Baldur's Gate 3 by Larian Games

Phazael · Jan 31, 2024

reavor said:
Also kinda bad design that you easily reach lvl 12 before even a third through act 3. Much less incentive to keep questing. Sure there are still some nice equipment to grab but most items are kinda meh overall.

And to compound that, the best gear items are accessible really early in the act (stuff from Magic Shop if a wizard, Avernus run, Saravok's gear, Baldur Gear, Lightning Trident, and shops) as soon as you feel tough enough to attempt it. Its a shame, because there is a LOT of great story in the tons of side quests in Ch3, but if you were thorough prior to reaching it, you are basically at level cap an hourish into it and can pretty much beeline to the good gear immediately.

The one exception is the rapier you get for the hag quest (massive pain in the ass, but worth it) that makes certain builds completely amazeballs. That one takes a lot of questing and not fucking it up to obtain. Stack that against Raphael's home, which is literally walk in the shop and go, and the amount of amazing loot that side run nets you. And even on tactician, Raphael is still very doable even prior to level cap if your party is even remotely optimized. Ch3 was fun, but its very uneven and can be facerolled if you nab key items really early.

Burns · Jan 31, 2024

Phazael said:
And to compound that, the best gear items are accessible really early in the act (stuff from Magic Shop if a wizard, Avernus run, Saravok's gear, Baldur Gear, Lightning Trident, and shops) as soon as you feel tough enough to attempt it. Its a shame, because there is a LOT of great story in the tons of side quests in Ch3, but if you were thorough prior to reaching it, you are basically at level cap an hourish into it and can pretty much beeline to the good gear immediately.

The one exception is the rapier you get for the hag quest (massive pain in the ass, but worth it) that makes certain builds completely amazeballs. That one takes a lot of questing and not fucking it up to obtain. Stack that against Raphael's home, which is literally walk in the shop and go, and the amount of amazing loot that side run nets you. And even on tactician, Raphael is still very doable even prior to level cap if your party is even remotely optimized. Ch3 was fun, but its very uneven and can be facerolled if you nab key items really early.

Being that it was in EA for so long, and the the face of the game, I think they kinda let chapter 1 get away from them. On the other hand, some people like being at max power for X amount of time in games too.

Even if XP was a bit tighter, with the alternate paths allowing players to skip/miss large parts of chapter 1, I don't know if they could design the game any other way (to cater to the 100 percenters). Additionally, there are probably quests/areas you can also skip/miss in chapter 2, but it's not such a huge difference.

The other things aside (as I would have loved a higher level cap), If people want to look up where all the good gear is and bee line to it, that's more of a player problem than a developer problem. I am fine with developers not bending over backwards to placate people that want to use spoilers.

You have to do things more than just ~~steal~~ buy them for at least half of that gear and going in blind, you don't know what is where. For example, in my first playthrough, I missed a top tier piece in a side room of the Wizard Tower's basement and didn't get the lighting trident until very late in the chapter.

Cybsled · Jan 31, 2024

Borzak said:
Accidently killed yolo in act 3 and he can't be rezzed. Hope he wasn't that important. Didn't even see him till everyone was died and he was laying there.

Not really. If you save him, he gives you some info related to a quest (bhaal temple I think), but it’s possible to do the quest without that info. He shows up later for some flavor dialogue if he lives also, including the epilogue

Phazael · Jan 31, 2024

Burns said:
Being that it was in EA for so long, and the the face of the game, I think they kinda let chapter 1 get away from them. On the other hand, some people like being at max power for X amount of time in games too.

Even if XP was a bit tighter, with the alternate paths allowing players to skip/miss large parts of chapter 1, I don't know if they could design the game any other way (to cater to the 100 percenters). Additionally, there are probably quests/areas you can also skip/miss in chapter 2, but it's not such a huge difference.

The other things aside (as I would have loved a higher level cap), If people want to look up where all the good gear is and bee line to it, that's more of a player problem than a developer problem. I am fine with developers not bending over backwards to placate people that want to use spoilers.

You have to do things more than just ~~steal~~ buy them for at least half of that gear and going in blind, you don't know what is where. For example, in my first playthrough, I missed a top tier piece in a side room of the Wizard Tower's basement and didn't get the lighting trident until very late in the chapter.

Well mostly I agree.

I played the entire game to completion multiple times, so I know where to go. Though to be fair, I did manage to find multiple things I had missed on prior plays every single time. But.... the really good stuff (aside from that legendary Rapier) are on paths you are pretty heavily railroaded into and basically impossible to miss if you are doing anything main plot or main plot adjacent. Council of Bhaal is pretty much almost completely unmissable and drops one of the better armors and one of the two best 2 handers in the game. Orin drops the best daggers of the game. The robot factory drops the best bow. You are pretty much shoved towards Raphael's palace unless you plan on taking his deal, and that place is a loot bonanza. The Trident is kind of easy to miss, but you hit the circus the first thing in town so if you pick pocket constantly you will get that. The Baldur gear is something you might miss if you decide to skip past the coronation section and the puzzles down to it are kind of trickey, but I stumbled across it on my second play (I avoided guides until after I had completely beaten the game twice). The Magic Store begs you to clean it out, practically, and nearly all of the top caster gear is there.

It is much easier to miss chunks of Act 1 and even Act 2 that will lock you out of things later if you fuck them up. You can literally completely skip out on the entire goblin camp AND do nothing in the druid camp before wandering into the Act 2 regions, but the game tries hard to discourage that with outright warnings. You can pretty easily miss the entire Gith Creche (or Underdark). The shadow region its feasible to miss the entire Harper Camp and just stumble into the Shar ruins then go murder the end boss without engaging in any of the side quest related activities. This is actually how my first run ended playing out and running in to the entire place hostile to kill Kethric without ever having set foot in the Inn of Last Light was how I ended the chapter.

I guess I am saying that Act 3 was much more blatant about routing you to the good stuff and you were much more likely to miss key things in the previous acts.

Phazael · Jan 31, 2024

Cybsled said:
Not really. If you save him, he gives you some info related to a quest (bhaal temple I think), but it’s possible to do the quest without that info. He shows up later for some flavor dialogue if he lives also, including the epilogue

If he is alive at the end, he gives a passive buff to the party for the remaining fights. The Prince does as well, if you pick him over the Emperor (who is really a huge dick if you dig into his backstory and dialog enough).

TheNozz · Feb 1, 2024

k^M · Feb 1, 2024

Phazael said:
Well mostly I agree.

The Magic Store begs you to clean it out, practically, and nearly all of the top caster gear is there.

If nothing else, you should go to the magic store, talk to the librarian to learn why she whispers, bring in a barbarian, and go HOW ARE YOU TODAY?!? cause the books all explode. Think its single handedly my favorite scene in the entire game.

Borzak · Feb 2, 2024

The most annoying thing is if one person goes down in combat and they are blocked. Can't heal them, can't throw a potion on them, can't pick them up and move them, can't revive them. It's like they don't exist and the only person that could cast something that could push them is the one that is down.

I'm finding all the funky stuff. Loaded the game back and was fighting a bunch in the foundry. Killed the one that explodes and then my culling strime reaction went off and killed everyone and I was the only person left standing out of the entire group. Including my party. Odd. Guess I'll load it up and try it again tomorrow. This is tactician mode. No way I would move to honor mode with all the add stuff I find.

Julian The Apostate · Feb 2, 2024

Borzak said:
The most annoying thing is if one person goes down in combat and they are blocked. Can't heal them, can't throw a potion on them, can't pick them up and move them, can't revive them. It's like they don't exist and the only person that could cast something that could push them is the one that is down.

I'm finding all the funky stuff. Loaded the game back and was fighting a bunch in the foundry. Killed the one that explodes and then my culling strime reaction went off and killed everyone and I was the only person left standing out of the entire group. Including my party. Odd. Guess I'll load it up and try it again tomorrow. This is tactician mode. No way I would move to honor mode with all the add stuff I find.

Have you talked to Withers?

k^M · Feb 2, 2024

Borzak said:
The most annoying thing is if one person goes down in combat and they are blocked. Can't heal them, can't throw a potion on them, can't pick them up and move them, can't revive them. It's like they don't exist and the only person that could cast something that could push them is the one that is down.

I'm finding all the funky stuff. Loaded the game back and was fighting a bunch in the foundry. Killed the one that explodes and then my culling strime reaction went off and killed everyone and I was the only person left standing out of the entire group. Including my party. Odd. Guess I'll load it up and try it again tomorrow. This is tactician mode. No way I would move to honor mode with all the add stuff I find.

Withers can pull corpses to your camp and revive them for money, then you can just steal the money back from him.

Also if you go to revive someone, you then have to tell it where you want to revive them to. If your visibility is shitty (fog cloud, darkness etc) it'll say blocked because of that. The radius of rez placement is pretty huge otherwise. You just can't rez them on top of someone else, or on an obstructed object etc.

Borzak · Feb 3, 2024

I tried withers and didn't get the option. Yeah I've done it before and then stole the money. I logged back in and hit continue isntead of load the save and wasn't blocked. Just a hassle cause you can't go straight to camp from there, gotta walk outside then to camp then back inside. Either way withers was no help. Fixed now.

If I finish the game may do another class/build that is more involved. Did a Tavern brawler open hand monk this time and while it worked well it's not very involved so to speak.

reavor · Feb 4, 2024

Finally got Minsc, but he just seems really lackluster in comparison to the rest. Like he's supposed to be this big muscle dude but his stats are nothing of the sort. In the old BGs his stats were actually pretty solid and he was a strong frontline fighter compared to other NPCs. Sure he only had two quick slots, but his boosted stats more than made up for it. Here he just feels behind everyone else in terms of usefullness. Considering all the hoops you have to jump through to get him, you'd think they'd let him have some stat boosts.

Borzak · Feb 4, 2024

OK question time. I took a break from party in act 3 since things kind of slowed down. I'll get back to it later. So I started another character. I may have messed up and end up with some overlap. Dark Urge Duergar dwarf. Well the dwarf gets invis in combat and the dark urge gets the cloak that you can invis as well.

Anyway what about picking up another class? I'm not sure how that works when people talk about you have to do them in a certain order. Start with one and then multiclass to another instead of the other way around, something to do with spell casting?

I'm not looking for effeciency. Just doing something different. So far I will say two clerics in a party threw lvl 4 are better than I thought they would be, likely will change later. Likely drop the other cleric. I ripped off Gales hand so might have to do a hierling.

velk · Feb 4, 2024

The order for classes is mostly because some things you only get from your first class, mostly armor proficiency and saving throws. So if you start as a wizard and switch to warrior, you won't get heavy armor, but if you go the other way around you will.

k^M · Feb 4, 2024

reavor said:
Finally got Minsc, but he just seems really lackluster in comparison to the rest. Like he's supposed to be this big muscle dude but his stats are nothing of the sort. In the old BGs his stats were actually pretty solid and he was a strong frontline fighter compared to other NPCs. Sure he only had two quick slots, but his boosted stats more than made up for it. Here he just feels behind everyone else in terms of usefullness. Considering all the hoops you have to jump through to get him, you'd think they'd let him have some stat boosts.

Given the unlimited supply of 21 / 27 str potions, and gear that gives 17 or 18 in the other stats, they don't really have any room to play with unless they gave him a free fighter base class + 12 additional you could select from.

Phazael · Feb 5, 2024

reavor said:
Finally got Minsc, but he just seems really lackluster in comparison to the rest. Like he's supposed to be this big muscle dude but his stats are nothing of the sort. In the old BGs his stats were actually pretty solid and he was a strong frontline fighter compared to other NPCs. Sure he only had two quick slots, but his boosted stats more than made up for it. Here he just feels behind everyone else in terms of usefullness. Considering all the hoops you have to jump through to get him, you'd think they'd let him have some stat boosts.

He, like most companions, is just a baseline character that is better if you repec them. And he starts out as a pure ranger, which is one of the shittiest options in the game. I suggest making him a full Fighter type, since the game showers you with great heavy armor and 2 handers around the time you recruit him. He is mainly there as a nod to the original and for some fun interactions with Jahera. His best dialog happens in the Savarok and Vycona fights. You can pretty much bench him outside of those encounters if you have another tank you prefer. I suppose you could go Doomstalker/Assassin melee specialist, too, but that seems well out of character for him.

Like Jahera, he has no tadpole powers so he is actually inferior to the other companions in a lot of ways. And quite honestly three of the stock companions make far better tank beatsticks than he does because of this, like Minthara as a Lockadin, Shadowfart as a Bardlock, or Lyzael as a straight up Arcane Warrior Fighter. Jahera gains the most due to all the specialized loot they toss her for her quest. But Minthara is awesome both from story standpoint and all the Dark Elf racial bonuses she packs. Fully respeced with either the Lightning Spear, Sword of Baldur, or Sarovok's Chaos Blade, she is arguably the second strongest companion in the game. Number one is Asterion as either a full on Monk (2 levels of Thief for more flurry) or as a Doomstalker/Assassin, because of his passive Vampire shit. Minsc has none of that which is a shame because they could have gave him some passives centered around Boo. Jahera is decent as a Moon Druid, but only really if you dont have another dedicated nuker and keeping her greatly limits how ruthless you can be in the game.

TLDR Version, Play Minsc and Jahera on one playthrough for some of their dialog, then never bother with them on another playthrough again. Make Minsc a Fighter and Jahera a Moon Druid (one level of Dragon Sorc for Magic Missile fun) slapping the caster gear on her. She can tear it up as a wild shape when you need an additional melee person, then swap to being a nuker (Call Lightning and Ice Storm both rock) as needed.

Phazael · Feb 5, 2024

velk said:
The order for classes is mostly because some things you only get from your first class, mostly armor proficiency and saving throws. So if you start as a wizard and switch to warrior, you won't get heavy armor, but if you go the other way around you will.

This is why any build where you want good saves and decent gear access should start with Cleric if its part of your plan (I typically play Shadowfart with two levels of Cleric tossed into her Bardlock build just to wear good armor and add guidance to her buff repertoire). Clerics in this game are a highly underrated class. War Domain Clerics at max level giving you the super meal spell (negates frightened for the entire party and provided enough food for Tactician Rest) are a descent substitute for a Fighter or Support role.

Borzak · Feb 5, 2024

I thought it had to do with if you went from a wis class to an int class for instance your spells you cast used one or the other depending on which one you went first or lass. I've seen that numerous times but it's never really clear to me. Comes often in the BG Build sub on reddit and everyone talks like it is a known fact, but never really explain it.

Someone will post a build and people will say often you need to take the X class first then move on instead of the other way around like it's a no brainer and people agree with them.

reavor · Feb 5, 2024

Phazael said:
He, like most companions, is just a baseline character that is better if you repec them. And he starts out as a pure ranger, which is one of the shittiest options in the game. I suggest making him a full Fighter type, since the game showers you with great heavy armor and 2 handers around the time you recruit him. He is mainly there as a nod to the original and for some fun interactions with Jahera. His best dialog happens in the Savarok and Vycona fights. You can pretty much bench him outside of those encounters if you have another tank you prefer. I suppose you could go Doomstalker/Assassin melee specialist, too, but that seems well out of character for him.

Like Jahera, he has no tadpole powers so he is actually inferior to the other companions in a lot of ways. And quite honestly three of the stock companions make far better tank beatsticks than he does because of this, like Minthara as a Lockadin, Shadowfart as a Bardlock, or Lyzael as a straight up Arcane Warrior Fighter. Jahera gains the most due to all the specialized loot they toss her for her quest. But Minthara is awesome both from story standpoint and all the Dark Elf racial bonuses she packs. Fully respeced with either the Lightning Spear, Sword of Baldur, or Sarovok's Chaos Blade, she is arguably the second strongest companion in the game. Number one is Asterion as either a full on Monk (2 levels of Thief for more flurry) or as a Doomstalker/Assassin, because of his passive Vampire shit. Minsc has none of that which is a shame because they could have gave him some passives centered around Boo. Jahera is decent as a Moon Druid, but only really if you dont have another dedicated nuker and keeping her greatly limits how ruthless you can be in the game.

TLDR Version, Play Minsc and Jahera on one playthrough for some of their dialog, then never bother with them on another playthrough again. Make Minsc a Fighter and Jahera a Moon Druid (one level of Dragon Sorc for Magic Missile fun) slapping the caster gear on her. She can tear it up as a wild shape when you need an additional melee person, then swap to being a nuker (Call Lightning and Ice Storm both rock) as needed.

agreed, but I found Jahera as a druid (of the land or moon) as still pretty solid in the party. the owlbear + shapeshift gear gives a solid tank/DPS with 3 attacks + the attack jump.

Phazael · Feb 5, 2024

The Raptor shift the Moon Druid gets eventually is pretty solid, as well. But realistically, you could make a generic (or pick someone who's story you like) and make them a Moon Druid with the Displacer form and be way better. Doing a tactician play with my friend and I am basically running that off and on. It is what changed my mind about Druids in the game, pretty much. Its best and worst aspect is its not dependent on gear but there is not a lot of gear for it anyhow.

This is why I zeroed in on one level of Sorcery, because sometimes spamming Magic Missile is the best option and losing one level of Druid does not cost you any spell slots (or anything else) really. The downside is even if you take the Feat to let Call Lightning ignore resistances, you still need the +DC to save stacked to get the full damage out of it. Normally, not an issue and with everything available in the game you can stack like +8 or something equally ludicrous. But if you have another caster in the group who depends on +DC to save, there really is not enough of that gear to go around. My friend is maining as Wizard (keeps wanting to go Necro mode but keeps sticking with evocation) so I have to stick mostly to spells that do not depend on failed saves to be effective (Ice Storm is very nice in this capacity, as is of course Magic Missile) when I am not facerolling with Displacer Beast/Owl Bear/Raptor goodness, burning less useful slots to heal myself. It is still surprisingly effective and fun, its just not going to be as effective as a topped out evocation wizard or melee specialist in those individual roles. The Tadpole Powers synergize well with druids, though. A level 10+ Moon Druid in Displacer Form with cull the weak active is god damn ridiculously good. And getting the super meal spell is a nice bonus.

Baldur's Gate 3 by Larian Games

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Confirmed Beta Shitlord, Fat Bastard

Karazhan Raider

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Vyemm Raider

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Bronze Baron of the Realm

Trakanon Raider

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Confirmed Beta Shitlord, Fat Bastard

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Confirmed Beta Shitlord, Fat Bastard