Topic: Baldur's Gate 3

I’d love to get a four player co-op playthrough of this on the go next year maybe if anyone would be interested.

@KAIRU All my team are permanently naked, so i can absolutely agree with you on Shadowheart

@Throb She properly slays, in more ways than one!

@Ravix Almost there buddy! I’m scared to death I’ll lose my life to it when I start down the path toward Baldur’s Gate. 😅
But yeah, I’ve been reluctant to jump in day one on most games lately due to the first few weeks to months having a lot of patching to clean up the bugs. This has been out a month or two or so and I wondered if there were any further essential patches forthcoming. Sounds like there’s still room for improvement but nothing game breaking.

@Th3solution It's been absolutely fine for me. Just a couple of little awkward moments when you engage the manual aim have occurred, some areas in Act III have stuttered a bit on frame rate in the really busy areas and the very first time I booted it up, I needed to change some colour settings.

But for a new game and one of this size, it's pretty amazing how well it all holds up

@Th3solution ah, its fine. You won't lose your life to it. I mean, it would be totally possible to, but not necessary. All it has taken over for me is my regular old gaming time, and sometimes I find myself thinking about the game (especially earlier on) while doing other things. But even just playing in the evenings is enough to satisfy that RPG itch for me, like any other big AAA game, it's just it is lasting even longer, so that is simply providing extra value 😁😁

After you've got the hang of it properly, it's easy enough to just pick up and play it whenever you feel like it too. I've probably only played a total of 3 hours of it over the weekend. It is a lot like RDR2, Elden Ring and TW3 were for me. Something I'd really enjoy playing most nights, and sometimes find myself blissfully looking forward to playing it while I'm doing other stuff, but never a full on binge, like those twitch streamer types who eat cheetos whilst gaming and have to urinate in a bottle because they are unable to leave the room for 14 hours, or whatever 😁😁😁 (no offense to anyone that likes to game like this)

I guess it just depends on your gaming habits, but I see nothing in this that would randomly make a person change their behaviour and take them over completely. Despite it being f***ing epic and quite detailed to learn 😁 but learning about it can be done via websites when you're just browsing the Internet anyway, and that does help until you get the hang of it.

@Ravix Some of the best gaming memories are those where a game does take over your whole waking consciousness. I reckon the last game that really did that to me was Death Stranding. RDR2 was another for sure. Also Skyrim. And the Souls games I’ve played, namely Bloodborne, have an element of that too, but aren’t quite as long. Like Baldur’s Gate 3, I’m anticipate Elden Ring will be one of these I totally lose myself in for months.

I don’t mind being taken over by a game to the point of borderline obsession, but I unfortunately do have a life to live. 😅 Gratefully I’ve never come to a point where I have to wear diapers or pee in a bottle, but I have been known to skip a meal or two on marathon gaming sessions. Not to mention sleep. Sleep is what gets me. Skimping on food during an epic gaming session is easy enough because one can pause, grab a quick snack, and be back in the fray within a few minutes. Sleep on the other hand is tough to go without for too long. There’s only so much caffeine one can drink whilst still maintaining a steady hand. And if I push it too long my brain spaces out into a partial consciousness during cutscenes and when I realize I just watched a major plot point and didn’t pay attention to any of it, then I know I have to go to bed. During a long weekend gaming session I’ll often have to take a nap in the middle of the day once I feel my attention drifting off into a zombie-like state. I usually say to myself that I’ll just power-nap for 30 minutes to get my mind back but then I wake up 3 hours later. 😅

——————

Anyway, on subject — It’s just that right now I have a busy work schedule, and with the holidays around the corner there’s always a lot going on. But I have been prepping myself with reading guides and watching some videos to help plan my build. I still am unsure what approach to take and I figure I’ll have to do some trial and error since I’m not experienced with this series. Fortunately, it seems like from my reading that there’s really no ‘bad’ class to choose and none seem too under-powered. I’m looking to one that has good melee, good range attacks, plenty of ways to talk myself out of combat, and just a little bit of magic to spice it up. But it needs to be easy to learn with not too many complex actions. It seems like a lot of classes fit the bill.

And I’m curious about how people like doing multiple campaigns at once. I see that some people have a co-op campaign and a solo campaign going, or even a couple solo characters they are running alongside one another. I would think that I’d eventually gravitate to one campaign and one character that I prefer playing.

@VoiceWithin1991 fantastic story arc. It makes all the more fun to immerse yourself in the role-playing. Larian really made a masterpiece.

@Th3solution yes, sometimes I will play a game late into the night, to be fair. But as long as you don't do it every night, it shouldn't mess with the rest of your life commitments. That's all I'm getting at, anyway. I've been playing gwent in TW3 and thought, uh oh, it's light again 😂 but yeah, there doesn't seem like there will be any negative connotations from BG3. I've done a couple of proper late night sessions, but it's both bingable and manageable 😁

To me, it sounds like you are another Bard in waiting. I feel like my Bard can do anything as leader, and then I bring 3 speciality characters along with me to cover mass healing, pure offence, and AOE/Damage spells and actions.

On my Bard/Fighter, I basically had 75% of the game where I could weild a sword, shield, crossbow, control spells, the odd damage spell, and flourishes, which are like super power weapon attacks, that are a bit like spells. Talk anyone into or out of anything, if I felt like it, play music and entertain and just chill before or after a slaughter. Pick locks & disarm traps when there's no rogue in party (most of the time) and generally feel like the actual leader of a band of misfits.

Last night I finally got myself to a point where I ditched my shield too, as I found a legendary duelling weapon, and my armour class seems pretty good after replacing an armour I had for quite a long time. And now I will have even more attacks available.

I might do a full respec just to tweak a few things, now I've got what feels like my endgame load out. I've been wearing gloves that give 18dex for ages, and had respecced to put all my former dex points into CON and Charisma to 22 (with a hat boosting it by 2). But I'm thinking Charisma 22, Dex 20 might be possible, now if I ditch the gloves and sort my points. And there might be a couple of spells I'd switch now I'm more experienced and know what I use most and least.

@Ravix I do like how turn based games allow for easy playability side-by-side other more twitchy action games. I played Persona 5 over a couple year stretch, taking long breaks in between to play other stuff, and when I would go back to it I didn’t feel as lost since the muscle memory isn’t as important. As opposed to something like Assassin’s Creed or a Souls game where if you take a break away for too long then you have to ramp back up your skills for a couple hours the first time back.

And is it true that you’re not locked into your build and can change it in the middle of the game? I think someone said the only thing you can’t change later is your race and your name. I’m not sure it’s efficient to change your class in the middle of a role-playing game, but I suppose it would be nice to have the option that if you feel trapped by a build that you can get yourself out of it without restarting.

@Th3solution I also think you should buy the game.

@Th3solution haha buy eeeeet!

Yeah, you totally can change class. I've only used the feature to make slight tweaks to ability point distribution, and to make sure I picked the right cantrips, spells etc. And it's probably best to do this for companions right away, as soon as you unlock the ability (a camp npc you will find)

Companions are never optimised, so you can min/max them, or tweak them fairly early, to make sure they have no wasted points (make sure their skill points are on an even number, basically) and remove points you don't feel they need to apply elsewhere. It's not vital, but I've tweaked a few companions.

Oh, and the Internet led me to believe of all the acts, 3 is the shortest 😅😅😅

Last night I basically followed one side quest (hag hunters) and did some camp interactions, and a few bits and bobs to set up more side stuff, and move the main narrative on a touch with...

I still have so much to do, most of the companion flavoured quests that have kind of morphed into main quests, the newspaper, find more body parts xD and then anything else I discover as the city isn't fully explored yet 😁😁

I've been meaning to dip in to this thread on several occasions but never got around to it. I have plenty to share on the game but I'm not quite going to get into everything just yet, but when I have a bit more time to fully cover everything I will. Suffice to say I'm absolutely loving the game and it's already an all time favourite for me with Witcher 3 and RDR.

I noticed a little while ago that I seem to be at a similar point and pace to yourself @Ravix but your last comment is what spurred me to chime in now.

I finished my play session last night after finding a few body parts and literally finished/saved just about to go into the hag hunters building.

One final note for now, the game has run pretty much flawlessly for me until recently in Act 3 when most npcs don't seem to be loading in the final texture for their faces. It doesn't detract from the game too much, it just looks like everyone has an odd skin condition. Anyone else had this?

@BearsEatBeets yeah, I lucked out a bit, and I'm quite happy that it was

Quite fun that even now things vary for other players 😁

As for the bug, yes, it's sometimes like they have not quite got as many lines or as much texture on their faces as they should, like bad makeup, but it's most noticeable with certain characters with big wizardy beards, but they are fairly rare.

I can't wait to do the newspaper quest tonight, and the bank/vault area, I guess, as it seems like maybe some sneaky stealth quests. But i'm going to be looking for at least one big battle too, so I'll have to see what they lead to 😅

I really need to test out my new legendary Rapier, as I missed the other I could have got, due to never having Wyll involved on my adventures xD but Mizora has since given Tav a slightly different gift... ... ...

I was hoping for a buff from it tbh, like Volo gave my eye, but oh well 😅😅

@Ravix I'm kind of hoping I can get her back before I find the thing I need as I refused Raphael's deal for it. (Oh yeah, I had a bit of a bug with that where Gale was annoyed with me in camp for the deal when I hadn't even met up and heard the deal yet. Still it kind of helped me make a choice with that so it ended up being a useful bug.)
It can be tricky at times to know what the best order to do things is but thankfully it does kind of warn you on some major bits and you can tell what the main story stuff is.

I've done the bank stuff as I went there as soon as I got a vault key off someone (can't quite remember where I got that, think it might have been on the murderer).

I don't use Wyll much either, he seems to be the only one who gets himself killed/downed in fights fairly regularly but that's most likely me not getting the best out of him. I turned down Mizora's 'offer' in camp if that's what your referring to, I wasn't sure how Shadowheart would take it. I loved that saying that was actually a dialog option but didn't use it. In fact I've actually laughed at some of the dialog choices and I'm definitely going to replay sometime and be a selfish, sarcastic git as I'd love to see the reactions.

I've not stumbled across a newspaper quest yet, at least I don't remember doing so. There are so many quests and random things you can just encounter though it's amazing. I still need to find Volo again as I found his note when he disappeared from camp. Still, there is quite a lot of map to I have to uncover.

Have you done the firework factory quest? I did a reload on that one it was tricky.

@BearsEatBeets yeah. I think I left a comment here about the fireworks factory haha. I didn't have to reload, but I had to use 2 short rests, and a Bardic rest, and then just run to camp via fast travel to stop getting locked in an endless battle. 3 waves was enough, and each party member had about 10hp left 😂😂

Newspaper is right near basilisk gate, just a woman stood next to the kid selling newspapers, no icon, just happened to talk to her xD

Hey @LN78, thanks for making us aware of this 🙏 Just letting you know I've removed one of yours only because it quoted an offensive (now also deleted) comment

A lovely derailing of the thread this morning. Fantastic.

Anyway, I was back to my evil co-op playthrough yesterday evening for a couple hours. Not much was achieved admittedly but we did finally get to the Underdark and we'll get to exploring there on our next session. It was small progress, but progress nonetheless.

@Ravix My Halsin story consisted of saving him, he waited at camp but wasn't quite ready to join the full team and then one time i returned to camp and he was just dead on the floor. No idea what happened to him, so just looted him and carried on