Here are the balance patch notes from Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch #1.
But is it making normal mode normaler?
Are you normalizing normal mode?!
I wish theyd do this. All of my time on normal has been rince and repeat reloading because i refuse to play on easy. The one time i did, it turned from hard and all my friends dying to a super easy 2 turn fight. It feels like theres no middle ground here.
If normal poses a challenge you might be too conservative with your resources. It’s perfectly fine to have a short rest after each fight to regain your abilities. And even long rests are basically free, so unless you are in one of the rare time sensitive moments use them a lot.
Also consumables should be used more freely. Elixirs last until a long rest, so are usually good for at least 3 fights. Potions and weapon coatings also add up, that additional D4 of the lowest poison does a lot. And it’s just a bonus action to apply and lasts 10 turns .
Scrolls of spells you have already learned should be used if you are out of spell slots. You don’t need to save them for a harder fight. You can always have a long rest before entering a hard fight. But they can make that random encounter you entered with few spell slots much easier.
And all of that goes hand in hand with organizing your ability bar. It’s a pain to do but being able to see what you have available is so valuable. At the very least make use of the individual tabs for “Class abilities” “Spells” and “Consumables”. They give you a better overview than the default bar.
And even long rests are basically free, so unless you are in one of the rare time sensitive moments use them a lot.
Wait, is this true? I’ve been avoiding even short rests since the game tells you so explicitly that time sensitive things can get messed up by too many long rests, and the early plot is super clear that having a tadpole usually means death/mind-flayer-dom within a week. So I’ve been SUFFERING through every single fight since I need to conserve short rests. Can I actually long rest without dooming myself?
There are maybe one or two quests that are actually urgently time sensitive. Don’t be afraid to rest, the game will warn you if you’re going to mess up a quest before it happens. Resting is also how you get a lot of important camp scenes with the companions.
Also, short rests will never mess up a quest. Do one after nearly every fight.
To my knowledge nothing has a global timer. And only a few quests have an actual time limit. But there you usually get some kind of warning if you are taking too long.
The only thing that’s frequently time sensitive are individual encounters after you spotted them. So let’s say you see two groups fighting. If you then take a long rest, the conflict is resolved and one side is dead. But if you have a save literally 10 seconds before spotting the encounter you could reload that, have a long rest, then walk the few more steps and the two groups are still fighting.
And even non violent NPCs can be time sensitive after spotting them. So if you see a person standing around, just talk to them immediately.
The exact distance when an encounter is triggered can be hard to judge sometimes. So if you want to make sure not to “miss” anything, have a long rest just after a fight. Walk around a little bit to see if any post fight scenes trigger but if not, it’s usually a good spot for a rest. Also helps with getting rid of some lingering spell or environmental effects m
To my knowledge nothing has a global timer. And only a few quests have an actual time limit.
The only one I can think of is one where a character will die from poison gas if you take too long and go to camp too much - not even a long rest; just going to camp (as I learned the hard way when I went to camp to pick up stuff to sell from my trunk) and I came back to an empty zone and the dude’s corpse, and that route closes off a bunch of other quests. I had to reload right before I went to camp.
There are definitely other timed quests, particularly in Act 3, as I’ve discovered while save-scumming long rests trying to trigger different companion convos.
and tactician mode more tacticiany?
I’ve been thinking normal feels a little too easy.
I’m ok with this. The difficulty curve is pretty uneven. Also, if you’re a beginner, it’s largely reversed, with some pretty lethal encounters at the start.
Yeah Witcher 3 and Skyrim are the most recent RPGs I’ve played. This is very next level without much guidance as to what’s what.
I’m experimenting and being free with the reloads to try and get a grip but I still feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. I’ll get there.
Don’t feel bad about reloading to figure out how you want the story to go. BG3 is one of the best story generators in the genre and a lot of the dialogue options have unclear implications (e.g. just-friends dialogue options with gale accidentally leading to romance is one of the fixes in this patch). The point is for you to be able to build the story you want through your actions while still having consequences for those choices, not to pigeonhole you into making the “right” choices.
This is how I started BG3 as well. I ran through the beginning “map area” as a Druid support and it was NOT the right call for a first-time Baldurs Gate player(or at least me). Once I got through the first “map” area, I restarted the game. I chose a more damage friendly class(rogue) and pretty much steamrolled after that. Now that I know that game enough, restarting helped me see some hidden areas I missed or things I just walked passed because of not knowing. 100% would recommend this. I think I was 15 or so hours in. But I quickly got back to my same progress maybe 12 hours in.
Similar experience for me. I somehow missed getting La’zel and Gale on my first playthrough. I managed to go back and find Gale, but La’zel was nowhere to be found. The encounter already happened I guess.
I restarted and things now make more sense.
The group of Intellect Devourers right after the crash killed me about 5 times because I haven’t played BG in about 10 years lol. I had to turn it down till I got back in the swing of things.
I walked into the ruins with only Lae’zel. The bandits steamrolled me bad.
I ran into that problem.multiple times on tactician now, I believe it’s because I usually don’t kill all imps in the last nautiloid fight and don’t level up. On level 2 that fight feels very reaonable. Anyways, you should always sneak up on the sleeping ones to wuickly get rid of one and then it’s 2v1 until the devourer from the back shows up.
Yeah I’m cruising through on my first run on balanced and killing a lot as an evil character, but I played DOS2 and that was damn hard. I can understand new players running into a lot of challenges
I play easy mode and this is much needed, I die non stop, and I have played table top DnD a good bit in the past. It’s definitely over tuned.
I find that it is like DnD and there are some encounters where you can’t win and need to run away.
Got any examples? I can’t think of any
And running away is not easy with the opportunity attacks and the distance required to be able to go to the camp.
Yeah but I’m playing on easy mode lol I still win the fights it’s just that sometimes I have to reload a save 2 or 3 times
It’s definitely not overtuned. In easy mode you get max HP let level up and enemies deal less damage. Balanced is where the game respects the rules. You have every advantage with height manipulation, positioning of your characters, having a long rest before a combat encounter after reloading if you didn’t see it coming… All of those things can’t be done in tabletop.
It’s fine to want the easy mode, nbd, but saying that it’s overtuned is a stretch when comparing it to the tabletop version of 5E.
It’s also beefing up some Tactician mode encounters. I’ll have to replay.
Is tactician the hardest?
Yup
Still in act one but it seems like difficulty is/was generally hard for direct combat. But you seem to be able to cheese a lot of it. For example I was fighting a 75 hp enemy in a room full of minor enemies, near impossible fight for our builds. Reload save push him into a pit, now fighting the remaining goons is doable.
Just wait until enemies start pushing you into lava. 😂
Had that happen! The first time I decided to try out push, I had Karlach push a goblin into lava.
…I did not move her, because it did not occur to me that then she could be pushed into lava. Which is what happened the next round when an enemy dashed over and shoved her into a lava pit.
Lesson learned.
I mean, for anyone to have been shoved into lava, Karlach is probably the best character to be in that position.
Fortunately I’m running a Ancient Paladin build so I’ve got a solid Strength for saving throws.
I had no issues on normal until the very end of Act II. There’s a fight at that point that can be extremely difficult depending on the choices you’ve made. I beat my head against it for a bit, then switched to story mode just for that battle. Back on normal now, working my way through Act 3, and haven’t run into any other fights like it. Curious to see how that encounter plays out in a subsequent playthrough as a less murdery type.
Lmao, I just did that fight on my evil playthrough. Scraped through on Balanced due to Shadowheart’s special Darkness spell, a minor zombie apocalypse, and abusing potions of speed so Minthara could dump four smites per round on the boss.
Ayy, good on you! Man, I was not prepared for that one. Really wished I’d >!killed that damn drider earlier!<
