I fireballed the one balcony and flamestriked the other to quickly take out the portal guys. Also had the benefit of breaking some concentrations.
That was on like my third try, though. Very tough fight.
I think I’m winding towards the end of Act 3. I’m about ready to finish the Gortash half of things, then I think I have one substantial sidequest left before tackling the Orin side of things. After that, I expect a spectacular finale with appearances from all the cool folks I’ve saved.
I’m impressed with the game. The implementation of the 5E rules are good, especially no attunement, bonus action for potions, and more. (I’m currently running Level Up, called A5E, as it has more depth than 5E.) I enjoy the little tweaks to magic items, which makes picking which armor or weapon to use a deeper choice than it otherwise might be. There is no right way to play, only my way to play.
In the glitch category, one of the characters has a harp and has several cutscenes playing the harp. I have never actually seen the harp. The harp is never there so they are playing an invisible one.
On my run through the Shadowfell, I find Jaheira, of course. She is at my camp and says she will be at the final fight with the General. She is but in my game, we got bottle necked in the tower fight at the top of the stairs from the outside into the first room. I had to retreat rather than go forward due to darkness and other spells. It was quite cool! Jaheira started the fight with me and at the end of the fight, I find her body. Um, oops but good loot. I thought it was a good story moment, and it was a tough fight I didn’t want to do again, so I left her dead. Here’s the thing. Jaheira seems to have a spot in the camp but is never there. Further, I have had NPCs request I tell her something and have no way to do that.
How many people are the hoarding type that never use anything? They end the game with lots of little one shot things, potions, scrolls, or arrows saving them for the exact time they are needed? Well, it won’t be me this time! I go to the secret temple to Shar in Baldur’s Gate and start talking to them about Shadowheart’s story and transgressions. I end up fighting all of the clerics. I decided to use up my black powder arrows as a way to disrupt the dozen clerics that keep casting concentration spells, like darkness or the shadow spells of Shar on me. Those do so much damage that I was able to kill half of the attackers on one side with that area of effect. Once those were used up, I switched to the many target spells arrows, not sure what they are called, to hit the other side of clerics. Being able to shoot multiple times to force spellcasters to make multiple concentration rolls and eventually they will fail.
I think this is better than Skyrim. I get the allure of the freedom of Skyrim but I much prefer a main story and being pushed to do that with many different ways of accomplishing it. It pushes me forward to see the story that has been planned. I also think that would have been difficult to implement in 5E rules compare to the skill based game that is Skyrim.
I didn’t like Divinity 2 and I’m finding out why as I play BG3. I have used FR as my game world for three decades. I know it well. So finding a scrap of paper that references something I know makes it a deeper experience for me that wasn’t there in Divinity 2. Having said that, I also think that BG3 has a “DM v player” feel that I don’t like. Miss an Investigation, Perception, or Survival check, or miss what it highlights on a success, and something will be forever hidden.
At the same time, my first play through only makes my second play through, and third, better because now I know that sometimes I have to sit in a chair to start a cut scene or move all paintings to find the hidden safe.
I think one DLC that I would definitely pay for, and I hope that Larian ends up being a disrupter for giving us a completed game with no DLC and reasonably fast turn arounds on patches, is going up to twentieth level. I like games that reward me with grinding to get an extra level or two with side quests with non scaled fights that are a bit easier. squints at Diablo IV The bounded accuracy won’t give me much higher skill or combat bonuses but it will give me more hit points and spell slots to use.
Don’t forget everyone who pre ordered on PC got the deluxe edition for free.
I am loving the game but I do think this game has bad on boarding. I have been playing it around twenty hours now and feel like I am still learning how to play because there was barely a tutorial. Maybe they assume everyone is familiar with 5E rules but I am not. I think a little more hand holding would have helped in the beginning. I will also reiterate my wish for auto combat and auto leveling for the NPC party members like the first two games had. I get most like to micromanage and min max but I appreciate only having to focus on my character.
@Quimby I do agree with that. I’m not sure where I stand on that. Is it good they don’t show you everything in a tutorial so that gives it replay value? Or does it take away from the first game when you realize how much you miss? At the moment, it is making look forward to trying things I learned in my next game but I could see that turning sour as well.
I agree on auto leveling. I think I even chose that but still have to do it, as you said. I personally don’t like micromanaging or min maxing so I can focus on my character. I think the nature of a computer game means those will happen because the computer can do those things easier.
I have been impressed with Larian. As I said, though, I want a game from them with IP I already know because their own games didn’t pull me into them as much as BG3 is.
Thanks for the replies and conversation!
(Act II Spoilers) For me, she died during the attack on Moonrise (as an NPC). I hadn’t invited her to travel with us yet, she lasted to the end of the big fight but died in the last few rounds. Since she was an NPC, I couldn’t revive her so… oh well. There’s actually a few Companions I don’t have or plot NPCs who had bad endings due to my quest choices or negligence:
(Act III Spoiler): I missed Zevlor in the Mind Flayer pod and he showed up later in my camp… as a tortured corpse and warning from Orin. I went around talking to my camp people after that and all my companions were “Poor Zevlor” aside from Angel Girl who was apparently too busy canoodling with her girlfriend to notice a divine assassin dropping off a corpse in our living room. Grade A work there, Daughter of Selune.
In more amusing Act III Romance Spoilers:
After clearing the House of Loss and --ahem-- “freeing” Shadowheart’s parents, I figured that now my progress with SH could finally progress. I long rest, see a cut scene starting and… it’s The Emperor in his underwear trying to hit on me. Yikes! The next night I saw Mizora in my camp had a dialogue box. She wanted to hook up and I was ready to quit for bed anyway so I quicksaved and said let’s do this. Cut scene starts and… it’s SH having a moment about her parents. She stole my Mizora romp! For all people complain about the game being horny, I’m getting blocked at every turn. Well, unless I want to doink a mindflayer.
So I’m in the Shadow Lands, as of last night. Total time in Act 1, according to the save I had at the entrance to Act 2: 50 hours. Probably can add another 5 or so due to having to backtrack (technical issues or party wipes).
The massive success of BG3 might change their mind, but apparently to date Larian’s plans have been to be more or less one and done with Baldur’s Gate. Their president appears to think that for this game as implemented it would simply be too complicated to scale up to godly power levels and keep the game engaging. Not impossible, just an enormous amount of work and they already have other projects in the pipeline.
Of course stuff like BG2 and WotR proves it is doable, so I’d like to see them give it the old college try. But I’m not holding my breath. After all, if I’d held it for BG3 I’d be long since dead 
.
This is 100% true of actual D&D, so it tracks. Even level 12 is into the point where stuff starts breaking down a bit.
DLC would be neat, but it’s fair to say that it would be gilding the lily.
I think what would make more sense (and dear God I hope this happens) is for Larian to make more stories set in the Forgotten Realms using this engine. They can add more classes (or subclasses) and races as well as spells as they do (and if they wanna be real class acts backport some of those features to existing campaigns), and maybe some of these stories could go to level 14 or 16 - but probably not much higher.
Maybe something like Planescape could handle higher levels.
I would love a game using the engine set in Eberron so it can be a little steampunky. Plus I would love to explore Sharn.
I’m now picturing Planescape: Torment with this engine. Not that I’m in favor of remaking it, just imagining how it might have worked with well-acted cinematics replacing text. It would have been epic.
Just agreeing with the above, WotC has said that the average 5e campaign ends around level 12 (based on their research) and there’s no first party published campaigns that go past 16. Besides the mechanical issues of dealing with Plane Shift, Simulacrum and Wish, many players just don’t like the vibe of the game at that point versus the good ole days of exploring crypts and battling orcs & ogres with foes like dragons and liches being tremendous mythic threats.
Man, Act III is crazy busy with each companion quest being a whole thing plus stopping the bad guys plus all the random nonsense NPCs want to their at you. I think I’m happy I’m missing some companions because I have too much going on as is.
That’s exactly the issue that ended up turning me off of DDO, which is based on 3.5 rules. DDO originally had a level cap of 10, then went to 12, then 16, then it was at 20 by the time I started playing. That was perfect for me, and I loved it.
After I had been playing for a few years they added epic levels from 21 to 25. I didn’t like that as much. Then expanded those up to 28, then 30. At this point, characters were so overpowered that they added a new difficulty (“reaper”) which pretty much immediately became the standard for all groups.
The problem is that reaper difficulty applied to all levels, meaning I could no longer find groups for the basic 1 to 20 “campaign” that I enjoyed. Plus all new content that included levels 1 to 20 was much more difficult than the older content, meaning it was much more difficult to solo.
I ended up quitting DDO very shortly after reaper was introduced, and haven’t played it since. It’s too bad that adding higher levels ended up infecting the low level experience, but that is probably an inevitable consequence.
I’ve been grabbing oil barrels anytime I come across them and now pretty much start every battle with grease and an artillery barrage.
Yeah, when I said earlier that I was winding towards the end I wasn’t thinking about all the companion quests, though Karlach and Gale’s just sort of happen in the course of things. I’ve also decided to do Astarion’s on my evil playthrough.
At the moment I think I only have Jaheria’s to do. Then a heist. Then I’ll go after the last Big Bad in my journal.
T’chaki! Do you Istiks mean to say you aren’t doing every possible sidequest and opening every past crate? Vlaakith turns her gaze from your shameful countenance.
Counterpoint: Why are you wasting time doing anything that isn’t directly related to reaching the creche and connected points beyond?
I read somewhere that they stopped at level 12 because spells simply become too powerful to implement. How do you do Wish (as an example)? Power Word Kill?