is 8 lol, but my charisma and dexterity are 17 and 16, which is what I cast and melee with. Hmm.

The only problem with my bard is I'm seriously lacking in bonus actions. I might have to go back into the respec, and see what's available otherwise. Everything I unlock is an action, very annoying 😅

@Ravix I picked the Thief subclass for Rogue, so I got an extra bonus action. It's really handy to have if you end up dual-wielding melee weapons. I feel like Assassin would have been quite good too but the extra bonus action was too good to pass up!

I'm trying really hard to not 'lone-wolf' the whole thing and be miles away from the rest of the party in combat. I do like to scout ahead a little bit to see if I can find a vantage point and to maybe pick off some enemies.

@KAIRU yeah, they do seem the most universally fun, the old rogue duel wielder is always popular for obvious reasons lol.

What I mean is, none of my bonus actions are worth a damn for my build, everything I use costs an action apart from Flourish, which can obly be used once per short rest. I have healing word, too and that's it (other than the bog standard push) so it means if I cast a spell like dissonant whipsers, or do a sword based action, I have no others options unless someone is hurt, as I need to save my bonus action flourish for important moments. Even simple cantrips cost a whole action ;((( Maybe I just need to learn to short rest more 😅

Otherwise I guess it will just have to be my main flaw for this playthrough. It is a bit tricky only having one move per round most of the time

@Ravix Yeah, it would be quite nice even if the consumable spell scrolls and stuff were a bonus action, rather than an action. It would definitely be a bit more of an incentive to use them. Maybe there is a way that you'll be able to find a solution at some point but I'm not so sure!

@KAIRU I do actually have a skill that let's the entire party short rest without having to short rest, which is cool. Full HP and all slots return. I'll have more of an experiment. I feel if I can stick one or two levels into Fighter and still cast with Charisma, and melee with Dex, then I could be onto something that suits my style quite well. I'm already a skill check beast, and the only real flaw is intelligence and religion based things, which Gale and Shadowheart make up for.

The fact that I can seemingly send advanced wizarding parties ahead to take up good positions and distract the enemies by blowing one of them up, so I can sneak or slice my way in, mid combat, feels really cool.

@Ravix Yeah, the variety in ways to play is absolutely awesome. I guess it's a staple of the RPG genre as a whole, but I really like how your choices actually mean something.

I love trying to deceive NPC's and pick a few pockets in some of the more populated areas. It's such a thrill trying not to get caught. I'm worried what's going to happen when I fail the skill check on an attempted pickpocket though... 😅

@KAIRU yeah, they might not react too well to old tadpole head stealing their belongings. and I doubt there is a KCD-like skill check for "don't you know who I am?" Spoken with noble pomposity. Or "I'm on a secret mission" 👀

I've only pickpocketed once, as I'm saving it for npcs I dislike, so maybe Wyll hahaha, what an up himself kn*bhead 😅 "oh hello, I'm immensely great and noble, and definitely nothing going on other than me being the perfect white Knight. Did I mention I'm amazing and noble?" Yeah, yeah, stay in camp ya nonce and save the poor helpless fire from going out.

The one I pickpocketed was the previously mentioned Pandrina, and that was an absolute nightmare, as I tricked her into thinking I was the new "box guardian" and she was relieved of duty, and then cured her so she could walk off. Then she just sat back down in the corner acting like I hadn't relieved her of duty and she was still the storage room guard. And after all that, including a good few reloads, because it was breaking my immersion that she forgot my skill check to make her leave when she had the ability to, (I made shadowheart learn a new spell just to help her ffs lol) after allllllll that. All I got was a rusty key to please a talking rat, and I have no idea why I actually did any of it to start with 😂😂😂

I didn't have to kill her and stuff her in a camp box like @Tjuz though, so that's progress, I guess 😂

I gave up on the Aunty's Ethel qiest last night too, it's really cool, and I was loving it, but I got to a section with lots of noxious gas, and I was too tired and probably not levelled up enough to try and get through, so I rolled back to a previous save and I'll just do the whole quest again another day haha.

I also realised I'm taking a stupidly long way round to find Karlach, as I thought the river was impassable 🤦‍♂️ but I did meet another fella, who invited me to tea 👀😅

This game is so good 😅 I think I've now started or concluded every available quest in emerald grove (some look like they will span all 3 acts, but no more can be done in that particular area for now) And the best thing is, I've probably missed some things. I mean, I just met a very sad bear, who is missing his master/friend. I hope they didn't just go to Baldur's Gate and not tell him, as that would be sad
but it was pretty much my last visit to an area that I'd been to a lot, and i hadn't noticed tbe path down to him before. And that wasn't even well hidden 😅 who knows if I will ever meet a person, or corpse, who used to be friends with a bear. But I'm glad I met the bear 😁

I'm pretty much fully embracing my half wood elf, making sure to check in with as many of the local animals as I can, and it's leading to some simple, but awesome moments 😁 playing my lute for a wolf isn't even a dialgue interaction, but they howl along to the music 😁

I think I'm finally in a position to go and search out the fabled Goblin camp, as it has multiple threads nicely tied to it now, the search for a druid, some treasure/weapon, clearing goblins to provide safe passage to Baldur's Gate for all who want it etc. Oh and something about a parasite xD

I also picked up a very nice crossbow while searching for a swamp location related to my Emerald Grove wood elfy druid investigations, do I feel bad about how I acquired it? Yes. Does it suit my build perfectly, also yes. But us head parasites have to stick together, and some people have chosen inherently dangerous professions...

The game looks bloody lovely too 😍

@Ravix It seems like the game is really clicking for you (and for most everyone) which is great to see. How many hours have you put into it up to this point, if you don’t mind my asking? I’m curious because it sounds like you’re being really thorough in your exploration and speaking with everyone, which is the style I tend to follow in these open games, so I was wondering what I could be in for. I suspect many players could just run to the goblin camp straight away versus spending time opening up all the side quests and optional interactions.

I'm about 20 hours in and thinking about restarting the game or starting a 2nd playthrough. When i started the game, the tutorial was broken, but i think it is fixed now, since yesterday I had my first tutorial pop-up. And as someone who isn't really familiar with CRPG and didn't play much D&D this game can be pretty tough to understand, especially if the tutorial is broken. I managed to kill a lot of people I feel I shouldn't have killed, especially as a Palladin So I'm considering starting over with a new character and making different choices to see how they pan out. And also hoping I understand a bit what I'm actually doing now that the tutorial seems to be working.

The game looks absolutely stunning though, love the ability to switch the camera from top down view to over the shoulder view and the voice acting is absolutely great. Especially the narrator's voice is amazing. Glad to see they seemed to have fixed most of the bugs. I encountered quite a few, like sound dropping off out of nowhere, but the last few days it seems to have improved and haven't encountered bugs or performance issues anymore really. Now the game slowly starts to grow on me.