Community Update 11 - Inspiration, Freedom and Pacifism

Translated from English, click here to access the original content.

Hello everyone !

How are you ? We've been very busy lately between reading your feedback since the game's launch and implementing several tweaks to suit your ideas. Today's patch, which we'll call “Inspiration, Freedom and Pacifism” for reasons you'll understand very soon, introduces major changes to the game's design and gameplay for the first time, inspired by your feedback. .

Last weekend we announced that this patch will make your saves incompatible once the update is done: you can read more about it by clicking here to view the original page on Steam in English, and here to consult the page in French. You have some time before and after the patch's release to prepare to continue your adventures on Patch 2, rather than today's Patch 3.

You might wonder why all the fuss? Informed readers may have noticed the conversation between Swen and IGN (in English) where he openly mentioned a large amount of feedback from players since the game was released on October 6th. (Doesn't that seem like a long time ago?). Much of this interview was done while driving the game design changes we mentioned earlier and which we'll be talking about today.

What's in Patch 3? Let's talk about it. Today we are going to include an anecdote for each topic covered. At the end there will be a quiz *, so make sure you don't miss a thing!

The roads less traveled, now rewarded ...

Our games have always made a point of rewarding creativity and exploration, however, a few people have been disappointed with the lack of rewards for implementing peaceful and creative solutions using less popular routes. Patch 3 now introduces additional experience gain when avoiding conflicting situations, both during dialogues and while exploring and solving puzzles. Now peaceful players will be able to experience an adventure more in keeping with their character's personality. It will also give you more options for dealing with specific situations.

Anecdote : 56% of players avoided a fight during the Goblin rooftop ambush. Now these players will be properly rewarded without necessarily having to kill the Goblins.

Companions will now behave more like ... companions

Regarding behaviors, we noticed that your companions were probably behaving in a slightly negative way at times. So we made them less picky and instead focus on the adventure as a whole. The companions will therefore now be more tolerant. They will no longer pick up on every little thing that bugs them but instead focus on the things they approve of while maintaining their personalities and opinions. Clearly, they will behave a little more like companions.

Anecdote : For the 204 players who allowed Astarion to bite them, you will no longer have to deal with Shadowheart's disapproval at what should be an intimate moment between the two of you.

Skill tests during dialogues will be less likely to completely exclude you from a situation

Particularly important dialogues with difficult skill checks have been rebalanced - instead of failing and being excluded from an entire event due to a failed dice roll, you are more likely to succeed. . This is to prevent the result of the roll preventing you from accessing the rest of the story, unless the situation is worth it. However, you will still ultimately have to comply with the will of the die.

Anecdote : Slightly more than half of the players who used the skill “Communication with Animals” still failed their dice roll during the dialogue with the Bear-Owl. This figure varies by only 5% with players who did not use “Communicate with Animals”. We have therefore adapted the game so that you can have more chances of success if your character is invested in learning dressage.

The end of individual management of jumps

Micromanaging your characters' gymnastics sessions is surely not something you would have imagined doing in the Forgotten Realms! Now when you need to jump over a ditch, for example, your party will automatically jump to follow you! Hooray!

Anecdote : Just over 200 players used the jump to reach the injured Tiefling near the river. Don't worry about doing this jump alone, now your companions will join you automatically.

More adventure, less rest

You will now be able to use 2 short rests after your long rest. Previously, you were only allowed one short rest. It's twice as much for the same price! This means fewer interruptions during your adventure and all the benefits of a rest.

Anecdote : 2 is exactly double of 1.

Rebalance of magic tricks & reduced surface effects

It was an extremely popular request. Magic tricks will now have less impact than “real” spells, which will give more importance to limited use spells. This will make the management of resources more meaningful, and “real” spells will be more satisfying to use. Additionally, we've made changes to the ground surfaces, drastically reducing their spawns to avoid crashes as well as to respond to community feedback about how combat feels. The Fire Bolt, Frost Ray and Acid Jet spells will no longer create a zone on the ground on impact. Fire Bolt will always ignite flammable surfaces, and Ray of Frost will always ice water and blood.

Anecdote : Last week, players died 78 times from the fire. This constitutes a total of 293% of deaths. Maybe that will change thanks to the reduction in surface effects and changes to magic tricks.

Improved user interface including spells & inspiration points

Inspiration Points will now be visible in the UI, so you can use them!

You will now be able to select higher versions of your spells via a separate widget in order to declutter the spell bar. You can watch the result in today's video. D&D allows players to cast the same spell in different “levels”, which costs more or less resources and produces a more or less powerful effect.

Previously, each level of a spell was represented by a different icon. After a while, this led to a clutter of the Spell Bar and players had difficulty organizing it after each level-up. Now all the variations of a spell will be grouped and organized in a new menu inside the icon of the spell in question.

Anecdote : 770 of you rescued the group of fishermen at the crash site. Now you will be able to clearly see the inspiration point granted by this action.

Cross-saving is finally here! And it is finally activated!

There is one thing that we are working a lot on at Larian HQ (s), and that is improving our own infrastructure in order to offer different services allowing players to have more freedom in the way they play ( you see, freedom is in the title!). The launcher - for which we still don't have an official name - is a simple icon for you to launch the game, but behind it are a bunch of people at Larian who work on things like this feature of cross-saving.

Cross-save was partially functional between Steam and GoG but we didn't want to talk openly about it until it was fully functional across all the platforms the game was released on. Now, your Larian account facilitates cross-saving thanks to the ubiquitous “cloud”. The strong point is that we manage this service ourselves, so we are in total control of it. This means that you can now share your saves between Steam, Stadia, Mac and GoG. If you are online, your save file will automatically upload to the cloud once created, along with any autosavings as you play. On your laptop at an airport? Log into Google Stadia and continue your adventure. On your MacBook for work? Well… let's talk about that briefly.

Baldur's Gate 3 was featured extensively during the Apple Event on November 10. During this event, Apple unveiled the launch of a revolutionary new chip: the Apple M1. It's a bit early to talk about running Baldur's Gate 3 with the Apple M1 architecture, but native support for this new chip will be here very soon. As of this writing, Divinity: Original Sin 2 and Baldur's Gate 3 run on the latest Macs, but they're running Rosetta 2, which doesn't take advantage of the exciting features that the M1 chip brings.

Technically, this means that you will therefore be able to play Baldur's Gate 3 on all Macs from the latest series. Previously you would never have been able to play BG3 on a MacBook Air, and would have struggled on a MacBook Pro, but even running Rosetta 2 we tried Baldur's Gate 3 with high quality graphics options with very little of problems, which we think is super cool because it will allow you to have - combined with the cross-save - a highly portable and accessible experience anywhere.

If you're lucky enough to own one of Apple's latest Macs, give it a try today and let us know what you think. Know that our friends at Elverils are working hard on native M1 support, which will really make this new hardware (and the game) shine, but this is just the first step towards what seems like an interesting adventure in the world. future of AAA games on an ARM architecture.

Here ! We've covered all the important points in this update. Of course, Patch 3 comes with a whole bunch of bug fixes. Do you want them? Here they are :

improvements

• Improved character “follow” movement.
• Added an option to hide the helmet in the equipment screen.
• Added preview of spell trajectory.
• All characters do stop running when turn-based mode is activated by the player.
• Companions will now jump to follow the character controlled by the player.
• Fixed and re-added Crusader Save function between all platforms.
• Adjusted the approval rating of companions.
• Combat AI now takes into account falls when jumping.
• Changed the AI ​​behavior for Boar, Intellect Eater and Little Spider.
• Battle music no longer stops when a character joins the battle.
• The audio configuration now changes when a new option is selected.
• In multiplayer mode, all players can now hear the sound of the dice roll during dialogues.
• Decluttering the spell bar with a separate widget to select higher levels of a spell.
• Improved the appearance of passives that can be added to the spell bar.
• Improved some tooltips related to character creation skills.
• Added a tutorial for inspiration points.
• Cinematics: adjustment of emotions and looks in certain areas.
• Cinematics: camera adjustment and improved brightness in some areas.
• Cinematics: many adjustments and improvements in attitudes and emotions.
• Cinematics: improved timing of fades.
• The dialogs associated with a mask will take place before equipping it instead of after.
• Jumping into a hole will also teleport all follower characters.
• Revision of the weapon's draw / sheath for a more consistent behavior.
• Experience is now granted for dodging combat and completing minor quests.
• Added a new sound for initiative rolls in combat.

Rebalancing

• Fire Bolt, Frost Ray, and Acid Jet no longer create ground surfaces on impact. Fire Blast will always ignite flammable surfaces, and Ray of Frost will always freeze water and blood. Fire Blast damage in summers adjusted accordingly.
• Adjusted the default distribution of abilities for Clerics and Rogues. Clerics will start with more Dexterity to better take advantage of the advantages of medium armor; Rogues will start with more Intelligence for Arcane mastery.
• It is no longer possible to perform infinite actions by moving between the interior and exterior of a White Spore Cloud in the same turn; The status effect caused by a White Spore Cloud should now persist until the end of a character's turn.
• Camera shake mitigation for spell preparation effects.
• The Break spell now works correctly with the Sculpt spell.
• Melee sneak attacks now require a melee weapon.
• Summoning a clone now works correctly only if the attacker is within 3 meters of the summon.
• Surprise statuses can no longer stack.
• Increased the price of Drow's armor to 800 gold.
• Possibility of accumulating several curse effects on the same character.
• You can now launch while being hidden.
• The group can now take 2 short rests after a long rest.
• The default action in a container tooltip is now “open” instead of “pick up”.
• Rebalanced the difficulty of skill tests during dialogues.
• Changed the melee skeleton ability from Slash to Slash for greater consistency.
• Fixed NPCs not viewing the use of the Hunter's Mark as a hostile action.
• Adjusted the Goblin AI.

Performance and Stability

• Fixed the bug preventing you from being able to load certain saves.
• Reduced backup time.
• Improved the stability of the Vulkan version.
• Fixed a random crash when removing a tracked character.
• Fixed random crash when switching weapons while carrying two weapons.
• Fixed crash that occurred when deleting many saves.
• Fixed crash when picking a heavy chest.
• Fixed random crash when making a failed passive skill roll.
• Fixed the crash that could occur when two objects stack on top of each other.
• Fixed crash when loading while jumping.
• Fixed crash when loot imps loot from a tutorial room.

corrections

• Fixed several staging issues during cutscenes.
• Fixed incorrect speaking rates during some dialogues.
• Characters can now walk to their positions even if they are blocked by an invisible object.
• The automatic path has been set for some objects.
• A weapon incompatible with the handling of two weapons will now be automatically equipped when double-clicking on it.
• All Passives should now be visible in the Character Sheet.
• During combat, the preview for the chance of an attack succeeding should now be correct - even if the character needs to move.
• The melee archetype AI should now correctly calculate the damage inflicted on allies and neutral characters. This should reduce unnecessary damage inflicted on allies when using any attack or area-of-effect skill.
• The sound of the casting has been restored for some spells.
• Summoned guards will now patrol an area before leaving it.
• Fixed a bug blocking some dialogues triggered by a Persuasion check.
• You will no longer be able to switch weapons while casting a spell or moving.
• After loading your save, the quest marker should now disappear when the objective changes.
• Added entry delay to avoid spam with jets.
• Fixed an issue with characters going out of sync returning to their original position after jumping.
• Log notifications should no longer be blocked on the screen.
• Fixed a bug preventing visuals from being displayed in the “examine” window.
• Fixed a bug that caused an error in the creation of the player profile when special characters were used in the name.
• Changes made to audio settings are now kept when changing profiles.
• Fixed an animation bug when applying certain statuses to NPCs when forcibly activating turn-based mode.
• Doors that have been opened now appear to be open.
• The invisibility scroll is now worth the same price as other level 2 scrolls.
• Agathys armor now does 10 cold damage when using a 2nd level spell.
• Healing wounds from Clerics in the Realm of Life now heals 2d8 HP when using a level 2 spell.
• The “Great Weapon Fighting” passive no longer activates on ranged weapon attacks.
• Carried with both hands, the combat staff now does 1d8 base damage instead of 1d6.
• Dissonant Whispers now shows the correct damage value at level 2.
• The effects of the Mother's Dislike potion are active until rested (as mentioned in the tooltip).
• Some broken healing potions are no longer displayed as higher versions.
• When loading a save while turn-based mode is on (during an NPC's turn), characters now have all of their gear well equipped.
• Characters will now receive fall damage when struck by Eldricht's Breath with the Repelling Breath passive skill.
• The Faith Breaker (Absolute Power) weapon now properly triggers a pushback.
• There is no longer any interface overlay when 4 players recruit Lae'zel and Us in the tutorial.
• Removed attack and barter options when recruiting Lae'zel.
• By recruiting Lae'zel, you no longer gain double experience.
• Harpies should be able to reach more areas in combat.
• Journal entries are now correct when the player decides not to fight the Harpies.
• In Thayan's Cave, skeletons now destroy their coffins upon spawning.
• Music should now play correctly in the Goblin Camp.
• Minthara no longer disappears after asking her certain questions.
• The moon puzzle no longer flips the moons after performing a successive rotation of the adjacent discs.
• Companion bear stats are no longer ten times the expected weight.
• The dialogue between Ethel and the Mayrina brothers no longer ends abruptly if you decide not to take sides.
• Fixed a bug preventing the Letter for Kagha from being picked up.
• Removing incorrect music from the swamp.
• Lae'zel no longer refuses to discuss after meeting the Githyanki near the bridge.
• When entering the aura of a Sussur Floral, spells are now correctly disabled in the hotbar.
• Other fixes and general quest checks to make the story run smoother.
• Fixed repetitions in the Kagha denunciation scene.
• Fixed a bug when selecting the Goblins beer kettle to allow the correct dialogue to display.
• Fixed quests and journal tracking for Zhent's Shipment.
• Arabella dies well when she's supposed to.
• Dialogue with Anders has been corrected.
• Thayan's undead have slower reactions.
• Improved Shadowheart's responsiveness during the Arabella trial scene.
• Corrections made when recruiting Lae'zel in the Plains for more fluidity.

* There is no quiz.